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 okhpoh�hf0�8ifm 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!