Half-Life: Before is the most
disappointing thing since my son. I mean how could you possibly screw up the
entire backstory to Half-Life? It's like screwing up 3 prequel movies that tie
in with a beloved set of three other films. Also, while my son eventually met
his death by stupidly running into an active trip-mine after screaming at someone to
open a silo door, the sad truth about Half-Life: Before, is that it will be
around. Forever. It will never go away. It can never be undone.
Okay, seriously. As a huge advocate
and fan of Goldsrc mods, I just had to check this out. People told me not to,
they said it wasted a decent amount of space on your computer and that it was
essentially a waste of time. However, being the fair man Iam, I decided to give
this mod a chance. A chance to prove itself worthy of being on Steam itself,
while other amazing Goldsrc mods like They Hunger, Sweet Half-Life, and USS
Darkstar get to remain on other services such as ModDB. So, lets dive in and
review Half-Life: Before!
JUST TO SAY, THERE ARE SPOILERS
BELOW! IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED, SKIP THIS PART OF THE REVIEW
So lets get into the plot of Half-Life: Before. The title hints that this is a prequel to the original Half-Life.
Is it? Hardly. You play as Black Mesa research scientist Andrew Winner, who is
on a mission to an alternate dimension where an artifact of supposed importance
is being held. Your objective is to find the artifact, and bring it back to
Black Mesa. You start the game off on a ship in the middle of nowhere during a
rainstorm. You are then immediately assaulted by Headcrabs and Zombies. Picking
up weaponry found around you, you begin to make your way to the ship's bridge.
Along the way, you discover that Vortigaunts, Bullsquids, and even Alien Grunts
are trying to stop you from reaching your goal. Towards the end of the inital
journey, even a military force tries to hinder your progress. Upon getting to
your destination aboard the ship's bridge, you come across a man with no name who
tells you that the artifact you are looking for is below the ship inside the
cargo hold. He also tells you to be wary of a genetically modified creature
that the game refers to as "Genmod 262". He activates the cargo
hold's doors and thus you must make your way back to your starting point, and
leap into the cargo hold. There you find the artifact, as well as "Genmod
262" who bursts its way through a vent. Using it's long tongue, the
creature devours the crystal artifact, and begins to attack you by summoning
Alien Controllers and floating towards you, threatening to devour you with it's
tongue. With nerves of steel and a quick trigger finger, you defeat
"Genmod 262", gibbing its body into pieces, and freeing the crystal
artifact. The player takes possession of it, and the game ends.
SPOILERS OVER
Okay, now lets talk about
gameplay/aesthetics. The mod doesn't look terrible honestly. It has standard
Goldsrc assets being used, and it even uses a few custom textures and effects
to it's advantage. The rain effect while you are on the outside of the ship is
competent to say the least. It uses the HD Model Pack, which grants it some
extra points, though not with me. I could care less about the Half-Life HD
Pack. As long as the gameplay is good, I don't care for graphics. Speaking of
which, Half-Life: Before's gameplay is very, very, VERY basic. There is no real
attempt for even basic complexity or challenge for the mod. You basically run
straight forward, go up, backtrack, drop down, and run in circles. There, I
just described the movement path for Half Life: Before in ONE SENTENCE. Now,
nothing is wrong with simplicity if it's done right. Here however, it's done
poorly, and hurts the mod's overall impression. The mod is also easy to the
point of the player basically asking, "Oh why even bother?". Even on
hard difficulty, the placement of the enemies, abundance of health packs and
batteries, and bad A.I coding the enemies have make it a walk in the park. I
only died once in this mod, and that was due to me not knowing about the 3
turrets right in front of the ship's bridge entrance. Those of you who call
that "Challenge", no, it's a beginner's trap, plain and simple. For
veteran Half-Life players like myself, the mod is just unsatisfactory, in more
ways than one.
Now it's time for the pros and cons
section. Let's go over my favorite part first, the cons.
#1: THE LENGTH. Half-Life: Before
literally only clocks in at about 17 minutes at best. For someone who has never
played a Half-Life game in their life, it might take around 26 minutes,
depending on the difficulty. For a Half-Life master, it might take them less
than 15 minutes. The length of the mod REALLY compounds how terrible and
compressed everything feels, and I do mean everything. The story, the gameplay,
and the experience is just hampered by this mod's ridiculously short time. I'm
going to say, on record, that Half-Life: Before is the shortest Half-Life game
I have ever played. Not even Half-Life: Uplink was this short, and that was a
DEMO.
