Journals

2muchvideogames4 years ago2020-04-11 02:59:04 UTC 2 comments
Hey yall, hows twhl doing these days?
Back in the day i just post long paragraphs about mods i played as journals here. Well this is the modern times now, who would want to read long paragraphs on the internet? Also i havent posted any journals in years. Probably because there haven't been alot of hl1 mods coming out recently. I definitely will stream twhl tower 2 when it comes out, I'm very hyped for it. But until that happens I'll just play some random mods. And this time instead of a long paragraph I'll just put a video link.
Link

Long story short, the mod I'm playing this time gives some extra new weapons and I also like how the soldiers can kill me in like 2 seconds.
2muchvideogames6 years ago2017-08-26 21:58:25 UTC 5 comments
I just finished one of the hardest czech mods for half life (Half life: The Real)

What made this mod so hard? It's because it's a partial conversion with custom weapons and monsters. In addition to that, the monster and weapon stats have been beefed up so that everyone dies much faster. One of the most common death is getting hit by a headcrab. Get hit once and your dead, its extremely realistic because if your just a random guy, a headcrab will kill you in 1 hit because you got your head headhumped.

What's cool about this game, is that it's actually 2 games in 1. The training course is itself a 30 map mod, similar to residual point. Not only that, the 'training' mod and the actual mod involves different weapons and monsters too. The training mod is closer to the vanilla experience where you can get killed by regular headcrabs, soldiers, and other xen aliens. Meanwhile in the actual mod you're in a space station invaded by all kinds of headcrabs, and blue vorts. Yes, there are several different kind of headcrabs, akin to headcrab frenzy. I'll even tell you what kind of headcrabs there are, because the reality is they can all kill you in 1-2 hits.

I played on hard so these are the damage values:
Regular headcrab - 200 damage (can survive a hit with full HP and armor)
Red headcrab - 400 damage (1 hit kill guaranteed)
Blue headcrab - 80 + flashbang your face for several seconds
toxic headcrab - 40 + poison damage over a long time
purple headcrab - you get healed a large amount

Most of your deaths will be from headcrabs, especially the red ones. However, the developer was kind enough to introduce other ways for you to get killed. Not including drastic buffs to most of the vanilla monsters, there are some new guys here to wreck you a new one.

Black zombie Barney - 150-175 per slash + flashbang your face
Blue vortigaunt - charges up within half a second, 300 damage
nuclear tripmines - they dont emit a lazer so you need to look around very carefully.
Otis - Hes always spawning around a bunch of headcrabs so he never lives long enough.
Green Gonome - 30,000 HP. I didnt want to get hit by this thing to find out what it did.

One of the most annoying places in the mod is where you ride this waterfall out of a cave, where you are immediately attacked by 2 helicopters. You must beeline to cover because the area you come out of is also covered by a 6-barrel turret AND an automatic rocket launcher. I think this was the hardest part in the entire mod, moreso than any headcrab ambush (and there are loads of those)

In fact you can even get killed right after the opening cutscene. Soon as you spawn into the game a bomber jet casually flies overhead, then the area you are in is bombed. That was my first death in the mod, soon to be followed by many, many others. I lost count.

...

FEAR NOT, though! The developer has introduced lots of new weapons to counter the increased power levels of the enemies. Among the vanilla weapons, you can also get:

A five seven pistol from CS
Colt m4a1 from CS
SG550 from CS
P90 from CS
Knife from OP4
shotgun from gunman chronicles, set to highest bullet amount (its alot)
sniper from OP4 that sounds like the CS AWP
deagle from OP4
M41A from azure sheep
shockroach from OP4 (i didnt get a chance to use this)

Try this mod now, if you love to get killed lots of times. I certainly did.
2muchvideogames8 years ago2016-03-18 00:11:29 UTC 6 comments
I just played some Russian military mod of HL. The USA invades your counttry and you have to fight them back. Prepare to get heavily wrecked by the US army and their troops, light and medium tanks, and worst of all, the machine gun nests. I swear, those machine gun nests added at least 20 hours to the gametime since I didnt quicksave as often as I should have.

