'Logistique Act. 1' is a first person shooter and is a mod for the base game 'Half-Life 2'. The story takes place in various environments that you've already seen before but with some relatively moderate changes. You play as "Adam Ivanov", a citizen of City 17 who's wife was among one of many kidnapped residents and Adam himself endures a heavy beating by the very ones that kidnapped his wife. Play through 4 semi-lengthy chapters as he sets off in search for her in this somewhat decent mod.

As you can probably guess, you don't end up finding your wife because as the title states, this is just Act l of the series. And if I have to be brunt about it, you'll probably never find her as this game most likely got cancelled seeing as how it was initially released back in September of 2020 and there's yet to be an Act ll. But if I have to be honest, this is probably for the best due to the numerous amounts of bugs, design flaws and overly ambitious gimmicks that the developers attempted to pull off that ended up being detriments to the game rather than benefits.

Now for starters, 'Half-Life 2' is well known for it's unique gameplay styles as well as great storytelling and puzzle solving. Unfortunately, 'Logistique Act. 1' fails to achieve essentially all these key points despite trying it's hardest to do so. The story works and isn't bad per se, but the gameplay doesn't quite reflect on what you're trying to do. In the original 'Half-Life 2', you were set off through a huge journey to ultimately save the world and it really felt like you were on an important quest. But here it doesn't feel like you're trying to look for and save your wife, it just feels like you're trying to escape the city and the Combine. Even with the small bits that reference your goal of saving her, it still doesn't feel like you're looking for someone.

Then comes the gameplay. It's standard enough for the most part and you do fight the same types of enemies from the original game. I also agree that the weapon system and mechanics are unique and definitely not something that many if not any 'Half-Life 2' mods do, but I think there's a reason for that. To start off, you have no HUD which isn't too out of this world, but I'd like to know how much health and ammo I have. Sure there's a "clip check" mechanic where if you hold the "R" key, Adam will unload his gun in question and give the player a vague idea of how many rounds are left in the magazine but it means little to nothing to me. Are there 4 rounds in it? 5? 3? 2?

Not only that but your reserve ammo is based on magazine count so if you end up reloading an almost full mag, you will lose every single bullet in that magazine because for some reason Adam just chucks it away despite it still having 26 bullets. So if you're the type of player that has the tendency to reload after firing a few rounds, then you're going to lose a lot of ammo and they aren't very easy to find. Enemies also stop dropping ammo later on in the game but do drop it at the start. Why change that? Why make ammo (an already scarce resource) even more scarce?

I get that the developers were trying to go for a more realistic approach to a 'Half-Life' game but this was not a good approach. The "unique" features just end up being annoying gimmicks that take more from the game than actually giving. People also complained about the abundance of puzzles in the game but honestly, I didn't find many of the puzzles to be super difficult. Most of the puzzling is quite straightforward and simple but there are some areas where you have to figure out relatively taboo things and that's mainly because a handful of times, you need to move things from point "A" to point "B" and perform a bit of platforming. This is probably what people were complaining about and frankly, I stand heavily by them.

And let me just say, this mod is not good for platforming. It's finicky to move objects you need to jump onto and some areas require the aid of physics objects in order to progress. It also doesn't help that Adam only jumps 2 feet in the air making platforming and jumping more troublesome than it really needs to be. Some areas need items that require the player to backtrack a ridiculous distance just to be able to progress and in the end just boils down to the fact that the game attempted to tie in a gameplay aspect that the physics of the mod just don't compliment.

Then comes the biggest complaint so far, the flawed level design. I have to admit when I played through this, I got lost more times than I want to admit, and why's that? Because the game has such confusing level design that essentially throws the player around an area where they're left wandering around with little to no direction. There are plenty of areas that have 0 indicators that the player must go there. Not only that, but there was even a point in the game where I literally could not progress because of a bug that didn't open a pathway for me to move forward. I wandered around like a mindless ape before eventually giving up and noclipping through the damn thing because at this point I honestly couldn't be bothered.

