9 Comments

1. Klems

   5th November 2017 at 11:44 pm

   

   This is a pretty cool mod. Yet it can be extremely frustrating at times. It reminded me of G-String in many ways. You can clearly see lots of work and passion went into it. The setting and story is intricate and oozing with atmosphere. Yet the player pathing and gameplay is absolutely terrible.

   The writing is stellar and is completed by excellent voice acting. The playable character will comment on events a lot, which add lots of personality to the mod. The atmosphere and mood was great. It was sometimes scary, sometimes funny, sometimes straight up weird, yet it never seemed out of tone. I’m not really a circus freaks kind of guy, I’m more into Lovecraft, but it was done well enough. You will visit lots of cool looking places (a church, a hotel, a sanitarium, a manor, a circus) which all fits the period and ambience impeccably.

   It has lots of very cool ideas. This is probably the first game I played with a pet cat. And not any cat either, this one is a beast and will make short work of enemies. it sounds kind of silly but it was actually refreshing and fun.
   The inventory system was interesting and fairly balanced, it rewarded exploration and made the game feels more like a survival horror than a singleplayer FPS, which was good. It can be jarring at the beginning (especially the lantern oil thingy), but it becomes a lot better once you adapt and understand that the gameplay is different.
   Inventory systems usually have their own problems though. Even with the limits on items and money, I still felt like I often had way too many supplies. It was very hard at the beginning simply because you didn’t had as much weapons and healing items. Then it became a lot easier.
   I guess this is unavoidable since these problems happens in literally every game with an inventory system ever. I’m not sure how this would be fixed, maybe a dynamic resupply system?

   Now unto the bad parts.

   The levels features lots of backtrack. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but in most cases it wasn’t very clear at all. You can pick up keys, and the game sometimes expect you to backtrack 1 or 2 levels to open a previously seen door. Once you pick up a key or complete an area, the character and/or written messages will sometimes hint to which door or area to go next, but it’s not consistent and can easily be missed completely. Sometimes it doesn’t tell you anything at all.
   Some puzzles are not very obvious. The first puzzle with the water pump/crate, I think I was stuck here for at least 15 minutes until I realized I had to lit the fire to activate the engine. Some puzzles can only be completed when you use the one weird looking thingy which looks like any other brushes. One of the puzzle has to be completed while someone is shooting at you with a mounted gun. He’s invincible, has friends with him, and the gun deals insane damage. Then, on top of all the extensive backtracking and obscure pathing, you add the whole lantern oil mechanic, which makes the whole thing absolutely infuriating. More than once I had to load a previous save simply because I spent so much time looking around for something, wasting all my oil.

   It’s not clear which doors can be opened and which doors cannot, which make things even more confusing. Some doors are never opened. Some doors are opened with keys. Some doors are opened after you go back to an area. They all make the same sound and all look the same. It’s a mess. I know this is a gamey thing but guys, we figured out keys a long time ago. Red key open red door. Blue key open blue door. Show the keys on the HUD. Remove the keys when needed. How hard can it be?

   There are many optional areas. That’s a good thing. But when a weapon is obtained in an optional area that’s a bad thing. I completely missed the Henry Rifle. I think I might’ve missed the dynamite as well since I only got them at the end of the game (it would’ve been great to be able to purchase it). I could’ve completely missed the double barrel as well. And it’s not like you can pick it up from enemies or a later level or something, there are literally 1 double barrel and 1 rifle in the entire mod and you can miss both of them. Just to put some perspective, there are 3 weapons in the game (not counting the saber, dynamite and gatling gun).

   Combats are legit bad. Not hard, just bad. Most enemies are bullet sponges and doesn’t have interesting patterns. The standard guard takes something like 3 headshots with a revolver to kill. That would be fine if they didn’t run around the map like crazy. They run, shoot at you, run away, rotate toward you, run away, shoot, run, what the hell are they on crack? The NPC pathing of HL1 is partly to blame here, but the weapons makes things even worse. In HL1 you had automatic weapons and explosives, here it’s all accurate semi-automatic weapons with low ammo capacity. You have to aim very precisely on enemies glitching around and that is simply isn’t fun at all. I had a lot more fun in the area with the gatling gun, simply because the gun was automatic and had lots of damage.
   Bossfights aren’t much fun either. The giant chicken for instance, all I had to do was run in circle and shoot at him with my revolver. It took a really long time. I don’t think I felt threatened at any point during the fight. I just shot at a giant chicken for what felt like 10 minutes.
   The final boss is a mess. I’m pretty good at air-strafing and movements in general, yet I still had lots of issues with him and had to restart a lot and resort to savescumming. Some bossfights in Half-Quake were easier. The solution to the boss doesn’t make sense either. You break 3 flesh thingies and use a lever, the end. I mean I knew what I had to do because it was a bossfight and expected something like that. But none of it made any sense.
   At some point (the manor I believe) you have to deal with waves of respawning enemies. 4 types of enemies spawn in, when you kill one, another of its type spawn in, until you deplete all the waves. I prioritized the most damaging enemies, so they were dealt with quickly. What’s left is waves of nonthreatening bullet sponge enemies spawning constantly. Not fun.

