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2muchvideogames
Okay here is the starcraft 2 journal I promised.
So my cousin who is in the primary school got this game recently and I watched him play the singleplayer campaign, in which you control terrans. I think the thing was that the expansions will allow you to play the campaigns for other races. So anyway after he successfully finished the campaign (on baby bitty Easy) I wanted to try my hand at this 70-80 dollar game also.
Unlike my cousin I played on a higher difficulty level. I also strive to make different choices from him (more on choices later) to keep things interesting. And, unfortunately for me, things definitely got WAY too interesting than how my cousin played it.
So basically, you are in control of Jim Raynor and his merry band of misfits. You all live on this really big battlecruiser containing an armoury, laboratory, bar, and control room (sounds like a map idea!). In the armoury, you can get permanent upgrades for every unit that you can build (like stimpacks for marines). It seems that Terran Academies are no longer necessary.
In the lab you can watch weird samples do weird things. Also you can do special missions and research technology like building science vessels which has already been researched since starcraft 1. Waste of technology.
You play as raynor himself. Alot of the game involves socializing with other major characters and watching CNN on television. I'm not joking. I think I spent at least 20 minutes just watching the freaking CNN. But allow me to get to the fun part of this article.
So I am going to outline the choices that my cousin made and compare them to my choices. There are three major choices that I will leave ambiguous for your sake.
My cousin's choices resulted in:
What I didn't like about the game was some lack of creativity. In particular there were some really glaring parallels between this and the first game. For example the third mission is always "defend for 20 minutes until you get picked up by dropships" and "an elderly general's battlecruiser crash lands in the middle of enemy base and he has to defend himself with bunkers". I just thought these were WAY too obvious ways to reuse old scenarios.
So after all the ranting and major characters dying, I managed to grasp my way to the final level where I had to defend an extremely weak tower from getting zerg-rushed. So I was just chilling at my base, until this DAM HUGE Juggernaut of a Zerg hovered near my base. I tried attacking it but all my thingies died. Then the dam queen of Blades showed up and I find that her stats are extremely buff, from 400 HP in starcraft 1 to ONE THOUSAND HP here. And she appears to have developed some really cheap abilities, such as shooting fiery balls and using psychokinesis. So unfair, that dam psychokinesis crap killed my battlecruisers IN ONE HIT. What the eff. And then while Queen of Imbalanced Gameplay was killing my units, that dam Juggernaut who was camping near my base, it decided to join the party. Needless to say, Raynor and major characters and every other terran there never came back home. THE END.
So my cousin who is in the primary school got this game recently and I watched him play the singleplayer campaign, in which you control terrans. I think the thing was that the expansions will allow you to play the campaigns for other races. So anyway after he successfully finished the campaign (on baby bitty Easy) I wanted to try my hand at this 70-80 dollar game also.
Unlike my cousin I played on a higher difficulty level. I also strive to make different choices from him (more on choices later) to keep things interesting. And, unfortunately for me, things definitely got WAY too interesting than how my cousin played it.
So basically, you are in control of Jim Raynor and his merry band of misfits. You all live on this really big battlecruiser containing an armoury, laboratory, bar, and control room (sounds like a map idea!). In the armoury, you can get permanent upgrades for every unit that you can build (like stimpacks for marines). It seems that Terran Academies are no longer necessary.
In the lab you can watch weird samples do weird things. Also you can do special missions and research technology like building science vessels which has already been researched since starcraft 1. Waste of technology.
You play as raynor himself. Alot of the game involves socializing with other major characters and watching CNN on television. I'm not joking. I think I spent at least 20 minutes just watching the freaking CNN. But allow me to get to the fun part of this article.
So I am going to outline the choices that my cousin made and compare them to my choices. There are three major choices that I will leave ambiguous for your sake.
My cousin's choices resulted in:
- A major character lives happily ever after
- A major character hangs out in your bar forever.
- Losing some specialists to their own nukes.
- A major character becoming a freaking zombie
- A major character gets killed
- Getting all the remaining major characters to walk around in a cave.
What I didn't like about the game was some lack of creativity. In particular there were some really glaring parallels between this and the first game. For example the third mission is always "defend for 20 minutes until you get picked up by dropships" and "an elderly general's battlecruiser crash lands in the middle of enemy base and he has to defend himself with bunkers". I just thought these were WAY too obvious ways to reuse old scenarios.
So after all the ranting and major characters dying, I managed to grasp my way to the final level where I had to defend an extremely weak tower from getting zerg-rushed. So I was just chilling at my base, until this DAM HUGE Juggernaut of a Zerg hovered near my base. I tried attacking it but all my thingies died. Then the dam queen of Blades showed up and I find that her stats are extremely buff, from 400 HP in starcraft 1 to ONE THOUSAND HP here. And she appears to have developed some really cheap abilities, such as shooting fiery balls and using psychokinesis. So unfair, that dam psychokinesis crap killed my battlecruisers IN ONE HIT. What the eff. And then while Queen of Imbalanced Gameplay was killing my units, that dam Juggernaut who was camping near my base, it decided to join the party. Needless to say, Raynor and major characters and every other terran there never came back home. THE END.
I was just finishing a 49-map mod called Last-life. That's right, it's longer than Blue shift. But what "long" mod isn't longer than blue shift nowadays? People left and right complain that blue shift was too short. Blah Blah no one cares.
This mod is basically the end product of a chemical equation between vanilla, Blue shift, Opposing Force, and something French. It is a French mod that attempts to reimagine parts of the chapters that you went through in the three official games. Unfortunately the results are not always great. I ran into your typical problems, including freezes, areas where you must noclip to proceed, and inconsistent v_ models.
The story is as follows. You are Gordon Freeman, and you don't work in sector C. You work in some other unknown sector with dim lighting. One day you go to work, and you mindlessly press a button on a laser machine, causing it to spiral out of control and cause all systems to go haywire. Xen aliens arrive and start a party at the wrong time. And since no one brought chips, the Xen aliens resort to eating your colleagues because they are quite hungry, having eaten nothing since they expected food at the party. This makes your life more difficult. And I just made this up.
So what sets this mod apart from nameless others? Just look at the image below, a memorable screenshot of this mod.
Naw I'm just kidding. That wasn't the highlight. The real highlight about this mod that is absent in other mods is the ingenuity in map design (when it isn't bugging out). Sometimes, you are dumbfounded at a certain area or stumped by a locked door and need to figure out how to get thru. This will happen often. You must have a good eye and thinking to see the hidden paths that will allow you to proceed. Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your days in the bowels of black mesa among all the other crap down there. Poo.
So this mod has the French flag and clever hidden paths going for it. Try it out if you want, but, bear in mind it can be frustrating sometimes due to a small amount of bugs.
This mod is basically the end product of a chemical equation between vanilla, Blue shift, Opposing Force, and something French. It is a French mod that attempts to reimagine parts of the chapters that you went through in the three official games. Unfortunately the results are not always great. I ran into your typical problems, including freezes, areas where you must noclip to proceed, and inconsistent v_ models.
The story is as follows. You are Gordon Freeman, and you don't work in sector C. You work in some other unknown sector with dim lighting. One day you go to work, and you mindlessly press a button on a laser machine, causing it to spiral out of control and cause all systems to go haywire. Xen aliens arrive and start a party at the wrong time. And since no one brought chips, the Xen aliens resort to eating your colleagues because they are quite hungry, having eaten nothing since they expected food at the party. This makes your life more difficult. And I just made this up.
