Engage The Combine - Half-Life 2

Um, a series of rooms, which all look the same and have random textures and bizarre pink lights; no apparent scripting; enemies seem to stand around doing nothing mostly; ends with nothing happening.

3D Gamers Edge Syndicated Review

Rating: 50/100

Good: Not Much.

Bad: Read Below.

Review:
Engage the Combine starts off promisingly enough, as you must take out a combine soldier and equip yourself with your suit and some weapons before heading out into the rest of the building. Afterwards you square off against a series of combine soldiers who attack you from behind barricades and shields in a series of similarly designed rooms. The soldiers never pursue you, making the skirmishes short and simple. Eventually you find yourself in a square metal room with no exit that i was able to locate.
This map suffers from a wide variety of novice errors, some of which the author mentions in the readme file. While the author was able to craft the most basic of levels, a lot of work is needed before this would be worth the download and time spent playing it.

Copyright:
This review was written by Tron and first appeared on 3D Gamers Edge and is republished by express permission.

Fluffy The Hampster’s Syndicated Review

Number of Maps:

Score: 1.25 out of 5

Annoyance Rating:
11421094397197127401230213112412041982123891262185619321 out of -918230128042614017240127576198372198

Or to summarise, there is not enough mass in the realms of space required to create a calculator that can calculate this number.

Lighting: Darker then pitch black. Darker then crude oil. So dark that not even light can escape.

Architecture: Think way back when you were 6 months old and you were stacking boxes. You ain’t far from the truth.

Textures: Unimaginative. Expect the same wall you saw 6 rooms ago.

New Models/Skins/Etc.: Is it just me, or is everything *shiny*?

Gameplay: Absolutely zomborifically horrible.

Story?:
You are Pat “Every episode of Postman Pat is named after me” Clifton, Postman, and you are about infiltrate the German government in order to assassinate Colonel Bob “Bobby” Bobbinson. You have your trusty wrench, eyeglass and secret communicator device that is activated by the raising of the middle finger and the holding down of the rest.

Translation: There is no story, so I’ll make up one.

You are Gordon “F**k me, it’s not butter!” Freeman and you (as well as a few other victims) have been cruelly abducted by some unknown god and placed in an inescapable prison where you must fight zombies forever. Somehow, you expect that Jennifer Lopez is involved…

Onwards:
This map constitutes the american tried and true freedom of torturing other people with free expression via interactive media. No kidding, this map is a rid into the land of HL2 crapton. I made no joke when I say that a 4 month old pulmonata with lung cancer can do a better job at mapping then this guy. The problem is that the architecture it’self is actually not that bad. What’s bad is every single friggin’ else. Let’s seperate the pile of **** so that we can identify what was eaten before, shall we?

First off on the craplist is bugs. There are few bugs, possibly because the entire thing is no larger then an albino dust mite. First off, everything is shiny. Headcrabs are shiny. The guns are shiny. Everything is shiny. It looks out of place because everything else is dark. Also, the air vent is too small. Either transform yourself into Casper the Friendly Ghost, cut off your hips Saw style or noclip. All three are good choices, though i’d recommend the second since the map is mental torture.

But alas, zombies are not the only people whom join you in this hell-hole. Oh no sir! Your fellow human soldiers are there too. Why? To piss you off by not actually being useful. Great. You can’t even use them as human shields, pissing you off even more. The combine join you, the only reason really being ammo.

Can I stop this review? I want to go home.

Summary:
I would have more fun watching ten hours of slow-motion cricket while being paralysed in a chair and being force-fed columbian mix coffee mixed with high-quality speed. I’d also like to be gradually shredded in a giant lawnmower while listening to Britney Spears (Gee, i’v been really bashing her alot, havn’t I? The herpes infested sperm *****) talk for 8 hours about her past 139 relationships. That being said, it wasn’t as horrible as Fall. No, Fall lasted for 5 seconds. This is more of a gradual torture.

Copyright:
This review was written by Fluffy The Hampster and first appeared on Combine Destiny and is republished by express permission.