Journal #5791

I just played a mod called doomed-life. And no wonder this is a doomed mod.

You start out in a ruined futuristic city of some sort. You have no clue what your supposed to do other than to not fall off the buildings. But the rocks randomly crumble so ya dun know what to tread on. You supposed to get jump around to a little balcony with a door that opens. There your HEV suit is waiting for you and there appears to be a time machine that you need to get into. This time machine is so cool that upon entering you are instantly transported to the specified point in time. No env_sprites were used.

In your case, the destination is 1998 Chile for some reason. You wander around a canyon sort of area and eventually find a cool-looking remodeled MP5SD in the back of a jeep. Up to this point your only weapons are crowbar and a 25-bullets of mp5. And up ahead are two grunts.

Just kidding they weren't much of a problem because they were looking the other way from where I arrived. But the next part is ugly.

You make it into an installation filled inexplicably with scientists and security guards. ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE FACING THE EXACT SAME WAY. This suggests to me that they were all put into the map with the default facing "0" angle. Also there are no such thing as scripted sequences.

SOME QUIRKS ABOUT THIS SCIENCE FACILITY

• there is a headcrap in a glass tank jumping around and tried to claw me to death. But there is a barney right next to him.
• there is a button you needs to press to open a certain door, but the "delay before close" on that door is 4, so you have to press the button and madly dash to the door before it closes.

-after the door above there is a huge glass cage with two alien grunts and a big button in the corner. See where this is going?

Pressing the button in the corner causes some action, where the cage breaks and a random spot on the floor also gives way. It may not be intuitive but you need to take a dive into the hole on the floor.

Most of the gameplay after this point involves finding buttons to open doors. These puzzle elements progressively get more "challenging" as the mappers still have doors that close 4 seconds after they are opened. But that's only the first slice of this fun little mod.

There is one point where a tank is activated by you to kill 5-7 grunts and make a big hole on the ground (sounds familiar). You jump into the hole, but comeout on the otherside into a rural farm area, with a little wheat field, a barn, and a cool looking medieval-like house. The front door is locked.

This may seem non-intuitive, but you need to break the second window to the right of the front door (the first window is unbreakable) and break enter into the house. Then the text message "It's freeman, call the police!" or something comes up. You are then taken to prison.

In prison, the map changes and you are taken to a different prison. The wall behind you crumbles to give you a crowbar. You try to break out of jail, but near the exit the words "freeman's escaping, get him!" or something comes up and you are taken to another prison. (Whoa, the prison motif seems a bit overdone at this point.)

This prison, has a grunt guarding it. But this prison also has func_illusionary floor. SO you fall thru into a water pit, where there are spikes at the bottom. Where do you go? The spikes, smart. You swim towards the spikes, whereas a mapchange takes you to some weirdo hallucination chamber with checkered walls. You are given a .357 and one little box of extra ammo.

In hallucinoworld, you meet bullsquids, houndeyes, and alien grunts. (The grunt randomly falls in front of you thru the ceiling). Then, the hallway ends and you are stuck figuring out what to do. You are supposed to "use" the wall to the right which will cause the end wall to crumble for no adequately explored reason. But behind the wall are three alien slaves, and they are very happy to see you (and give you a shocking experience).

After the slaves got some potshots at me I kill them off with my .357 easily. But then the floor crumbles again and I fall and end up in some weird tomb looking area. This is very coherent storyline, by the way.

I wander ahead thru the tomb and three headcrabs fall from the ceiling. Haven't we seen this tactic used before. I just run pass them because there not worth .357 ammo.

I ran ahead and the floor gave way to a spike trap, but I luckily didn't fall into it. I figured that this may be another mapchange (like the other one from prison) but I tested it first. I had lured a headcrab to jump into the spike pit to see what happens. It was gibbed bad. I then decided not to jump into the pit of pointy world brushes.

up ahead is a dead end with two random rooms each to the left and to the right. Both auxillary rooms have buttons that must be pressed, which each breaks off a bit of the end wall to reveal another passageway (creative or noobish, you tell me.)

I went ahead and got pressed flat by something that jetted out of the ceiling. Dead.

...and then I found out that there were zero autosaves in the entire game up to this point...

I could tell you what happened next, but what's the point? Get this mod now!! You have to experience this for yourself to know how great an experience this is.