A truly enjoyable mod.

With all due respect to the developer, the last map was a tactical gamers dream and wonderfully challenging , but left me feeling a bit “blue-balled”. Might be the spot to continue another chapter though someday in the future.

Don’t let comments regarding the ending deter you at all. It’s well worth the time.

I’m looking forward to more mods from Jason

Personally, I very much felt that this mod had it all covered on all points. Nice big environments, indoor and outdoor play that allowed lots of personal choice in how to handle the combat situations, with a nice wide variety of combatants placed at appropriate points.

The combat timeline itself, has a nice tempo going for it and doesn’t feel like over-kill, nor did it leave me wishing for ’something to do’. There is always ’something to do’ here, and I found myself looking forward to each upcoming area, both for its solution as to how to best handle the problem and wondering what he had planned for me next.

Not once did I get the feeling of it being ‘predictable’ or amateurish in tempo.

I also liked the fact that it felt like there was a purpose that was leading somewhere. For me, that part is very important. The reason I fell in love with Half-Life to begin with, was for its story, not just because I got to shoot stuff.

This mod gave me the impression that it actually had a purpose which I was working toward within the story, not just ‘yet another zombie’ thrown at me in meaningless mayhem to keep me busy.

The expert use of lighting and textures is very much what enables that smooth transition of being drawn from reality into the game world. You never find yourself just floundering about in a darkness that just cheaply hides a poorly made environment. The playing areas are all clearly defined and appropriately-lit where it would normally be so, and the use of shadowing and darker areas doesn’t remotely seem ‘forced’ or accidentally defined in a harsh mish-mash of uncertainty. Excellent job there.

The choice of textures are put to well-thought-out use in this mod.

It isn’t simply a doubtful constant barrage of kaliedoscopic change where you felt as if the designer became compelled to throw the book at you simply to give you a false sense of a lot more going on than was actually so.

At the same time, it is never boring and repetitively unimaginative, – just believably varied, with well- placed changes to provide a convincing atmosphere, so that the player is easily able to immerse themself in the environments without a distracting thought of how “this or that feels out of place”.

The technical work itself ran very smoothly. Thankfully.

It absolutely drives me nuts when I get a game that freezes, or won’t save, or the AI shuts off, or gets me stuck behind a piece of construction, or delivers unusual frame-rates in a frenzy of poorly planned loading zones, etc. None of that here, I’m happy to say.

If this mod does have one ‘down-side’, I would honestly have to say that it comes at the end.
The combat scenario with the gunship almost feels ‘hurried’ in comparison to the rest of the mod. I mean, the area is still well made, etc, but it felt kind of ’small’ and hurriedly contrived, compared to the previous areas.

The battle with the gunship, itself, I suppose could be seen as ‘difficult’, simply because a soldier keeps coming to attack you as you’re trying to shoot down the gunship with the RPG and you sometimes have to keep changing weapons for the close quarters combat with the soldier, but ‘difficult’ isn’t necessarily ‘fun’, nor ‘interestingly challenging’, in a way that makes you say: “Wow. That was just so hard to beat, but I absolutely loved it”.

Here, unfortunately, it felt more like, ‘I have to give this mod an ending’.

Sorry. Not intending to be mean, I loved this mod. Honest.

I just wish I could have had a bit more of an expansive area to fight from at the end, and possibly more to do, like maybe a series of steps to complete which possibly arms ’something’ to aid the end destruction, etc., – instead ofjust being jammed under a little space that simply makes me easy to hit when I stick my head out.

That kind of tactic always only leaves me feeling like the designer was just either too lazy, or afraid that I’ll beat all his hard work too easily, all because he didn’t take the time to think of a really nice finale’ to all his hard work.

And that is sad really. I think the ending should always act as a final compliment to that long labor love, since they are now saying goodbye and taking their bows to the applause.

Why not leave them on a high note? Maybe it’s just me. But I feel as if an ending should be a ‘project of its own’ and it could have used some attention there.

As it was, it is somewhat anti-climactic.

But who knows. In fairness, maybe by that time, a person reaches a state of ‘burn-out’ after so much previous mental effort, that possibly one sometimes grasps at the seemingly easiest way to call it ‘finished’.

Other than that, this mod sincerely impressed me on every other aspect of design and gameplay, and I am very eagerly looking forward to playing more of this highly talented person’s intriguing work.

[MOTY 2008 Review Competition Entry]

I think someone should add the tag “short” to this excellent map to avoid more confussion.

This has already been tagged with “Medium” because I had a simple guideline of times for each Playtime length, but of course I can’t find it now! DOH!

Anyway, I think the points you both raise are valid, and I have discussed this many times before. I personally think that many readers’ recommendation are partly based on the presumptions about the map/mod after they have seen all the other recommendation images. A few times in the past readers have complained that they didn’t enjoy a mod as much as they were expecting due to all the PIN! images.

I seriouslt considered making the comments hidden from view by default to try and aviod this but I don’t think it’s possible. Sometimes a map or mod, as well as other things like books and moives, just can’t live up to all the expectations.

BTW, where did the rating system go? )

It was constantly being abused. I chose to remove it. The Recommendation images are better in my opinion.

Speaking about the rating system, this is something I’m afraid will never get sorted out. A short mod with 2 good maps will usually rank higher than a mod that for example has 3 good maps and 4 average maps. On the whole, the longer mod isn’t a perfect experience, but it might offer much more good than the 2 maps alone. And this does not reflect on the ratings unless players decided to take points away from length all the time, which would be unfair to the mapper to be honest.
Everyone knows its much harder to keep a quality standard throughout 15 or 20 maps than it is doing so in 1 or 2. I’m not sure how that can ever be incorporated into ratings.
I think someone should add the tag “short” to this excellent map to avoid more confussion.

Only negative is that the end came a bit abruptly, and the music didn’t always fit well, but nontheless:
`
5/5 stars!

keep it up

//Seoshinawi

There are some framerate issues in some of the areas of the map. Taking into account the sheer massive-ness of this one map (I wouldn’t be surprised if the author is touching on at least some of the engine limits!) it’s not too surprisinging that it could do with a bit more optimization. In many places my framerate was fine (over 100 steadily) but this was noticably inconsistent. I turned on the fps monitor when I first noticed jerkiness … and I found I was getting constantly under 20fps in some substantial areas of the map. Thankfully the combat in these areas wasn’t too heavy and so it didn’t really get in the way of the gameplay.

In other areas, there are dynamic lights being used and the Source Engine just isn’t very good at them. The generator that you destroy is an example (lovely piece of design by the way). In that area the framerate is high, but with frequent low-fps spikes which are caused by the dynamic lighting flicking on and off. I find this creates an even more noticable type of jerkiness in the game.

Apart from these framerate issues (which are easy to ignore because the maps are very well designed) I would give this two thumbs up and a hearty “Play it Now!”

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do following this map, but I’m currently kicking some ideas around. Your feedback is very meaningful in determining how I will approach the next project.

Anyway, Powerstation is an example of how a single map should be made. I would’ve given it 5 stars if it had included more maps like this one, but it’s just too short (about an hour of gameplay on Hard).

Can we get a full fledged mod out of this???