Image: Mistake of Pythagoras (screenshot from walkthrough by YouTube user Bolloxed)
Below are three reviews I wrote for some Half-Life mods in early August 2017. They were originally posted over at RunThinkShootLive. I'm posting them on the blog for preservation purposes.
Mistake of Pythagoras Review (Posted 8th August 2017)
"It’s very rare that a mod like this really jumps out at me as being something I really love, but it’s practically everything
I could want in a mod. Engrossing atmosphere, clever use of
storytelling and the environment to create a surreal but believable
world, and the musical score…my goodness, the SCORE! The creator of the
mod, Koumei Satou, made the music entirely by himself and it is
captivating and in many cases, exhilarating such as the incredible
moment when you gain telekinetic powers and start killing the invaders
by just looking at them, lifting trains and tanks into the sky, pulling
computer monitors off the wall; all this while an immensely
heartpounding music track reminiscent of The Matrix begins to build and
build…it’s truly something else.
In addition, the alternative universe
idea of having the Combine and Humans be allies was a very cool idea,
and I hope more mods continue to do this. All this from a mod from 2005!
My only two complaints is that the AI path-finding can be pretty bad
and at the beginning of the chapter 'Twisted Space', if you’re not
careful, you’ll be killed quickly from the sheer amount of enemies and
the fact that you can’t really see them as they are transparent (for
plot reasons). This, I felt was a bit unfair. Apart from that though,
this mod is an absolute must-play. If you haven’t played Mistake Of
Pythagoras, you owe it to yourself to play it (just be prepared as it
can be a bit weird)."
A Venetian Welcome Review (Posted 9th August 2017)
"When I started out this map, I thought that it would easily get a 'Play
It Now!' recommendation. But now that I’ve played through the whole
thing, it only gets a 'Maybe' from me. It’s a shame really, as the map
starts out really promisingly. You’re in a Venetian jail,
trying to escape, you climb out of your cell doing some typical HL
parkour, you grab your suit and off you go! The first section in the
jail for me is easily the best part of this map. It’s certainly not as
pretty as the rest of the map but it’s where I had the most fun. But the
outdoor segment (which takes up the majority of your time playing A
Venetian Welcome) was an absolute pain and somewhat confusing to
navigate. The map goes from being a nice linear style of play with a few
diverging paths to keep things interesting to a wide open area that
made me, for some time, lost.
For example, there’s a particular section
in a bar which makes it look like the direction you have to go,
climbing up things and what have you, but nope! Turns out there’s a
door you have to go in WAY over to the right of the bar that is
partially obscured and out of sight. Not only that, but the end segment
took me a few attempts to beat even while playing on easy due to the
sheer number of enemies. The ending of the map was also very abrupt, so
much so that it made me let out an audible "Oh". Couple all that with
glitchy looking water, some poor looking textures in some areas,
occasionally bad AI and unfortunately A Venetian Welcome, despite it’s
initial promise, ends up just being OK at best."
The PTSD Mod Review (Posted 11th August 2017)
"This is by and large the strangest mod I’ve ever played or seen, but I
was honestly surprised by the quality of it (at least, in the last
chapter or two). While there is certainly a lot of strange things here, The PTSD Mod is an experience that I think anyone should play at least
once because of it’s surreal and often psychedelic moments. I didn’t get
many of the references that were present in the mod but they’re not
needed to enjoy it. My only major complaint is that there was a nasty
bug in the last chapter where whenever I tried to save, the game crashed
without an error or warning. This occurred for both quicksaves and
normal saves. I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced this issue but
it did kinda detract a bit from the experience if I’m being completely
honest. But still, this is a great (and very weird) mod that’s well
worth a playthrough especially if you love the more "out there" mods."
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