Recent reviews by TheColeHardTruth

Worth every penny

Amazing game. Highly atmospheric, brutally difficult.

Beat a laser breathing dragon to death with a musical instrument
10/10

become powerful and kill god

• Good Human AI (though it may have just been copy-pasted from HL2 Combine Soldier AI)
  
• Large Variety of Custom Guns
  
• Custom human enemy skins
  
• Has potential to be a good game (even though it isn't right now)

• Non-existant storyline (TLDR: from what the game told me, you're a dude named Wilson who drove to Black Mesa 5 min before all hell breaks loose, manages to find an HEV suit, and starts to kill everything standing in his way)
  
• Default HL2 NPC's and dialouge make the game feel as if it was made in G-Mod
  
• Bad level design (you spend a lot of time confused where to go/rubbing your face on doors to progress)
  
• Reused/repetitive assets and ideas
  
• Xen Creatures/Vortigaunts hard to fight even on normal (instantly spawn before teleportation animation is done and do a lot of damage)
  
• Have to cheat in order to finish the game (when stuck at a sewer with a spike tentacle in it open console and type in "map wc_08" to get to the next and final level)

I tried to like this game. I really, really did. I had high hopes since I thought this would be a similar in a way to “Underhell” (another Source mod that was pretty good for what it was) and was kinda excited about it. But whoever developed “Wilson Chronicles” made liking it very hard due to quite a few negative things I'll discuss later in the review. Since it reminds me of Underhell, I'll start off being nice instead of starting off with a whole bunch of hate (as I said, that will come later).

This game's saving grace is that it performs decently when it comes to human to human gunplay. The AI for enemy humans is surprisingly well done and they all have custom models. They take cover, throw grenades, run away from grenades, and aren’t aimbots and hit every single shot they take or Stormtroopers and miss every single shot. They feel nice and rounded. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the AI is only good because it's copy-pasted from HL2's Combine Soldier AI. I’ll give this a pass because it’s not really detracting from the gameplay. Next are the guns. As to be expected, the gunplay is similar to Half-Life 2. But what I didn’t expect were all the guns they added. There's a large variety of guns (at least relative to the Half Life series), and there’s an even larger amount of guns not in the game but still in the files (you can spawn them in through console commands, e.g.: “give weapon_gauss”, “give weapon_mortar”). It feels like there’s been effort put in these gun and enemy models (if they haven’t been ripped from another game or someone else’s work) and it’s a lot better than the other crap that Valve lets flood the store. As I said before, this can be a good game if the developers put more time and effort into it.

Story
All good things must come to an end, so now we move onto the cons/things the developers need to improve, starting with what I hated the most. The story is absolutely non-existent. From what the game tells me, you're some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ named Wilson who drives a bright, red Mustang (straight past a man stranded in the middle of the desert at one point), arrives at Black Mesa 5 minutes before Gordon unleashes Armageddon, after which he survives and somehow finds an HEV suit, and starts beating/shooting the living ♥♥♥♥ out of everyone and everything that even so much as looks at him funny. Oh yeah, there's also some guard dude that follows you around for a few levels before eventually you get split up and I guess you find him dead. I don't know what makes him important. He just starts following you around, teleports to you when changing maps, is completely invincible, and calls you Gordon every now and again. That's right! All the NPC's are default HL2 NPC models and use the default NPC dialogue. All this put together makes sure that you have no idea what the heck is going on and makes it feel somewhat like the devs made the game in G-Mod.

Gameplay
This only scratches the surface of what is wrong with this game, but hopefully I can help identify some of the things wrong so the devs can fix it. Un-inspired level design and obtuse progression through levels made it so that I had to rub my face on every door in order to find the right one to open, and in some instances, I had to noclip through some levels in order to find the right way to progress. Reused assets were all over the place with the same rooms appearing in different places, the 4 or 5 scientists that climbed into a vent with a shotgun and died in the exact same way, and always with Xen Creature and Vortigaunt ambushes around corners and Headcrabs and zombies in vents. Xen Creatures and Vortigaunts are a pain to fight since they spawn instantly (usually a couple feet away from you giving you no time to react), ignoring their teleportation animation and do a large amount of damage even on normal difficulty. And finally, for the piece de resistance, the second to last level in the game does not have a load trigger for the final level, meaning that you have to cheat (go to advanced keyboard settings, enable console, type "map wc_08" in console) in order to travel to the final level and watch some friendly NPC's fight enemy soldiers to get "TO BE CONTINUED" and a big anti-climax. To be completely honest, this game feels like it should still be in alpha with all of the problems it has.

I know this is a beta/early access game, and from my perspective, it has a lot of potential (it kinda reminds me of Underhell when it was first beginning), but I sincerely cannot recommend this until the creator fixes/improves the level design at the very least. If they fix this and they'll get my recommendation.