So what sets this mod apart from nameless others? Just look at the image below, a memorable screenshot of this mod.
Naw I'm just kidding. That wasn't the highlight. The real highlight about this mod that is absent in other mods is the ingenuity in map design (when it isn't bugging out). Sometimes, you are dumbfounded at a certain area or stumped by a locked door and need to figure out how to get thru. This will happen often. You must have a good eye and thinking to see the hidden paths that will allow you to proceed. Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your days in the bowels of black mesa among all the other crap down there. Poo.
So this mod has the French flag and clever hidden paths going for it. Try it out if you want, but, bear in mind it can be frustrating sometimes due to a small amount of bugs.
I just played a strange mod of half-life. Well, actually 2 strange mods. The first one is just a code change where all the barneys conspire to join up with soldiers and barney shoots your ass down as soon as you step out of sector C tram, so that was no fun.
The second one was more interesting; it was called Lv426. Available from filefront. In this mod you are part of the US Colonial Marines, sent to investigate a remote science station because the personnel there failed to respond for 24 hours. The story sounds cliche because I just made it up on the fly. There is no readme in the mod so I just made up the back story.
Anyway you and your idiot fellow marines venture foolishly into the temple. All of you are armed with m41a's, which I'm sure you've seen in plenty of other mods (azure sheep being the best example). Unfortunately your fellow soldiers have their m41a's on single shot mode, while you were smart enough to set yours on fully auto. And your fellow soldiers drop a sig handgun when they die, and their m41a's disappear for no explicit reason. (Read: no code changes in this mod.)
This is you and your marine squad regrouping in an ominous and dark space installation.
Moments later.
The entrance to the facility is now locked, and you are stuck in it with a bunch of Aliens. Watch out, because upon seeing you they will run up to you like a player model and attempt to sock you in the face. Keep running, but you will soon lose your way in this poorly lit facility. The aliens usually appear out of nowhere (monstermakers in front of you), in all directions and try to punch your lights out.
So what do you do? Well I really don't know. Scattered throughout the facility are buttons with unknown functions. Really. You have to wander all over this dim place pressing random buttons that you have no idea does what, and every once in a while aliens will ambush you a la monstermaker. It is kinda creepy at first though, but once you get bored and hopelessly lost, the novelty factor will drop dead quick. And when you run out of ammo, you too will drop dead quick.
This mod features two other maps that I didn't get to. One is tunnel, where you start out with ONLY EXPLOSIVES and traverse a dungeon filled with Aliens. You have ONLY EXPLOSIVES. So I ran around to avoid then and WOW at the end of the corridor there is an RPG. So I ran towards it and suddenly the floor collapsed and I got a face full of black abyss.
The other, names stadium2, should immediately ring bells for you. Take a look below.
I'm not even kidding, this map is called "stadium2". Can anyone guess where you've seen this before? Here's a hint, there's a map called "stadium3" in sven coop. So what shady past connections exist between this mod (Lv426) and the popular Sven Coop? More on this after the commercial.
The second one was more interesting; it was called Lv426. Available from filefront. In this mod you are part of the US Colonial Marines, sent to investigate a remote science station because the personnel there failed to respond for 24 hours. The story sounds cliche because I just made it up on the fly. There is no readme in the mod so I just made up the back story.
Anyway you and your idiot fellow marines venture foolishly into the temple. All of you are armed with m41a's, which I'm sure you've seen in plenty of other mods (azure sheep being the best example). Unfortunately your fellow soldiers have their m41a's on single shot mode, while you were smart enough to set yours on fully auto. And your fellow soldiers drop a sig handgun when they die, and their m41a's disappear for no explicit reason. (Read: no code changes in this mod.)
This is you and your marine squad regrouping in an ominous and dark space installation.
Moments later.
The entrance to the facility is now locked, and you are stuck in it with a bunch of Aliens. Watch out, because upon seeing you they will run up to you like a player model and attempt to sock you in the face. Keep running, but you will soon lose your way in this poorly lit facility. The aliens usually appear out of nowhere (monstermakers in front of you), in all directions and try to punch your lights out.
So what do you do? Well I really don't know. Scattered throughout the facility are buttons with unknown functions. Really. You have to wander all over this dim place pressing random buttons that you have no idea does what, and every once in a while aliens will ambush you a la monstermaker. It is kinda creepy at first though, but once you get bored and hopelessly lost, the novelty factor will drop dead quick. And when you run out of ammo, you too will drop dead quick.
This mod features two other maps that I didn't get to. One is tunnel, where you start out with ONLY EXPLOSIVES and traverse a dungeon filled with Aliens. You have ONLY EXPLOSIVES. So I ran around to avoid then and WOW at the end of the corridor there is an RPG. So I ran towards it and suddenly the floor collapsed and I got a face full of black abyss.
The other, names stadium2, should immediately ring bells for you. Take a look below.
I'm not even kidding, this map is called "stadium2". Can anyone guess where you've seen this before? Here's a hint, there's a map called "stadium3" in sven coop. So what shady past connections exist between this mod (Lv426) and the popular Sven Coop? More on this after the commercial.
So one day I was at some French modsite and I found this on the Dark Side of the Force. It's a star wars mod for half life. At this point, some people who didn't even look at the link will complain saying, "I know that mod, it's the one with the crappy maps with huge rspeeds and poorly skinned grunts as stormtroopers! What a piece of crap." And then they proceed on with their worthless lives only to miss out on one of the Frenchiest mods of Goldsource.
Suffice to say this mod is NOT that crappy one with the poorly skinned stormtroopers and the large r-speeds desert town. No, this one actually only has 4 maps. And, unfortunately, the four maps are none too impressive expect the last part, which captain terror said had "nice terrain". CT also said everything was "wicked" except the mapping. Can you trust him?
So I got this and in the first map I'm armed with bare hands, surrounded by enemies. At this point you are told nothing by the game. So you just wander around and find a pistol, at which point the lifeforms around you open fire, and you die. Game.
I had to guess how to play this mod. So basically, you do NOT pick up anything in the first map. Ignore that huge concussion launcher DO NOT WANT IT. After you get past the first map, then everything should be okay.
Anyway, so what about this mod other than mapping is so crazy? It's the code, weapons, models, sounds, pretty much. You will be fighting the Galactic Empire and some exotic wildlife, and using all new weapons such as laser pistols, laser rifles, your bare hands, and my favourite, the lightsaber. Using this weapon made me feel like a nearly invincible Jedi Master. Because you see, this weapon not only kills in one hit, a skilled Jedi Master such as myself can also use it to deflect bullets and easily dispatch the stormtroopers/imperial officers/bounty hunters that dare shoot crap at me. Being a Jedi kicks ass.
If the above paragraph failed to get you to get this mod, your head might need to be checked. But like I said the mapping is definitely very bad. Usually you will in nondescript large rooms or large outdoor yards fighting enemy infantry, or AT's. If you are open-minded enough to overlook the crap mapping, then an entirely new arsenal and foes await you in this apparently dead French Testmod, which in your steam/WON game list will be known as 'Testmod'. Nevertheless, despite being only a test mod it is much better than alot of finished mods I've played, and CT says that if you are a star wars fan, you better get this now.
Suffice to say this mod is NOT that crappy one with the poorly skinned stormtroopers and the large r-speeds desert town. No, this one actually only has 4 maps. And, unfortunately, the four maps are none too impressive expect the last part, which captain terror said had "nice terrain". CT also said everything was "wicked" except the mapping. Can you trust him?