#2: LAZY USE OF ASSETS. In the mod,
"Genmod 262" is lazily represented by a slightly altered Nihilanth
model, with a Barnacle tongue. The creature never truly moves, more so flies
towards you like the static prop that it truly is. This may be a small complaint,
but this really set my expectations low when I played. Not only that, but some
of the dead bodies of people you find on the outside hull of the ship are lazily represented as well,
especially in the facial department.
#3: UNSATISFACTORY STORY. Alot of
Goldsrc mods suffer from this problem, and Half-Life: Before is no exception.
"Why do I care about this artifact i'm after?" is the question that
ran through my head the whole time I was playing. Maybe some players don't care
about story and only want an excuse to violently kill and mutilate alien
monsters. Thats fine, but a story for the players who DO care would have been
nice.
#4: LAZY PUZZLE DESIGN. Part of
what makes Half-Life games special, is their synergy between intense, and
harrowing combat sections, and somewhat complex, tricky puzzle sections. There
is only a total of 2 moments in Half-Life: Before where you must use your
brain, and they are made up of "Move this crate to this place so you can
jump on the platform and keep moving". Then again, I guess the mod wasn't
long enough to have complex puzzles, huh? Half-Life: Before honestly just feels
like one long combat section with barely any thought put into it.
#5: THE ENGRISH. Now, I understand
that the developer for this mod may not speak English as their first language,
but, people, spell check exists for a concrete reason. I've played lots of
Goldsrc mods by foreign individuals, and they manage to have perfect English
text. While this isn't a huge issue, this con compounded with all the others,
really weighs the mod down in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully the
developer learned from this mistake, along with many others for their next
project.
#6: THE BLARING MUSIC. Half-Life:
Before has custom music, and jeez is it annoying. Not only does it not fit the
mood of a Half-Life setting, but it's blaring nature can often get distracting.
I had to turn my volume down just so it wouldn't destroy my ear drums.
Strangely enough, the music never seems to stop. Even when you pause the game
the music still plays for some reason. Heres a free tip for any Goldsrc mod
developers. If you are going to create custom music tracks for your mod, take a
page out of Half-Life: Opposing Force's book and create themes that fit with
the setting.
Now it's time for the pros, if
there are any!
#1: DECENT EFFECTS. Like I said
previously, the rain effect in the mod is actually pretty decent. Not alot of
Goldsrc mods actually incorporate rain into their environments, and so I must
give Half-Life: Before a point for that.
#2: THE GLOCK'S MAKEOVER. The
handgun in the game has been changed. Would I say for the better? Eh. It has
new animations, sounds, and a slower firerate. Though, it can kill a Headcrab
in only one shot, so there's that.
#3: GOOD VOICE ACTING. The man with
no name I mentioned earlier who opens the cargo bay doors for you, actually has
a decent voice. In fact, it sounds alot better than most custom voice acting
i've heard, in much better Goldsrc mods no less. Whoever did that voice needs
to be commended. He very possibly has a future career in voice acting.
So, whats my final verdict for Half-Life: Before? Well, lets just say I don't know why this mod has the right to be
on Steam. In my honest opinion, lots of better Goldsrc mods deserve to be on
the platform a heck of alot more than this short, lazy trite. I still regret
the fact that this thing took up 70mb of data on my computer. That space could have
been used for ANYTHING ELSE, but no. To add a bit of clarity, Half-Life: Before
could have been something great, had more effort been put into it. I know that
it was made in 2009 and was probably a haphazard first project by the developer
that served as a test to see if they could actually make games in the first
place. Though, thats not my place to care about that. I judge things for how they
are now. Besides, this mod is still pretty awful, even back in 2009.
Half-Life: Before gets the final
rating of 1.5/5. Thanks for reading everyone, and stay classy!
Here is the link to the mod's page on Steam, for those who want to play it regardless. http://store.steampowered.com/app/261980/
Don't forget to comment and follow me on Google+ and Twitter https://twitter.com/Killbuster37 to see me review more Goldsrc mods and Sourcemods here on Modzone!
Oh and I almost forgot, if you want to contact me, or play games, or just whatever here's a link to my Steam account. If you do this i'll give you a pizza roll. I have like 200 left. Cmon, don't ya want a pizza roll? Listen to your stomach.
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