1 person found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 1.0 hrs on record
Posted: 27 Nov, 2024 @ 1:00pm

I've enjoyed this little slice of Ravenholm to prepare us for Project Borealis. The typical gameplay is back and I feel this team has gone through great lengths creating style and gameplay + atmosphere for the modern era.

To see unreal engine emulate the legacy source engine menu interface with new graphics features comes across as very anachronistic, and a fun gimmick! I have to say they "imitated" source pretty well, except from some little details. I feel like the physics in the original (base) game have more punch. A huge part of this is sound, and part of that is the speed and frantic way the physics interact with eachother. The gravity manipulator plays well, and physics objects in the world do react almost similar to hl2, But Impacts with the crow bar should also be more beefy. Especially when headcrabs jump you and you hit em with it, or you beat the zombies, It lacks the distinct punch of the original game. But I'm convinced this can be improved.

Also, what they must improve is the slight snappiness and directness of the controls. I feel like the mouselook and walking-to idle envelopes feel a bit more soapy and mouse look feels similar to the pre-hardware mouse input era of source.

Even when it runs at more than 60 fps, it feels a bit like its suffering from these "mouse action to frame rate interpolation" problems of old console ports. This can definitely made a bit more snappier. (but I feel like the latest beta has improved on this a bit)

When you sprint, Gordon's subtle mouse sniff sounds a bit like a super race car switching gears.

I'm looking forward to how this project will evolve. I hope the quality will be on par with Crowbar's Black Mesa reimagining of the first game, and especially Xen! if they can bring it up to this quality, it would be a great intermediate experience to help the hype for when Valve are able to count to 3 and actually release the 3rd main game.
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