Similar to Mine, very enjoyable mini-campaign with ambitious and unique mechanics, although unpolished and buggy (map 2 only worked for me once and always crashes when I try to load again).

I'm not sure why its strongly recommended to play on Easy though, even on Medium this was pretty easy. Might try replaying it on Hard one day.

This is one of the most interactive maps iv ever played to this day, The only feedback i have is there should be more levels like 4 and 5, because i can not explain how awesome level 3 felt, exploring a lab and then such a twist, would say it was the best part of the Champaign and 5 just felt like an fps tower defense which i loved. 3 should be longer, i shot 1 ship and it was over. Otherwise the first 2 maps were OK, just or casual shoot em up. The d day one was cool but can be improved apon. Also the beginning sequence was beautiful, made me feel the sense of urgency with everyone getting places and what not.

10/10 would recommend to others

The alarm at the beginning of the first part was just too annoying for me to even try to play through. And here's the reality of this sentiment. People are going to check out your mod and decide within a short time whether or not to bother continuing forward with your story. There's nothing more important than a good first impression.

Here's an example: I heard about this guy that said he turned down buying a house because one of the room's had a burned out light-bulb. He went on to say, these people are trying to sell their home, the most valuable asset they have; and they can't be bothered to change a light-bulb?

If the story is that of more reality, then understand I'm already under duress. The headset technology is weak, the revolution has only just begun and its stressful to deal with the poor optics and the data throughput is just not enough. So, in any map in any VR experience right now, it's already stressful.

I looked at cube in discord - it's well done but I prefer combat.
I went through many rooms in it.
I also seen both movies - Cube and Cube 2.
Am looking at others that I missed and yours will be on my list for sure.

@vincent_g

If you haven't played my other mods, feel free to check the "CementStairs - Portfolio" collection linked on this Workshop page.

I'm currently working on a mod inspired by the movie Cube, with randomly generated maze filled with deadly traps. Though that will probably take some time before it's finished.

Have any new ones in the works?

@vincent_g

Thank you very much!

I cherish every playthough I get to see, so that I could get some feedback and see how people play my mods, so I really appreciate it!

My playthrough ---> https://youtu.be/dO61ka9t-OY

@vVRedDevilVv

Thank you very much! I'm glad you've enjoyed the mod.
Feel free to check others in the collection linked above.

to whom ever made this you made me have some of the most fun ever in vr I had a great time in this map it was awesome how you slowly take over the world. And all the missions were amazing Favorite one is the storm the beach mission. I actually think all these missions are better than the actual campaign itself.

I wonder, has anyone replayed/played the 4th level after the update? I have changed some thing regarding the speed limit of the ship and I wonder how it turned out(my own testing was fine, but I'd like to hear your opinion too).

Again, this level has another story lurking beneath the surface here. the use of the forest for sneaking around has aa good start, but I feel it could be improved to make the immersion even better. For dealing with the reanimated humans (?), having some barriers/puzzles in the way, that if not solved in a certain time, would've left you in a position of being overrun and possibly being killed (this is where the infinite ammo would've been useful).

I'll be trying level 4 later on this weekend. Thanks for such a good time with level 3.

- By the time I got into the Complex, I had over 810 rounds for my gun. Having less than a 100 would've made this more suspenseful.
- The kitchen sink areas had the reverse problem as the concrete bunkers; I felt like I was too small.
- Once retrieving the prize. the gas throughout the area, reanimating the dead corpses, was nicely eerie and creepy.
- What was less creepy was that I could literally walk back to the extraction point without almost killing any of the reanimated zombies. This completely drained the final part of the level and any drama or tension for myself.

Also, some of the enemies seemed like partial bullet sponges, and took nearly a whole clip to bring them down.
- The guard towers with the spotlights looked great, but had less functionality than I was hoping for. For example, why weren't the guards able to turn the spotlights to scan the entire area. It would've been even cooler if you gave your position away somehow, they were able to track you with the spotlight, and you would've had to gone all Metal Gear Solid to get them off your trail.
- A couple of the concrete piles of rubble I was literally walking through (on the right side of the complex).
- On the two towers behind the spotlights, it's a shame there weren't a couple of snipers up there trying to kill you (make sure they have laser sights so you can track them as well).
- I so desperately wanted to climb the water tower. Would've loved it even more if the Water Tower was a secret way inside the complex.

- The driver's head was partially imbedded into the roof of the vehicle.
- The concrete bunkers were a nice touch, but seemed way too short, as though my head was scraping the ceiling. Given the only purpose of the bunkers was to replenish health/ammo, I would've liked more obstacles/booby traps to get to the treasure.
- The moon looked like a giant radioactive egg.
- The human enemies in the level has a story I want to find out more about, specifically, what is going on with their deformed hands. At this point, I didn't care about the shooting, and just wanted to go into exploration mode to discover more background information on what was going on here.

