Reviews - texassteve

An alright mod that is plagued by awful balancing and some bugs due to the SteamPipe update.

The mod starts off relatively okay but you will be lost for the first 5 minutes or so but afterwards it becomes pretty linear and understandable, atleast it did for me.
Unfortunately the closer you get to the ending, the worse it gets, to the point where you must use cheats as there are just waves after waves of enemies with barely any supplies to counter-balance them.

Voiceacting is whatever, does the job and sometimes a bit funny due to the delivery.

If you got time to waste and have nothing to do otherwise, it's worth atleast a singular playthrough but you probably won't have that much fun with it.

I gotta say, RTBR is very consistent at being hit or miss.

Levels can go from really pretty to Timmy's 20th GMod map with ok lighting, certain levels can look incredibly flat due to textures and models used within them. Overall level design is either very good in one map or just ok in another which makes the AI be incredibly dumb most of the time.

The mod suffers from difficulty spikes aswell which are ******* horrible.

Voice acting is mostly ok to bad, depending on the lines written and the delivery of them, doesn't help when NPCs do not match the lines spoken when it comes to body language and overall emotions, lot of issues where they are talking to another but are looking at you because??? or they won't face you despite talking to you, instead just trying to look at you with their backs turned.

Barney is whatever, it's alright.
Consul sounds like a generic villain, no charisma at all.
Eli can't stop talking about how old he is but otherwise most of the lines and delivery is fine.
Alyx can be fine but become incredibly annoying depending on the situation/map.
Grigori is peak, no faults there as far as I can tell, very good impression and line delivery.

Gunplay feels good, nice punchy animations, vfx and sfx. Alternate fire modes are thought out decently well but that's really it. However the inclusion of NPC weapons like the Annabelle and the Alyx Gun is good on paper but execution ******* sucks, "here is my weapon Gordon, use it while I leave myself completely defenseless and call out to you 20 times because there are too many enemies to manage as they just keep spawning." Gee thanks Grigori.

The assets do not mesh well at all, everything looks either stupidly cartoony and rubbery or dipped in oil, sometimes very crude looking aswell. There's a few that look fine but the majority suffers alot. (Not to mention the fact that the mod uses vanilla and other source game assets that just contribute to it since they did not finish making and swapping everything out.)

Overall the mod feels like it's just going through a checklist and staying as close as possible to the events of HL2 but under the skin of the "beta."

The rating I'm leaving is very generous as there is some good in this but otherwise is very overshadowed by the bad. I'll probably update the review as the Divisions release but I'm not holding my breath.

Calamity is more action-oriented mod from 2009 that explains it's narrative through graffiti and audio logs.

The combat for the most part is decent but eventually gets a major difficulty spike that might ruin it for you.

The narrative isn't too strong but it seems to have predicted Half-Life Alyx's Citadel construction plot point.

Overall it's a tightly packed mod that doesn't go on longer than what was necessary, the only thing that ruined it for me was the difficulty spike I spoke of earlier, it's well worth a playthrough however!

Rock 24 is one of those mods that got absolutely demolished by the 2013 SteamPipe update.

However fans have since created patches for it that put it in a fully playable state, it offers an hour or so of playtime with a decently written story for the time.

It's only shortcomings are the fights against the Combine, they are not that well designed and most times they will just rush you instead of doing something a bit more smarter, also the lack of player cover was a bit annoying but otherwise fine.

Well worth a playthrough if you want something tightly packed that doesn't overstay it's welcome!

Beta extravaganza!

Not only is it doing it's own thing but it also acts as a front for custom beta content on the retail engine!

If only more people actually used it for their beta shenanigans instead of creating multiple Moddb pages for mods that will probably never release.

Can't wait for the next release!

The mod's only saving grace is that you can play HLA beginning to end, ironic how it won the Best Singleplayer category considering that it actively removes certain puzzles, mechanics and weapon upgrades. Extra depth my ***.

Overall the entire thing feels jank as hell, you WILL get stuck on small props and geometry, you WILL fall out of the map if you try exploring areas that are normally supposed to be clipped off, I could go on.

