Evacuation is one of those Half-Life 2 mods that desperately wants to be a modern AAA first-person shooter. From the weapon limit, to the ADS, to the view bob and sprinting animations, the opening turret section, and even Resident Evil 4 remake-style yellow paint on key items, the mod tries its hardest to appear flashy, modern, and professional. None of these are necessarily bad traits, but playing through Evacuation, you very quickly understand that these aspects are surface-level and aesthetic only. At its core, it is just another HL2 mod. Nothing unique is attempted in terms of level design, and oftentimes the levels can be downright poor. The mod takes place entirely within a forest which means player railroading can often be confusing, with things like fallen tree trunks simply looking like parts of the environment but being required for progression and traversal. Enemy encounters aren't very interesting and there aren't any "wow" moments like you'd see in HL2 community classics. It feels like moving from arena to arena without regard for Half-Life's famous sense of progression. Some of the puzzles feel pretty obtuse, such as having to search for a full gas canister in an encampment full of gas canisters to power a generator. It's all serviceable but not very interesting, and there are plenty of other, better HL2 mods that take up far less space on your hard drive (11 gigabytes!).
At least it looks nice visually, with nice amber lighting giving the forest an attractive autumn look and nice details such as leaves falling from the trees making the experience more atmospheric. However, I did seemingly run into a frequent lighting bug where the color correction/ambient light in a scene would flicker rapidly between tones depending on where the camera was facing. The original soundtrack was a nice surprise to hear and it compliments the game just fine with its ambient, electronic tone but compositionally isn't that interesting on its own. I still do want to praise the dev team for including a free .flac album on their Steam page for individual listening, though.
Despite its aspirations, Evacuation just isn't a very interesting mod. The level design is bland, player railroading is problematic, and it lacks key elements of originality or experimentation. At least the presentation is nice when it's working as intended.
At least it looks nice visually, with nice amber lighting giving the forest an attractive autumn look and nice details such as leaves falling from the trees making the experience more atmospheric. However, I did seemingly run into a frequent lighting bug where the color correction/ambient light in a scene would flicker rapidly between tones depending on where the camera was facing. The original soundtrack was a nice surprise to hear and it compliments the game just fine with its ambient, electronic tone but compositionally isn't that interesting on its own. I still do want to praise the dev team for including a free .flac album on their Steam page for individual listening, though.
Despite its aspirations, Evacuation just isn't a very interesting mod. The level design is bland, player railroading is problematic, and it lacks key elements of originality or experimentation. At least the presentation is nice when it's working as intended.