Func_Msgboard: HL2 SP: Ravenholm

Posted by negke on 2006/01/28 13:49:01

finally! a proper hl2 sp episode!

i just finished the ravenholm mod and must admit it really got my hopes up in terms of hl2 mapping.

basically, you awake from unconciousness, find yourself in ravenholm and have to find a way to escape. there are several areas the player has to pass, such as ravelholm itself (naturally), its canals and some dark foggy 'forest' areas, battling lots of headcraps and zombies, and eventually even some combine. every now and then the player is haunted by visions of future events that foreshadow the story.
the voice acting is in czech, but there are english subtitles.

building quality is generally very good, even though some areas would have benefitted from more details and better lighting. gameplay mostly consists of the same (linear) type as hl2, but also offers some exploration in parts. sometimes the player has quite a lot of ammo, but in other situattions it falls fairly short (i even found myself crowbarring through hordes of zombies - not because i was out of ammo, but rather since i didn't really trust those 'easy' sections :P).

apart from some flaws concerning the english translation, there were also some minor technical bugs, as well as ones concerning coherency (e.g. car wrecks in the canels - actually not that much of a problem, but it made me go huh? at first; also a few other things i forgot), but they didn't diminish the playing experience at all.

i really enjoyed playing this mod, and i hope there will be more stuff like this in the future. (average playing time is ~5 hours btw.)

screenshots & download (72mb):
http://ravenholm.wz.cz/english.html
( http://files.moddb.com/1270/ )

Blah.

#1 posted by Shambler on 2006/01/29 11:48:28

Got the first ant-lion-king bit and uninstalled. Generally a mixture of adequate, boring, and occasionally frustrating gameplay - not enough to keep me wanting to play it.

Design was fine though.

Yeah

#2 posted by Vondur on 2006/01/30 00:37:31

same here
unbalanced and boring piece of turd

Heh, You Sissies!

#3 posted by negke on 2006/01/30 22:52:32

i regarded the unbalanced parts as a challenge rather than an annoyance. probably a matter of preference.

i forgot to mention there are some pretty clever secrets, but indeed also some fairly frustrating parts/puzzles, though imho they're not bad enough to justify dismissing the entire mod.
yes, the canals section is too long and too meh in parts (the antlion-king bit was quite nice actually - it's impossible to kill it, one just has to run away. there will be a second encounter later in the mod), but once back in ravenholm, it gets more rewarding again.
the exploration thing i talked about referred to the 'dark forest' area - if one is as blind as i am, he can spend quite a while looking for the exit... which sucks a bit.

it definately has some shortcomings, but overall it's far more satisfying than 'the island', for instance.

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