Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Tangent for Half-Life 2

***Previously reviewed on my french blog***


Level name: Tangent

Author: Nick 'Daedleback' Williams

Release date: 12 April 2006

Size: 6361 ko

Number of maps: 1


website: none active anymore


download: from Planetphillip

Author's note:
This level was created as coursework for my Games Engines & Physics module at Staffordshire University as part of my Computer Games Design degree. The brief was to create a level in the source engine (we had created a level in the Unreal engine in the first semester) based around Staffordshire University, Beaconside campus. The level is set several months before the events of Half-Life 2 and the player is briefed via Text messages received on their phone from various sources.”

Story

“From: Student Union - 26/03/09 20:15The combine have been oppressing the students at this university for several years now. The vast majority of students couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to fight the overlords, but now they have reason. The oppressors have denied the sale of alcohol on the university premises. The time to fight has come. Fight your way to the Lounge and Legends bars and turn on all beer taps.”


Review :

This was another school project based on a preview UT2004 release from Nick. The story behind is quite simple, before all what we know about HL, students parts of a university already got a huge conflict against the administration that wanted to prohibit the consumption of alcohol, Rebellion will fight against the authority to free the whole university.

Design even if this map wasn't completed totally is well balance between outdoor and indoor with a good looking layout and design...The univestity theme was perhaps a little under visited and went a little bit more to a industrial theme which is not a problem at all and won't bother you since the experience is more than failry enjoyable.

Gameplay was well balance with a sort of new hud featuring transmision message (sms type) that wil orient your mission the rest is from the classic bottle and is a mix between fight against combine and puzzle solving to progress in a linear way. The mission end a little abruptly after the Antlion guard fight there is a simple switch to push and thats all.

In conclusion: back then there wasn't still a lot of stuff available for HL2 and this experience even if short was certainly a good enjoyable one, another good find from the snark pit. The author appologize for the little bugs than can be found and the abrupt ending but the main school objective was achieve and succeed so that the author lost interest and switched to new projects.



Playtime: 20 minutes




Rating: A B C D E (74%)

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