But overall, for all this short mod, yet with some challenge : if you search a good mod… What else?

The final map with the gunship and combine battle made for a nice challenge. Lots of places to take cover and pick off combine and take shots at the gunship as it circled around the map. Visuals were nearly perfect.

Anytime there are rebels following me in a confined area, they always seem to get in my way. However, I didn’t have to say “get the **** out of my way” too many times. They don’t listen anyway.

The addition of zombies trying to beat their way thru a force field made me laugh. Not long enough for a PF but a solid PIN.

I enjoyed the fact that one individual could accomplish such a nice piece in such a short time.Content was good, visuals were great, played smoothly and the combat was just right.I particularly enjoyed the last map.It showed so much post-battle destruction so well and created a good atmosphere for the hunting around and slaughtering combine.I’d love to add more, but it’s quite late.

There was nothing here to keep me really excited or wanting more. But then I just played Fear 2 and Halo and Alpha Prime , which does take a little thinking to work through.The original Hl2 has some of the best and toughest puzzles around and kept me working to finish. This was too easy and has no heavy action feel to it. There is nothing new in this at all and even though it is done well and looks good, it lacks any real excitemnt.

The fighing is all done pretty much in one open area which is a bombed out group of buildings and I did all that hunting around for the batteries for nothing! It’s also hard to fight the enemy in this type of enviroment with all the debri and it makes it hard to tell the good guys from the bad when their far off or shooting from different levels of the buildings. So, it is worth playing but I really hope the whole mod is alot more exciting and more of a challenge then this was. The voices were ok but for me their a minor part of a game anyway. Just there for directions anyway, dosen’t do anything to enhance the gameplay.. I hope the author can try to get away from HL a little and come up with some original storyline besides just the basic rescue.

Despite the problems above I’ve decided to give it 4 stars.

I also found most of the combat to be somewhat mundane as I could avoid firing a single bullet in many instances. For example, I jumped past nearly all the barnacles, I let the Combine and zombies kill each other, and I let my team mates kill most of the Combine at the end. I kind of made me feel like I wasn’t really needed.

The visuals were mostly good save for a certain je ne sais quoi that kept them from being great. The voice acting was good, except for the woman who comes to show you the rocket launcher at the end.

It has potential and is a blast to play for a little while, but I would not agree that it’s worthy of the Hall of Fame until these annoyances have been addressed.

The only fault I noticed at the start – and maybe it’s just me – was that the Game Volume slider was set to zero. No sound at the beginning. Took me a bit to figure out what was wrong, and the first time that’s happened in a mod.

Apart from that – well worth playing!!!!

It’s not a bad mod, but it ultimately failed to make me “feel” anything. I never understood what was at my destination, so when I was told it was overrun and how we needed to get to another destination, I was apathetic and just going through the motions. A collapsed tunnel lined with radioactive slime, forcing me to use the Gravity Gun. A wire puzzle straight out of that radio tower area in Episode 2. Find batteries to open a gate. Stop me if you heard this one before.

To its credit, you don’t see many mods using these features (except that battery bit – all the kids are doing it now) or integrating the Gravity Gun this seamlessly into gameplay. But then, because the puzzle is so familiar, it doesn’t do anything thought-provoking and therefore exudes a “been there, done that” feeling. The moment with the Combine Sniper could have been a novel idea, but the furniture was too imprecise to move.

The levels themselves are pretty well designed. The tenement complex and the surrounding ruins were definitely standouts. Comparatively, the latter half of the tunnel sequence didn’t feel optimized at all and the bright lighting didn’t seem appropriate. The part with the Combine forcefields in the tunnels definitely had some quirks to it and would have benefit from some playtesting. Aside from being unable to shoot through them, it wasn’t clear when they were deactivated.

I share mel’s criticism with the final area. While it looks great, it’s poorly designed for a Combine Gunship battle. Not only is there the issue of going back and forth to the ammo cache (my rebels were picked off by that sniper pretty early, admittedly), but the Gunship itself was too far away. When I launched a rocket, most of the time it would just get shot down. It didn’t feel like there was much skill to the battle. Just get lucky and hope the Gunship doesn’t notice your incoming projectile?

So, in conclusion, if you’re looking for a good mod that will hold your attention for a half-hour, this is worth checking out.

The end encounter with the Gunship was ill constructed, having to keep going down stair into a cellar to reload with a squad of rebels following and blocking your ever move was not smart. One of the girl rebels gets stuck in the cellar and if this happens on the stairs then you need to reload and hope see get stuck else where.

None of the above should deter any one from downloading and playing Project 25, compared with most of the recent postings this has a lot to offer. It won’t make my HOF but then who cares.

If you are looking for a short fun couple of maps with solid visuals and gameplay, don’t waste a second and download this. Most of the issues I found are certainly things you might not see at first. As for the issues that affect gameplay, none are really show-stoppers so you’ll be fine.

This mod has a sensible setting (not story), great voice acting (Except for the very last second – more on that later), beautiful visuals and great gameplay.

let’s look at the above in a little more detail. Firstly, I’ve called this a setting because in 30 minutes of gameplay you can’t really have a great story unless you have text or cutscenes. That’s not a criticism of the mo, just a mini-rant that I’ll expand on another time.

The voice acting really is pretty good, definitely a cut above most mods. That last part? Well…SPOILER BELOW
When Alyx speaks to you it’s just silly. Up to that point everything was fantastic but this slightly took the edge of it. It’s amazing how something so small can affect you, isn’t it? Let’s not dwell on that because that really is the only negative.

Onto the visuals. Perhaps the use of HDR is annoying, but that’s me rather than the mod. I don’t actually like HDR very much and generally turn it off anyway. It’s hard to believe that one person made this in 3 months because just looking at the screenshots makes you think there is a team involved.

And that brings me to the gameplay. There were a couple of jumping sections, a couple of puzzles with the power plugs (I did get mine stuck, so be careful where you throw or drag them!), some nice sections with a fairly unobtrusive squad.

The last area is absolutely fragtastic and the author should be very proud of himself.

All in all a brilliant piece of work.

Mini Bug report: It’s possible to fall through the fall in the radioactive slug at the beginning. (See image 3). It’s not a big deal becasue only idiots like me go running around radioactive slug anyway.

5 Words Or Less Review
I just loved the ending.

Useful Links
Frequently Asked Questions | Commenting Guide | Recommendation Images Guide