Due to life and other little things, I was not able to get to the Level 3 until today. Observations are as follows:
- For myself, the best map so far. The ability to travel through the forest as a ways (though it has its drawbacks) of covertly getting to the destination added a nice alternative manner of approaching your enemies. The drawbacks I saw were : (1) Boundaries to how far you could travel into the woods were not well defined, and often came across as random invisible walls. This was not a horrible thing, but was often immersion breaking. (2) The apparent lack of noises I was making when moving through the trees. Even if I was far enough away from the enemies, hearing the noises I was making would've had me adjust my play style to try to be more stealthy.

Thanks a lot for creating this mini - campaign which is a Combine world domination tour in 5 different locations/missions. Nice transitions (combine breefings) between the maps.
I recorded my first playthrough (apart from Map 2 - unfortunately got stuck with a grenade thing that blocked my hand).

Part 1 https://youtu.be/glOEcXCt4KA

Map 1 is easily the best map. I really liked it. Great work on the combine base and the breefings. Unique ideas such as the electric whip and nice puzzles (electrified ground, moving boxes...) made it feel like classic Half Life, very immersive.
The combine kept running through me which was a bit annoying and some props hover over the ground.
The rebel enemies are strangely silent and some change their clothes when shot.

Part 2 https://youtu.be/CgXqxYsEggU
Map 2 That's the D-Day map.
Far too large for my taste, it juddered on my machine (RTX2070, Ryzen 9 3900xt, 64G ram, 2x1TB NVME).
The grenade thing was not usable for me, it got stuck in my hand and I could not proceed further.
This map would probably benefit from compacting and dense enemy population. I felt a bit lost and alone there. Other than that, great work on the bombs that occasionaly hit.

Part 3 Stealth map.
Liked this map. The idea with the disguise was hillarious, also that shot rebels turn into zombies - Great!
Infiltrate, aquire the grub, fight your way out.

Part 4 - marine adventures. The canon on the ship was difficult to operate.
I think the idea is okay but (sorry for that) it didn't cought me.
The controls (canons and steering) were far away and the enemy ships felt like silent hover-crafts. I just put it on full speed an never had to touch it again, enemy ships hit me but I could have just stay there doing nothing.

Part 5 Really felt like killing the bugs on Klendathu - Great one!
The jump of the helicopter was a bit weird. I heard the sound of fall damage multiple time and arrived with zero health.
Killing waves of antlions was great fun - I ended up staying outside, wanting to shot all of them.
The end was weird - I was teleported and set into a wall or something - there was a calm voice but the screen turned yellow.

All together, a great amount of work that got into this. Thank you for creating and sharing this.
It really is like a small world domination campaign.

Cool map. I really liked playing around with the new weapons, the helicopter turret sequence over the HL2 level and figuring out the best way to use the whip were my favourite moments. Also, the combine base with the green energy thingy on the ceiling made me go Oooooo.

I think this would have benefited from smaller environments and tighter sequences for the NPCs - but I get that's not what you were going for, and it was interesting to see large scale battles in HLA.

Map 2:
When I tried to grab the blue disc mines I couldn't drop them I almost died few times because of that.The giant battle was a cool idea but I didn't like how open it was. There wasn't much cover and also sometimes I had to shoot e.g. suppressor from far away which wasn't very comfortable.

Map 3 crashed my whole steamvr like 2 minutes into it. I may try to play it again sometime.

Map 4:
Steering a ship was a really fun idea. Tho the hands were shaking when turning. Would love some more detailed ships.

Map 5:
First time when I jumped off the ship I thought I did something wrong because the fall was long. It took me sometime to realize I had to kill all npcs with the scope. The battle was epic, but I didn't like how long was the break between the fights.

So overall very creative and ambitious map but needs much more polish.

I've finally tried all of them, so here is my feedback or smth. I think the the custom mechanics where the best part of this mod, they were pretty clunky but also original and creative. I think the maps were too much ambitious - too open. Alyx doesn't work well with open worlds and my experience was laggy. Sometimes I couldn't understand the narrator so I didn't know what to do.
Also most of the props where static. It killed the magic of the game for me. I love how in Alyx you can interact with so many things.
Map 1:
I liked the whip part, I liked how you had to spin it before hitting if you wanted to hit something that was away from you The Hl2 part's rooms and corridors were too big and empty.When I got outside I really didn't know what to do so I gave up. There where also t-posing citizens outside standing and doing nothing

If anyone wants an extra hard experience, you can download Cuser's merciless antlions mod for the last level of this map - The Starship Troopers level.

@collindrennen Thank you once again for your feedback. I'm sorry about the crash, but luckily you should be able to easily start the 3rd level through the Map Selection.

- One thing I did notice a lot of is when shooitng a human, the body model actually changed when they died (like they were one character when alive, and a slightly different character when dead).

Unfortunately, after completing Level 2, and as Level 3 was loading, the game crashed.
Overall, a much more fun and pleasant experience, with huge potential for improvements.

