Do the endings change each time you play?

To the mod: Well placed enemies, stupid allies, Cool story, Confusing story… :S

It all comes together to something you’ll actually have to play yourself… I can’t really explain too much, as I was confused myself with the timeline… And I was surprised Alyx betrayed the rest. Now we know what the Author thinks.

However the end is werid…

I had no problems running this on my VERY overclocked (2.13Ghz c2d @ 3.2Ghz and HD3870 @ 830/1211) system. I do get a BSOD on rare occasions which I put down to my overclock, even though I do have quality components in my system. But not a single problem with this mod.

I’m posting mainly to say to ‘Jon’ that definitive statements like “DO NOT USE IT, IT WILL BREAK YOUR SYSTEM.” have absolutely ZERO value when the vast majority of players will experience no problems with it whatsoever – me being one of these. I had a fault-free play, although I would concur with the ‘long load-times’ comments.

Perhaps you should have relayed your feelings a little more personally; “I found this MOD to be instrumental in BSODing my PC”, or “I had a full system crash whilst playing this MOD, although it may have been unrelated” seem far more mature & helpful than “DO NOT PLAY!”

Think how hard the devs have worked in getting this MOD to release status. Do you really want their struggle to be completely ignored just because one(!) user has had a hissy fit after unknown, & quite probably random, difficulties?

Come on!

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.

Good level design, interesting plot, great gameplay…

On a side note, I don’t think it’s been mentioned here HOW you get the different endings, just that you can. So…

SPOILER ALERT
To get different endings, load the last autosave of the game. When you come out of the corridor, you’ll see Alyx and Breen run off. Which ending you get depends on whether they survive or not. If you want the best ending, kill them both – if you slowly edge out of the corridor, you can just see Breen’s head over the air-vents, so you can cap him one (or three) with the pistol, leaving just Alyx to take out with a double shotgun charge.

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

As far as I can think at the moment, system files needed to boot aren’t ever written to, other than the registry, and it seems pretty unlikely for that to be the cause. Even if the machine hive became corrupted (somehow…), the “Last Known Good” function should help.

I’m going to unsubscribe from this thread because arguing about this isn’t on my list of things to do today.

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.

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

No, I didn’t say it was your processor capacity at fault.

I guess it is possible the mod is making hl2.exe do something extraordinary that would make Windows crash (maybe opening far too many file handles or something nuts like that; I have no idea). Looking at what the BSOD text says (especially if it mentions a file/driver name) would probably be the best way to tell.

I know how aggravating and frustrating stability issues can be, so I didn’t mean to add to that for you in any way. Sorry.

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.

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

I forgot to mention the problem I had with the gunship–the one that appears right after the first Strider is taken out. I fired no fewer than 18 rockets at that thing, thinking I was supposed to take it out (well, some mappers make them that difficult to take out!). Only then did I realize that part of the map was a gauntlet, and the gunship couldn’t be taken out. This was very annoying.

Then there was that one spot where a map load occurs, and unless you’ve already taken out the headcrabs by firing at them below, you’ll be facing enemies right as soon as the map loads. Another one of my pet peeves…

I didn’t hate this mod; I actually liked the level design. I just encountered a few things that really tend to drive me nuts.

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”!

Anyone has a clue?

And, all in all, a great mod. A bit slow to load, true, but I’d put the blame on my anti-virus software rather than anything else.