This is an ALT mod and as such you don’t have weapons or enemies to fight.
You are along for the ride in a story about love and loss.
It’s in Russian but there are English subtitles.
Please base your reviews on what the mod actually is NOt or what you wanted it to be.
Basic Details
- Title: Attempt to Survive
- File Name: hl2-sp-attempt-to-survive.7z
- Size : 88.95MB
- Author: Aspik
- Date Released: 09 October 2010
Notes
Although this mod is categorised as a Half-Lfie 2 mod, I believe it also works in EP1 and Ep2.
Download Options
Installation Instructions
- Copy the attempttosurvive folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Attemp to Survive should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
Videos
The playthrough below is provided by Custom Gamer. See more of his playthroughs on this site: VP: Custom Gamer
Screenshots
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
Reader Recommendations
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 1 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 1 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 45 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by DarkShift
Longest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by DarkShift
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 45 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 1 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 45 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by DarkShift
Longest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by DarkShift
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 45 Mins
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This is another mod I reviewed over on my now dead ModoftheWeek website.
It’s very good and I did enjoy it, which is unusual for me. The story si fairly well told and the ending pretty good too.
I started to work with the author and a few voice actors to get this re-recorded into English but I kept getting side tracked.
I you enjoy ALT mods and want something a little dark then I recommend you play this.
I’m calling this a personal favorite but people be warned that if it were not a personal favorite I would give it a “maybe?” instead.
I personally really enjoyed this mod as well. I cant exactly identify why, but it just seems to be well-made despite its mapping errors and a puzzle in the very beginning which I could not solve. I truly enjoyed the atmosphere and the hopeless mood throughout the story. I would love to see this retouched in terms of clearing up the mapping errors, improving the lighting in some places, and generally sprucing things up. other than that this was an inspirational and very interesting thing for me to experience.
In short: Good atmosphere, decent story but poor gameplay.
In long:The puzzle solutions were forced and exceedingly arbitary and it isn’t even clear how you are supposed to trigger the solution or even what is relevant to the solution (often the solution is entirely irrelevant) so it results mostly in solving puzzles by trial and error as the means of activation are often inconsistant, some doors open by using them, some you have to rub your face on and others you just need to walk near, this inconsistency makes it all the more frustrating.
The rock music in the start level didn’t go with the sombre tone at all and after wandering around for a while, trying to find what corner of the map I hadn’t pressed the use key on, the track looped over and over seemingly taunting me. The music in the other maps was more well suited and throughout the music quality is good.
There were a few quite glaring mapping errors, huge walls with incorrect texturing, crudely shaped displacements ect. However the atmosphere was well executed and the whole map feels quite unsettling and desolate.
The tree that broke the horses back for me on this mod however was the player navigation, for some reason I can’t even begin to comprehend the mod reduces crouch walking speed to something that would embarrass a snail and crouch is used quite a bit, the floors are littered with junk and all of it clips into the player making walking jumpy in some areas and one case there is a flattened cardboard box which I actually had to jump over. Movement is generally awkward.
It also suffers from the old problem with bright lights making it hard to see the white text on the screen.
The story is decent enough although the gameplay that presents the story isn’t great.
The start menu is a little confusing, it’s easy enough to figure out what everything is but I feel that start menu’s really should say what they mean. There is also an option for developer commentary in which I didn’t find any commentary nodes.
I also found the “cryptic” start menu fields needlessly annoying too. Why?? Just to tick us off? To test our memory? Also, and HOW MANY TIMES have we seen it, truncated instructions because the needlessly verbose text exceeded the available text box? Seriously annoying when you get “Now it is that you must finding the code that you saw and putting it into th[SNIP]” – What?? Aaaaaagh!!! FFS! And it was white text on a white background too, give me strength.. Beta test, anyone?
Oh I remember it now, pretty nice mod indeed!!, I played ot like 1 year or more ago, but by just watching the screenshoots I remember it was a powerful enviironmental mod, I loved the whole atmosphere from the beggining till the end, that postapocaliptic world and that kind of romantic-tragic-pathetic(not in a bad way) story, I liked it, very in the art line of what a story teller mod should be.
The paths were interesting and the simbolism of the areas you move were significant, like you are in a middle of a forsaken hollocaust but the memories of your past still remain….
Very deep and enviromental I liked, and I recommend you to play it now.
I personally conssider this and the “Sprucecape mod” as the perfect representants of lovley and cool art-storyteller mod, both are very deep and sensual, the only difference is than in the sprucecape, you use some weapons and even the buggy, but both drive you through a cool romantic-tragedy story.