   Summary

   In the end I had a pretty good time. The mod might have some serious issues, but I still had lots of fun playing it. I never resorted to walkthrough or cheats. Even though the gameplay is frustrating, I’ve learned to be very patient while playing mods, especially TCs such as this one. I don’t play mods to play well balanced experiences (otherwise I’d just play AAA games), I play mods to see new ideas, experience new things. And that mod delivered, I certainly never played anything quite like it.

   Installed:
   Manually

   Difficulty Played At:
   Medium

   Playtime:
   5 Hours

   Reply
2. fasteddie

   8th November 2017 at 10:41 pm

   I can’t open the first gate in Eminence in the first part. I’ve found the shotgun and I think I’ve been in all the rooms possible. What am I missing? Watched the walkthrough a few times still not getting it. Help Please.

   Reply
3. Qwertyus

   9th November 2017 at 4:18 am

   fasteddie, find phonograph and use it.

   Reply
4. fasteddie

   9th November 2017 at 6:09 pm

   Hey Qwertyus, thanks for the help. I must be thick or something. I found the vend o’ matic and ate and drank all I had. I’m assuming that’s the phonograph you mentioned. Still stuck, so I have no idea what I have to do. Please help a simple man out. Thanks

   Reply
   1. Qwertyus

      9th November 2017 at 7:06 pm

      Not vend’o’matic. The phonograph, grammophone-ilke thingy, which is on the second floor of police station.

      Reply
   2. ZikShadow

      9th November 2017 at 7:08 pm

      In the Police Station, there’s a phonograph in the same room as the Eminence Constabulary note (sitting in the middle of a table, green cylinder on the center of the thing) that says “Sheriff, in dire circumstances… etc… etc…”.

      When you say you found the shotgun, do you mean a double barreled shotgun, or do you mean the Henry rifle at the top of a tower (the design often mistaken for the 1887, which is an actual shotgun)?
      Because if you’re somehow still stuck in the first area (and haven’t yet encountered the cops/armorman), try touching Eminence’s exit doors (where you originally came from), that might be the cause of your confusion.

      Reply
5. fasteddie

   9th November 2017 at 9:55 pm

   Thanks for your help. I have opened the gate finally. I’m still not quite sure how as I still have not found the phonograph but did go to the entrance of Eminense and then to the sherriffs constabulary read the note and tried the gate again and it opened. I’ll settle for thant. Thanks again

   Reply
6. Anhiro

   31st August 2018 at 8:15 pm

   

   Half-Rats is a full-fledged campaign mod that has a lot of care put into it, but it suffers from several gameplay issues that can make it less palatable for some players. Level-design inconveniences and combat seem to be the main culprits with this one, which I’ll explain:

   The first problem is the level layout. While I have to commend the devs for keeping “Point-A-to-Point-B” linear level design behind, and instead opting for large maps with many alternative routes for the player to choose from, it unfortunately suffers from clearly defined goals or objectives, which can ultimately waste the player’s time. This means that the player is usually left meandering around the map to find a certain key or mechanism that they may or may not realize where it needs to go. This was a problem that was addressed in another mod with similar gameplay, “Heart of Evil”, where key items emitted a slight sparkle to attract the player’s attention, for example. This little convenience was unfortunately not provided to the player here. Personally, I was left to wander around a large map for nearly 10 minutes trying to find a key for a lock and after having cleared the rooms at every extremities of the map, only to realize that it was hung on a cork billboard at the beginning of the map. Meanwhile, while you’re going back and forth, your lamp (which is your flashlight) can run out of fuel, and pretty fast at that too. This makes exploration even more of a chore, and is not personally something I enjoyed with this mod. Some people even reported missing out on important weapons such as the rifle or shotgun, but thankfully I did not on my own playthrough… It pays to nudge every door you come across.