So I got this and in the first map I'm armed with bare hands, surrounded by enemies. At this point you are told nothing by the game. So you just wander around and find a pistol, at which point the lifeforms around you open fire, and you die. Game.
I had to guess how to play this mod. So basically, you do NOT pick up anything in the first map. Ignore that huge concussion launcher DO NOT WANT IT. After you get past the first map, then everything should be okay.
Anyway, so what about this mod other than mapping is so crazy? It's the code, weapons, models, sounds, pretty much. You will be fighting the Galactic Empire and some exotic wildlife, and using all new weapons such as laser pistols, laser rifles, your bare hands, and my favourite, the lightsaber. Using this weapon made me feel like a nearly invincible Jedi Master. Because you see, this weapon not only kills in one hit, a skilled Jedi Master such as myself can also use it to deflect bullets and easily dispatch the stormtroopers/imperial officers/bounty hunters that dare shoot crap at me. Being a Jedi kicks ass.
If the above paragraph failed to get you to get this mod, your head might need to be checked. But like I said the mapping is definitely very bad. Usually you will in nondescript large rooms or large outdoor yards fighting enemy infantry, or AT's. If you are open-minded enough to overlook the crap mapping, then an entirely new arsenal and foes await you in this apparently dead French Testmod, which in your steam/WON game list will be known as 'Testmod'. Nevertheless, despite being only a test mod it is much better than alot of finished mods I've played, and CT says that if you are a star wars fan, you better get this now.
Allow me to proudly present you Opposing Life2Life, the Gold Source of Goldsource mods.
If you click the link nao, you will see a list of 22 mods that this mod was built upon. Since they credited those other mods, there is no need to go STOLEN STOLEN or whatever spam on their page. Well, actually they didn't credit all of the mod contents they used (e.g. They Hunger, Point of View, Redemption, etc.) so do what you will.
So what the EFF exactly is this mod? Well, imagine going into opposing force and typing "map c0a0". That is more or less what this mod tries to achieve. You get to play vanilla with Opposing Force Coding.
BUT WAIT A MINUTE! This mod offers more than just that. Didn't I just said this mod is built on 22 other mods? Yes it is. So, if you play thru this mod, not only will you see monsters from OP4 (like gonomes and shocktroops) but you will also get new weapons from OP4. So, in a way this is just like playing Half life with OP4 code. But in a way it is better.
Sprawled throughout the mod are nonsolid prop models placed almost everywhere. Some are nice to look at. Some are generics that can be gibbed. And some are annoying because they block my view and the grunt behind it can take potshots at me. AR time.
The mod quality is discouraging at first impression. They start out from the opening cutscene of Visitors, which was badly linked with the opening of blue shift, which in turn is badly linked with the opening of vanilla HL. So just start a new game at c1a0 and you're all set.
The first thing you notice is that your colleagues are no longer clones of five certain individuals. You will definitely see some familiar faces here and there, but unfortunately this means that later on you will see a variety of bodies around the complex. Sob.
Storyline plays out normally in this mod. That is, until you take your unpaid vacation to Xen. At Xen, Gordon will be in entirely new places that will look familiar to you. This is not a grammar error, I really mean it that way. So then after you realign the focal transmitters, Rosenberg tells you to hurry and return into the portal. But guess what? That cheeky bawstard redirected the portal right into Nihilanth's factory. Damm it.
So go ahead and grab this mod and see your favorite mods make their cameo appearances in vanilla HL. Just remember that the file size is almost the combined file size of all these mods, so it will be obese. Now go and throw a displacer ball up Nihilanth's face, and enjoy the fireworks.
If you click the link nao, you will see a list of 22 mods that this mod was built upon. Since they credited those other mods, there is no need to go STOLEN STOLEN or whatever spam on their page. Well, actually they didn't credit all of the mod contents they used (e.g. They Hunger, Point of View, Redemption, etc.) so do what you will.
So what the EFF exactly is this mod? Well, imagine going into opposing force and typing "map c0a0". That is more or less what this mod tries to achieve. You get to play vanilla with Opposing Force Coding.
BUT WAIT A MINUTE! This mod offers more than just that. Didn't I just said this mod is built on 22 other mods? Yes it is. So, if you play thru this mod, not only will you see monsters from OP4 (like gonomes and shocktroops) but you will also get new weapons from OP4. So, in a way this is just like playing Half life with OP4 code. But in a way it is better.
Sprawled throughout the mod are nonsolid prop models placed almost everywhere. Some are nice to look at. Some are generics that can be gibbed. And some are annoying because they block my view and the grunt behind it can take potshots at me. AR time.
The mod quality is discouraging at first impression. They start out from the opening cutscene of Visitors, which was badly linked with the opening of blue shift, which in turn is badly linked with the opening of vanilla HL. So just start a new game at c1a0 and you're all set.
The first thing you notice is that your colleagues are no longer clones of five certain individuals. You will definitely see some familiar faces here and there, but unfortunately this means that later on you will see a variety of bodies around the complex. Sob.
Storyline plays out normally in this mod. That is, until you take your unpaid vacation to Xen. At Xen, Gordon will be in entirely new places that will look familiar to you. This is not a grammar error, I really mean it that way. So then after you realign the focal transmitters, Rosenberg tells you to hurry and return into the portal. But guess what? That cheeky bawstard redirected the portal right into Nihilanth's factory. Damm it.
So go ahead and grab this mod and see your favorite mods make their cameo appearances in vanilla HL. Just remember that the file size is almost the combined file size of all these mods, so it will be obese. Now go and throw a displacer ball up Nihilanth's face, and enjoy the fireworks.
So way back when I was a ni?o, I played this mod:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/heavily-armed-half-life/
Allow me to boldly announce that this mod will offer you unlimited gameplay time, if you don't quit prematurely. How does it do that? Keep reading to find out.
Like all excellent mods, this one also features custom content, including weapon and monster model replacements. In this mod you will take up a sniper rifle with the slowest projectile speed in the history of sniper rifles. You will be chased by dawgs, but not the huskies from They Hunger (Almighty knows how many times that model was stolen.)
This mod takes place in a darkly city controlled by soldiers. They will have all sorts of dangerous munitions pointed in your direction, including a setpiece featuring around 20 grunts surrounding a rocket launcher, if I remember correctly. In addition to soldiers, civilians in cars also want to turn you into roadkill. You have to do the Frogger and cross the highway without getting popped like some cane toad. Interesting, isn't it?
You will be attacked by people in bathroom cubicles. Don't ask me about this.
You make a way through an office building not unlike Night at the Office, but the mapping is much less impressive. I personally thought that texture choices were of really poor taste. In addition the stairs are very, very dangerous. It will make Xen look like World 1-1 of Mario World.
This mod binds the T key to a cheat, because as we all know graffiti is kinda useless. The mappers knew in the bottom of their hearts that cheating is a necessary component to completing the mod. But you can change the key bind if you feel that you can defeat the mod without cheating. Your call.
The biggest merit of this mod is the amount of theoretical hours of gameplay it offers. This mod offers a never-ending story that doesn't have an ending. Endless mod is endless. This is because after you get through the last map (a forest-ish place) you will end up back at the first map (the city) and can continue completing the mission that you already completed. If there is a mission at all. But let me tell you a story of my youth.
So way back when I was a ni?o, I played this mod:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/heavily-armed-half-life/
Allow me to boldly announce that this mod will offer you unlimited gameplay time, if you don't quit prematurely. How does it do that? Keep reading to find out.
Wait a minute...