The mapping is alright as you can see in the screen shots, but what you dont see is that the mapping is actually extremely sloppy. Loads of areas to get stuck in and visual glitches. Instructions appear as on screen game_text and in some cases you have about 5 seconds to read it or fail to know what to do. Alot of doors are breakable(but they dont open) so if you dont whack every door you see you will get stuck too.

The mod contains all of the base op4 assets but I suspect the biggest reason the author used op4 is for the friendly soldiers.

I must say this mod is pretty unforgiving. Combat is very tough even with the op4 weapons in stock. There are many US soldiers coming and they wont hesitate to rush at u from any direction or hide in some dark area and ambush u. Expect every US soldier to carry grenades or noob tubes. And the worst is how they can see you perfectly from behind thick plants where you have no hope of seeing them. Same goes for the tanks. Did I mention the machine gun nests? They will reck u hard. They dont work like normal machine guns, they spray shotgun shells extremely fast from extra long range. Dont even THINK about rushing them or even picking at them from long range. You will have to be extremely careful. Not only can they take you to school at extra long range, they can actually bend at a 90° angle to spray you when you think you are save. And there's a random weaponstrip somewhere in the mod so don't bother saving ammo or whatever.

It says theres 2 endings, but really there's almost no difference between them. Basically one 'ending' will let you get to an extra level which I thought was unfinished, because nothing happens in it. And another map was about 2 seconds long. About 7 or so maps are copied due to the routes splitting between the two endings, but there are no differences between them.

Overall I think this mod is very different from you standard mod. If you are looking to get recked by US soldiers then this is the mod for you. It's difficult, but not impossible and you might make it to the end if you be careful and find a way thru.

(I wish someone would stream this mod so you can see how tough it is, lol)
2muchvideogames9 years ago2015-04-15 05:05:58 UTC 1 comment
I just played a russian mod that takes place in the USA. You start by going off in a helicopter generously provided to you by the G Man. Unfortunately, his generosity ends there, because you are not given any weapons at all before you leave for the enemy soldiers' base.

After being informed by on screen text the words "CHOPPER DOWN" you start out on a cliff overlooking several yards. One peek gets the attention of about 5-10 enemy soldiers. So what do I do? Got no weapons except the Freeman Fists. Might as well jump down to the yard filled with soldiers and see if any of them is generous enough to donate me a gun. Turns out they were only generous enough to donate some grenades.

About 5 or so minutes after that I somehow got the attention of an Apache Helicopter. At this point all I have is a crowbar and an assault rifle with scavenged ammo. There was no RPG to be found in what seems to be the first map of the mod. Makes sense.

Your mission is to find some scientists with sensitive information and try to bring them back to base alive, preferably. So I run around the base, fighting about 50 soldiers or so, until I get to this outdoor area. It seemed like daylight seeing the skybox, but the entire area was pitch black. Didn't go a few steps when the assassins started showing up. Oh boy. Fighting assassins in a pitch black canyon. You should try it, on hard.

About halfway thru the pitch black canyon map the path splits left and right. To the right there were a few soldiers (the map is still pitch black) but they were far easier to deal with than assassins. Too bad I couldn't see any grenades coming. And I should mention this mapper(s) absolutely loves the contact grenade grunt.

At the end of this path there is a small transition room not unlike the one you end up in before entering Black Mesa East in HL2. Except theres a grunt in the window watching me as I enter. Then, the door closes behind me and water starts flowing in from a pipe in the corner of the room. The other door does not open, leaving me to drown. That's right, it's the "Pick one right, you may pass, pick one wrong, kick your ass" gameplay.

So all the way back at the split I had to pick the right side in order to progress. This side is alot easier because instead of soldiers, it is filled with only houndeyes. I should also mention theres a taser in this mod. Just like the one in CSGO, with unlimited uses. So I went around basically, tasing houndeyes.

