Recreating HL2 Beta: Raising The Bar Redux

[Music] welcome back in this three-part series we'll be looking at three mods that aim to recreate the beta half-life 2 world in the first video we looked at a mod called dark interval in this video we'll be looking at raising the bar redux in the next one we'll look at missing information [Music] after the original raising the bar mod discontinued in 2016 a new team picked up the project and started development in 2018 and the build we'll be looking at today is from december 19th of this year it was released last week this mod has a few more levels and areas if compared to dark interval but will it match dark intervals amazing take on the atmosphere let's find out so welcome to recreating half-life 2 beta this is part 2 of 3. part 1 will be linked in the description [Music] so the main menu i like the citadel interior it has retail textures but the structure the architecture that resembles the beta we have a few chapters in this build it starts from the train and ends in the sewers section where we escape from the city i was surprised to see this g-man intro the voice actor did a good job it's not easy doing a g-man impression it's a good performance not the best but good however what i kind of didn't like was g-man's dialogue events change and people grow complacent they've forgotten the happenings of the past the scars have healed and a sense of pride has all but vanished i cannot pin the exact problem that i have with it but it just feels not right he's saying ominous things just for the sake of being ominous it just doesn't make any sense anyway then we wake up on the train stopping in city 17. now like the last video i'll try and focus more on the design aspect rather than the rest of the things like music or sound or gameplay so city 17. from the platform we're standing on the city looks great at first glance looks like that u.s skyscraper design was used but again it's a mixture like dark and terrible the train station itself however is well designed and decorated not as gritty as i was expecting but it's on the same level as retail it's not grim or sinister but rather simply depressing the train station's architecture looks nice again it's upscale to make the player feel small it has these huge areas and tall ceilings but that console that console i have a problem with he looks fine but i'm not sure if i like having him a russian style accent citadel was established here we list your work detail is organized you will find the relevant environment gear provided by your overseers i'm used to hearing the console in that science fiction-esque evil villain voice but this russian accent i don't think it works there's this scene where a citizen attacks a metro cop and gets killed in cold blood kind of shows the grave nature of the combine the train station is well designed i wouldn't particularly call it a beta style station but rather a different take on the retail version then we exit out of the station and into the plaza section of the city and just wow the sheer density of the map that you can see from here and that skybox agree with me or not that skybox along with the ambient grey lighting is doing half the magic here sure raising the bar doesn't have those bells and whistles in its graphics like dark interval does but it sure does look nice this sequence is from the later stages of the beta this is barney's scout that tries to help us but gets busted we'll learn more about him in future videos once he gets busted we have to find our own way through the city now unlike dark interval where they made most of the city from scratch i think here i recognize these buildings and textures basically i think what happened is that the team enhanced the pre-existing plaza maps and made this whole new area now i gotta mention something about the combine design they look good i guess their design is inspired from the concept art but not adapted directly but i guess the design fits looks good that sunlight on the sides of the building gorgeous the citadel design is nice too it's more alien rather than the other modular ones or organic ones we make our way through the narrow alleyways and corridors of the city buildings to proceed further it was a bit hard to see here i could see the cremator doing his business but i tried to make the screen brighter but i couldn't maybe the lights should have been a bit more intensified here i like sparse lighting don't get me wrong but this is a little too dark even for my taste the underground sections do have a personality of their own in this mod yellowish dim lights with dirty textures make the underground feel more terrifying to venture through moving forward we see some scenes in the city and get captured by the combine that is until our old friend barney comes in and breaks us out i like how they did the combine voices in this they sound very intimidating in some scenes but barney's voice acting well about that beer i owed you it's me garden barney from black mesa hell of a job you did there gordon it's good but falls short of the immersive experience for example he doesn't have that feel in his voice that the actual barney or dark interval barney has this barney's dialogue is more monotonous in some sections [Music] moving on to the old industrial area this scene has great lighting and ambience the sun is rising while we're heading towards kleiner's lab i really like this tone of the map almost makes you feel like everything is fine until you see the combine in the middle of the street i don't think they factored in the air being all murky because of the air exchange because if the air was unbreathable like in the original concept the sky wouldn't be that colorful we make our way through the industrial buildings and see a familiar place the stenographer's chasm this is an early incarnation of the combine factory before it became a factory i liked the industrial section even though it's a straight path to where we want to go there are obstacles in the way that we need to bypass we do that by going into different buildings and reach our goal one step at a time now if there's one thing i felt while playing this is that there's a lot of shifting indoors and outdoors like that's not objectively a bad