Reviews - rabyte

One-line-summary: Sadly doesn't live up to the hype.

CoF is a great example of how a game can be hyped into oblivion. The good parts of this mod aren't original and the original parts aren't good. Put differently: The parts that are fun feel highly derivative and the elements you haven't seen in another shooter (of which there are few) are executed badly, sometimes frustratingly bad. I won't write a two-page review here, as this really wouldn't make much sense in this case. Instead, I'll resort to the good old good-and-bad-points system of reviews:

+ Pushing the HL engine to its limits
+ Mostly detailed maps
+ Some great music
+ Excellent ambience effects
+ Good weapon animations
+ Storyline shows promise in the beginning
+ Fun co-op mode

- Tries hard but fails to be original
- Laughably bad looking monsters
- Few effective scares
- Lot of annoying backtracking required
- Some needlessly frustrating scenes
- Simplistic storyline with pathetic ending(s)
- Lackluster protagonist voice-acting (and artificial... pauses... are... annoying...)
- Unstable, game crashes often
- Very few servers
- Devs hunting for cash ("donations", expensive soundtrack)

Keep in mind that this mod has been in development for several years, has been hyped by the developers themselves and that they even take money ("donations") for extra content. The soundtrack goes for 15 bucks, available as low-quality MP3s only.

Some last advice: No matter what you think about my review, be highly suspicious about the 9 and 10 point ratings here. Don't fall for the hype by incompetent fanboys who just have no clue as to how to review anything. Also pay attention to all the 10* ratings right after this mod was released. You should've played through it at least once before rating.

Update: More like a 5.5* due to fun multiplayer, revised certain aspects.