Rescue 9 - 1 - FREEMAN
[My first submitted review. Vnitro wanted me to cut the length a bit, and with good reason: I'm my own worst editor. The published review was slightly shorter. I think. I don't really remember.Title: Rescue 9 - 1 - FREEMAN
Author: TylAK
E-mail: [N/A]Homepage: http://www.tylak.com/ [Oddly enough, it's still there. Follow the link to his blog.]Filename: 33885_r91freeman.zip
Filesize: 879k
Number of maps: 3
Download: [N/A]Score: 3.5/5
[Note: played with v1.0.1.6.]
**[** I vaguely remember holding onto that version with great stubborness. I think it it had something to do with the next version removing the crunching sound when Gordon ran over cockroaches. Beyond that, I don't know.][Note #2: Heed the author’s warning: "make sure you type the bsp name Res1 WITH A CAPITAL 'R'. If you don’t the level changes won’t work." I learned this the hard way.]
**[** To be clear: I have no idea if this even applies anymore.][That's right, there was no Abstract...][...and I didn't have a "Story?" section yet...][...aaaaaaaaaaaand there was no "Onward!"]When authors start out their maps with a "Part One of..." tag, my usual reaction is one of weary skepticism. Hint to mappers: if you have a series in mind, don’t tell us. Surprise us!
**[** I've never been a fan of proposed big projects. They almost always fail.]Anyway, let’s start with the design stuff:
The lighting here is of the lurid, dingy type (i.e., "It’s bright enough to read by, but not bright enough to perform major surgery by"), showing off the gritty, dirty walls. Very convincing.
The architecture is not bad. Nothing fancy, but more importantly there weren’t any screw-ups that I could see.
The difficulty is -- at the default level -- easy. I never dipped below 90% at the worst of times, but that’s because I’m sneaky. Sneak sneak sneak. (Ah, is it time for my Thorazine again? Thank you!
**) The third time I played through I went all-out Doom style and still never went below 70% (except once when I pulled a real bonehead move near a Houndeye).
[** For some reason, I once thought I was an amusing person.]To give proper props to the author, there is nothing blatantly incompetent here; the textures are essentially okay, the level design is solid, and he used some nice prefabs. But there are...problems...
** let’s focus on the bad rather than the good, shall we? On to the actual play experience:
[** Reference: Marillion's "He Knows You Know." (YouTube link)]There is a storyline: You have to make your way through a military installation to rescue Einstein (funny, I thought he was dead...maybe that Relativity stuff works, huh?
**) and escape the base. Not that the mission was prefaced by any story elements, mind you -- you have to figure this thing out on your own.
[** What the hell do I even MEAN by that??]To begin with, my trip begins with a drop into a vent-like area; from an engineering viewpoint, this room really doesn’t make any sense. It’s essentially a small, pitch-black room with a metal vent shaft texture. This room has no discernible function, since to be useful, it would have to have another outlet.
Okay...picky, picky. So realism takes the first hit, and the annoyance factor is next: in your drop you pick up the HEV, a Glock...and the HEV Lady drones on and on about the suit's various and sundry features. By the time I heard "communications interface...online", I was ready to be kicked to death by the first human Grunt I saw. "Please kill me," I’d plead.
**[** Oddly enough, this is the first thing I say when I wake up in the morning.]Anyway, your first contact is with a human Grunt, who says his "I...HAVE...SOMETHING..." line convincingly. But I asked, "what? What does he have? And is it catching?" Then I thought, "Does he have something for me, perhaps? How nice...could it be flowers, maybe candy? Maybe even caramels! I love caramels!" But he didn't really have anything for me. He just walked in and started shooting me. What a bastard.
So it finally hit me that I was in a military installation (points deducted from my personal experience scores for sheer density of skull). After killing a couple more Grunts, I came to a room with bars on the window, which set up the first real set-piece: a Bradley crashing (sorta) into the room. It more or less just bumped into the wall, damaging it slightly. A Grunt yells "SHIT!", but I wouldn’t go that far. It wasn’t a bad set-up.
