tr1p tells the story of a guy who had a car accident while driving home from work after a 48h shift. He wakes up at night laying next to his crashed car in a place he doesn't seem to remember as a part of the route he usually takes to go home. Actually... he is now very, very, VERY far from home. This is a Half-Life 2 first person shooter mod. Will you survive and make it back home to your family and friends?
To be fair, you did say it was going to be hard and most of the game is fairly challenging but the first major fight and the last chopper battle are bordering impossible. I finished the game but those two parts are seriously too hard. This is probably because there's no good place to make your stand at while at the same time there's not enough room for the player to fight while on the move and enemies keep spawning all around you.
Another problem was the level design, while mostly ok I spent a lot of time wondering where to go. This wasn't so bad at times (at the first poison zombie) and frustrating at others (after I let the ladder down into the playground). And when you figure out a way that you think is right, you don't know if you're exploiting or just doing what you're supposed to do (e.g. the walk on rail bit in the sewers, after I let the ladder down into the playground etc).
Speaking of exploits there were some bugs. The combines and zombies didn't attack each other except when the headcrab shell hit the playground during the first major fight some combines attacked the headcrabs. This left me wondering if the combines and the zombies are supposed to allies or if its just a bug. And the fast zombies sometimes went through walls when they tried to jump attack me.
The story is virtually nonexistant and what little there is, is just confusing. I mean why is this "normal?" guy wearing a hev-suit? Why does it end at the train, will he be home after that? Why are the combines attacking him, if he's just a worker? Why are the combines cooperating with the zombies, etc? If you're going to have that little story, why can't the protagonist simply be freeman?
Other than that it was fairly entertaining, it could be longer :)
The only reason this isn't rated as a 1 is because the mod creator mentioned it'd be difficult as hell. That's fair - he did exactly as he said he would.
All that said... if I were to come up with an apt metaphor for playing through "tr1p," it'd be like placing your testicles in a vise and squeezing as hard as you can. It is not fun. There is no nuance to this, no puzzles to solve other than the "puzzle" of finding out where the hell you're supposed to go next. The map design (which is decent) offers no hints, other than the occasionally missed sound - this is not a player friendly experience and the designer seems to take a sort of pride in this fact.
I agree that games have become dumbed down and easier, but even MGS told you to look on the back of the ******* box when you couldn't figure something out. There's a difference between challenge and completely alienating the player, and this mod gleefully does the latter.
Anyway - you play as someone who is apparently Gordon Freeman coming back from a "48 hour shift" (what is he, a firefighter?) Mind you, this is all flavor description from the mod page, so if you just load it up without looking you'll have no clue what's going on. It's just a barebones set up intended to offer some lame and flimsy pretense to go out and fight zombies and a metric fuckton (a precise measurement, imo) of Combine troops.
This doesn't tickle the brain, it holds no nuance or detail that doesn't continually drive you into combat or offer much to think about. It's a big dumb set of maps where you brutally kill things and press the F9 key a thousand times until you either open up the console and give yourself God mode or, more preferably, exit out.
Give 'er a miss. Again, I at least salute the creator for explicitly mentioning that this would be difficult as balls. I just didn't realize he meant "to the point of not being playable."
This is made for masochists. Physically impossible for average joes and way too hard for people who love a challenge. If you loved playing Doom and Doom Eternal on Ultra Nightmare, go ahead.
that first large arena fight isn't challenging, it's unreasonable. it's easy to make HARD games if this is what you consider to be "HARD", "simply never stop and keep on running" doesn't work for long with a donut map where any enemies behind you also are infront of you or you're walking into a dead end where you need to turn around and try to walk by them.
it doesn't make much sense that we watched in one area zombies attacking combine and combine attacking zombies(where we got the shotgun) and then in the VERY NEXT area this rule gets flushed down the toilet and you become the only target(it's a set up with the worst payoff you could have picked, you didn't just ignore the rules you created, broke common sense to break your own rules THAT YOU SET UP JUST BEFORE as well), when I play half life I want to feel like I'm part a world and not the world itself, why and how do the zombies and combine somehow know that some nerd who crashed his crap car is the most important thing in the area? why would a zombie care? why does the fighting only start when I enter the area as if it's an ambush? did the zombies and combine talk to each other about how they have a common enemy called "the player" and to not start the fighting until the guy gets here and to only focus on him? gunna tell me the zombies have ambassadors that they send to the combine when they wanna have a ceasefire?
[TL;DR] the first 20sec from the timestamp of this youtube video sums up the combat,
Great visuals and a really nice Half Life feel. Alas, some poor design decisions make it less fun than it ought to be.
This mod is horribly unbalanced. It's almost as if the creator doesn't want you to enjoy yourself. It's a shame because I really liked the level design in this, but my expectations were ruined due to it being criminally unfun.
Good mod.
Too difficult for no reason.