Reviews - MaiYass

I just played through the entire demo (which was a lot longer than expected), and I have to say I enjoyed it!

I'll admit that my hopes weren't that high when I started. The beginning train station level specifically just wasn't that good, it was by far the least polished area in my opinion, it just didn't have that "lived in" feel that a level should have. But goddamn, when the sequence of entering the city plaza with that original HL2 soundtrack playing in the background occurred, I could tell I was in for a helluva ride.

Combat was very similar to HL2, I personally LOVE HL2's rather simple combat mechanics, so there's no issues here. Animations were smooth and satisfying, and the addition of the stunstick was pretty cool.

There were a lot of areas that needed some more polish, not as bad as the train station, but it definitely felt unfinished in certain areas. I noticed that a lot of the areas needing polish were levels where intense combat took place, which shows that the devs clearly focused mainly on scenery in this demo, a lot of areas where you're just supposed to take in your surroundings looked pretty complete, while areas with combat just looked basic and generally incomplete.

The art style was all over the place IMO, it was just a mish mash of HL2, HL2 beta, and original content, all three of which sort of colliding with each other. It was EXTREMELY jarring to see a default HL2 zombie being controlled by a custom, high poly headcrab model. I sincerely hope you guys plan on remaking most NPC textures like you did with the citizens, being forced to be that close to the original low quality GMan face texture was not enjoyable.

There were some engine bugs, though it wasn't that common. Usually it would just be a lighting bug, such as a chair seemingly glowing in a dark room, however I would occasionally find a citizen or two just randomly crouching or cowering in terror for no reason. Also, was the Cremator supposed to be hostile? Originally I thought I had to sneak by it or else I'd get incinerated, but I soon found out that it just... ignored me, despite the fact that I was on the run in an area a citizen probably wasn't allowed to be.

Voice acting was decent enough. GMan and Barney was passable for a free mod, but goddamn whoever voiced Kleiner was ******* amazing, you guys genuinely struck gold with whoever you casted. Mossman was also pretty good, she didn't sounds like Judith, but considering they're completely different characters between beta and retail I can imagine the difference was intentional.

Overall, it wasn't flawless, but I enjoyed it. This has HUGE potential. If you guys just fixed bugs, focused on one art style, and ran some levels through a few more layers of polish, this could rival Black Mesa in quality.

7/10