Nylige anmeldelser av Poltius

It is fantastic that Valve in 2024 have rebuilt, bug fixed and revived the first Half Life game. I still remember when it first came out and I played it a lot. I mean A LOT. The game was so game changing (duh) at the time it came out and it still gives me the creeps. Oh, and I still fall into the depths :D

And the game itself so many years later, for lack of a better word, is still fantastic! Just go and play it and see for your self!

Hilarious!
I'm all Birch. Go do your Birch thing. Tell me - how Birch are you?

This is absolutely a nice game and fun to play. The founding idea of the game is really good. While the game shows great promises and some really good ideas how a finished game could end up to be, there isn't much to do in the current world. I will recommend it for anyone to try it out while I do recognize that it is released in early access and have some issues as such. Still, the build I have played (r.5.27g) is not in a bad shape and I have not experienced any serios troubles playing it. What ever content that is provided is playable. But I do have some thoughts on basic mechanics that are lacking.

Character creation though is a blast with lot of options and tweaks for your visual character. Sex, Skin types, eyes, face details, male and female genitalia, breasts, body and feet are all fully custommizable in detail, size and colors. There is also a variable set of posing so you can see your choices more closely. Very nicely done. The character creation window also bear witness of ideas for RPG elements in the woerld. You can pick slots for background (1 pick), knowledge (1 pick), Skills and traits (2 picks). Everything nicely explained in textboxes from mouseover.

In this state of the build nothing of your character creation choices reflects in the game world. For instance you have the choice of choosing swordmanship for a skill but there are no swords around. Likewise choosing the cannoneer skill produce nothing in the real world of the game because sailing is just a black screen and some text describing the voyage. Connecting the RPG choices to real gameplay would be nice. Also implementing a system for earning and develop for instance experiencepoints and stamina and the ability to distribute those in a meaningful way as the player progress the world playing the game would give a deeper involvement in exploring the game and develop the character type and not only the visuals.

The animation of characters (sex-)interactions and NPC's are excellent and works seamless but there is something off with the balance between the meshes of the character and the graphics of the world. Not a big deal but it is visable. Maybe it has to do with how the interaction is more of a cinematics than real action. Character alignments in action sequences(read sex) is really good and while it works in the sequences where the player tries to seduce named npcs in focus it is more immersive braking when hunting. When succeeding seducing named npc's (by choosing intimacy option through dialog) it gives a black screen and some text describing the emotions before it goes into interaction mode (or cinematics) and you need to smash the spacebar to get to the next phase or activating "next" option with your mouse. When the scene is played out it fades into the black screen describing and handling you back to the starting point. But while it works the first time there is no variation if you start the scene again. Its the same cinematics. So maybe an improvement will be to skip the cinematics all togheter and change it to real time action. I'm sure that creates another set of problem in developing but it's just a thought.

There is a lot of running around in this game. I do miss the ability to fast travel between already discovered spots. And there is a lot of forests to run through too, with not so much content. The forest is nice and all but it lacks life. There is only the occasional prey to be tranqulized and cured, nothing else is going on in the forests. No insects, no birds, no animals. The lack of riding animals, boats or other transportation options is really missing after just a few hours play. But if the place was filled with content it would be more fulfilling to explore.

What I feel needs to be done in that regard is the ability to sail in real time between the icelands and whatever mainland that is planned. A lot of conversation from several NPC's is about the main city and other vessels travelling between the icelands. That will immediately turn out to be a nice feature to experience. A lot of activities can ultimately be explored upon like new icelands, fighting between vessels, pirates, plunder, duels, exploring, treasure hunting of all kinds, boat hunting etc. etc.

But as I wrote initially this is really a fun game and bear great promises and I recommend it for anyone to try out and give your opinion. It is only then the game is getting better:)

On the other side what I really don't like: - the black screen! :)

Suggestions for further implementing gameplay features I kind of miss:
- Scrap all the black screens
- Implement a journal system to keep track of quests
- Make a world map and a local map and maybe even inside home/cavern maps¨
-Add a compass
- Implement day cycles/routines for NPC's. They kind of stand on the same spot all day
- Add more NPC's living in the cities
- Fill all the empty houses with living NPC's
- Implement real time action for hunting/fighting/NPC interactions
- Implement customization of the player boat
- Implement buying a player house/base in the cities or distant icelands
- What about adding a reputation system wich NPC's in your way treats you accordingly, moods, prices etc.?
- add customization of player weapons
- make the cities and villages thrive and flourish with life
- maybe adding camps/caves where the wildlings (prey) are living out in the world
- enable zoomimg in the map view
- enable options for adding map markers in map view
- maybe enable fast travel in the map view or even travel spots
- enable sailing in the world map. And in addition adding system for combat between sailing vessels in real time
- enable use of of small boats on icelands (local maps)
- add riding animals or other transportation options on icelands
- add fish and animals to the sea
- add sirens to the sea to lure sailers
- add merfolk to the sea (mermaids & mermen)
- enable hunting sea animals from boats/sailing vessels
- add diving to the swim movements
- add treasures on small icelands and underwater spots
- ability to dive for treasures

I can't count how many hours I spent in the original Half Life in the 90's (Yes I'm THAT old :)). But coming back in the game with Black Mesa feels odd but in a really good way. The gameplay is really smooth and the visuals are stunning. The atmosphere is as good or even better than I remembered it that long ago. The developers have put a lot of efforts in to get it as good as this and I can't recommend it enough. Just not take my word for it - go and try it for your self! Now! :)

Old game, still fun. Heavily modded though, Of course :)

Quite fun and unforgiven game. No holding hands here, you're all on you're own :)

Nice landscape and quite familiar settings in the nabouring country Sweden, It's quite genius to put the game in the good old 80's and work very well graphicly to set the mood of the game. I've only been playing for a few hours but the maschines are really getting to me. Quite annoying now early on in my first playtrough where the maschines will kill you in an instant if you're not quick enough to strafe, take cover or just run away like a quitter to fight another day. I find myself more often than not using stealth to avoid confrontation until I get some more ammunition to my Mauser. Oh and did I mention how scarce the ammunition is? Well add that too :)

All in all an exceptional good game and it's quite satisfactory to wipe out a few enemies from a distance with a scope attached to your gun in one shot. And of course it gets really fun when you're out of ammo and only have your handgun to rely on in combat with a runner or two. That's when the nearest safehouse is not so near anymore to spawn to.

Only thing I find somehow confusing is that when I have wiped out a few enemies and get killed before I can loot them the remains are gone when I get back to the same spot and sometimes it's even more maschines there guarding like nothing has happened. Maybe it's just me cause I'm not used to play multiplayer games although I only play the singleplayer campaign. I'm not the coop kind of guy. I do still find it strange.

Anyway I'm clearly looking forward to play it a lot more.

Have fun - Poltius

this is so hard! I didnt make it on easy mode... Laborers are growing too slow, food are growing too slow AND they are eating incredible much food! Its INSANE!