One thing I used to do on Gmod when I was 14-15 was to go on gm_bigcity and spawn in like 300 Combine troops to hunt after me and arm myself with a bunch of M9K weapons to kill them all, or as many as I could until I died. Tacky, yeah, but this game and its sloppy mechanics/skirmishes reminded me of that. But what would I rather play right now, or at any moment in the future, for that matter? Yeah, Gmod.

This game has such a fatally bad understanding of the Half-Life world and aesthetic, as it feels like the creators wanted to fuse it with the cinematic, grandiose nature of the MGS games, a fusion that would barely work in good hands in the first place, let alone made by people who made a story and script as bad as this. This idea that we're finally playing as "the villain" is so transient and forced, even due to how the story unfolds. It is so divorced from everything that made the HL games great and is a pretty embarrassing stain on a lot of the amazing mods that have been created from Source and GoldSrc. For instance, Kelly Bailey's amazing, atmospheric scores for the original Half-Life games have been replaced by some stock music-ass, Epidemic Sound ass battle music that not only wildly varies in style but none of which fits with the game or HL2 for that matter, save for a pretty great main theme/menu theme and a few other themes done by composer Paul Humphrey. Still feels tangentially disconnected from the HL vibe, but it's still good and I'm giving credit where credit is due as a fellow musician.

The gunplay and firefights, as I alluded to earlier, are garbage. You're always meant to be in a big empty room killing 10s upon 10s of enemies, and the objectives are so unclear that half of the time you go through about 90 enemies in 10 minutes before you realize "Huh, maybe I'm meant to be going somewhere!" and find you can open this train car door hidden off to the side of the gigantic train station to move to the next section. The absolute worst. Did Half-Life 2 also not have a super-intensive HUD and not give you objectives through it? Yes. But it was able to easily display a point A and B through its excellent level design, which is impossible in HDTF, cuz every area is so big that it feels like you could hold two concurrent games of football in them. Act 2 as a whole is a masterclass in how NOT to do game/level design.

There are very minimal shades of passion and good gamescraft here and there. Some of the vistas throughout the game look quite nice, the choice to put a timer culminating to seven hours throughout the first act (referencing the duration of the Seven Hour War) was pretty cool, and the intersections between Mitchell and Gordon's journey were nice. These guys who made the game are very obviously Half-Life fans, which makes me sorta feel bad for loathing this game.

Not gonna say much more because "Hunt Down The Refund" is a pretty excellent deconstruction of everything wrong with the game. And just to mirror something he said in the video, yes, the audio mastering in the game is ungodly bad. There are cutscenes where voice actors are at entirely different volume levels and have completely different mastering of their voices, and there are sections where what people are saying becomes completely inaudible due to the terrible radio EQ. This problem couldn't even be visually subsided since the game doesn't have working subtitles, what an embarrassment. And yes, I'm gonna acknowledge but try to move past the protag in his presumable 40s-50s having a short-lived love interest in a girl he met when she was a child, which is obviously gross. That alone is enough to make me dislike this game, but there's so much more fundamentally wrong with it.

Anyways, this game's had enough of my energy already. At least I have a new answer for the times anyone asks me "What's your least favorite game?"

You fucked up my face/10

Ultimately, a middling Source engine mod that came out at a time when there were a thousand other, better ones of its kind. Hard to beat the aesthetic, a wonderfully gritty sci-fi """cyberpunk??"" setting that if anything still feels fresh. Enjoyed skulking around empty servers and soaking in the unparalleled atmosphere. The maps genuinely feel haunted, detailed and littered with props and history; like teleporting into a forgotten world plagued by untold stories. Whatever sickness that once resided behind these metal walls managed to remove all life therein. I genuinely implore anyone to give this mod a shot just to create a solo server and explore the maps and soak in the vibes.

The game's biggest sin is commissioning Ed Harrison to create one of the best soundtracks ever, and then proceeds to just.... not use it natively? Servers outright had to enable a radio plugin to play the songs that were dormant in the directory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPUp2PiCYBY

So I picked up this game from the old DS shelf thinking “you know I never beat this one did I? I don’t remember anything about it except trying to make my way through some spooky woods….”

…so then I turn the game on and see the first file has 100% completion. I definitely remember something about obtaining the various Kirby spray paints, so I know it wasn’t a used game, but man. The game wasn’t at all bad or uninteresting, either; there are a lot of cool ideas in place to make for a pretty unique experience among the various kirbs. The thematic vibe of the game kind of reminds me of if the Great Cave Offensive had introduced some rival explorers that were trying to get to certain treasures before you, and that resulted in some neat puzzles based on the different Squeak Squad members’ abilities.

I also feel like the game introduced some pretty unique takes on the powers, although I have mixed feelings about some of them. The ability lists feel a bit pared down to Kirby’s Adventure levels, but the scrolls that upgrade them are interesting and there are some that have interactions with the environment beyond just solving very specific puzzles. For example, I thought it was really neat how the spark and beam abilities caused a current to run through metallic surfaces and let you attack from a distance.

Anyway, the puzzles for the chests weren’t total brain busters, and it was kind of interesting that there were some short levels dedicated to one puzzle, but I feel like the combat could be weirdly difficult for Kirby. You know, the main game, not the unforgiving boss rush arena. This was a bit mitigated by the inventory system, although there was something of a risk/reward element in the fact that if you wanted to get all the chests in a level in one go, you’d be using three out of five inventory slots. You can even upgrade your health and buddy, you’ll need it. Some of the bosses hit super hard!

Anyway, the game looks and sounds great as always, and the story is very aggressively Kirby. Not the deepest on the lore end of things, but comparing the inciting incident to the identity of the final boss is extremely funny.