This mod has alot of tiny buttons and other confusing puzzles that took me longer to finish that it should be. At one point you enter this teleport (if you can find the tiny button that activates it) that takes me to this red spaceship with (again) a split path, left or right. Going to the left will result in you taking lots of damage from about 15 baby headcrabs. At the end of the path is nothing except a tiny button that blends in with the wall which you will never notice. Going to the right will put you at odds against annoyingly placed normal headcrabs as well as a laser machine that doesn't work unless you press the aforementioned tiny button. The rest of the spaceship is filled with alien grunts and more headcrabs.

Other fun things include: A knife from CS that wasn't coded too well because if you use it a certain way there's basically no cooldown. Theres also a locked door that can only be opened by shooting the panel next to it, but the panel itself appeared to have more HP than grunts. The final area of the spaceship was an endurance round versus three headcrab monstermakers. Unfortunately for them you can camp in a corner and just wait it out.

Back on Earth, you are greeted by more of the mod's favorite gameplay element: pitch blackness. It's a compound filled with soldiers and at the roof is a helicopter. I should mention how many times my flashlight ran out, but I already lost count.

As if that wasn't good enough, the next area again introduces the mod's second favorite gameplay element: assassins. And a puzzle that you must be REALLY observant to notice the solution to. From there on the mod returns to the tried-and-true formula that was used earlier: fighting assassins in a pitch black area. In fact from there on the rest of the maps (with the exception of the final map) are all basically versus assassins in totally dark areas. Of course, the darkness is no problem for the assassins because they are wearing the night vision goggles. While all you have is a little 5 dollar flashlight.

Anyway once you get past all that (if you get past them, that is) you will encounter the final map. Getting thru it, you ride in a wire trolley as the credits roll. Remember what your mission was? Neither do I.

TLDR or YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE IT YOURSELF
http://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/addons/hl-index-two-ep1
2muchvideogames9 years ago2015-03-17 04:06:49 UTC 6 comments
I totally just got outplayed by the hecu soldiers. see screenshot below:
User posted image
Basically, I was camping in that garage and waiting for the soldiers to come in so I can feed them my m3 shotgun. Took out 2 guys and then these two other guys, they both rushed into the garage together and one of them ran behind me and I tried to shoot him but I didn't manage to kill him. So then he, without stopping to shoot at me, ran back out of the garage for some reason. Then I noticed a grenade on the floor that the other guy dropped while I was distracted.
All in all, it really depends on the map design to bring out the 'intelligence' of these guys. Even though everyone knows that these guys are supposed to be really smart (like in FEAR) these maps and most mods dont provide for it. Just check out these shots below:
User posted image
The glock is too OP, and these guys simply don't work too well at long range
User posted image
(One monsterclip is all it would have taken to prevent this catastrophe)
2muchvideogames9 years ago2014-07-15 22:50:33 UTC 3 comments
I just played Estranged act 1 on steam. You do not need HL2 installed to play it. It is also free. and has source code as well, I think.

Basically you are the fisherman on a boat and must unfortunately get off the boat to inveshtigate an island. It is supposedly a horror mod, but I've played black snow and no mod can get scarier than that hands down.

It's not very scarey, honestly, and certainly isn't the best mod ever either. But it does offer slightly different play than the average HL2 mod, seeing as your enemies are all human and dont look like combine soldiers or headcrab zombies. There isn't that much combat either, and get this, you can only carry a single weapon with you at all times. Do I recommend this? Sure, if you want a quick revisit to the source engine. Wouldn't put it on any sort of priority list or anything.