   Second, another inconvenience that compounds the previous one is that most of the important clues and storytelling will be done by letters/notes you come across. These scenes are unskippable, but not only that, the screen will switch back to your character before you’re done reading and understanding them. Even worse, the character will start to comment on what you just read at the last half part. If you have poor concentration like me, you will have to stop reading and catch all of what your character says before shifting back and forth over the letter on the floor (there’s a cooldown period before you can read it again) to get back to your reading. Pretty annoying, and it’s hard to figure out the objectives when you have to listen and read to two things simultaneously. Maybe next time have the contents of the letter copied into a log, and then have the character do his monologue *after* the control is given back to the player?

   The third issue, and probably the most important to me, is the weapons/items and their impact on the gameplay. I’ll name some of my most disliked ones:

   CAVALRY SABER: Your crowbar for the game. The mod advertises itself as having a blocking system in this game, but it’s entirely useless IMO. Blocking slows you down to a crawl and is a toggle function that requires a short period of time in-between switching functions . What this means – in a mod where enemies with lightning-fast melee attacks are made to swarm you – is that by the time your character switches back to the normal stance from a blocking one so that you can start hitting them back, you will already be in the middle of the enemy’s follow-up attack. So what’s the point of blocking in this case? Just use your mobility to avoid those zombies instead! Granted, you could block the enemy’s attack, quickly switch to your shotgun and blast the enemy, but you can do it just as fine by simply backing away rather than risk getting surrounded as you use the blocking feature, which almost grinds your character to a halt. They should’ve just changed the block for a parry feature, instead.

   REVOLVER: The majority of the game will have you use hitscan weapons. The Revolver is certainly one of the least fun weapons in this category to use… It shoots slowly between each shot, and the secondary function mimics the original Glock’s, which is shoot faster at the cost of accuracy. But this time, it will also rock your camera to the side and seems to have even worse accuracy than the Glock’s. So definitely never use the secondary function, unless it’s for fun. Reloading is not made by bullet, but by the magazine, and it’s a long reload too. Awful weapon design… Use the rifle instead.

   COCAINE LOZENGES: Grants you God Mode for a short period of time. Some parts in this mod will throw waves of enemies upon you as you try to operate a lever for a gate to open under a time limit, and these are essential unless you’re the masochistic type. They cost 500$ (your wallet can carry a max of 999$), so if you think you’re overflowing with money, think again… You’ll need these, because some of those headaches (such as the final boss fight for example) can be practically skipped using one of these. But it begs the question… is it fun gameplay if the authors of the mod decided you could breeze through some of the most intense parts of their game with these kinds of items?

   Fourth and final issue: the combat. As mentioned, the gunplay in this game relies much on the the rifle and the shotgun, with some occasional saber to handle the giant shotgunners. Enemies generally involve the zombie reskin and various quadrupeds who rush to attack you in melee, but the deadliest of all have to be the undead Barneys and the giant shotgunners with their tower shields. Wielding hit-scan weapons, it’s nearly impossible to dodge their attacks. Barneys will have to be methodically brought down using headshots from your rifle or rushed with your shotgun, eating bullets in the process. The giant shotgunners require you to stand far away so that their shotgun’s effectiveness is reduced. After having emptying their weapon on you, you’ll then have to rush them with your saber so as to stun-lock them while they’re in their reloading animation. Or you could just spend lots of bullets time sniping them from afar. In any case, there are no elegant methods of handling those enemies as they’re pretty much guaranteed to damage you no matter what you do, and I think it’s one of the weakest points of this mod. The best enemies in the game have to be the ninjas that attack you with a sword and throwing daggers, but they only appear once or twice in the game as boss fights, which is rather disappointing because I liked their concept.

   Some NPC’s will join you temporarily at some parts and are invulnerable, which allow you to sit back and slowly bring the enemies down with your crappy Revolver as they tank inordinate amounts of punishment. So, no worries about escort missions if that’s not your thing.

   In conclusion, the mod is still enjoyable enough without those issues above and you should give it a try if you have nothing else to do. The writing doesn’t take itself seriously, but it doesn’t fail to entertain with its old American dialect and its silly voice-acting. The atmosphere itself is pretty unsettling too, perhaps with some overuse of the same paintings over and over again, but it fits the theme pretty well. If you liked the “They Hunger” series, this mod should be right up your alley. There are no cheap jump scares in this game to speak of (other than the one with the cat in the trailer video), so those with a weak heart should have no worries.