**[** Rim shot.]Creeping out of the window into a courtyard, I felt it prudent to hide...uh, "assume a strategic defensive position" behind the Bradley; the next event was the opening of two facing doors on either side of the courtyard, discharging Vortigaunts on one side and Grunts on the other. Also up in a watchtower was another Grunt...why there’s a watchtower on the *inside* of a military installation, I’ll never know. Maybe he was keeping an eye out for the Enemy Within.*
[*gratuitous Rush reference]
**[** Reference: Rush's "The Enemy Within." One of my favorites. "I'm not giving in to security under pressure / I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure / I'm not giving up on implausible dreams / experience to extremes" (YouTube link)]Thus far, the number of enemies vs. my hit points had been bearable, even for me. So I go down a flight of steps, nicely lit, and into a medium-sized room. The ceiling breaks, a Vortigaunt falls through, and a Grunt APPEARS out of thin air to kill him. (I’m not even going to try and justify that) The next room was an L-shaped hallway, leading to a couple of Barnacles, some crates ("Piles of CRATES!! Slowly I turn...step by step..."),
** and since I had played this set of maps before, I knew it to be the first map’s end. So I step forward...but instead of the next map, I am taken up into the cold embrace of an error message: "HL caused an invalid page fault in module HW.DLL at 0167:0442a448."
[** Reference #1: the ubiquitous crate in games. Reference #2: the old Vaudeville "Niagra Falls" skit; specifically, the Three Stooges' take on it. (YouTube link)]A good rule of thumb, no matter what you’re playing -- be it Doom at home or Daikatana in the bowels of a psycho ward
** -- is to save often. This I did. So I restarted with my saved game. It loaded the second map, but in a weird way. Stuck in the void with no hope of getting out, I pulled down the console, starting RES2. KEE-RASH! "HL caused an invalid page fault in module HW.DLL at 0167:0440fb84."
***[** I was implying that playing Daikatana was a mark of insanity. Daikatana wasn't as bad as most people think, though.][*** Aren't you glad that we never have to deal with game crashes anymore?][That was sarcasm.]It’s moment like these that make me wonder if we'd all be better off with slave collars around our necks, toiling in the radish patch while some hypertensive psychotic midget screams pointless orders at us in an indecipherable foreign language.
**[** Just ignore that. I was reaching.]So my methods needed to be changed...I’ll start right in at RES2! Yes! So I did. And after taking the time to give myself what weapons and extras I had upon ending the last map, I stepped forward...to end the level. Then I appeared in the Great Void, looking down upon all creation. I kid you not. I could see the HEV suit below me...in the start room...and then it hit me: RES2 had started me off facing backwards! I remember frothing at the mouth and chanting in an unknown, hitherto unheard-of dialect of gutter Latin
**...and that’s all I remember.
[** I was attempting to be clever. I blew it.]So I try again, this time *turning around*. It’s really not my fault, since I’ve been abused by the "appear on the other side of a door" foolishness before, and just assumed that’s what happened. I just didn’t think about it.Shortening my painful experience, let me point out here that if you started the first map with either "map res1" or "map RES1", you are going to have serious problems changing maps. This is what I did. So learn from my stupid, pointless experience, read the text file carefully, and again, heed the author’s advice and type "map Res1" at the console. Also, despite this, the first map still crashed at level-change. But I restarted with my saved game and experienced no more of this type of problem.
**[** Happily, since I haven't played HL in over ten years, I don't have to care about such things anymore.]Okay, map two. A couple of dingy rooms, Headcrabs and some Mawmen do not stop me from reaching my goal: an elevator that goes downward. "How To Set Up A Death Trap For Idjits Rule #234: Place claymore mines in a small hallway right outside an elevator or door, forcing the player to duck under them." Then it's on to a couple of offices with Houndeyes and Vortigaunts. The next room is has a metal floor, several crates...and that institution unto itself, The Pit o' Instant Death. So imagine my quandary: "should I cross this pit -- which I am sure will instantly kill me should I fall into it -- using the seemingly sturdy metal crates suspended over the pit itself...or should I use that metal catwalk?" Now here’s the twist...no, find out for yourself. It’s more fun that way.