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/heavily-armed-half-life/
Allow me to boldly announce that this mod will offer you unlimited gameplay time, if you don't quit prematurely. How does it do that? Keep reading to find out.
Like all excellent mods, this one also features custom content, including weapon and monster model replacements. In this mod you will take up a sniper rifle with the slowest projectile speed in the history of sniper rifles. You will be chased by dawgs, but not the huskies from They Hunger (Almighty knows how many times that model was stolen.)
This mod takes place in a darkly city controlled by soldiers. They will have all sorts of dangerous munitions pointed in your direction, including a setpiece featuring around 20 grunts surrounding a rocket launcher, if I remember correctly. In addition to soldiers, civilians in cars also want to turn you into roadkill. You have to do the Frogger and cross the highway without getting popped like some cane toad. Interesting, isn't it?
You will be attacked by people in bathroom cubicles. Don't ask me about this.
You make a way through an office building not unlike Night at the Office, but the mapping is much less impressive. I personally thought that texture choices were of really poor taste. In addition the stairs are very, very dangerous. It will make Xen look like World 1-1 of Mario World.
This mod binds the T key to a cheat, because as we all know graffiti is kinda useless. The mappers knew in the bottom of their hearts that cheating is a necessary component to completing the mod. But you can change the key bind if you feel that you can defeat the mod without cheating. Your call.
The biggest merit of this mod is the amount of theoretical hours of gameplay it offers. This mod offers a never-ending story that doesn't have an ending. Endless mod is endless. This is because after you get through the last map (a forest-ish place) you will end up back at the first map (the city) and can continue completing the mission that you already completed. If there is a mission at all. But let me tell you a story of my youth.
So way back when I was a ni?o, I played this mod:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/heavily-armed-half-life/
Allow me to boldly announce that this mod will offer you unlimited gameplay time, if you don't quit prematurely. How does it do that? Keep reading to find out.
Wait a minute...
Ok, so since like 20 people told me to put a link of what I talk about in the journal I figured I should start doing that. After all I can get into some pretty weird crap sometimes.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/tactical-espionage-action
Tactical espionage action is a third person shooter. Just thought you might want to know this up front.
Ok so you might have heard of this one on moddb it's called metal gear...wait I mean, TEA. So in this mod you drink tea and talk about a weapons company under terrorist attack. You'll be given a metal gear radio or whatever thing's called, and barney will relay instructions to you in the field.
English natives will be pissed off by this mod and the slew of typographical errors. There are also some very glaring mispronunciations and generally butchering the English language. But since no one except English natives actually care about that, I assure you that this will not be a problem for most.
In this mod you play as a black ops male assassin, using a very strange mp5 that shoots lasers on semi-automatic. I am not going to go any further on that, on pain of a horribly confusing paragraph that has no bearing on the main idea of this article.
The mapping is pretty decent, though I didn't get to finish it (go into this later.) They used condition zero deleted scenes textures, which if you know, make for very impressive visuals by goldsource standards. They also picked up the stealth elements of deleted scenes, which is implemented in a way that is playable.
The health system is just like call of duty. You have a regenerate-able health but can be easily killed by taking too much damage at once. Of course, this makes the gameplay seem very easy, but...
If you read the comments you'll notice a trend forming there. Everyone seem to complain about a certain area with a tank or something. This is probably the most annoying boss I've had to fight in a while. I think I died, like, 20 times against this 2-HP beast. Let me describe this set piece for you.
You start out in a garage with a shotgunner firing at you. From here on, you have to do a repetitive task: load a missile on a crane, move the crane with a control panel, shoot the missile when it's positioned above the tank, use the panel to move the crane back to the missile box, and repeat. This sounds like standard procedure, but problem: there are three spawn points for soldiers, with one located directly where you start, that spawn soldiers each minute, with max live children = 1 for each. And the tank has a machine gun too. Hiding behind stuff will cause the soldiers to spam grenades at you, it's so much like call of duty that it's not even funny.
After dying twenty some times and beating the tank finally, guess what. The next map has this problem from reissues where all the brushes disappear and I'm staring at a skybox. Were you expecting an epic ending behind that beastly tank confrontation? Well life tends to be anticlimactic if you haven't noticed yet. The end.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/tactical-espionage-action
Tactical espionage action is a third person shooter. Just thought you might want to know this up front.
Ok so you might have heard of this one on moddb it's called metal gear...wait I mean, TEA. So in this mod you drink tea and talk about a weapons company under terrorist attack. You'll be given a metal gear radio or whatever thing's called, and barney will relay instructions to you in the field.
English natives will be pissed off by this mod and the slew of typographical errors. There are also some very glaring mispronunciations and generally butchering the English language. But since no one except English natives actually care about that, I assure you that this will not be a problem for most.
In this mod you play as a black ops male assassin, using a very strange mp5 that shoots lasers on semi-automatic. I am not going to go any further on that, on pain of a horribly confusing paragraph that has no bearing on the main idea of this article.
The mapping is pretty decent, though I didn't get to finish it (go into this later.) They used condition zero deleted scenes textures, which if you know, make for very impressive visuals by goldsource standards. They also picked up the stealth elements of deleted scenes, which is implemented in a way that is playable.
The health system is just like call of duty. You have a regenerate-able health but can be easily killed by taking too much damage at once. Of course, this makes the gameplay seem very easy, but...
If you read the comments you'll notice a trend forming there. Everyone seem to complain about a certain area with a tank or something. This is probably the most annoying boss I've had to fight in a while. I think I died, like, 20 times against this 2-HP beast. Let me describe this set piece for you.
You start out in a garage with a shotgunner firing at you. From here on, you have to do a repetitive task: load a missile on a crane, move the crane with a control panel, shoot the missile when it's positioned above the tank, use the panel to move the crane back to the missile box, and repeat. This sounds like standard procedure, but problem: there are three spawn points for soldiers, with one located directly where you start, that spawn soldiers each minute, with max live children = 1 for each. And the tank has a machine gun too. Hiding behind stuff will cause the soldiers to spam grenades at you, it's so much like call of duty that it's not even funny.
After dying twenty some times and beating the tank finally, guess what. The next map has this problem from reissues where all the brushes disappear and I'm staring at a skybox. Were you expecting an epic ending behind that beastly tank confrontation? Well life tends to be anticlimactic if you haven't noticed yet. The end.
I just played BOOM, that so-called "greatest modification ever made" and "fail troll mod" over at moddb. It is made by Russians.
If you go over to their moddb page, you can see how much the moddb community is in an uproar over this mod. Alot of people have banded together to form an anti boom club even, and about 70-80% of the mod comments are negative in some way. After playing this mod (taking me way longer than I wanted because theres NO DAM AUTOSAVES), I have concluded that though the mod is of sub-par quality, I have definitely seen worse maps than these, and I find some areas very boldly crafted (not necessarily player-friendly.)
First let's discuss the new models to get those out of the way. I'll talk about mapping later. So, the models, there's a few, and most are very bad reskins done with MS Paint. Just looking at their banner at moddb and you can see what I mean by this. There's some combine soldiers, but they're the buggy models used in ag3nt-x's invasion 105, so that was kinda annoying. The alien slaves, though pretty cool looking, are semi-broken. They cannot do their charge lightning attacks. That's right, all alien slaves will attempt to melee you on sight. Pathetic.
This mod features another problem never before seen by me in half-life modding history: the re-painted headcrabs and zombies have very long idle sounds, which I guess crowds up the sound channels, so that if I ask barney to follow me, he just says "yeah" (or nothing at all). Okay.
