The author set’s it up in the very long beggining that you are number 42, a special Combine soldier…perhaps the best of the best. Your meant to go after after Freeman. In the beggining your moving through the Citidel where there is no danger but a lot of scenery, and I really had the feeling of being a Combine! The author was clever here: I walked passed other Combine, they didnt even flinch. I got to board a Combine train. I get access through most doors which is a HUGE plus of being a Combine! In other words, I felt like part of the Combine team!

In one of the earlier combat campaigns you are charged with defending a room along with other Combine, against attacking rebels. If you play hard and smart, you can save some of your fellow Combine! Using all the skills that I could muster, I was able to defeat the rebels and save 3 Combine. Appearently you can name them, but I never figured out how(??). This is yet another of many suprises that the author has in store for the player! The saved Combine will follow you to the next big area and help you if needed against those rebels, but after that your into a teleport to the lower sewer areas by yourself.

There is much more to say about this great mod, but most of it has been said by others. Using the airboat but in a different sub-enviroment than ever seen before was brilliant really, as was the beautifully done water hazard sections outdoors with great combat, and more suprises from the author in the form of radiation and even dynamyte. The Ravenholm section was smallish, but captured Ravenholms atmosphere to a tee…from the crazy puzzels, to the ambient sounds, to the combat, to the wacky sawblades. Highway 17′s road section’s use of the sniper rifle…was amazing. And later at the beach area town, I personally loved the manhacks…you can choose how to throw them which is very cool, and makes the player feel like they have options…which they do all of the time in this game.

FUN is the word I think of with this mod. This game’s author is very creative. I really hope to see more from him/them in the future!

As for the enviroment change-up’s, I get what Phillip is saying…too much of a good thing can be bad. But I didn’t mind because of the fun I was having, and anyway the author did (barley) connect the enviroments in a way that can be justified…if you use your imagination

The chapters read like a mini-version of HL2…”Route Kanal”, then ‘Water Hazard”, then “Ravenholm”, then “Highway 17″. I was expecting “Sandtraps” next, but didnt get it.

All in all a fun mod and worth playing for sure. Grab it!

I’m not sure if I had a bug or not–I could not kill the chopper (I didn’t know the rebels had any air vehicles–at first I assumed it was my friend!). If you’re not supposed to be able to kill it, the only issue I really had was the airboat ramp/jump section. It was hard to do that with the chopper shooting at me.

I couldn’t use the scope for the sniper rifle, either. But I’m on DX8.

When I got the RPG, I was expecting something I needed to use it against. Don’t know if I had a glitch or if it was just, perhaps, misplaced?

I would really enjoy a full mod of this !

Awesome new features such as employable man hacks and a totally SWEET bolt-action sniper rifle are made to feel like last-minute additions and not related to the gameplay at all. If I were involved in this mod, I would have stressed to the team that these features should be central to the mod’s gameplay. The same goes for radiation poisoning, Combine allies, and distance finding.

Gameplay elements such as total darkness are interesting but I think flares would have been useful for walking sections. I think the Ravenholm area was poorly mapped and it also felt very short and haphazard in general.

Finally, the mod ended just as it was getting interesting. And as a slap in the face, the G-Man put us back into stasis even though he was the guy who woke us up to kill Freeman in the first place.

Again, this mod is neat and stuff, and the length and fairly satisfying gun play is something to be proud of. But it doesn’t feel like it was worth all the time spent…not by any means. It needs lots of polish and more purposeful, innovative use of all the special features.

The scenery is terrific, but putting us in the position of killing resistance members and murdering Freeman?? That’s a very, very bad concept. Also, in spite of the well done scenery most of the gameplay is extremely pedestrian. In nearly every area where the airboat is available you can simply put it in first gear, putter along, and destroy everything without being challenged. In other areas the resistance huddles in packs to be shot down or stands almost immobile with the same result. There’s very little challenge in these parts. Another very poor idea is creating a reachable ledge in one section and putting the player to the trouble of carrying and stacking barrels and boxes to reach what seems an area clearly meant to be reached–except you can’t access it. A lot of wasted effort because the designers overlooked an obvious possibility.

I’d like to see a better plot and much improved gameplay. It would be a shame to waste so much engaging scenery.

I really hate it when mod creators don’t take the time to check their mod using the lowest settings, such as writing not being visible on low resolutions, or illegible when textures are set to low, or when textures don’t show on dx8 mode.

Pretty much a perfect mod for me.

I was really surprised to hear my father language, when the *ahem spoiler*-man showed up.

However, you didn’t feel like a combine. Combine are always in groups, unless there is some specific background story. “You alone are going to kill the man, that everyone is looking for, that’s your job!” I don’t think a serious game/mod would be organized this way. But a lot of effort was put into this, so play it later!!

The introduction is pretty and a few interesting things happen while you’re being dragged around by a scanner, but it really does drag on for too long. I got bored fairly quickly (and I have no doubt that I have a longer attention span than most FPS gamers). Once you’re let loose, though, things move fairly rapidly.

The combat is well orchestrated and paced, with the occasional bit of exploration or puzzle to break up the action, with a few new gameplay mechanics sprinkled here and there for variety. In addition to utilizing new mechanics, in some areas the mod combines familiar mechanics in unusual combinations, for example, driving the airboat through dark, zombie infested tunnels. Just so you know, trying to run over a group of four poison zombies with the airboat is a bad idea.

The atmosphere, in most places, is excellent, and the outdoor driving section in the rainstorm shows the best use of weather effects I’ve seen yet in a Source engine mod. That said, the atmosphere, as well as the premise (what little there is) requires some suspension of disbelief: you go from locale to radically different locale in what seems to be the blink of an eye with little sense of realistic progression. As phillip mentioned in his review, at one point you’re out driving along a coastal road at night in the middle of a rainstorm, and ten minutes later you emerge into bright daylight with not a cloud or droplet of water in sight. It’s a jarring transition, to say the least.

One thing that’s rarely mentioned in reviews that’s important to me is presentation. Not just map design and such, but aesthetics, like the menu screen, or like changes to any game UI elements or weapon skins. While the quality of these elements have little effect on gameplay, they’re an important part of a polished mod so I consider them an important factor. Overall, this mod is very well presented. At the frontend it has an icon for the Steam games list (hey, I think it’s important), and a short intro video. In-game, the HUD is completely redone but still very functional, with quite a few interesting nuances (zooming in shows a range estimation, aiming at a friendly soldier displays their name, for two examples).

The two new weapons are a sniper rifle, the M24, and deployable manhacks. The manhacks are fun, but I have to say it’s the M24 that really impresses me. Normally I get irritated at the CS tards who rave on and on about how Half-Life should have a sniper rifle instead of the crossbow (I love the crossbow), but I have to say the rifle in this mod is superb and is probably the best custom weapon to be included in a mod like this so far. It’s clear a lot of attention was paid to the details during its creation. It looks very nice and true to life, yet with a distinctly Combine look about it; functionally, it’s no crossbow dressed up as a sniper rifle (I’m looking at you, Strider Mountain >:/), but a completely new weapon that works just like it should and has its own ammunition type – it’s precise, and satisfying to use, and the scope view has just enough sway to make lining up accurate shots exactly as challenging as it should be. And that’s not all, the creators even included *two separate animations* for dry and tactical reloads. Just… wow.

[IMG]http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w68/Red_Dog57/CombineCombat.jpg[/IMG]

Anybody know what the problem might be?
Windows XP
8800 GT Nivida
2 GB Ram
Q6600 @2.40GHz