thumbnails are not screenshots. 

I've played through this now, but first a couple of disclaimers:

1: I played with godmode because I glimpsed in the readme that hard was insane and easy was hard. This, I've come to learn, means that it is ridiculously hard and I couldn't be arsed to play it properly at this time of night. Thus I won't be able to make any formal statement about the gameplay.

2: I didn't bother reading the readme hard enough to notice if there was any backstory or not.


Build quality is kinda dodgy. Architecture is not exactly pretty. Detailing is okhpohøhf0å8ifm lfpow5

oh fuck this.


Riding the robot, which I guess was the gimmick this entire set centers around, was really lame.
I just couldn't stop thinking about Robie The Robot ( http://www.somethingawful.com/cranky/index.php?review=47 ) while this huge, fragile skeleton of shiny metal ass wobbled it's way clumsily at 2mph through the nearest exit.
I'm not saying I can make a better robot, but if you can't make a better robot than this, don't bother making it.
Also you don't control the robot as much as you push a button and it walks forwards and you can run around in it's head pushing buttons to make it shoot web.


The rest of the levels, I dunno. They're just so mediocre and blah and meh and I think I left a little bit of my brain behind there somewhere.
I liked the hordes of combine elites for some reason.


Tip to the combine robot engineers: put some goddamned armor plating on your robots man, there's fucking huge holes to fire into and murder it's crew!

P.S.: Contains no Barney :( 

Downloading it now, thumbnails look interesting-ish but czg's comments make me wary. Still waiting for a Ravenholm set of maps :( 

Basically these are glorified zoo maps, not really in keeping with the HL world's style. I have real problems with the Combine allowing a random selection of antlions, headcrabs and zombies to live in their super-important base. It's like a bad D&D adventure.

Architecture is bleh, would probably have been regarded as OK or maybe even quite good in HL1 but lacks the sense of believability and feeling of being a real place that I think is expected in HL2. Very few areas look like they would serve any actual purpose in the game's world.

The player's progression through the second map lacks structure - a lot of random wandering about until you can find something to interact with. (No, not exploring. Wandering about with no idea what the fuck you are supposed to be doing. Exploration requires an objective.) First and second maps both have a quite loud and globally present ambient sound which I can only presume were chosen because they were the two most irritating sounds available.

In the third map you get to sit in some room thing that has buttons in it, which wobbles about a bit after you push one of the buttons, but I'd pretty much lost interest by this point.

Whilst I would agree that a large amount of dross has been released for HL2 I wouldn't say that this is that much better, despite perhaps being more technically accomplished than most. 

from the screenshots it really does look like HL1 buildwise, I wouldnt have known it was HL2 if it wasnt for the different weapons/enemies. 

thumbnails are not screenshots.

No, because, you see, they're teaser shots. There's a huge difference there somewhere, if you can spot it. 

I don't like being teased. Guess I'll not download this then. 

Average in most areas with a few places that were quite fun.

I managed to get upto the big robot at the end without using godmode (died around 5 times tho) but the end is rediculous and I had to turn it on...

yeah the build quality is functional at best, lights are there so that you can see where your going and are never really used to make stuff look pretty, same with pretty much everything else, its all functional but never really cool.

combat was good for the most part, lots of stuff to throw around and hide behind, and the mapper was kind enough to leave some explosive hazards around that I made use of :) But as people have said the lack of setting or cohesion breaks the pack completely.

A few minor things as well really pissed me off (im bitching now...) like when you put the batteries into the machine to power it up, ...WTF! Yeah I will throw a battery into a hole and stuff powers up!! The batteries should have locked in place on some sort of device, I dunno, small stuff I know but it does break what little believeability there is, and in a game like hl2 you do have to remain fairly realistic in order to not break the atmosphere. (At least in this case)

SO yeah, overall : Worth playing, nothing too special, robot at the end was kinda crap! 

There's no need to play this with godmode on. S2 is challenging (especially the last map) - but S1 is clearly easier.

In terms of "conceptual grandness" the level design is kinda standard HL-type hallway-run except the fine third map. It works but offers very little new.

In my opinion the robot is fantastic. It looks cool and works reasonably well. The first time I played the pack on S2 I had some difficulties during this scene because of the amount of enemies and I didn't even know that there were HEV-chargers & medi-chargers at the bottom of the robot. I also missed the cannon which can be used against the Combine & the Combine chopper. 

/me pahs at trendy catchphrases invented by unrealsp.org to try to label something people have been describing easily for years. 

this text does not exist 

Haven't been too Unrealsp.org in a while, but that sounds about right. 

:\~ 

how do you expect to place batteries properly from a character that has no hands ?
throwing them into a hole fits perfectly into the games` atmosphere 

You cock monkey... valve managed it just fine in the hl2 sp game. Now go troll in Vondurs face! 

I'm sorry Das Roboss did not live up to your expectations. I tried really hard to make a fun gameplay experience using the base tools provided in retail HL2.

This thread contains by far the most negative feedback I have recieved so far and I will do my best to learn from what you have said.

Thank you for playing DR. 

As far as I am aware, this is the only forum where mappers are allowed to criticise other's work without being lynched for "flaming", so I shouldn't take the negative comments too personally :) 

a mapper not getting offended by negative criticism and instead taking it on board for the future.

Unlike some mappers like this : http://planetunreal.com/phalanx 

(And Tylak, that's one of the most mature and measured responses I've even seen. Good for you.)

/me tips his hat 

this is actually the maost negative forum ever
yeah, washed out lights.. go map! 

then positives are meaningless. 

then positives become relatively negative. 

yeah respect to Tylak for sure :)

At least here you know you can trust peoples opinions, whereas in other places you just get a 20 page thread with "yeah awesome gg!! OMGLOL!!!! AMAZING CAN I SUCK U!!!!! (ps plz!!)" and you learn absolutely nothing about improving your mapping abilities...

Hope you stick around :) 

The thing that some mappers assume is that people are only out to hurt them and criticize them because

a) they're jealous

OR

b) they do it for fun

I can tell you right now, neither of those things is even close to true.

Having been around all the people on this board for some time, I know what people's motives are; they're the same as mine. That is, we only want to play the best custom maps. As much as we are mappers and we try our best to make the best, we don't enjoy playing a shitty map (not to say that your map is shitty, but just trying to make a point)

It wouldn't be beneficial to anyone if qualified people didn't state what they honestly thought about someone's work. I can speak from experience. I used to get really down when people shit on my maps -- but the truth was, they were, and are, shit. Hell, they still are. But I know I can always look around and find someone in the custom map community that everyone praises, and I can try and examine what they've done correctly in their map, and figure out what level of polish and detail is expected from me to garner the same praise.

So cheers to you for not being upset, and hopefully we will find you putting some really top shelf HL2 maps in the coming days. 

Like someone told me a day in Func_: we are not here to win a popularity contest so I really think the best thing to do is to take into account each comments, for good ones as "what do re-do next time", and for the bad ones as "what not to do anymore", and so improvement will come naturally... For sure sometimes pro mapper are really ...hmmm.. let's say really discouraging, but it's wanted, just in order to help "rookie-mapper" to improve their maps...
Just think comments are not against you, but against the map results... and it makes really a big difference... Everybody want to play hig quality maps, not bull-shit... ;P