(This was more of a review and less of a summary, which is what I typically did. Oh well.)
2muchvideogames10 years ago2014-03-22 19:47:44 UTC 5 comments
I watched a playthru of to the moon. It made me really sad.
User posted image
..
2muchvideogames10 years ago2013-11-19 04:58:55 UTC 1 comment
I just played treasure adventure game, a free game where you go on an adventure to explore islands and find treasure. It's a pretty fun puzzle platformer type of game and I kinda like the music as well. I think you all should try it and get stuck for half an hour figuring out what you were supposed to do. Maybe the treasure chest is on the top of a giant tree. Or maybe the giant cave to the west. Or was it hidden in Your Local Giant Corporation's ventilation system. The adventure takes you to all kinds of weird places and get high. Literally. Also pun intended. And there is an epically lol final boss that I think you should play for yourself (do not spoil it by going on youtube or something)

I got the game from gog.com, which is like an anti-DRM site, so that's a great bonus as well. Have fun!
2muchvideogames10 years ago2013-08-20 21:10:03 UTC 3 comments
So I tried out malle's medal of honor(TM) game and I thought it was gonna be like MOHAA (you know, all old school fps) but turns out it was a call of duty modern warfare clone. That's fine, since whack a mole: modern warfare was pretty fun and all. Basically I'm just walking along, completing this mission and that, and it's moderately better than COD in one part where you use a scoped m249 trying to suppress fire on a machine gun so your unkillable squadmates can advance close enough to mark it for airplane bombs. But then at one part you take cover in this house as fifty terrorists come down from the mountains all around you. And your house gets progressively more blown up until it's practically a single wall between you and the 50 guys. One grenade and I'm dead. My squad mates were yelling about how they have no more ammo, even though one of them just handed me 900 bullets for my m249 and I still have like 600 left. Way too be script huggers.

At the end we got saved by 2 apache helicopters similar to the ones in Half Life that have rockets onboard. Then in the next level I got to control the apaches and this is where the fun starts. Basically you helicopter is indestructable and can tank multiple RPG7 shots, but it kept telling me to destroy something like a rock wall and I couldn't kill it because I didn't see what I was supposed to destroy. Then it just said Mission Failed. I didn't get blown up or anything, just 'mission failed' and fade to black. LOL.

I couldn't get thru that part after like 5 more tries. And this brings me to the main point of FPS's these days. Control is taken away from the player almost completely, so that in the end it's not so much a game you are playing but an interactive movie. And that's just what it is, a movie. Because if you run off the script, the 'game' will restart till you get it right. Kinda like the director yelling CUT over and over again until you do exactly as he says. I'm not kidding, many times I see enemies that take 20 rounds and simply refuse to die until they did their scripted sequences.

Back when scripting came out on Half-Life, it was groundbreaking and made games incredibly interesting. But nowadays, scripting has been abused just way too much. So much so that the player has practically no control over anything and it's not really a game anymore. Sad, I know, but everybody seems to like it that way, so, you know.

Incidentally, I kinda ran out of HL1 mods to play, and I dont feel like playing those HL1 messup type mods since they tend to not have any new maps or anything. Just waiting for the core to come out, though I'm not pushing for a fast release or anything. Take time to fix all the little things and I'm sure the modding community will appreciate it. If there still is a modding community by then.
2muchvideogames11 years ago2013-03-04 00:12:51 UTC 14 comments
When I was around dimbark's age, my computer got some problems and had to be formatted. The computer guy who did the formatting told me the problem was caused by the HL SDK I downloaded. He said it was a 'system developing kit' which screwed up the entire system. So I was a scared little kid who never touched the SDK ever again.

