Sexy looks like these make me wish there was a HL2 without Steam. Gorgeous!

No need for Steam discussion, everyone has their opinion. 

Your mother is a fat pig.

No need for a mother discussion, everyone has their opinion. 

Surely that's everyone's had your mother... 

Pretty nice - experimental but inside the same themes.

My opinion:

Every pig is a delicious individual. 

It's just some pigs are more delicious than others...


Yeh, I'm d/ling it atm, useful comments to follow... 

Didn't really enjoy this one all that much. Progression through the level is utterly linear and unrewarding, combat is predictable and annoying... meh.

The excellent visuals don't quite make up for a lack of anything interesting to do. Worth a DL if you are bored or just want some eye candy to check out, but don't expect much in terms of fun. 

BlackDog: Could you elaborate? I happen to work with the guy that made this, and I think he's making a part 2, I'm sure he'd be interested in improving himself. How could the progression be more rewarding, and how would one make the combat be more interesting? Any specific examples that were dull?

I quite liked it, lots of cool stuff going on everywhere in my opinion. 

My primary complaints are combat and linearity. I thought the map looked fantastic, no complaints there.

Linearity is a pretty obvious problem. While the map layout isn't very linear the player's path through it is highly constrained - every building and area has pretty much one way in and one way out! A more freeform level could have been achieved without huge architectural changes, and I think that would have made for much more interesting combat and exploration.

Combat is hampered from the start by the player being placed on rails, but there are some additional problems. When the gunship first attacks, you aren't given any room or interesting cover to fight from behind. Popping out the door, firing a rocket and then going back into hiding isn't very dynamic or interesting, and the gunship runs away after a few hits so there isn't even the satisfaction of taking it down. I'm not sure what you'd do differently there... maybe move the fight down to the bottom of the lighthouse where there is more interesting terrain to fight in?

Combine ambushes on the way down the lighthouse were telegraphed almost every time, which kind of sucks the tension out of things. For instance, the hanging cart: first time I saw it, I knew *exactly* what was going to happen (and that it would be annoying). Sure enough, I got to sit in it and wait around while manhacks buzzed me. Sigh.

Finally, enemy placement and play style were a bit monotonous. The first part of the map is all fighting zombies and the second half is all fighting combine - mixing things up with different enemy types and maybe some light puzzles would help. Without the gravity gun in the map, it would also be nice to stick in some exploding barrels and enemy killing environmental traps to allow different approaches to combat.