NOTE: if you take the catwalk, and are *surprised* at what happens next, please do humanity a favor by throwing yourself under a moving bus.
**[** Tortured. I would adjust it to "...by throwing yourself in front of a moving bus."]The next room puts me in the audience again to witness another combat between Vortigaunts and Grunts, but this time taking place in...water. Yes. I don’t know WHY there’s a pit with water in the middle of the room, but there is. It must make sense to someone. What makes me uneasy is the fact that there are Vortigaunts blasting Grunts with bolts of electricity...while standing waist-deep in murky brown water. Anyone remember what happens when you mix electricity and water? Alas, that doesn’t happen here. Where’s Mr. Wizard when you need him??
"Now Timmy," Mr. Wizard says, tossing Timmy unceremoniously into the water, "this energy-wielding alien being is going to fire bolts of electricity into the water. Observe carefully..."
"Won’t this hurt, Mr. Wizard?"
"Not for very long, Timmy..."
[Reference: Mr. Wizard. Growing up, my knowledge of Mr. Wizard was limited to his show on Nickelodeon. This bit is in reference to a parody of his original (radio?) show I still have somewhere, in which Timmy takes a pill that makes him freak out. Mr. Wizard says something about the future being in your hands, to which the wasted Timmy replies, "And I have to eat with those hands, Don!"][EDIT: Someone put it on YouTube. Here you go.]Unreality aside (there’s a bad joke in there somewhere),
** at this point my job involved cleanup. No matter who won, I’d have to shoot them. Sad, when you think about it. There were two doors in this room, one leading to a valve that lowered the level of water *slightly*. I think this was to show those of us with less than 6 IQ points that it is possible to get out of the watery pit via knee-high steps, should we fall in. The way leading to that valve is stuffed with Houndeyes, all hiding behind crates much like Imps are prone to do.
*** Back in the watery pit room, the other door takes you to a room with a Vortigaunt surprise, a hallway full of CRATES with an Alien Grunt at the end ("Gleeplegork, guard these crates!"), and to a ladder with two Houndeyes at the top. Then there’s the hallway leading to the map’s end.
[** Or something like that. It's all a bad joke, if you ask me.][*** Reference: the original Doom. Imps placed behind crates, etc.]The third map is a great ending to the set: you get a message from "Black Mesa Mission Ops" (or whatever) that tells you that since you’re entering into a high-security area, you must not be seen by anyone. Now *this* was interesting. I picked up the crossbow with glee, remarking to no one in particular that the Grunts guarding this high security area must be deaf as posts not to have heard me killing Headcrabs in the storage room.
Fortunately for those of us with no sneaky skills (more Thorazine? I couldn’t possibly...I’m stuffed. Oh, all right...just one more glass),
** the bad guys (aside from the first two; peek around the crates) were looking the wrong way. So how do you test your player at this point? Claymore mines! If you blow ‘em up, the alarm sounds and your game reloads. If you walk through them like a complete idiot, the alarm sounds as your suit tells you upsetting things about your medical condition as you stare at the walls at an odd angle. So you need to use your hopping and ducking skills at this point, my personal success rate with these types of maneuvers reaching as high as 33% on a good day.
[** Obviously, I believed the Thorazine reference was an absolute scream, which is why I inflicted it upon you twice. It just makes me tired now.]I won’t give away the ending, but there were no problems from here on out. I just wish the stealth portion of this map was a bit longer.
Summary?
If you did as the author said in regard to "Res1", and experienced no level-change problems, then this can be classified as a short, entertaining level set; i.e., a good -- but short -- ride.
[There was no "Rating?" section yet.][There was no "Annoyance Rating" section, either.][So there you have it. Mildly amusing -- if you're high -- but no great shakes otherwise. It reads more like an irritated walkthrough that an actual review of its merit. I never really improved on that, sadly.]EDIT: Formatting tweaks, YouTube links, etc.