thing but in my personal opinion it gets a bit tedious rather than having one long outdoor section or one long indoor section the mod tries to create variety by doing this constant shifting one moment will be outside then inside then underground then outside again while playing this i got a bit annoyed because i was waiting for something new to happen a new area rather than little chunks of every single area smushed together but i'm not gonna lie the mod does shine its best in the underground areas they really did well with the lighting the sewers and tunnels almost feel ominous with you alone in them i like this huge area one wrong step and you would fall into the void below [Music] they kept the child labor element in the story with a combined guard standing there keeping watch makes the combine look even more ruthless now we are near kleiner's lab some sections here in the entrance reminded me of the beta maps this is based on well actually this whole area is like an enhanced version of the official beta map in the underground areas the mod does try to create a haunting atmosphere and i think it succeeds in its goal kleiner's lab is ripped straight out of the beta map looks good but nothing special here now here i found another annoyance the dialogues i do not mind them but this felt very stretched out when i was playing kleiner and barney go on and on and on before we even put on the suit and then it takes a few more minutes just for the teleportation scene to happen i was honestly tired of hearing barney and kleiner at this point [Music] in the teleportation scene things go bad like we expect it to first we get teleported to helena mossman's cracking base but things go south and then we shift around we see the wasteland and the borealis in the process too when the machine stops kleiner gets injured and barney asks us to head out of the city [Music] now this is where things got interesting from here till the end of the mod i will admit to one thing the gun play the feel of the weapons the combat it all feels amazing i think it's the weapon models and the sounds but the feeling you get in a firefight with the combine feels thrilling and satisfying now i get why everyone was saying the same thing in the previous video's comment section maps done great by dark interval gameplay done better by raising the bar i agree with that now [Music] but here's the problem again it's my personal opinion but the maps don't show gordon's progress going out of the city it's a whole lot of city 17 exterior areas and interior areas than the underground in the retail even in the early parts of gordon's escape from the city not a single place looked like the other but because of this constant shifting of indoors and outdoors this mod makes you feel as if you're going in circles now don't take this as me hating on the mod i actually love it but i want it to be better i love the half-life 2 beta and this mod is so much close to providing the perfect experience unfortunately it falls short on the pacing side everything else is perfect [Music] the only place i really liked was the construction sites it was unique it had a different feel from the rest of the sections that come later it was nice fighting through the empty buildings but later on it all becomes redundant they have done a great job in creating a hybrid retail beta atmosphere but i really wish they would improve some of these sections i don't want to go underground every two minutes and come back outside only to go back downside again [Music] now i'm not a mapper and i'm not a game designer but what i was thinking is that what if you take all the outdoor sections and have them play out first then the interior then the underground sections it's like finding a balance of course we don't want bland maps and we don't want convoluted ones either we want something in the middle i loved the parts from the construction sites to the manhack arcade but then the interior of the manhack arcade wasn't that great either congested and narrow passages disoriented the hell out of me but throughout all of this i loved the gameplay i loved the gun play it felt so satisfying to shoot both the pistol and the smg and i hope future weapons that they add in will have the same effects on the gameplay look it's a good mod a great one in fact but in the end it doesn't matter what i say or criticize it's their mod and they can do whatever they want with it but the structuring of the levels needs some serious work otherwise gameplay alone won't save the mod hell even if this element of constantly shifting inside and outside is fixed i'd say this mod can easily be the best there is it's all about how the gameplay is paced if it's ill-paced then it's not fun i didn't want to do this but if we compare this to dark interval that mod had great pacing sure it did that shifting indoors outdoors too but it did it very minimally and because each section in that mod had its own personality i didn't even care where i was going everything i looked at in that mod was something new something interesting which made me go further with more hope for finding something new here the mod can't make up its mind as to where it wants to take us so to end the video i will say that i enjoyed a majority of this mod i'm sorry if my criticism felt like i was spewing hate because i wasn't i really really want this mod to succeed and i hope that they can fix the pacing problem and like dark interval i really hope this project gets finished one day and finally i hope you enjoyed the video and if you did please consider subscribing to the channel thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Radiation Hazard

Views: 10,545

Rating: 4.9799333 out of 5

Keywords: half life 2, valve, beta version, dark atmosphere, grim alternate reality, leaked hl2, half life leak, city 17 beta, blade runner, alpha version, half life 2 development, Half Life 2 Beta: City 17 - The City That Never Was, The Fascinating & Depressing World of Half Life 2, the citadel, citadel, Half Life 2 Beta: The Citadel - Inside The Titan, Half Life 2 Beta: City 17 - In A Different Timeline, half life 2 beta, Half Life 2 Beta: Cut Characters & Enemies

Id: BBt9CANDa4U

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020