01 July, 2009

Keepalive: Heart of Evil: Napalm Edition

written on Tuesday, June 30, 2009

THIS ENTRY CONTAINS SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

I love the Heart of Evil mod for Half-Life. I spent many hours recording, rendering, and uploading a video walkthrough to YouTube. So when some guy posted to my YouTube profile "heart of evil napalm edition is out download it and make a walkthrough" I overlooked his inability to punctuate and bossiness and went to go download it.

I hated it. Sure, the textures and models are nicer, but pretty much everything else is worse.

- The new vocal performances are worse (and the originals weren't superlative).
- Barney is an annoying smart ass instead of the simple, faithful soldier from the original.
- They added new jokes that weren't needed and weren't particularly funny.
- They removed the firing squad killing locals in the first base, which was important for setting the tone.
- They removed the helicopter ride to Flight of the Valkyries.

I actually quit the game at that point, but forced myself to go back, trying desperately to give them the benefit of the doubt.

- The first village you start at isn't on fire.
- There is no scene with a helicopter wiping out enemies, then getting taken out with an RPG.
- If you let the RPG sniper kill friendlies to get a gun early (which is required to open a secret door with extra ammo) you can pick up the gun but can't use it, making that secret impossible to open.
- Even if you kill the RPG sniper by wiping out his nest before he shoots, a missile comes from the empty room to kill friendlies.

Napalm Edition was made by people who obviously loved and respected HoE, but didn't have the awareness or skills to do it justice. It's fan fiction in mod form.

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