YOUR COMMENTS BELOW
2muchvideogames11 years ago2013-01-08 19:49:00 UTC 1 comment
Been playing two things recently:

1. Rebellion - a 47-map mod focusing entirely on soldiers. It goes pretty well with the custom mod I mentioned before. I think I saw like 4-5 heavies in the entire trip, some of which were placed in surprising good places (like there's one right outside the train I was riding)

2. Single player The Ship - This can be considered a source mod, I suppose. However, It's kinda dumb. I'm at this one part where I have to escort this fat paraplegic nazi everywhere and there's thugs out to kill him. Soooo hard. This dude appears around the corner with a revolver, and he kills me in 1 hit. It takes 2 hits for me to kill him WITH THE SAME WEAPON, which is just totally unfair. And bots have autoaim so he NEVER MISSES. Not to mention, This dude with a club runs at me WHEN THERE'S TWO POLICEMEN IN THE AREA. And I pull out a weapon and I'm INSTANTLY BUSTED. It's games like these, where the computer is a cheating asshat, that makes me not a happy baby.
2muchvideogames11 years ago2012-12-28 22:42:30 UTC 2 comments
I explored more on fighting glitch trainers in pokemon blue (on an actual cartridge! haha)

This video will show you what the 'default' glitch trainer's battle lineup is. However, by fighting other trainers before meeting the glitch trainer you can change their party. There's a list of possible glitch trainer parties but I only had time to meet 3 of them. One of which was the L111 drowzee that I can never beat.

My team (all pokemon are around levels 30-35)
Hitmonlee
Kabuto
Aerodactyl
Charmeleon
Haunter
Hypno
L12 poliwag for surfing

Glitch Trainer parties I met so far (in addition to the one in the video):
L111 drowzee (pwned my entire party)

L14 Nidoran♀
L14 Magneton
L14 Charizard ´M
L14 Gastly
L14 Grimer
L14 Missingno
  • A low level party. I breezed thru them with my level 30's. I heard bad things about charizard 'M but he only used ember and weak moves, luckily.

--
L42 Rhyhorn
L42 Arcanine
L42 Missingno
L42 Clefairy
L42 Mewtwo
L42 Missingno.
  • A decently challenging party (notice the Mewtwo!) Their levels are a bit higher than mine but good thing the AI sucks in this game!
  • I had a bit of trouble with Rhyhorn since he knocked out my hitmonlee. But I used a max revive and hitmonlee's double kick managed to top the Rhyhorn.
  • Arcanine was ok. I used Aerodactyl who only had wing attack but has rock-type resistance to physical attacks. In the final moment Arcanine used Take Down on me but died from recoil LOL
  • Missingno's have very poor defense so they were easy to take out. The clefairy wasn't much hassle either (used defense curl lol)
  • When I saw the Mewtwo I was like OH SHIT and switched to hypno who can tank Psychic in case he decided to use it. He didn't. Or rather, I didn't give him the chance to because I quickly put it to sleep with Hypnosis. Then finished it off.
There are reportedly 23 glitch parties from this method alone. I think I was pretty lucky not to run into some crash-causing enemies. Stay tuned for more on fighting these glitch trainers!
2muchvideogames11 years ago2012-12-19 00:46:35 UTC 5 comments
I just played an EP2 mod called Black Snow, because it was one of the moddb nominees. Before playing, I did NOT look at any of the media and therefore have no idea what type of mod this is. I was wondering whether Combine soldiers will show up while staring at the loading screen for this mod.

There are spoilers up ahead. But I kept most of it vague. It should be alright.

Anyway you play a Japanese dude, I think. He was part of a small assessment team sent to a research facility in the frozen snow when they failed to report for a week. Reminds me of that one mission from Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, where the Spetznaz was sent in to a Siberian nuclear silo when the scientists failed to report in. So basically, I thought there would be like Combine terrorists that attacked the facility and I would have to take them down with stock HL2 weapons. No big deal.

Well a few minutes into the mod and I was the last guy alive. The gameplay turned out to be mainly puzzles and there was this axe that couldn't be taken because it electrocutes me. It was strange that the assessment team wasn't even equipped with weapons but that's too bad. It took me about 10 minutes to get out of the first building.

It was a dark and snowy night. Forlorn and abandoned, the setting instantly reminded me of a movie called The Thing. Going in a snowstorm from building to building to find your way out. In fact, the entire storyline of the game (revealed thru logs and emails) seems to be very similar to The Thing (remake). The puzzles get really hard, but only because I got so thoroughly scared that I was too afraid to go into some of the rooms.

