Basic Details
- Title: Mad Crabs 1
- File Name: hl1-sp-mad-crabs-1.7z
- Original File Name: madcrab.zip
- Size : 3.44Mb
- Author: Nicolas Gadenne – Megasis Studios
- Date Released: 01 January 2002
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This is a French mod
Authors website – not working
http://www.madcrabs.fr.st
I remember playing this one it wasn’t great but fairly enjoyable
Does Mad Crabs 2 really exist. I played it, but it doesn’t seem to be related.
I hope you play as a headcrab
Dammit!
What movie it does resemble: Aliens
ok bit short/quality & story ok/balance weak/few puzzles/grants and crabs only.
Arriving at a spaceship you have several tasks to do until a strange little tube arrives the ship, being examined and hell breaks loose.
Pro’s:
-Nice story, reminded me of Aliens and Terminator (Hi Skynet!)
-Good support via text messages
-Decent leveldesign, maybe a bit too long walkways + good cutscenes, scripts
-Modified enemy health, also new music, textures(?)
-Lot of weapons + ammo in supply room
Con’s:
-Some tough,illogical combat (grunts don’t die from one rocket), also less health
-Some weird level layouts, design flaws
-Pretty short
-Really no space feeling, I felt bored most of the time
Movies tend to provide nice ideas to pull inspiration from (as demonstrated in Azure Sheep), and in the case of Mad Crabs, the movies are 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Alien (1979). The story here has something to do with “facehuggers” on a large space vessel called the Nostromo complete with onboard AI. If there are other movie inspirations, they were lost on this reviewer, probably because he hasn’t seen enough movies. 😉
The mishmash of 2001 and Alien unfortunately does not translate to competent level design—simplistic texturing (exemplified in the leftmost screenshot), largely repetitive architecture (room meets hallway meets room), and construction errors like flashing textures and clipping errors, not to mention HOMM. Where areas do manage to rise above mediocrity, there’s usually something to remind you of the amateur mapping. It’s a shame too, especially with the movie inspirations. Designs reminiscent of Alien’s huge, bleak Nostromo or 2001’s high-tech futurism wouldn’t have gone amiss. And a lack of ambient sound—too few atmospheric sound effects. The 2001-like musical opening is definitely there, but Half-Life’s CD soundtrack could have really helped out in a map pack like this. Unused, unfortunately (or if it was used, it wasn’t noticeable thanks to a certain bug in the Half-Life 1.1.0.9 update).
Gameplay isn’t much better. When the AI isn’t spoonfeeding you directives, things like locked doors and obvious routing effortlessly direct your way. Nonlinearity or multiple simultaneous objectives would have kept things interesting and clipping along. Not that there’s much need anyway, since the beefed-up headcrabs (or “facehuggers” as they might be) are fairly populous. Some infected Marines provide additional opposition in groups, making combat difficult but interesting nonetheless. As usual, playing on Medium skill is recommended—Difficult is too over-the-top in certain set-pieces that really pack it in.
The story might be a combination of clichés, the level design subpar, and the gameplay trying (and tired), but Mad Crabs cranks out enough innovation that it’s somewhat worth playing, if only to see how weird it is. Good enough for the same sort of diversion one would expect from a mediocre Quake SP map.
Note: There are 4 endings to this map pack according to the Readme. I found only 2 of them.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Sunday, 2nd June, 2002 by Calyst.
This review was originally posted on the Ten Four Website, which is now offline. Permission has been granted to republish the full review and more details can be found on the About page.