I downloaded this alt-mod as it sounded new and interesting. I should have guessed Phillip had caught me out again with an old release from his old “Mod of the Week” site!!
I played this from that site and I remember liking it, but on replay, Wow; this is a real gem of a experience. The mode of the story fits perfectly with the graphic look and melodic tone of the music and the use of sombre lightings. The Russian narration is pitched just right and you really get the impression that you are travelling through this mans memory. My only issue with subtitles is a minor niggle; I would prefer them to be at the bottom of the screen so they do not interfere with the picture.
The little flashbacks in black and white add wonderfully to this tale of woe and relief! Even the last screen is a lovely little scene to the credits pass by!
Keep this as it is it’s a brilliant piece of work already!
Thank you Aspik.
And thank you Phillip for reintroducing me to this work.
Don’t be fooled by the title, the risk to your survival isn’t waves of combine, zombies or even antlions, it’s the very real and overwhelming desire to shoot yourself in the head after 20mins of struggling through this incredibly depressing mod. There is no gameplay because there is no game, just map after map of bleak, desolate, uninhabited wreckage and post-war destruction. If that wasn’t bad enough, the player’s speed has been crippled so that sprint has become walk, walk has become crouch-walk, and crouch-walk – well, you’ll need a calender rather than a stopwatch. As Dysprogue has also pointed out, the only “puzzles” are how to proceed (God knows why you would want to) and yes, the ‘solutions” are arbitrary and unrewarding. You just stumble around until you trigger another fade-to-black transition (which happens way too often) or worse, are repeatedly returned to the start of the map. Then it’s more stumbling around wondering why you’re still going on, until finally [spoiler]you find a gun and (mercifully) shoot yourself in the head[/spoiler] whereupon the mod ends. Do yourself a favour and bind “noclip” to a key early on, but keep an eye out for doors which are ajar as you’ll miss the triggers/transitions in noclip. Actually, do yourself a bigger favour, switch it off & go out into the sunshine & talk to people instead! Ultimately depressing, frustrating & pointless…
I enjoyed this mod. A great (well executed) atmosphere will get me every time. There is no combat here, but I remember thinking during some parts that if there was it could have been very tense and exciting given some of the locations.
I’ve seen some people say the first puzzle was difficult. It wasn’t. The object you need to find is the only object in its vicinity. Yes it’s hard to spot and it is a rather arbitrary conclusion to a puzzle, but as soon as I saw the object I thought to myself “That’s it!” because when you do see it, it stands out (at least I thought it did). I have a feeling that the people that found it difficult were the ones who were darting around impatiently trying to get it over and done with (like in the video), but that’s just my opinion based on the fact that I don’t think I gave Dear Esther a fair play because I just kind of rushed through it and I had the volume so low I hardly heard any of the dialogue thus perhaps cheating myself out of the full effect of the experience.
Anyway, back to this mod.
If you’re wanting fast paced action and/or gunplay this mod is not for you.
If you enjoy exploratory elements of gameplay and an immersive amosphere get it.
I particularly liked the very last section of the map as it was a familiar place with different elements. /Doorville
this was a hard one to review…. however you can see alot of works gone into this but being a “alt” mod its not gonna be everyones cup of tea !
the beginning wasnt the easiest start …. and I needed to check one of the few walkthroughs on youtube …. but from then onwards there wasnt any problems
to be honest this is more of a story and with no weapons or enemy you simply need to discover the right way !
personally this looks more “fallout3” than “half life 2″… and if npc,s had been added( and some weapons ) I reckon this mod would be much better and would of received more positive comments
its good to see phillip working with the authors on some translation…. however I didnt find the subtitles a problem
the end was quite unexpected … but the closing credits was one of the best ive seen and the music was quite relaxing …
I would like to give this more than a “PIL” however I feel I was generous by awarding it that ….just not my kind of mod.. but overall not bad !
Sorry, but that was in the past. I had to stop due to other projects.
Couldn’t get out of the first room, like Custom Gamer in the video posted above. Then we’re into wave after wave of concentrated depressing Slavic nihilism. I award the author minus one potato and a vacation in a gulag of his choice.
Atmospheric mod in a post-apo setting, you’re a lone wanderer, rumbling about his past life before the catastrophe. Nothing to do besides wandering in the dust, the desert, and abandoned stations.
The ending is as dark as what happened before.
Manually
Medium
45 Minutes
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Recommendation was removed, you have to at least write a reaction or basic thoughts on the experience.
Not my kind of mod so I’ll just comment on the visual. It looks great.