Is this mod scary? I got pretty scared with this, even though mods like Grey didn't scare me much at all. Well, for one, scripted jump scares are not around much. The only jumping you'll be doing is when the Things attack you, because you'll never see them coming. What kind of Things are these? Well if the title of the mod means anything, then you can surely imagine.

As good this this mod may sound right now, I am obliged to give you both sides of the picture. Even as a moddb nominee, there are loads of problems with this mod that I suspect will prevent it from getting the honors, some of which are listed below: (spoilers, kept vague just for you)
  • Number one problem: way too short and has an unfinished feel (think Residual Life, but worse)
  • A very difficult section involving a 'moving' light that apparently is not essential for progressing thru the mod
  • Being able to get trapped by Things in a storage room or something similar (no auto-heal, you can only heal at heaters, some of which are inconveniently broken)
  • An unreliable inventory screen that does not display all the items you have
  • Some doors inexplicably open when you get something completely unrelated to it, while other inexplicably close and trapping you in with the Things (scary, isn't it?)
  • Having to depend on an extremely limited number of flares (Like in EP1, except you have NO defensive weapons or protective girlfriend whatsoever)
In fact, you never get a weapon ever. I suppose this is what Dimbark wanted to get at when he tried making a horror mod. But we all know what tends to happen with Dimbark's projects :(

Anyway about this mod. It is pretty scarey for me. You do not have a flashlight or NVG or anything like that, so when staring at a darkened room you should expect the worst. Those Things are pretty nasty: think of them as invisible silent scouts with Force-a-Natures----the knockback is atrocious.

I got REALLY paranoid while playing this. I think you should try it out just because it is kinda different from your average HL2 horror mod. No weapons, no flashlight. Kinda like Amnesia? I dunno. I never played that. The only thing I know about Amnesia is that you have to hide in the closet or something.
2muchvideogames11 years ago2012-11-15 05:38:56 UTC 5 comments
MODDING HALF-LIFE W/ VIDEO FOOTAGE!

So I was inspired to make a little mod where some of the soldiers will be randomly replaced with other enemies. In the video above, I play a typical gruntfest type of mod where the soldiers may randomly be replaced with Heavies. Since it is completely random, I will not know when a heavy might show up, so, kind of like in your typical left 4 dead game.

I'd like to expand this idea to weapons as well as having more possible replaceable enemies. This is where you guys come in: help me think of some 'special' enemies that can replace the average soldiers and maybe have some model work done on any new enemy you might have (post ideas first, I might have models handy) and soon we can all join in on the fun!
2muchvideogames11 years ago2012-11-11 20:07:57 UTC 8 comments
The Escape is a French mod that just arrived fresh off the Hammer on MODDB. I tried it for a bit and it was a little bit unpolished, but is largely decent. And that is why we are going to create a challenge out of this mod.

THE ESCAPE CHALLENGE
The object of this challenge is to prove your skillz as a Half-Life Player. The instructions are as follows:
First, obtain a feel for what you are up against in this mod. Play the training level first. You will be immediately attacked by soldiers in an office area. Know how to switch weapons without a suit. Make you way past the bomb-rigged jumping section, as well as the acrobatic ladder section. After that the training will boil down to a crossbow target range. Feel free to expend your bolts on the scientists if you survive. Complete the training and be congratulated by some guy from France.

Once you complete the training, the REAL challenge begins. Using ONLY ONE LIFE, see how far you can get on Medium difficulty. I will post my run on youtoob sometime later. The one to get the farthest is the Winner!

Be wary, the mod is very challenging. You will usually confront several soldiers at a time, we are talking ten to twenty at a time. Use whatever means necessary (not cheating) to get as far as you can in a single life. Will you get farther than I did? Probably. I didn't do too well at the truck section and got killed stupidly. Oh crap, now you know how far I got. Well, good luck beating me I suppose.