HL2 EP2: Grey Mod.

[the dark side]

of course, perhaps my modding history is making me overreact. sorry about that, my main critiscims, are, Lack Of Story, Lack Of Context, Abysmal AI, and the odd bug or glitch.

however, i am willing to cut them slack because the Core of the game is correct, as i have always said, you can have the greatest videogame story ever written, but if your core mechanics are wrong, then its wasted. if you're core gameplay is wrong, your entire game is wrong.

this little mod team has got a great core to there game, sure, its not enough to make it a great game, but its enough to make it a a good, fun, game, wich is a real acheivment when you consider a lot of the mainstream AAA developers are churning out nothing but abysmal, baseline unplayable, tosh, despite having over 30 times the budget that is available to the modders, at least. having a great core is 75% of the battle to me, as i beleive gameplay is everything.

all they need to do is write some better AI, learn to craft a great story to hinge context around the game, its charachters, its world, and its monsters, and do some better playtesting, and i genuinely think we will have a future great Dev on our hands.

the big issue i see is they have made the mistake of "doing an Activision", they have made the game, all its levels, its monsters, its setpeices, yadda, and then created a flimsy little story to tie it all together.

That is NOT a good way to make an involving game. I run on the "Hideo Kojima" school of game storywriting, in that you create the plotline first, then you populate it with charachters, who you flesh out with emotions, thaughts, back-stories, personalities, etc, to create your "Story" (how the plotline affects the charachters), then you create the setpeices that tie the plot together.

I think if the devs can learn to do it like that, then there next mod will probably be something REALLY special.