Bad level design is one thing, but to have levels unbeatable unless you used cheats is just bad game programming as a whole. I would rather the mod not exist than for it to be broken. Thank god for the developer console because without it, I doubt anyone playing this game would've completed it legitimately. Honestly, 'Logistique Act. 1' isn't even that bad but it does almost everything so badly and tries way too hard to be one-of-a-kind that it lost sight of what it should've been setting out to do in the first place: be a good, functional and unpretentious experience.

For the most part it plays just like the base game but has those gimmicky caveats that I mentioned before. It's unique sure but just because it's unique, doesn't make it good. As per usual Valve game, control bindings are available and can be rebound.

Actually pretty good. Along with the stock textures from the base game, 'Logistique Act. 1' throws in their own unique textures, weapons and animations. They're all pretty cool and give the game a charm that sets itself apart from other mods that stick to the source material. Cutscenes were also okay but if you've played the original game, you could tell they were just taken from the base game and given some filters.

Also not bad with custom sounds for weapons, somewhat distinct music as well as voice acting that actually isn't bad. They don't necessarily sound like they belong but hell, I've heard worse.

'Logistique Act. 1' is a mod for 'Half-Life 2' but continuously shoots itself in the foot by having unnecessary mechanics that end up becoming gimmicks that make the game more difficult to play by nature. On top of other flaws ranging from faulty ammo systems that count full magazines instead of individual ammo causing users to lose ammo when reloading, confusing map layouts that give the player zero sense of direction ultimately wasting their time and level design so ridiculous that it's actually impossible to progress in some areas because of bad game programming, you can probably tell that 'Logistique Act. 1' although ambitious, is a bit too ambitious for it's own good.