Gameplay is very, very imbalanced. In the beginning and middle, expect to be spoon fed with ammo and health and even batteries. Expect the gluon gun and ammo given before every garg encounter. Unfortunately, your favorite weapons like crossbow and rpg, those will not be provided (assuming I didn't miss them or anything. I couldn't have, because the maps have not much possibility for exploring.)
Which brings us to the mapping. Those Boom haters over at moddb have said that the mapping sucks. Well I can't wholly disagree. A majority of the maps are very repetitive. For example in the first map you make your way through a room featuring a wall medkit, wall suitcharger, some breakable stack boxes, and two zombies. Then you go through 5-6 incarnations of that same room. Very reptitive. And sad thing is, this will happen in almost every map except maybe the last 2-3 maps.
Glitches abound in this mod. Some of the level transitions are broken. Quicksave and quickload fixes that lil' mishap. Expect to see many, many fireflies. All of the level transitions bring over monsters from the previous map, so expect some weird things to happen like floating sentry guns.
Like I said from the top, the mappers were nooby, but very bold in their mapping. I didn't think first time mappers could strive to release a full-blown mod while still on the bottom of the learning curve, but these guys are the shiz. Most of us would prolly never be able to release a 10-map mod what with our overburdened schedules. I envy these people.
If you play this, you skills as a mapper will be insulted, but if you have an open mind and no life then go try this mod. Just remember, no autosaves. And the mappers didn't feel like giving you a good ending, so you will be executed by firing squad. And everyone else lived happily ever after.
If you go over to their moddb page, you can see how much the moddb community is in an uproar over this mod. Alot of people have banded together to form an anti boom club even, and about 70-80% of the mod comments are negative in some way. After playing this mod (taking me way longer than I wanted because theres NO DAM AUTOSAVES), I have concluded that though the mod is of sub-par quality, I have definitely seen worse maps than these, and I find some areas very boldly crafted (not necessarily player-friendly.)
First let's discuss the new models to get those out of the way. I'll talk about mapping later. So, the models, there's a few, and most are very bad reskins done with MS Paint. Just looking at their banner at moddb and you can see what I mean by this. There's some combine soldiers, but they're the buggy models used in ag3nt-x's invasion 105, so that was kinda annoying. The alien slaves, though pretty cool looking, are semi-broken. They cannot do their charge lightning attacks. That's right, all alien slaves will attempt to melee you on sight. Pathetic.
This mod features another problem never before seen by me in half-life modding history: the re-painted headcrabs and zombies have very long idle sounds, which I guess crowds up the sound channels, so that if I ask barney to follow me, he just says "yeah" (or nothing at all). Okay.
Gameplay is very, very imbalanced. In the beginning and middle, expect to be spoon fed with ammo and health and even batteries. Expect the gluon gun and ammo given before every garg encounter. Unfortunately, your favorite weapons like crossbow and rpg, those will not be provided (assuming I didn't miss them or anything. I couldn't have, because the maps have not much possibility for exploring.)
Which brings us to the mapping. Those Boom haters over at moddb have said that the mapping sucks. Well I can't wholly disagree. A majority of the maps are very repetitive. For example in the first map you make your way through a room featuring a wall medkit, wall suitcharger, some breakable stack boxes, and two zombies. Then you go through 5-6 incarnations of that same room. Very reptitive. And sad thing is, this will happen in almost every map except maybe the last 2-3 maps.
Glitches abound in this mod. Some of the level transitions are broken. Quicksave and quickload fixes that lil' mishap. Expect to see many, many fireflies. All of the level transitions bring over monsters from the previous map, so expect some weird things to happen like floating sentry guns.
Like I said from the top, the mappers were nooby, but very bold in their mapping. I didn't think first time mappers could strive to release a full-blown mod while still on the bottom of the learning curve, but these guys are the shiz. Most of us would prolly never be able to release a 10-map mod what with our overburdened schedules. I envy these people.
If you play this, you skills as a mapper will be insulted, but if you have an open mind and no life then go try this mod. Just remember, no autosaves. And the mappers didn't feel like giving you a good ending, so you will be executed by firing squad. And everyone else lived happily ever after.
So someone was talking about a mod that he's making in the forum, and his mod premise reminded me of a Russian mod with no subtitles or dubbing, called Red Star episode 1. Like Chronicles, this mod will prolly never see episode 2 and above. Unlike Chronicles, this mod features a much more lengthier gameplay, alot of new weapons and monsters (not model replacements), and has an overall more exciting storyline than Chronicles. Well, that is, if you speak Russian. Otherwise you'll have no idea what the flip you are supposed to do.
This mod takes place in space, the final frontier. In this mod, you will boldly go where no sane person has gone before: onto a planet with suspected terrorist activity. And so it begins.
You are a Russian Agent and a member of some Russian Battlecruiser, and in the intro scene that's even longer than Redemption's intro, you converse in Russian with your Captain about something, but since it's Russian I never did figure out what it was.
Inexplicably you take one of the cruiser's hoppers and land yourself on the surface planet. Upon arriving with your two buff and muscular bodyguards, something is wrong. No one is around to greet you and all is strangely quiet. So this is what it's like entering an area with suspected terrorist activity.
After you explore a huge part of the complex (about 20 minutes of exploring) you encounter some nifty weapons, like the TFC wrench and a large pick that's analogous to the They Hunger Shovel. Eventually when you finally get to the other side of the bay you encounter some scientists. Cleansuit scientists. With glocks. Yelling "LETS GO" and "SQUAD, GET FREEMAN." Oh no.
Assuming that you survived those cleansuit "scientists", you make it back to the landing bay, where your ship is perfectly fine. Your muscular bodyguards, however, have already become monster_barney_dead. What a shame.
So you get on your hopper and return to your Russian Battlecruiser, only to find that it is now in crap condition. Dead bodies everywhere, broken machinery, and no Xen aliens could only mean that terrorists have taken over the ship.
Hopefully, you didn't get hopelessly lost in the large battlecruiser, and I hope that you found where the surviving crew members are hiding. Once you find them, the Captain yells at you in Russian about something you need to do, but you can't do it because you don't speak Russian. How you got on this Russian Battlecruiser in the first place is a mystery that will never be solved. Though interestingly his aides all speak plain English "With my brains and your brawn, we'll make an excellent team."
It turns out that you have to lead one of his aides, Luther, to a door that only he can open. But that's not important. What is important is that if you ask Luther to heal you, then he will literally change his head into that of an old caucasian male with glasses, and heal you by punching you. Now I don't know what kind of Russian inside joke this is (assuming it is one.) In Soviet Russia, doctors heal you by punching you while changing their heads.
After that ordeal, you can lead Luther-Walter into a poorly lit control room. He tells you that you need to activate some Russian buttons equivalent to the ones in the BLAST PIT chapter of Half Life. This is by far the hardest part of the game. The combine terrorists are literally around every corner, and come in groups of 3 or more. And it is hard to come by any health. And to top that off, there is a hassassin-commander-with-lotsa-HP lurking around. Man, why do Russian mods have to be so hard?
This mod has pretty good mapping, enough to convince you that you are in a spaceship and not in some backwater part of Black Mesa. However, some areas have very repetitive texturing and architecture, so it becomes rather easy to get lost. Overall it is an nice mod in a nice battlecruiser with brand new enemies to deal with (like those cleansuit "scientists") Too bad the storyline/dialogue is all in Russian. I would say it's a good one to try this week.
This mod takes place in space, the final frontier. In this mod, you will boldly go where no sane person has gone before: onto a planet with suspected terrorist activity. And so it begins.
