When a couple of years ago I wrote on a blog about the game G String From a Japanese modode girl under the nickname Eyuura, I have repeatedly voiced the idea that indie authors can make projects no worse than professional studios with millionth budgets and thousands of employees in the staff. And if you were interested in her fate, then everything is fine there. Reviews appear even after many months after the release, and all of them are mainly positive.
I started with such retrospectives solely in order to bring you reading this article to another equally popular Source game from indie authors, published in August of this year. Entropy: Zero 2, which is a continuation of the modification for the HL2 of 2017, although it is distributed through Steam as a separate application with support for modifications, inherently this is still a fan project that is happening in the Half-Life universe. But whether he became better than his predecessor in all respects? Let’s figure it out!
The first thing you really should pay attention to is the reviews in Steam. They have EZ2 "Extremely positive", And the previous game from the author under the nickname Bredman exceeds the quantity several times. And they praise the project for anything, although it is clear that the main advantage of the sequel over the original is the plot. And I think there are those who did not play this dilogy, so I will try to explain on the fingers.
In the original Entropy: Zero story "bad cop»Without a name, but with a call sign, she bore the character of a light walk for several hours. Armed to the teeth with the whole arsenal of the local cell "Civil defense", We are going to suppress the uprising of people and Vortigont, Along the way, faced with an epidemic of an unknown virus and trying to almost do the task almost alone at any cost. As the advance, our character does not develop in any way, and no one tries to explain the goal and essence of what is happening. The author of EZ tried to compensate for artistic implicitism by hard cordal gameplay and interesting design solutions, but most players, as a rule, came across either bugs and unjustifiably complex AI of opponents, or with the absence of at least some hints and ways to solve certain puzzles.
Of course, Bringman, after the release, tried to support the game for two years, releasing updates, but in the end he took into account the feedback and created the second part, where, instead of a miserable metro -car, we are allowed to run in the costume of the elite soldier of the Alliance. Along with this, the motivation appeared in the protagonist (like the name – Aiden – Let it not affect the attitude to the character in any way), because he did not get to the corporation of evil thanks to the ephemeral "The call of the heart"Or because he is an ended idiot who decided to betray Resistance. His daughter was abducted. Hoping that alien forces will help Aiden return it, he enters into Alliance and due to a certain setup from colleagues, it turns out to be thrown into the trash. However, he soon gives him a second chance to entrust an important and responsible task – to go to the Arctic and detain the herself Judith Mossman. Largely because it is not only immersed in the plans of the rebels, but also knows something about the powerful ship "Borey"On which the highest creatures of the alliance have long laid eyes.
At first, you will believe in the unshakability of the protagonist, his coolness and verbosity, but then it goes to the stage – Do not believe it! – Clone of the protagonist abandoned by the Alliance. Trying to open his eyes to the player on what is happening, he sends him to the dungeons of an abandoned laboratory Aperture Science, chat with its new inhabitants.
It is here that we can understand that the events of the sequel will not be limited to a small dilapidated city, but will take up to ten hours of continuous passage, during which we will visit. Well, you can say everywhere. We will study the levels overflowing with references to Portal, we will visit Nova Prospekt, strong from the consequences of the accident arranged by Freeman during sending a teleport. We plunge into the flora and fauna of Ksen from the first part, located somewhere in underground mines, as well as admire the colorful snowy landscapes of the Arctic, where the human hand has already reached.
Entropy: Zero 2 took, perhaps, everything that worked well in the first part, and did it even better. Hardcore gameplay, advanced NPC intelligence and in some way even a tactical element. Now we can manage a whole detachment of combines! However, it is worth admitting that even with such powerful bells and whistles, an artificial idiot of the zero gives itself with giblets – which I spoke about in the review of G String. Just add to this overly high damage from opponents, although we seem to go in heavy armor. And these rebels learned to jump and fly in space, so it will not be so easy to deal with them.
However, opponents appeared in the game https://dragoniacasino.co.uk/games/ not only human, but also alien. Crazy zombie-and-eater at Aper levels.SC., Radioactive zombies, turrets, Bullskvids, gonarch and even abnormal Hadkrabs, which create hallucinations next to the player. In the moments where this bestiaria is found, the author’s desire to play on the thin strings of the soul of hardcore fans hl is very noticeable. If you look in quantitative terms, then there are almost three quarters from Ksen from Ksen from the entire mass, which seems to be pleased, but at the same time causes even more difficulties when passing.
I said that we will be given to study the beautiful snowy landscapes of the Arctic, but did not say that it would be necessary to do this through the windows of an armored personnel carrier.
The arms arsenal was noticeably replenished, and at the same time the firing mechanics changed. The most probably useful one – now you can shoot during a zoom, here it works instead of sniper aiming and can repeatedly save life. For many types of weapons, the return and scatter of bullets is very different. The same default machine SMG Now not so light and speedy as in the original Half-Life 2, and Impulse rifle, although she retained her power, she noticeably lost exactly and ease of use. But the shotgun as always IMBA. Although it shoots not in automatic mode, as appropriate to the real prototype of the weapon in the person of the SPAS-12.
