Recent reviews by moint pan

"i was initially planning on being a casual fan, but then i thought, why not just let it consume my soul instead?"

A great mod all around, but definitely has plentiful issues here and there. I feel like my cons outweigh my pros as well, not that it means I hate the mod, but it really could've been better I feel.

What I liked:
- The general environment, lighting, and artstyle. Everything designed with the game's Middle Eastern setting is fantastic and really nice to look at when it gets to shine, though sometimes it does feel like it either gets way too cramped or way too empty, it's somewhat inconsistent with how 'busy' it make it look. There are tons of small details here and there as well.
- Exploring conflict between allies against the Combine. This is something I've always wanted to see explored more in a mod, especially in a country/culture outside of Half Life 2's, and Swelter shows that somewhat well. I say somewhat since I feel like they could've done more and better with it as it felt a bit lacking in some spots.
- The music done by the fantastic Paweł Perepelica is amazing and does a great job at giving the mod its rightful ambiance with its great use of Middle Eastern instruments combined with Half Life's usual synth/electronic, and really shines during the combat sections and boss fights. (Nuclear Mission Jam's remix against the chopper was insane.)
- I do like the variety of weapons you do get to fight against the enemies though, they're fun to shoot and play around with, especially the sniper rifle but that's a bias from me. Taking out the revolver takes so damn long though, much as it looks cool, I don't really use it often. I thought it was just an animation that played when you first get it but it's not. Replacing the standard rocket launcher with L4D2's grenade launcher is really nice though.

What was okay?
- The combat encounters were... decent? I can't really say much on them. They were there, sure, but nothing too out of the ordinary to say the least. I just wish there could've been some enemy variety and also quit it with the antlion spamming.
- Emptying the vials, medkits, shield, and other consumables once you used them are a nice detail, but confused me sometimes as to whether or not actually I used them before looking at them properly.

What I didn't like:
- The confusing story and character interactions. It does have a nice beginning but you'll get quickly lost on keeping track of the story and the way characters talk to you sounds fake at times, not to mention their voice acting as well. They tend to sound super out of place, awkward, and overall just not part of the world as it feels like they're reading off a script. (And no, it's not because their English or their accent sucks, I'm aware it takes place in a Middle Eastern setting, I just don't think they acted well and/or wasn't given proper directions.)
- How it tends to outright tell you what to do in most puzzles with sprays, interact icons, and graffitis, betraying Half Life's usual 'leave it to the player to figure things out using the environment'. I feel like the game keeps on underestimating you as a player and holds your hands too often. And then there's times where it outright gets super confusing and the environment doesn't really help you there either or even mislead you, like the time where you have to actually throw a prop at a panel at the top despite it showing a blue icon to shoot at it. It keeps going back and forth with these that it gets irritating. Though again, this isn't every puzzle, but it really annoys me how most of them are like this. Or maybe I have a skill issue. (I don't know, I got through all the puzzles in HL1/HL2 along with its episodes relatively easily even if it took a bit.) A lot of the puzzles just never really help the player appropriately as the issue gets worse and worse as the game progresses.
- Also, why the hell do I gotta do all the damn jobs fixing stuff when I'm sure there are allies who would clearly be more specialized in these sorts of stuff? They just sit back and idle around. The setpieces for the puzzles just make the allies look lazy rather than something only the player can do before they give me a half-assed 'thanks'.
- The way the environments gets inconsistent with what you can pick up and break annoys me. There's a ton of objects that I wanted to try to just pick up and throw around since I always that in the base game, but then ends up not actually being real objects and just fake props. Sometimes some of the same objects behave differently from one another at times.
- Why does our protagonist speak so little and not in most of the actual campaign? I would've preferred us to just be mute completely because it feels odd to give them a voice then not do anything with it most of the time. I've noticed this seems to be purposeful with Roki (calling back to Alyx) calling us a man of a few words, but why do that when we already have a voice? It feels like a weird juxtaposition, and the times we do speak doesn't seem very meaningful outside of a few basic questions and relaying to the player.
- Animations on the characters are broken sometimes and the game having to teleport them to their proper pathing which ends looking pretty jarring.

Some nitpicks:
- Your companions don't really have sounds unique to them outside of their dialogue. It really weirded me out when the suit guy (forgot his name sorry) and Roki had the default male hurt sounds.
- Making ADS the default secondary ability option?

Love LOVE this guy, the demo was fantastic for being around 30 minutes (at least for me). I adore the artstyle, the animations are so smooth, and I didn't encounter any particular issues or bugs throughout my playtime. This is one of the few choice-based games (though to be clear I don't play many of that) that really forced me to think for a bit of what I want and need to do.

Admittedly I've never actually played any of the Beholders games before so this is my first Beholder game that's introduced me to the stories, planning on playing the first game as well at some point. I was first intrigued by the trailer and was interested to see what it was about. Now, mind, these games aren't what I usually play as I'm more of a FPS/hack and slash person, but this still caught my attention very well.

Overall excellent demo and intriguing plot as well, that cliffhanger at the end is a nasty one, I await the full release.

these achievements are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tedious

yakooza kiwami 2 very cool

cool

No, not right now.

yeah, fo sho.

fun

Yes.