The weapons feel horrible, both mechanically and animation wise (but not all of them... that much)
- The pistol has clean animations besides the aim firing being rather bad, no wonder they added the crosshair being always on your screen.
- The shotgun is clean for the most part but has clipping issues during the reload, the firing animation is also rather weak for what is essentially a one-handed (in this case two) pistol sized shotgun AND is slowed down because???
- The SMG is just... eurgh. The posing is horrid, the reload blocks the middle of the screen and the posing for the gripping on the mag is just not good at all during it.
- The Grenade is the same as the SMG, posing is awful, the animation for throwing looks more like trying to place it on a wall, it's like Alyx suddenly became a toddler who has no idea how to handle weapons in any capacity.
- The Multi-tool is of the same issue as the other two mentioned above, posing once again is awful, the animation for interacting with hackables is just ehh.

You have too many animators for a project that only has 5-6 weapons which not only results in inconsistency style wise but also quality. You could've easily let a singular animator do everything as long as they have the time, the fix is not getting other animators that do one thing or absolutely nothing.

I am truly sorry if I ****** off anyone on the team, I just have an incredible distain to your Project Manager who seems to care way too much about his own ego that anything below 7/10 makes him go rabid only to confront, harass or even undermine the reviewer by review bombing their mods with ******** "feedback."
Not to mention throwing a hissy fit over being asked to rename the mod to avoid confusion between the other NoVR mod.

SoMNst's version truly couldn't come any sooner.

I will start with the good:

The mod looks absolutely fantastic and has a really good atmosphere which captures Silent Hill very well but that's where the good ends.

The bad:

Your entire time during the 5-6 hours that it takes to finish the mod is comprised of walking long distances to find key items or solve puzzles only then to walk to whatever door you unlocked with nothing happening in=between outside of the 2-3 "encounters" you have with monsters that do not attack you and watch you from an unreachable area. It is quite literally a boring walking simulator without the cool animations for interactions that you'd expect from most games like it.
It's a chore to playthrough and you WILL start getting lost and what's even worse is that towards the ending they throw doors at you that just teleport you back to to the other end of a hallway that you are trying to leave, confusing you even more.

The story is interesting up until you get towards the end as it has a buildup that something cool will finally happen but in actuality it just feels like a massive **** you towards the player (to me atleast) after wasting hours of your time for literal nothing.

I would've given it a higher rating if there was actual combat to keep you on your toes but in it's current state I do not think it deserves the rating it has and baffled how every review has an 8 score.

I do not recommend this mod, skip it or look up a playthrough to avoid frustration. The only reason I'd see anyone playing this is if they'd wanted to explore the environments it has to offer.

To start of I played this on Normal difficulty and I think this mod was way too overhyped.

The levels are gorgeous and nicely made. The only turnoff is how dark some areas are for no reason inside the buildings. The lights are clearly on but there isn't much ambient light despite all of that resulting in the darkness.

Soundscape is nice and makes the world feel alive outside the levels as you can hear and somewhat see HECU forces fighting the Xenians, see a convoy driving by later into the mod & several explosions happening in the background.

Removing the fast weapon switch was a very bad choice as switching to any of your weapons from another one takes a ******* eternity for no reason. If one wants to leave in the holster anims you might aswell speed them up. They just don't fit into the gameplay/combat with this speed.

Handgun reload doesn't make any sense, why does the slide lock back when reloading a half empty mag then goes forward is beyond me. Empty reload is just as questionable, the gun automatically chambers a round after you put in the mag but you still **** it because???

The music is a combination of both original tracks, base HL1 and for whatever reason some HL2 EP2 tracks which don't really fit imo.

AI is really dumb, suffering from Security Guards not following you on basic paths, enemies completely ignoring you in some parts or not attacking, i.e 2 HECU soldiers just staring at me from afar despite being within shooting range. There was also a case of my security guard shooting me after I blew up 2 soldiers???

Overall it's an alright mod, visually great, gameplay was ok.