Recent reviews by vatha

Never reviewed a game on Steam, but I had to speak against the consensus on this one. HL1 is still a great game and mostly holds up today, but this outsourced (heh) expansion does not.

I will probably play it to completion but my qualms so far are:

1. Environments are drab and boring: you're constantly wandering around a grey corridor listening to the same 1-second clip of electricity crackling. Very poor sense of atmosphere.

2. "Puzzles" are both cryptic and mind-numbing: often-times the solution to clearing a room is simply waiting for a scripted event to finish.

3. Horrible jump vertical: you need to crouch-jump to overcome a milk carton. Surely a soldier is more athletic than this? I know crouch-jump is in the original, but this game makes you jump on boxes constantly.

4. Feels like a chore to play: I'm not given any motive except getting out of the aforementioned boring environments.

5. I HATE the wrench.

Positives:

1. New enemies are sort of cool.

2. The knife is fun, but it's not our beloved crowbar.

Overall I would not recommend this Gearbox take on HL1, it feels very much a bootleg of the original rather than something which "expands" it.

A NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE

With that aside, this is a game I have poured many many hours into. A small amount of time invested results in an extremely memorable and atmospheric experience. The best part is that once you complete it, there is a plethora of mods to enhance, modify, or in some cases break the game in entertaining ways.

And yes bugs are notorious although not as problematic as when the game was first released. The latest patch on Steam should suffice, but I also recommend looking into the Zone Reclamation Project mod for a vanilla experience with minor enhancements.

All in all, great game. Go shoot some snorks, Stalker.