You are a Russian Agent and a member of some Russian Battlecruiser, and in the intro scene that's even longer than Redemption's intro, you converse in Russian with your Captain about something, but since it's Russian I never did figure out what it was.
Inexplicably you take one of the cruiser's hoppers and land yourself on the surface planet. Upon arriving with your two buff and muscular bodyguards, something is wrong. No one is around to greet you and all is strangely quiet. So this is what it's like entering an area with suspected terrorist activity.
After you explore a huge part of the complex (about 20 minutes of exploring) you encounter some nifty weapons, like the TFC wrench and a large pick that's analogous to the They Hunger Shovel. Eventually when you finally get to the other side of the bay you encounter some scientists. Cleansuit scientists. With glocks. Yelling "LETS GO" and "SQUAD, GET FREEMAN." Oh no.
Assuming that you survived those cleansuit "scientists", you make it back to the landing bay, where your ship is perfectly fine. Your muscular bodyguards, however, have already become monster_barney_dead. What a shame.
So you get on your hopper and return to your Russian Battlecruiser, only to find that it is now in crap condition. Dead bodies everywhere, broken machinery, and no Xen aliens could only mean that terrorists have taken over the ship.
Hopefully, you didn't get hopelessly lost in the large battlecruiser, and I hope that you found where the surviving crew members are hiding. Once you find them, the Captain yells at you in Russian about something you need to do, but you can't do it because you don't speak Russian. How you got on this Russian Battlecruiser in the first place is a mystery that will never be solved. Though interestingly his aides all speak plain English "With my brains and your brawn, we'll make an excellent team."
It turns out that you have to lead one of his aides, Luther, to a door that only he can open. But that's not important. What is important is that if you ask Luther to heal you, then he will literally change his head into that of an old caucasian male with glasses, and heal you by punching you. Now I don't know what kind of Russian inside joke this is (assuming it is one.) In Soviet Russia, doctors heal you by punching you while changing their heads.
After that ordeal, you can lead Luther-Walter into a poorly lit control room. He tells you that you need to activate some Russian buttons equivalent to the ones in the BLAST PIT chapter of Half Life. This is by far the hardest part of the game. The combine terrorists are literally around every corner, and come in groups of 3 or more. And it is hard to come by any health. And to top that off, there is a hassassin-commander-with-lotsa-HP lurking around. Man, why do Russian mods have to be so hard?
This mod has pretty good mapping, enough to convince you that you are in a spaceship and not in some backwater part of Black Mesa. However, some areas have very repetitive texturing and architecture, so it becomes rather easy to get lost. Overall it is an nice mod in a nice battlecruiser with brand new enemies to deal with (like those cleansuit "scientists") Too bad the storyline/dialogue is all in Russian. I would say it's a good one to try this week.
So I was reading someone's journal today and in the comments someone mentioned cocks. And this reminded me of a Half Life mod I just played, called "Adam". That's because in this mod you play an extraterrestrial person called "Adam" who masquerades as some scientist called "Gordon Freeman". Premise is, you are from an extraterrestrial planet whose name escapes me, and your government is threatened by a dumb planet called earth, who with their NOD stealth technology may invade your home planet at any time. Your planet is an ideal society with no social classes, money, etc, etc. And the primitive evils of Earth may threaten your home planet and its ideal way of life.
So your home planet governing council chooses you, Adam, to travel back in time using lambda logos to assassinate the scientist responsible for developing the NOD stealth technology. So far, the storyline is certainly pretty interesting.
THE HIGHLIGHT OF THIS MOD IS ITS R-rating. Remember that woman in the shower from Azure sheep that you noclipped into just to peep at? Well, peep no further. At several points in this mod, you get to see these shameless women giving handjobs to soldiers. The soldiers enjoy it so much that they don't bother shooting you even if they see you. And for the love of all that's holy, don't shoot the soldiers when they are getting high off the handjobs being given to them.
Now it's seldom that a mod would feature handjobs, but that's not the best part about this mod. This mod has, relative to the 400 other mods I've played, one of the best storylines I've seen in a while.
The maps are not too impressive. One map consisted of you at the top of a large room with crisscrossing ducts, with grunts at the bottom that you can pick off with your glock. Not too good. So I guess, this mod hangs off its near-shock value to make it memorable. If you actually want to try this mod, I seriously hope that it isn't because you are a perv.
P.S. For your own sake. DO NOT TYPE THIRDPERSON IN THE CONSOLE
So your home planet governing council chooses you, Adam, to travel back in time using lambda logos to assassinate the scientist responsible for developing the NOD stealth technology. So far, the storyline is certainly pretty interesting.
THE HIGHLIGHT OF THIS MOD IS ITS R-rating. Remember that woman in the shower from Azure sheep that you noclipped into just to peep at? Well, peep no further. At several points in this mod, you get to see these shameless women giving handjobs to soldiers. The soldiers enjoy it so much that they don't bother shooting you even if they see you. And for the love of all that's holy, don't shoot the soldiers when they are getting high off the handjobs being given to them.
Now it's seldom that a mod would feature handjobs, but that's not the best part about this mod. This mod has, relative to the 400 other mods I've played, one of the best storylines I've seen in a while.
The maps are not too impressive. One map consisted of you at the top of a large room with crisscrossing ducts, with grunts at the bottom that you can pick off with your glock. Not too good. So I guess, this mod hangs off its near-shock value to make it memorable. If you actually want to try this mod, I seriously hope that it isn't because you are a perv.
P.S. For your own sake. DO NOT TYPE THIRDPERSON IN THE CONSOLE
I just played a castle HL1 mod that you probably never heard of yet. Because it was released very recently.
Like reissues and project quantu------ screw that. You don't really need an exposition this time. Let's get straight to the points. I fiddled around with the mod for like 10 minutes because the console crashes my WON HL. So what I did was, I removed all the WON-offending folders from the mod structure (cldll, dll, resource, media) and then it works. Alright then. I will take this from the top down for all you guys. (Read: spoilers ahead. It is recommended that you play first, and read this later)
Remember I was playing in WON software mode, so for me the brush faces disappear regularly. I wouldn't comment on the maps' aesthetic quality because then most people would get ridiculously low marks there.
This mod has some problems, which I'll get to when I get there. We'll divide this article by list number style, for extreme coherence.
Adventure begins here
0. The castle. What can I say, it's a cool little cobble castle that kinda reminds me of super mario N64 for a very obvious reason. Fun.
What's NOT fun, though, is that gold-dang ladder. I fell off it the first time and end up walking around the next 4 levels with 15 HP. Very, very uncomfortable.
1. Hotdog's castle - Oh boy. The rspeeds for me were atrocious. I spent, like, 20 minutes trying to figure out this puzzle. But wow did I feel like some blind idiot when I found the fuse. Doh.
2. Skals temple of death or whatever temple it is - I don't think it matters how strong you are, if you run into those "residue processing machines", you are done.
3. Capt. Terror's complex - A nice looking lobby with a nice, simple puzzle.
4. Deadeye - this thing is about half of the entire mod. But there is a big problem: With 15 HP I spawned into this map taking fall damage, and died. The second time around, I tried to get health off a red soda machine, which exploded but didn't kill me. Oh, but then the screen faded and I was forced to load the last save. The third time around, I crowbarred some bird posters and the fade-load-save thing happened again. That area took me forever to figure out.
Towards the end of this part the HL quit with another missing texture warning. I think the texpack in question was "deathtex.wad" which is easily available on the internet. Be sure to get this before you play this mod.
