The beginning was a little confusing. You see the room with the suit, but you can’t open the door. I suppose I should next think, “What can I do? I can go THAT way.” But “that way” was kind of dark. It worked well with the enemies you placed, but I didn’t want to go that way…

I also didn’t want to pick up the SMG without the suit (ability to switch weapons), but since there was nothing else to do I was forced to. Maybe there’s a way to make that an attractive option aside from showing us enough ammo (which you do). Or maybe I’m in the minority.

At the end, I decided to run for the elevator and left my squad mate behind. When I heard the vort’s speech, I decided to reload and see if I could kill off that bunch of enemies and bring my squad mate with me. The vort’s speech was the same…

speed zombies are lovely

That sentence worries me. Anybody who likes fast zombies is strange in my book.

For me the biggest two issues were putting crates in an area that you didn’t want player to reach. The area with the metrocops on the ledge. I was able to push crates and reach those areas. Image 5, show you. That spoiled the immersion a little.

The second one was the forcefield walkway. When I put the battery in the required area I couldn’t see the walkway and kept looking in the wrong place. I then removed the battery and tried other things. The moment I put the battery in I should have seen the walkway and knew where to go. Of course, I seem to be the only person complaining about this, so perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough!

I highly recommend dumping the L4D campaign and starting a new HL2: EP2 one!

Thank you very much for posting and playing my map and leaving so much valuable feedback. I was very excited when I saw this via a Google search.

This is my first fully functioning single player Half-Life 2 map. My primary focus was on Level Design in order to create an action packed map that has some mentally challenging puzzels. I tried to stay away from environmental art as much as possible.

As many times as I have played through this map, I still enjoy it a great deal (I recomend that it is played through on the hardest difficulty). I am currently working on a Left 4 Dead Campaign, but all this positive and constructive feedback makes me want to work on another HL2 map as well.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to play through my World. I hope you enjoyed it and did not find it too challenging. It is definately not a walk in the park. I am looking forward to reading more comments about what people really liked and what can be improved.

Thank you,

Craig Simon

As soon as I saw Dog I realized what he was doing. I just wish you didn’t have to trigger the headcrabs before you could get him to show up. It would be one thing if the headcrabs started spawning as soon as you came in the room, but they waited for you to pick up the smg, which I found annoying as I would have rather used the crowbar to deal with them.

After that it went pretty quickly. Worth a play through, even if it’s only once.

There are no visuals of note with only enclosed corridors and large rooms’ sparsely adorned with incidental content surrounded with uninspiring textures and basic set designs. However, what we have is adequate for the gameplay and not having any trace of a story the mod is designed around a couple of puzzles and set pieces staged for ambush.

I enjoyed the mod and having played it through a couple of times I now understand all the triggers, with the first play through I was not sure what was triggering what and to some extent I stumbled through the game. The balance between puzzles and action was right for me, and the author should be encouraged, it would be nice to see a mod twice the duration with 4 major puzzles linked to a story-line.

I short and self-contained romp through some building of unknown purpose or origin, for some unknown purpose.

My first observations was that the map was too dark to be able to see alot of the enemies, atleast until you got the flashlight which meant the fast zombie torsos had clawed off my face before I had even noticed they were there. The dog puzzle was nicely done although the battle before it annoyed me (I can’t stand battles against swarms of fast moving, impossible to hit enemies, be it manhacks or headcrabs), you could it down to personal preference on my part though.
As I played on I started noticing major stuttering on the map, although I don’t know if this was down to abysmal optimisation or my copy of Firefox chewing its way through 250,000K of my RAM.
The final battle with the Combine-Elites proved to be a fun exercise in disintegrating multiple targets, although if I remember correctly the corridor leading to the upper levels was a bit low on cover (having the enemy use cover always makes for more interesting battles in my opinion).
If the crates could be gravity-gunned fully, a little more attention was put on the setting and why Gordon is there in the first place and aforementioned lack of light was fixed then this map would be worthy or a ‘Play it later’ but in its current form the experience just feels a little bit empty to me.

I enjoyed this map and recommend you play it. I was pointed to it by Jasper who found it on Map Factory.org, which is a great site, that covers mostly MP releases.

The mini-review contains spoilers.

Visuals
The map contains a few winding corridors, some open roof areas, which I don’t think you were suppose to get to but I did, and a large open area, all looking a little bland. It seems the author added some crates and rocks to fill the area but they don’t seem to appear natural.

Gameplay
As I said, I cheated. I cheated on the second battery. I couldn’t find a way t get back to the area where I entered the water. I am hoping it as a little bug but I doubt it, more likely I missed something obvious.

The solution to the first puzzle, wasn’t hard but not very “realistic”, something I seem to focus on more and more recently.

Layout and Design
Besides looking like a level made to be a level or a puzzle, the layout is quite interesting. The large open area, I mentioned earlier, was great fun to play. I think I am getting to enjoy areas where the enemy attacks from lots of different directions, especially above you.

It was a shame you could see the elevator shaft through one of the roof areas, but it didn’t spoil the whole level.

Summary
An interesting release that would have benefited from more attention to the details. The action was fun and challenging, although maybe the Metrocops were grouped together too much.

5 Words Or Less Review
Action and puzzles = great fun.