Causality Effect - Half-Life 2

What can I say, except its a superb mod. Visuals, gameplay balance, everything. Beta testers for future mods/maps should compare the gameplay feeling against this one. A must download!

Thanks very much!

Not bad - a nice little mod that suffered a bit due to the long level loads.

Gameplay:
The mod starts with how the “Red Letter Day” chapter in the game originally starts. However, things change during the teleportation process and you appear in an alternate timeline. The mod is mostly action from then on, both small and large fights with combine soldiers or striders which can be tricky to beat at times. Around the start of the mod, the author throws a lot of combine soldiers at you near one of the gates you open which is very challenging to get passed. Further in, the fights do get slightly easier but harder again near the end. During the play through you get teleported about in the past and future to see events happening which can confuse you at times, but interesting. There can be too less ammo and health at some sections but enough much later on. The mod also has four different endings, depending on who you kill near the end and some seem interesting.

Design:
Very much like how Valve designed their levels which a good structure throughout many
of the levels yet a few aren’t. A lot of areas tend to however be very blocky, especially the outside locations which was a shame. Props have been used well and not over done and fit in the location they?ve been placed. Texturing is also fine, mixing well with each other and the room type but nothing too special. Lighting is above average and always has a light source somewhere which is good, sometimes accurate to the type of light model it was. Many areas are very open spaces, plenty of room for combat and pretty much detailed so they?re not too empty.

Conclusion:
An interesting alternate timeline to play through with tricky gameplay and above average design.

Rating: 75%

Copyright:
This review was written by Ryan “Quakis” Rouse and first appeared on The Abandoned Workshops and is republished by permission.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD - this “mod” is full of bugs, it caused a full system crash and i needed to reinstall windows. This has never happened with any other HL2 mod/game. DO NOT USE IT, IT WILL BREAK YOUR SYSTEM.

I played this one 4 month ago and didn’t encounter any problem

The map loads were pretty slow but not uniquely slow. My anti-virus software is not to blame.

This mod made hl2.exe crash on me in at least two different spots, in two different maps. One spot in particular was very bad in this regard–hl2.exe crashed at least 6 times in the same spot.

There is no reason a crash of hl2.exe should damage anything on your system. I can’t possibly imagine how that would happen as a direct result. This is absolutely not meant to contradict advice to backup before running any new software.

While playing this mod, the flashbacks left me clueless. I had no idea what was supposedly going on.

The mod wasn’t too terribly difficult, but a couple spots annoyed me a bit. I look forward to the day I find a map or mod that doesn’t include a puzzle every three steps.

*** SPOILER ALERT***

If you haven’t played this mod, you may not want to read what follows, as it contains minor spoilers. (I like to err on the side of caution where spoilers are concerned.)

On the last map, I killed Breen and Alyx (yes, sigh, Alyx) where they stood, yet they were marked as “M.I.A.” at the end. Dead isn’t “MIA”!

I have seen a few people have been questioning my “Do Not Download” thread, thats fine, I should explain.
Firstly: I know i know ALWAYS backup etc but nobody is perfect, ergo I hadnt.
Secondly:(in game)I had just exited on the surface after awaiting a longer than usual (even for this mod) level load, there were striders in the distance and a destroyed cityscape all about me(maybe someone knows where this is). This is all i saw as a few seconds later i was staring at the “the blue screen of death” with what i was being told was a memory violation. The usual ESC key and what not did not work so I had to reboot. Now ive been in this situation before but never through HL2, anyway the long and the short is, it wouldnt reboot at all not even safe mode, couldnt repair with the XP disk etc so had to clean install - boo hoo.

So good luck to anyone playing this mod, one which i found quite fun tbh, but BUYER/DOWNLOADER BEWARE - it can hurt your PC.

Jon

Chianti,
“the problem must be a problematic video driver”

U are correct HL2 is an intensive program, but why may I ask, after many (and I do mean loads) happy HL2,CS:S,other mods and EP1 (more intensive than HL2) hours does this mod crash after only a short amount of game play?