5. srry - Typical predisaster scenario where you try to reconstruct the four big letters to your favorite website of all time.
6. jeffmod's flat: Well I spawned into this map stuck to the floor. The info player start's position is fine but you have to realize that if I transition into this map from a fall, chances are I would be stuck in the floor.
Also that pipe was really hard to get into.
7. psilous - this is the (second to) last map, and finally we are told that we're playing as Gordon freeman. But I walked out of my dorm and saw "Bond" pasted to the doortag. So, I guess, I'm James Bond going undercover as a Gordon Freeman today. Awesome.
There were lots of fireflies in the bathroom, which leads me to believe that something very wrong is happening in there. I don't wanna know.
I don't know if this mod will be updated or not, but if it is, I hope that this journal is read and its contents contemplated. Good day, everyone!
Like reissues and project quantu------ screw that. You don't really need an exposition this time. Let's get straight to the points. I fiddled around with the mod for like 10 minutes because the console crashes my WON HL. So what I did was, I removed all the WON-offending folders from the mod structure (cldll, dll, resource, media) and then it works. Alright then. I will take this from the top down for all you guys. (Read: spoilers ahead. It is recommended that you play first, and read this later)
Remember I was playing in WON software mode, so for me the brush faces disappear regularly. I wouldn't comment on the maps' aesthetic quality because then most people would get ridiculously low marks there.
This mod has some problems, which I'll get to when I get there. We'll divide this article by list number style, for extreme coherence.
Adventure begins here
0. The castle. What can I say, it's a cool little cobble castle that kinda reminds me of super mario N64 for a very obvious reason. Fun.
What's NOT fun, though, is that gold-dang ladder. I fell off it the first time and end up walking around the next 4 levels with 15 HP. Very, very uncomfortable.
1. Hotdog's castle - Oh boy. The rspeeds for me were atrocious. I spent, like, 20 minutes trying to figure out this puzzle. But wow did I feel like some blind idiot when I found the fuse. Doh.
2. Skals temple of death or whatever temple it is - I don't think it matters how strong you are, if you run into those "residue processing machines", you are done.
3. Capt. Terror's complex - A nice looking lobby with a nice, simple puzzle.
4. Deadeye - this thing is about half of the entire mod. But there is a big problem: With 15 HP I spawned into this map taking fall damage, and died. The second time around, I tried to get health off a red soda machine, which exploded but didn't kill me. Oh, but then the screen faded and I was forced to load the last save. The third time around, I crowbarred some bird posters and the fade-load-save thing happened again. That area took me forever to figure out.
Towards the end of this part the HL quit with another missing texture warning. I think the texpack in question was "deathtex.wad" which is easily available on the internet. Be sure to get this before you play this mod.
5. srry - Typical predisaster scenario where you try to reconstruct the four big letters to your favorite website of all time.
6. jeffmod's flat: Well I spawned into this map stuck to the floor. The info player start's position is fine but you have to realize that if I transition into this map from a fall, chances are I would be stuck in the floor.
Also that pipe was really hard to get into.
7. psilous - this is the (second to) last map, and finally we are told that we're playing as Gordon freeman. But I walked out of my dorm and saw "Bond" pasted to the doortag. So, I guess, I'm James Bond going undercover as a Gordon Freeman today. Awesome.
There were lots of fireflies in the bathroom, which leads me to believe that something very wrong is happening in there. I don't wanna know.
I don't know if this mod will be updated or not, but if it is, I hope that this journal is read and its contents contemplated. Good day, everyone!
One fine day, I was just on steam browsing thru some free stuff, when I came upon what seems like weird-looking visual novel-ish game. If you didn't know, a visual novel is an anime played out in a video game.
The steam game turned out to be a cross between a visual novel, final fantasy, and zelda. Can you imagine what it is like. The premise is: your dad abandoned you in your home, leaving you with a huge debt. The Fairy World Loan Office comes to your home one day to collect your payment, but your daddy high tailed it and left you to deal with the loan officer. So, since you are unable to pay, they threaten to foreclose on your ass, and you will be forced to live in a box. Luckily, the loan officer takes pity on you and gives you about a week to repay part of the debt (10,000).
Oh, I forgot to mention, you are a prepubescent girl. So, I wonder how the flip you can get the 10,000 in one week. Well, I'm sure you've played some final fantasy, so go be an adventurer and save the world? The random monsters you defeat are sure to drop cash like they drop droppings. Oh, but wait. You're a prepubescent NPC girl, not some RPG game's main character. So, I guess you can do what smart NPC's do: sell items and crap.
There you have it. Your role in this game is to run a final fantasy style item shop, selling stuff to NPC's and adventurers who will get all the glory from killing monsters with the iron sword they bought from your little shop. But the game isn't as plain as "iron sword - 1200gp" Apparently, you are tutored by the loan officer to sell your stuff at rip-off prices. A "heal HP by 20" crappy item can be sold by you for over a hundred rupees. And what's worse, your customers are gonna haggle with you like you're some kind of low-brow flea market. As a grade-school girl under a huge debt, you need to be in tune with the fine art of business and shopkeeping. Good luck.
BUT BUT BUT that aspect is only half the game. The other half involves you hiring diablo-2-ish adventurers (who may also become your customers) to battle in the dungeons and pick up random drops. You can then take the items dropped by the digusting monsters and sell them to everyday people. That apple that your customer just bought was dropped by a hideous wolf-sized spider in the dungeons. Nah, it's okay. Don't ask, don't tell. Then everyone's happy.
You've played all those RPG's where you buy equipment and potions from those item shops you frequent. Well today you can be one of those item shops, to see what it's like. But since this community is centered on an action game involving direct interactions with monsters, this particular game may not be your cup of coffee. I actually never played this game. But if you are a business or economics major or something like that, then maybe you would be interested in this game.
Name? Oh, er, I think it called race tear or something. It's very early in the list of steam demos.
The steam game turned out to be a cross between a visual novel, final fantasy, and zelda. Can you imagine what it is like. The premise is: your dad abandoned you in your home, leaving you with a huge debt. The Fairy World Loan Office comes to your home one day to collect your payment, but your daddy high tailed it and left you to deal with the loan officer. So, since you are unable to pay, they threaten to foreclose on your ass, and you will be forced to live in a box. Luckily, the loan officer takes pity on you and gives you about a week to repay part of the debt (10,000).
Oh, I forgot to mention, you are a prepubescent girl. So, I wonder how the flip you can get the 10,000 in one week. Well, I'm sure you've played some final fantasy, so go be an adventurer and save the world? The random monsters you defeat are sure to drop cash like they drop droppings. Oh, but wait. You're a prepubescent NPC girl, not some RPG game's main character. So, I guess you can do what smart NPC's do: sell items and crap.
There you have it. Your role in this game is to run a final fantasy style item shop, selling stuff to NPC's and adventurers who will get all the glory from killing monsters with the iron sword they bought from your little shop. But the game isn't as plain as "iron sword - 1200gp" Apparently, you are tutored by the loan officer to sell your stuff at rip-off prices. A "heal HP by 20" crappy item can be sold by you for over a hundred rupees. And what's worse, your customers are gonna haggle with you like you're some kind of low-brow flea market. As a grade-school girl under a huge debt, you need to be in tune with the fine art of business and shopkeeping. Good luck.
