this followup to Genry's Great Escape isn't exactly good, but it's a gigantic improvement on its predecessor and does a handful of smart things that endear me to it more than even some higher-effort HL2 mods like Snowdrop Escape. it feels like a scattered collection of micro-ideas and design experiments the developer came up with while learning the engine, but with the Aperture flavour the disconnectedness is diegetically justified. its omnipresence, ironically, creates a consistency Snowdrop Escape lacked, and while its setpieces are technically much less impressive the level design makes for multiple unique styles of encounter, also unlike Snowdrop Escape's narrow corridor shooting. that's not to say the encounters are necessarily good - a few are pretty terrible - but they're varied, and that counts for creativity points in my mind. optional story content is a nice touch, even despite the clunkiness of its execution, and i genuinely loved the pyramid puzzles and traps. it's the first time i've seen Half-Life 2 go to the desert! so that totally rules!

i hope this is just a prelude to something else the developer has cooking, because the glimmers of greatness buried beneath the rough edges are really compelling. and the narrative, the redemption arc, coming from Genry's Great Escape to this, too! this kinda stuff is why i've fallen in love with modding and other independent creative endeavours like this. video games are rad as fuck!!