Recent reviews by Xaine

Playing this in 2026 is the definition of "Trust the process", because the level design is abysmal, the puzzles kinda suck, and the gameplay is dated but aged a bit better than Doom cause of the innovative mechanics Bungie added in 1994 like full mouselook and altfires for many weapons, along with health/shield rechargers which would later prominently appear in Half-Life. Fortunately there's workshop support to modernize the experience further, or make it more like the legacy release if you want to.

But what does make this game really really special though, is its rich lore and thick immersive atmosphere further enhanced by its unique somber soundtrack. Unheard of at that time until later in the 90s, Marathon had a fully fledged story relayed through terminals, set-dressings, and a few scripted events all of which would be further expanded upon in its two sequels. As you play through the game, you'll notice a lot of familiar plot elements which would eventually show up in their future titles aka Halo and Destiny, such as the integral use of ai companions, super soldiers, alien collectives, and the classic trope of exploring deep philosophy and its relations to the characters and setting. You could instead watch a youtube documentary to fully understand the lore and plot of this game, but if you can stomach it, I highly suggest trying this out and properly immersing yourself in the world.

Erase your light, take your flight, to a place where you will be remembered, to a place where you will be loved.

Pure absolute kino, Trepang2 is a return to the underrated 7th gen era of FPSes, specifically Fear but not directly a 1:1 imitation of it, but instead being its own thing. The movement is fast, the combat is fast (and brutal), and the plot and worldbuilding is, awesome... with a decently long runtime and also a lot of optional side content to play after finishing it. The game also heavily scratches that Titanfall pilot gameplay itch albeit without wallrunning.

Weapons actually feel devastating especially the shotgun, the movement is smooth and responsive, the sound design is orgasmic, the voice acting is amazing, and you're a super soldier and can do supersoldier feats like obliterating a tier 1 operator with a dropkick or akimbo ridiculous weapons, but still not feel completely overpowered cause you'll be constantly pitted against platoons of soldiers, mercs, spec-ops, and more. If you love Fear and other underrated 7th gen shooters, you need to play this it'll make you feel whole again and I'm serious.

One of the best mods for Half Life yet, with a quality of the likes of Sweet Half Life, Azure Sheep, Point of View, etc. Delta Particles is a full-conversion of the base game with the weapon roster of Opposing Force, the enemy diversity of Sweet Half Life, and its own wide fair share of unique mechanics and puzzles. The story and setting is amazing, borrowing plot & gameplay elements from that old cancelled fourth expansion called Hostile Takeover. The game takes place in a completely different research facility, who are competitors of Black Mesa in a similar vein to Aperture. Except for Xen, there's no familiar locations in this mod, which gives you that amazing feeling of exploring Black Mesa all over again. There's 6+ hours of playtime and overall none of the levels feel artificially stretched out, everything feels coherent and right in place.

Content-wise this game is amazing and sets the standard for what a true online live-service game should be like, with a lot of source material to draw from and infinite possibilities to spice up the formula throughout it's lifespan, however ever since they've added the illuminate the glitches, bugs, and balance have significantly gotten worse.

This game desperately needs a Operation Health style update and to stop focusing on warbonds for a bit to just fix the multitude of problems and performance issues that's plaguing the game. The balancing is very strange sometimes with heavy power creep and Arrowhead deciding to nerf usable weapons instead of just buffing the weaker performers, while they keep adding new enemies with one-shot/stunlock mechanics or with no weak-points. These strange balancing decisions remind me of another Sony owned game which is Destiny 2, and veterans of that will know what I'm talking about. Regardless, If they manage to fix all of this, this game might just become one of the best horde shooters of all time.

Far Cry 2 meets Call of Duty Black Ops in the Half-Life 2 universe. Swelter puts you in a mission to settle tensions between the Resistance and the Anarchists, a new human faction (with vaguely similar aesthetics to the HL2 Beta conscripts) established within City 545 and its outlands who also resist the combine occupation of Earth.

Throughout the game, you get these Far Cry 2 style info tidbits about both factions and their opposing idealogies similar to the APR and UFLL from FC2, allowing you to sympathize with the resistance or the anarchist's goals. You're also tasked with hunting down the Anarchist's leader, who's initially mysterious & enigmatic in a similar fashion to the Jackal from FC2.

The story is really good and well thought out in my opinion, compared to the team's previous mod which is Snowdrop Escape. The team also learnt from their previous mistakes from SE, and really ironed out the gameplay in Swelter too. Puzzles feel well-placed and don't break the pace like they do in SE. The good gunplay from SE is retained with significant improvements such as way better weapon handling animations, but without the inventory system so you're no longer able to swap weapons of similar archetypes.