BUT BUT BUT that aspect is only half the game. The other half involves you hiring diablo-2-ish adventurers (who may also become your customers) to battle in the dungeons and pick up random drops. You can then take the items dropped by the digusting monsters and sell them to everyday people. That apple that your customer just bought was dropped by a hideous wolf-sized spider in the dungeons. Nah, it's okay. Don't ask, don't tell. Then everyone's happy.
You've played all those RPG's where you buy equipment and potions from those item shops you frequent. Well today you can be one of those item shops, to see what it's like. But since this community is centered on an action game involving direct interactions with monsters, this particular game may not be your cup of coffee. I actually never played this game. But if you are a business or economics major or something like that, then maybe you would be interested in this game.
Name? Oh, er, I think it called race tear or something. It's very early in the list of steam demos.
Thanks to the Mighty atom, I just got to play another 17 great HL2 maps. This new computer has a 64 bit OS, making it extremely incompatible with many old software, including HL1. I also remember back in may where you guys told me about how portal was free and I got to try it out too. Man, what a wonderful community here.
This week, the HL1 mod I want to talk about is Macky's adventures, made by those japanese people that you may be familiar with. As such, you will be taking the role of a little anime girl who will use a slingshot to fight evil baddies. This mod has an autoexec file that makes your gameplay occur in the third person. The maps are very boxy and plain, so don't harbor some high expectations. I also experienced cases where ammo was in really short supply, and fighting evil baddies with hornetguns using a melee weapon was really difficult. If you're interested, I'm pretty sure there is a moddb page on this yet another mod with weird themes.
*about that religious squabble: I liked the part crollo cited my exp: A thread about compo 28 somehow turned into a religio-political flamewar. Impressive.
This week, the HL1 mod I want to talk about is Macky's adventures, made by those japanese people that you may be familiar with. As such, you will be taking the role of a little anime girl who will use a slingshot to fight evil baddies. This mod has an autoexec file that makes your gameplay occur in the third person. The maps are very boxy and plain, so don't harbor some high expectations. I also experienced cases where ammo was in really short supply, and fighting evil baddies with hornetguns using a melee weapon was really difficult. If you're interested, I'm pretty sure there is a moddb page on this yet another mod with weird themes.
*about that religious squabble: I liked the part crollo cited my exp: A thread about compo 28 somehow turned into a religio-political flamewar. Impressive.
While I could, in light of recent events, recommend the map "Experimental Problems" as the next in line for you to try out, I'm not going to. Instead, to celebrate the comeback or whatever you call it, I'll just list ten really, really good HL1 mods here for you all to try out.
Azure Sheep
Cthulhu
Heart of Evil
Night at the Office
Operation Black Thunder
Point of View
Poke646 and Poke646 Vendetta
Sweet Half-Life
They Hunger
Todesangst 2
And here's ten really long mods of varying caliber.
Black Death
Chemical Existence
Dark Territory
Hour-glass (yes the one with the inappropriate content)
Intolerable Threat (need OPFOR)
Invasion (the French one)
Residual Point
Survive in Catacombs series
Xen Assault
Zombie-X
Most of them are available on moddb, I think.
Tell me what you think of these.
Azure Sheep
Cthulhu
Heart of Evil
Night at the Office
Operation Black Thunder
Point of View
Poke646 and Poke646 Vendetta
Sweet Half-Life
They Hunger
Todesangst 2
And here's ten really long mods of varying caliber.
Black Death
Chemical Existence
Dark Territory
Hour-glass (yes the one with the inappropriate content)
Intolerable Threat (need OPFOR)
Invasion (the French one)
Residual Point
Survive in Catacombs series
Xen Assault
Zombie-X
Most of them are available on moddb, I think.
Tell me what you think of these.
I just played a limited game on steam for free called serioso sam. It's about some american stereotype wearing dark sunglasses and an impressive body mass. Maybe the croatian version of duke nukem or something.
The demo allows you to play one level, which at first I thought was level one. But after some poking around I found out that the free level given in the demo was actually closer to around level 11. Huh. Well, okay.
Gameplay consists of large, open spaces with plenty of room to maneuvre. This is supplemented by having hordes of monsters to battle at once. So what kind of monsters? Well mostly you have some humans that were victims of the French Revolution, accompanied by what looks like monsters from a Super mario game called "wario's woods" (image search "galrog wario woods" you see what I mean.) On the higher end of the danger scale we have undead steers and what looks like obese madcows, along with harpies and those bipedal mechs from Star wars. I like the variety.
Setting: Egypt. The game didn't tell me any plot exposition, seeing as it is a demo. So I'll just make one up: Sam is on the run from aliens and is trying to plunder ancient egyptian pyramids for artifacts that will help him unlock doors so that he can get somewhere. Why do the aliens want him dead? Dunno, maybe they're just mental or something.
This game features what can essentially be called a Pokedex that travels with you and subtly helps you out. Everytime you see a new pokemon err I mean a monster the pokedex thing will automatically update itself to give you useful information about it. Like how a red scorpion looking human toting a chaingun is very dangerous because of its religious convictions.
There was one thing I didn't like about this game: it was how monsters can spawn right next to you. Gameplay is usually a trigger_once that triggers a multi_manager that targets a bunch of monstermakers. If you see a good item lying on the ground (or rather, floating magically above the ground) then chances are there's a trigger_once covering that area. I made a radically bad mistake when I approached a healing pickup that I didn't need. Because when I got there, some people appeared and yelled at me that I made a stupid move. Apparently they think their yelling wasn't loud enough so they ran towards me holding large black boomboxes still yelling at the top of their lungs. It was very hard to communicate with them.
I think this game is very simplistic. Large open areas, lots of evil minions. Shoot. Blow stuff up. Then maybe get blown up yourself. Lots of action. Fun. Everybody, give this a try.
The demo allows you to play one level, which at first I thought was level one. But after some poking around I found out that the free level given in the demo was actually closer to around level 11. Huh. Well, okay.
Gameplay consists of large, open spaces with plenty of room to maneuvre. This is supplemented by having hordes of monsters to battle at once. So what kind of monsters? Well mostly you have some humans that were victims of the French Revolution, accompanied by what looks like monsters from a Super mario game called "wario's woods" (image search "galrog wario woods" you see what I mean.) On the higher end of the danger scale we have undead steers and what looks like obese madcows, along with harpies and those bipedal mechs from Star wars. I like the variety.
Setting: Egypt. The game didn't tell me any plot exposition, seeing as it is a demo. So I'll just make one up: Sam is on the run from aliens and is trying to plunder ancient egyptian pyramids for artifacts that will help him unlock doors so that he can get somewhere. Why do the aliens want him dead? Dunno, maybe they're just mental or something.
This game features what can essentially be called a Pokedex that travels with you and subtly helps you out. Everytime you see a new pokemon err I mean a monster the pokedex thing will automatically update itself to give you useful information about it. Like how a red scorpion looking human toting a chaingun is very dangerous because of its religious convictions.
There was one thing I didn't like about this game: it was how monsters can spawn right next to you. Gameplay is usually a trigger_once that triggers a multi_manager that targets a bunch of monstermakers. If you see a good item lying on the ground (or rather, floating magically above the ground) then chances are there's a trigger_once covering that area. I made a radically bad mistake when I approached a healing pickup that I didn't need. Because when I got there, some people appeared and yelled at me that I made a stupid move. Apparently they think their yelling wasn't loud enough so they ran towards me holding large black boomboxes still yelling at the top of their lungs. It was very hard to communicate with them.
I think this game is very simplistic. Large open areas, lots of evil minions. Shoot. Blow stuff up. Then maybe get blown up yourself. Lots of action. Fun. Everybody, give this a try.