   Installed:
   Manually

   Difficulty Played At:
   Medium

   Playtime:
   4 Hours, 45 Minutes

   Reply
7. Hec

   21st December 2018 at 4:28 am

   

   Ok, so I finally played this. And as you may see, particularly on Steam reviews of this mod. The opinion is divided, so this is a mod you may love it or just hate it. And precisely for that reason writing this review is maybe a bit difficult.

   First and before all, I think this mod it could be in a category called: “Old-School at its best!” You know, indeed the game had many, many elements of some of the greatest mods ever created for HL1: They-Hunger, HL-Wanted, and Heart of Evil. Also had a great reminiscence because of the backtrack gameplay to the also potent and great mod for HL1 called “Riot in Progress”.

   That’s said, in this mod, its gameplay stands out for its basic tasks given to the player to do all the time, and those are fetching keys, reading some notes and letters, and going to clear landmarks or specific places in the maps in order to trigger events, bosses and advancing in the story-tell of the mod.

   Then the story is just great. And yeah, if you’ve played it then you know emulates the HL1 basic story, but with a clever twist at the end. The thing that just is great in this mod it’s the whole concept of that hellish ghost town called “Eminence”, where you play most of the time the game progress. The enemies are great and felt like those coarse first enemies of Total Conversion modding in the Half-Life early years (99-2001). Also, the total new weapons felt so great and with a powerful wild-west 1880-1890’s touch. The whole combat is very realistic and damage is really a serious issue the player has to look after all the time he plays. The enemies although may look coarse they follow a powerful AI code, that make them very hard to beat most of the time. So the game is entertaining but requires hard effort to complete it from the beginning until the end.

   The places inside Eminence are scary in many points as the story progress. So we can feel that actually, we are inside a great scary-survival-horror game. I had more than 3 or maybe 4 jump-scares that made my skin crawl. Despite that, the weird humor of our main starring character is always there and quite helps to alleviate the many tense moments inside the story.

   I also have to warn to the rest of the gamers, that this is a hard game. I mean, it really requires some HL1 mod gaming experience, in order to actually enjoy and beat the mod. If you are not a skilled player then you may find many parts of this mod frustrating even if you play it on an easy level of difficulty. Many tricky jumps are required, special strategies to beat most of the bosses and enemies, and special pace when you fire and reload some weapons. So take that as a serious disclaimer before you attempt to try it.

   Then the new interface of buying perks and ammo as your trip goes on is a very interesting aspect of this mod. As that permits you to carefully plan how you actually spend the money in those perks buying machines. This can be a convenient way to get health and ammo, but it is also inconvenient if you don’t manage your cash in a proper way.

   So I guess this mod isn’t free of shortcomings, and well, I guess a big one is a dark illumination in most of the maps, and that you basically had to manage especially in the first maps your whale-oil lantern in order to progress or do basic tasks inside the mod. After that I see this mod starts out in a good manner in the first section, then it has -at least in my experience- 3 times where it gets very difficult, indeed almost impossible to progress, so there I had to cheat using the god cheat. The first was in the catacombs final chamber, where you get ambushed by never-ending hordes of zombies and claw dolls as you have to turn a crank wheel that opens a gate to the sewer level. Then I had to cheat in the Clown battle at the ambulant fair because I hadn’t enough Cocaine in order to resist the corporal beating of those damn clowns. And At the very final battle boos -Agent Trask in its specific monster dimensional form-, there the battle is impossible even in easy difficulty.

   So said those shortfalls, I think the very enjoyable final battle is the one you fight against Caleb in a saber duel, there the enemy is beatable if you carefully take close sword combat and hit its neck main artery in more than 8 hits. That was a brilliant part, As well it is very brilliant the inclusion of our beloved Half-Cat in the battle in the poor quarter of Eminence. The cat almost doesn’t present moving or companion problems and it is coded very well. I hope to fight along with him in some future adventure.

   In conclusion, Half-Rats Parasomnia belongs to a very excellent 2018 year in what Half-Life 1 modding scene respects. If you are a gamer who has been playing mods for more than 10 years like me, (I have 12 years playing Half-Life mods), then this is a mandatory title to play. Despite its sometimes hellish difficulty.

   Installed:
   Manually

   Difficulty Played At:
   Medium

   Playtime:
   7 Hours

   Reply

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