[h1]Overview:[/h1] '[i]Logistique Act. 1[/i]' is a first person shooter and is a mod for the base game '[i]Half-Life 2[/i]'. The story takes place in various environments that you've already seen before but with some relatively moderate changes. You play as "Adam Ivanov", a citizen of City 17 who's wife was among one of many kidnapped residents and Adam himself endures a heavy beating by the very ones that kidnapped his wife. Play through 4 semi-lengthy chapters as he sets off in search for her in this somewhat decent mod. As you can probably guess, you don't end up finding your wife because as the title states, this is just Act l of the series. And if I have to be brunt about it, you'll probably never find her as this game most likely got cancelled seeing as how it was initially released back in September of 2020 and there's yet to be an Act ll. But if I have to be honest, this is probably for the best due to the numerous amounts of bugs, design flaws and overly ambitious gimmicks that the developers attempted to pull off that ended up being detriments to the game rather than benefits. [h1]Gameplay:[/h1] Now for starters, '[i]Half-Life 2[/i]' is well known for it's unique gameplay styles as well as great storytelling and puzzle solving. Unfortunately, '[i]Logistique Act. 1[/i]' fails to achieve essentially all these key points despite trying it's hardest to do so. The story works and isn't bad per se, but the gameplay doesn't quite reflect on what you're trying to do. In the original '[i]Half-Life 2[/i]', you were set off through a huge journey to ultimately save the world and it really felt like you were on an important quest. But here it doesn't feel like you're trying to look for and save your wife, it just feels like you're trying to escape the city and the Combine. Even with the small bits that reference your goal of saving her, it still doesn't feel like you're looking for someone. Then comes the gameplay. It's standard enough for the most part and you [i]do[/i] fight the same types of enemies from the original game. I also agree that the weapon system and mechanics are unique and definitely not something that many if not any '[i]Half-Life 2[/i]' mods do, but I think there's a reason for that. To start off, you have no HUD which isn't [i]too[/i] out of this world, but I'd like to know how much health and ammo I have. Sure there's a "clip check" mechanic where if you hold the "R" key, Adam will unload his gun in question and give the player a vague idea of how many rounds are left in the magazine but it means little to nothing to me. Are there 4 rounds in it? 5? 3? 2? Not only that but your reserve ammo is based on magazine count so if you end up reloading an almost full mag, you will [b]lose[/b] [i]every single[/i] bullet in that magazine because for some reason Adam just chucks it away despite it still having 26 bullets. So if you're the type of player that has the tendency to reload after firing a few rounds, then you're going to lose a [i]lot[/i] of ammo and they aren't very easy to find. Enemies also stop dropping ammo later on in the game but [i]do[/i] drop it at the start. Why change that? Why make ammo (an already scarce resource) even more scarce? I get that the developers were trying to go for a more realistic approach to a '[i]Half-Life[/i]' game but this was not a good approach. The "unique" features just end up being annoying gimmicks that take more from the game than actually giving. People also complained about the abundance of puzzles in the game but honestly, I didn't find many of the puzzles to be super difficult. Most of the puzzling is quite straightforward and simple but there are some areas where you have to figure out relatively taboo things and that's mainly because a handful of times, you need to move things from point "A" to point "B" and perform a bit of platforming. This is probably what people were complaining about and frankly, I stand heavily by them. And let me just say, this mod is [i]not[/i] good for platforming. It's finicky to move objects you need to jump onto and some areas require the aid of physics objects in order to progress. It also doesn't help that Adam only jumps 2 feet in the air making platforming and jumping more troublesome than it really needs to be. Some areas need items that require the player to backtrack a ridiculous distance just to be able to progress and in the end just boils down to the fact that the game attempted to tie in a gameplay aspect that the physics of the mod just don't compliment. Then comes the biggest complaint so far, the flawed level design. I have to admit when I played through this, I got lost more times than I want to admit, and why's that? Because the game has such confusing level design that essentially throws the player around an area where they're left wandering around with little to no direction. There are plenty of areas that have 0 indicators that the player must go there. Not only that, but there was even a point in the game where I literally could not progress because of a bug that didn't open a pathway for me to move forward. I wandered around like a mindless ape before eventually giving up and noclipping through the damn thing because at this point I honestly couldn't be bothered. Bad level design is one thing, but to have levels unbeatable unless you used cheats is just bad game programming as a whole. I would rather the mod not exist than for it to be broken. Thank god for the developer console because without it, I doubt anyone playing this game would've completed it legitimately. Honestly, '[i]Logistique Act. 1[/i]' isn't even that bad but it does almost everything so badly and tries way too hard to be one-of-a-kind that it lost sight of what it should've been setting out to do in the first place: be a good, functional and unpretentious experience. [h1]Controls:[/h1] For the most part it plays just like the base game but has those gimmicky caveats that I mentioned before. It's unique sure but just because it's unique, doesn't make it good. As per usual [i]Valve[/i] game, control bindings are available and can be rebound. [h1]Graphics:[/h1] Actually pretty good. Along with the stock textures from the base game, '[i]Logistique Act. 1[/i]' throws in their own unique textures, weapons and animations. They're all pretty cool and give the game a charm that sets itself apart from other mods that stick to the source material. Cutscenes were also okay but if you've played the original game, you could tell they were just taken from the base game and given some filters. [h1]Audio:[/h1] Also not bad with custom sounds for weapons, somewhat distinct music as well as voice acting that actually isn't bad. They don't necessarily sound like they belong but hell, I've heard worse. [h1]Conclusion/TL;DR:[/h1] '[i]Logistique Act. 1[/i]' is a mod for '[i]Half-Life 2[/i]' but continuously shoots itself in the foot by having unnecessary mechanics that end up becoming gimmicks that make the game more difficult to play by nature. On top of other flaws ranging from faulty ammo systems that count full magazines instead of individual ammo causing users to lose ammo when reloading, confusing map layouts that give the player zero sense of direction ultimately wasting their time and level design so ridiculous that it's actually impossible to progress in some areas because of bad game programming, you can probably tell that '[i]Logistique Act. 1[/i]' although ambitious, is a bit [i]too[/i] ambitious for it's own good.