Even in EZ2, just a wonderful device called from nowhere appeared from nowhere Xen Grenade. In fact, the concept of this type of grenades was also described in the beta version of Half-Life 2 and boiled down to the fact that after the throw, the projectile creates a spatial funnel into which all objects and creatures are drawn nearby. This thing is found at the levels infrequently, but very useful ammunition sometimes falls out with it after use. Or creatures from Ksen. And sometimes all at once. And as for me, the very idea of expanding the arsenal of an alliance soldier, which many models tried to realize and make the most working as possible, in EZ2 was made for five. I did not notice any special bugs with weapons, especially since he had more realistic and complex animations of wearing, reloading and even shooting.
But the most key thing that was just in the air is script scenes. There are extremely many of them in the game, and all of them are qualitatively executed and voiced. Effects in the style of combine are attached. Moreover, there are both human characters like Judith Mossman, who tried not to give remarks above the default phrases from HL2, so the whole worm-Advisor, ascitative. And there is also a defective turret named Wilson. The role of the latter in the development of the plot of the game is a slightly deeper and more dramatic than it seems at first glance. Otherwise, for its escort to one of the key locations of the game, they did not give an achievement!
Wilson’s communication with Aiden is difficult. The cop mostly tries to chop off his attempts to climb into the soul, or calmly discusses with him the highest goal of their journey. Wilson makes the impression of a comedy naive fool, but with a difficult fate, because the main character meets him in a rather unusual situation and they are trying to get out of an abandoned complex of research of the nature of portals. And then you can either take a turret with you, or continue the way alone. And these decisions will differ in places. Non -linearity to her!
It seems that in EZ2 it is ideal literally that everything, plus, is done competent work on correcting errors of the first part, but this is not entirely. Here, minuses are already on the stage, not only technical (some of them are spinning in the tongue, but saying scary to say!), but also art.
Above, I noted that the protagonist from the time of the first part found a more or less sane bacgound, but he still does not change throughout the game, remaining an embittered and miserable puppet of the alliance. He began to say even more than he could say in the original Entropy: Zero, which is stablely quit, because it does not sound quite brutal and charismatic. And the conflict of the clone with the original, although it looks interesting on paper, the instruction for realization, where there are too many dialogs about anything. And both sides cannot in any way throughout the game to agree normally.
EZ2 lost the whole gloomy atmosphere of the first part, turning the action into an endless Hollywood action movie with shootings, explosions, a bunch of random events and scenes, between which they are not even allowed to restore. As soon as we get out of the Aperture Science to our own, we are again sent to a hot point. When we catch Judith Mossman, it turns out that we still have another goal, and without any delay and breaks, we need to run again for the distant lands. The author made such a fierce porridge from events and twists that take away at least part of the story – and nothing will change.
With the same success, you can remove Wilson. Its role becomes key only at the end, before that it is an ordinary ballast, which will have to be worn in the hands of 90%, since the remaining 10 it is placed on the roof of the armored car. At the same time, Wilson is as an interlocutor, and even more so as a combat comrade is little effective. Yes, there are a bunch of secret doors with supplies at the levels that the turret can open, but there are no problems with cartridges in the game in principle. Well, except that when the meat massacre has occurred, and the replenishment of the ammunition is really necessary, but this practically does not happen.
And most importantly, Aiden, if there is Wilson at hand, does not become more humane, there is no disappointment in the ideas of the Alliance or suspicion that he was impudently inflated, which his antagonist was repeatedly hinted at … No, nothing of the kind happens to him. We started playing a bad cop, so we stay. Well, unless life patted us and exhausted us to the end of the game, leaving with nothing.
Puzzles, quests and combat scenes remained as extremely complex, and artificial intelligence, as already noted above, with all its bells and whistles, still remains a product of a completely different era and from time to time at a godlessly stupid. In addition, half of the declared gaming mechanics does not work at all and does not come in handy. So you knew that the doors in EZ2 can not only be opened, but also knock out with your foot? Or that we can disarm the rebels with the same kicks and even capture? And how many times have you used a praised detachment control mechanics?
The problem is not so much in the presence of these chips, but that there is no such game situation where their use would look like something really justified. Most players would never even have known about them, if it were not for the tips both in the form of inscriptions and in the form of decals-references. That is, when the game is just in a foot with a gun at the ready, this is already talking about a lot.
By the way, it seems to me that due to the pile of gameplay with useless chips and too many bugs arose, for example, the game periodically flies to the desktop, and the preservation is mercilessly breaking. Of course, now they are trying to fix it with patches, but the problem, as you see, did not take up from scratch, but went into the inheritance from the first part, where the gameplay and design were also not a fountain, but the atmosphere of anti -utopia and loneliness imperfeatedly delayed.
Therefore, it is worth recognizing that Entropy: Zero 2, being a good game, could not surpass the first part in quality. Its obvious advantages are overlapped by the fact that many problems and flaws were not cured in any way, and we received just another game with the same technical base in filling and contents. Although I am still sure that the disadvantages that Breadman made when creating his game, he can be forgiven with a stretch. Exclusively because he is not a large developer, but an indie-author who was only able to enlist the support of HL-core.
One of the commentators instead of the recall to Entropy: Zero 2 posted the lyrics In the end groups Linkin Park. If we continue to draw analogies, then this game is personally associated with a slightly different song, but it is better I will say anything with which one. If interested, write your guesses in the commentary under this blog, and sooner or later we will come to the truth. In the meantime, good luck to everyone, play good games, do not play bad ones – and see you in new blogs!
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