It is highly likely that this mod is the root cause of my crash - not any lack of processor capacity.

Problem with seemingly ‘random’ crashes is that it’s really hard to track down the cause, especially when the computer in question is known to be running smoothly overall.

But. There are things users are mostly now aware of, such as dust piling up. Those problems are, in themselves, not so severe, but can lead to nasty crashes when combined with ie. very high system utilization (abnormally high, in this case).

Besides, it doesn’t take much to create a problem the only solution for which is a reinstall. It just takes the CPU making a small mistake in a crucial moment (ie. modification of some system file), and it sets a chain reaction resulting in a permanent crash. And it doesn’t even have to be the mistake itself to cause the crash - the PC might’ve been simply interrupted by the BSOD.

By the way, Jon - are You sure You’re telling us the whole truth here? WindowsXP doesn’t HAVE a ‘esc key quit’ functionality for Blue Screens of Death - a BSOD in NT-based systems means the system has ALREADY been halted, and there is no recovery possible (apart from a reboot), so hitting the ESC key wouldn’t do ANYTHING. On the other hand, the ESC key is known to help in these situations with Windows 98. And since Windows 98 is not really the platform of choice here, I would expect errors such as this to occur.

So what’s the whole story? Because I’m confused.

Once again your teleport experience ends in mishaps, but the events unfolding are far different.

I enjoyed this romp across City 17 with its street battles and sewage system encounters, ending with major engagements against the might of the Combine’s hardware.

The mix is typical City 17; navigating through stressed-out apartment rooms and stairways with lurking Combine, progressing to the first of 3 or 4 well staged street battles. The leap into the sewage system brings with it different encounters adding to the gameplay, with one very tough encounter against alien form, mixed with the more mundane, find the button then search for the door routine. The final encounters are on a grand scale, whilst challenging you are afforded plenty of weapons, ammo and health.

Causality Effect does not offer us anything new in the way gameplay, architecture or playing experience, it’s more a mix of well tried scenarios aimed at giving the player an hour or so of fun. It does however relay flash-back sequences to cleverly scripted events and twists from the original HL2 story after the teleport mishap. The twists are interesting, but you need to find them out for yourself.

The general gameplay is fine with a good mix of foe and Combine hardware; puzzles are sparse, what there are being typical navigating and button finding. In the main the mod is not difficult and depending how well you overcome one encounter in the sewage canal, should take about any hour on easy.

Textures and attention to detail were adequate with nothing outstanding, much the same can be said about the architecture of the street settings. I encountered no technical issues with the mod, with smooth play and game flow throughout.

Negative Points
- Nothing new

Positive Points
- A fun play

Conclusion
An enjoyable play and fun while it lasted, nothing new to stretch the average player but well worth the download and play time. The flashback sequences were well compiled, adding interest and enrichment with plots and twists to the original HL2 storyline.

My Recommendation

I extracted it again and it loaded just fine after that. Turns out I had played it before and will give it an okay rating.

The intro and the first battle are well made, but afterwards there are a couple - in my opinion - wrong decision made gameplaywise. For example the gunship that only goes down after zillions of rpg-hits or the antlion queen who is only vulnerable in a arena fight. Sorry, but that is just poorly done. It felt insincere.

I liked this one. Yes, it has a few bugs, and the loading is slow, but the level design is clever and the gameplay is interesting.
I found the final showdown just right — pretty challenging without being too frustrating.

Feedback to author: there were a number of places that I apparently couldn’t go even though I could. Know what I mean? I could climb up there, but apparently I wasn’t supposed to, because the game didn’t let me go there, even though it looked like a place I should be able to walk. Like I ran into a glass wall.

Anyway, all around lots of fun.

On the other hand, don’t play with Alyx’s loyalty. I didn’t like that twist.

It´s definitely worth playing despite one or two flaws (couldn´t get the helicopter in lev4 down even after 15 rockets). well done, much like the original levels!