Overall, I think Swelter is definitely one of the best mods made for HL2 in recent years, with beautiful graphics, great ambition, great gameplay, and a very good story. If you're a fan of the previously aforementioned games, and a fan of HL2, I absolutely recommend trying this mod out.

A sentiment shared with others in the reviews, this mod really focuses on puzzles in a similar vein to Portal, many of which are great and well-designed but sometimes placed in points that may ruin the pace of the game for some. The beginning half of the game also kinda feels like a semi-serious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with strange dialogue and cinematography, but immediately does a 180 in the latter half with an amazing soundtrack and Khrushchevka aesthetics. Other than the unexpected change of atmosphere in the story, the heavy usage of puzzles isn't necessarily a bad thing as my biggest gripe with base Half-Life 2 is the fact that Valve couldn't nail the combat as perfectly as they did with HL1, so they opted to go all out with puzzles and physics elements to compensate. This mod balances both worlds perfectly through overhauled gunplay, a simple inventory system, and an expanded arsenal in a somewhat similar fashion to Opposing Force, creating a fun balanced puzzles-and-combat gameplay loop in the end.

Snowdrop Escape is worthy of a playthrough and is definitely a great and well-designed mod, which also later formed the basis for one of the best HL2 mods yet known as Swelter.

Pretty good mod for Half Life 2, but nothing groundbreaking if you were looking for that.

The Burton Equation excels in storytelling and dialogue with its unique spaghetti detective noir theme and comic book-style illustrated cutscenes following the voiced protagonist, Zachary Burton. The mod comprises of 4 levels, taking place in different time periods that are controlled by an overarching antagonist, which is pretty unique for a source game. Each time period also introduces new weapons that aren't just reskins of the base HL2 weapons and instead have unique stats and altfires. The combat can get pretty boring however, which is the main negative of this mod as you essentially only fight metrocops and combine soldiers throughout all 4 levels. An update later added manhacks, hunters, and shield scanners to previous chapters to change up certain encounters but the issue still stands honestly. All of this doesn't really make the mod as replayable as it can be, and apparently, achievements were also removed too but may be added back later. Regardless, you should definitely play this mod at least once if you're a sucker for old-timey 1920s detectives narrating their beat cop adventures through awesome stylized setpieces.

Undoubtedly better than Overwatch 2 in every single way. Rivals launched in an amazing state, with lightning-fast queue times, no big cheating problem, decent servers, good netcode, all heroes available at launch (Remember the Kiriko/Ramattra battlepass exclusivity?), every single qol feature available, a decent selection of gamemodes, and maps with great level design. The only big issue, was optimization.

Almost every single character in this game feels well designed and fun to play as and against, with many just straight up being better takes on existing Overwatch heroes which isn't a bad thing. The art style & character designs are awesome and feel a lot more recognizable too in a fight compared to OW2, also with them being Marvel characters contributing to that, I guess. MtX is limited to battlepass, skins, emotes, and sprays similar to Overwatch but the pricing of said MtX is pretty high, but fortunately not Spectre Divide $70 founders pack level high.

Rivals resurrected newfound interest in the declining hero shooter genre, a task the likes of Overwatch 2 and Concord could never achieve, which should tell you how good of a game it is right now.

Spectre Divide, a game that doesn't know what it wants to be and doesn't even do anything it imitates properly. It has elements from essentially every mainstream competitive/streamer game, R6, Apex, Valorant, Overwatch, CS, COD, etc but implemented in the worst ways possible. The queue system doesn't even work properly and doesn't even let you cancel it 90% of the time. Shooting mechanics are horrendous and kinda imitates Apex Legends and R6 with the exaggerated ads recoil patterns, movement is janky and slow, with an insane slowdown when getting shot worsened by the fact that the maps are huge, making the game feel overall super slow. The store's loaded with overpriced cosmetics day-one like Valorant, with a $70 founders pack which says a lot. Over hyped streamer game garbage, ironically R6's newest operator Skopos, does the idea of controlling two bodies way better than this game does right now.

Portal Revolution is an amazing mod for Portal 2 that also greatly amps up the capabilities of the Source 2013 branch, running on the upcoming community edition engine allowing for even more incredible puzzles which the mod greatly iterates on. The voice acting is amazing and the visuals and level design are superb, being if not one of the best looking Source engine games yet. The story is great with a lot of underlying themes and metaphors regarding the characters which you'll hopefully notice by the end, overall one of the best Portal 2 mods ever made.