Heart of Evil Napalm Edition released!

[Boon]

Downloading now, 1hour 5minutes left, I can't wait!!!

[KylerAdams]

-no cutscenes,

Eh?

Whatabout the beginning with the chopper?

I haven't made it very far, but it seems good. Models are done well, as are sprites + such. Seems a bit more like a modern shooter rather than a fluid HL-style game. Not that it's bad, simply different.

[Barnz]

helicopter/truck rides

[Darth Marsden]

I'm playing through this at the moment, and I'm about half-way through the second 'chapter'. So far, so... hmm. I won't do a full review (as I've been doing lately), but I'll quickly run down what I thought worked and what I thought didn't.

Good Points

- Models. The best part of Napalm. They're all awesome.
- Unkillable zombies. Took a while to get used to it, but once I did it made perfect sense and worked brilliantly. Must have been hard to code. (The best tactic I've found, by the way, is to hack them to 'death' with the machete, then drop a grenade on them)
- Redone levels. Haven't played through them all, but the ones I have played through were excellent.
- The Alamo. Surprisingly strong add-on.
- The UFO replacement. The temple, as well as being very well made, also makes much more sense.

Bad Points

- The new voices. Barney's a little too silly now, and it was hard to understand your two superiors at the beginning.
- Letters. There's some engrish in the redone ones which breaks the flow.
- Chapter titles. While well done, they're utterly inappropriate.
- Chopper/Truck rides. They may not have been entirely in keeping with the rest of the mod, but I'll be damned if I don't miss that opening chopper ride with the Wagner blaring out.
- The controls. Most people these days use a WASD configuration - it took me 10 minutes to remap all the buttons from the completely different set-up the mod came with by default. Not the most major of criticisms I know, but it's a pain all the same.
- Letter Storage. Several times I've been given several diary entries or multiple part letters in a single location. Which would be fine if the game gave me enough time to read them (it doesn't) or it let me re-read them at my leisure at a later date (it should, but due to a glitch, every entry displays the text from the last read letter). Being able to store the letters is a nice idea, but it's flawed in practice.
- The End. Or rather, what ending? A huge chunk's been cut from the original - no HL2 section, no zombie Barney, nothing. The game doesn't end, it just sort of... stops. Hardly a satisfying conclusion to the story.

Overall, it's a good mod (so far), with a few minor niggles. But you still deserve a round of applause for actually getting me to replay the mod a fifth time. Kudos, guys.

EDIT: I'm now halfway through the fourth chapter. Amended the list - new points raised are in italics.
EDIT2: At the end of Chapter 4, and the game's glitched - I've met Barney down the water-flooded tunnel right before the boat, and he's just standing there, not moving or anything. I presume he's waiting for a command, but I've no idea what the command is.
EDIT3: Finished it. Again, latest comments are in italics.

[Werewolf]

Maybe I've missed something incredibly obvious, but how do you change between cartridge types with the shotgun?

Other than that, this mod is definitely awesome and novel enough to breath new life into HL (and draw me out of hiding to post on HIT again!)

[Darth Marsden]

No, that's a fair question - it's a little complicated to use, and I don't think it's mentioned anywhere. You need to use the secondary fire (the right mouse button) to load the buckshot shells. Thing is, you can only do this if you don't already have 7 regular shells loaded.

So if, for example, you have 3 normal shells left in your shotgun, and you hit the right mouse button, you'll load 4 buckshot shells on top of those 3 normal ones. When you next fire the gun, you'll be firing those buckshot shells. Once you've fired those four, you'll return to the original three - unless you load more.

[KylerAdams]

Maybe I've missed something incredibly obvious, but how do you change between cartridge types with the shotgun?

Same as Classic, but Darth already covered that.

To be completely honest, it seems very well done but incomplete. A new team with fresh motivation might turn it into something more refined, but in general it's rough + obviously unfinished. Some things are perfectly done (the new anims + the arm mesh is amazing, imo, and reload/reload_empty anims are a nice touch), but small things like sounds not playing properly + small model inconsistencies are minor things that should have been fixed before release. (the shotgun is weird, tho - it's MRJ logic all over in HL. it _should_ work, it just simply _doesn't_. :S )

Summed - unrefined yet good.

Also bawww at no PPsH41.

[Teflon]

I'm having problems with the end of Chapter 4 as well. Barney is just sitting around and refusing to move.

[BUGMAN]

I liked it cept' it was missing the original's feeling and I felt that half the levels were missing especially the boat fight and *spoiler* the UFO also the loved arcade map but overall I give a 8.5

[Darth Marsden]

Found a way to get Barney moving at the end of Chapter 4 - you have to noclip through the pile of rubble blocking off the corridor behind him. There'll be a map change, so disable noclip, then walk back down the (strangely clear) corridor you just came up, and once you go back to the original map, Barney should now move. Hope that helps anyone else stuck at that point!

I have, however, found a much bigger problem - I appear to have completely skipped being captured by Kurtz. I entered the temple (really nice, by the way), dropped down into the water pit, made my way to the left and removed the artefact before making my way to the other path on the right, which led to the final area.

Only I must have missed a trigger or something, because the area was set up almost exactly how I remembered it being after playing the Half-Life 2 section in the original version of the mod. Only I still had all my weapons, and there was no spoilerheadlessspoiler Barney, so I couldn't proceed how the game was supposed to. I could still kill Kurtz, and the zombies still did their thing, but that's a massive flaw to let slip.

Plus, I really wanted to play the new Half-Life 2 section.

[SaxonSwine]

You haven't missed anything the HL2 section was cut; the player & barney never get captured by Kurtz.

[BUGMAN]

Cool but why was the HL2 section cut, one of the best parts of HOE SPOILERThe UFO when the player gets captured when he finds barney tied up was that taken out as well

[KylerAdams]

Cool but why was the HL2 section cut, one of the best parts of HOE SPOILERThe UFO when the player gets captured when he finds barney tied up was that taken out as well

The UFO didn't make any sense whatsoever.

[Darth Marsden]

I can understand the UFO removal, that's fine. But why remove the HL2 section if they included the weapon models for it? Was it cut due to time constraints or something?

The way the game is now makes very little sense - Kurtz gave a whole speech while you were in the cell that 'explained' everything, and then there was the zombie Barney opening the room with the serum that lets you get the machete to actually kill Kurtz with... it seems like the whole game builds up to this big final area, and it's just not there. Very disappointing end to an otherwise pretty good mod.

[KylerAdams]

I don't think anything other than the models + a couple maps got finished, so it was cut.