Level 2
- It was either 'Saving Private Ryan' or 'Medal of Honor' meets Alyx.
- The concept of the level is simple, but effective, in that it really provided to myself a sense of backstory as to how the Combine invaded.
- As with City Hall, Alyx-Omaha Beach felt too big; it would have great for a multiplayer level. I know a beach feels wide open, but I guess the overall 'openess' of it made me feel very exposed (like a stray bullet could take me out at any second).
With that gripe out of the way, I still had fun with the level,and going from the beach to the trenches to the buildings felt fun. It would be amazing to think what you could do with more time to make the beach level feel more detailed (e.g., water washing up on the beach, bombs kicking up sand and partially obscuring your vision).

- Having the first humans I encountered fire on me almost immediately was nicely executed, and helped immerse me quicker into my role as a Combine Soldier.
- The helicopter ride with my firing down on the humans in front of City Hall was enjoyable, but control over the gun, and the range of fire with the gun felt limited; like I only had a small window of opportunity in each part to try to shoot humans down from above. Maybe flying at a slower pace could be considered so I could try to master the gun before that portion of the level is over.
- City Hall itself was just too big; certain parts of it felt like I was traveling down the length of a football field. A smaller version of City Hall, or access only a certain part of it to where it would have a slightly cramped, enclosed feeling to it.

@CementStairs,
I had the opportunity to play both Level 1 again and Level 2 for the first time tonight. Observations are as follows:
Level 1
- A much smoother, pleasant experience. I had a much easier time easing into the role of a Combine Soldier, although I am a big believer that playing as a Soldier should have a more drastic difference in presentation (e.g., the mask/helmet overlay previously mentioned, or adding arms that reflect a Combine Soldier's clothing) as compared to playing for Alyx.
- Walking around in the Combine HQ was a lot of fun and had a very cold, metallic, lifeless feeling to it. It was probably closest to imagining the Combine HQ as a type of BatCave. The shooting range was a lot of fun, as it gave me my first time (as far as I can remember) with using different weapons. Shooting the dead aliens was fun, if slightly gross.

@CementStairs: No problems on my end for how you want to handle it. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response.

The performance on the 2nd level should be improved. If anyone struggled with the level before, check it out please if it's more pleasant to play now. Thanks.

You have some really good ideas how to establish the narrative more naturally. It would require quite a large redesign of the map though, so I'm sorry to say I will keep it as it is, but I will definitely keep your feedback in mind when making new maps. I think with the bugs fixed, the introduction should be effective at communicating who you are and what you're supposed to do.

I wanted to go for this In medias res kind of introduction, where you're almost immediatelly thrown into action rather than have a longer narrative to slowly ease you in. The kind of cliche B movie type of intro when alarms start ringing and all the troops run to their assigned positions to get ready for deployment.

@collindrennen Thank for the quick answer and for the suggestions. From the gameplay standpoint, I fixed most of the annoying issues you had(the "friendly" enemy, flashlight section).
I now understand what you imagined the "be the combine" narrative to be - Having some custom overlay to make it seems as you're looking through a gasmask would be great idea, although I'd be afraid it would obscure the player's view or that a color correction would change the current look of the world significantlly. Also, I wanted to give the player the gravity gloves immediatelly from the beginning, because I know many people can get frustrated if they have to pick supplies from the ground. You also need them to use the guns in the shooting range(mingun, shotgun).

Now, with that being said, I have no idea if what I've stated is even feasible, and feel free to completely ignore it, but you did ask how it could have been better.

If you made it this far, thank you for listening.

- Concerning the human not shooting at me, yes, it did occur in a basement. that lead to some further confusion initially as to who I was.
- I know what you were shooting for (being a Soldier), but it largely felt almost exactly the same as if I was playing as Alyx. If possible, when playing as the Combine Soldier, having a Combine mask overaly (e.g., simulating what it must be like to fight when wearing a Combine mask) would have added a greater sense of 'realism'.
- Unfortunately, or not, I'm a fan of levels that take the time to set up the scenario, whether it be an brief, introductory level that sets up the narrative through the actual level and voice-over (and not just through text-based exposition). You brave folks are creating worlds for me to play in; establishing the foundations of this world I'm about to play in helps me for immersion and believeability.

What I was looking for was something that eased me into the role; got me acclimated in going from a regular Combine Soldier, into a 'super soldier'.

@CementStairs,
It was largely a visual association on my part. My hands were the Gravity Gloves (on top of black gloves); this issue here is that the Gravity Gloves are a permanent Alyx association with me. Having played Workshop levels for 1.4 years (I think), you are always Alyx, and always with those Gravity Gloves.
What may have helped better would be playing as a regular Combine Soldier (black Gloves only), embedded with some fellow Combine aquad mates (e.g., they never leave leave your side for a mission). Upon killing some humans, you stumble across an abandoned Russell lab with an abandoned pair of Gravity Gloves, and are able to put them on. Use the Gravity Gloves on your teammates, and after tell you haw awesome you'll be using the human's own tricks on them, they capture a human for you. Then both you and the human are placed in a combat arena where you hunt each other.

- If I understand it correctly, the problem with the Darkened room was that you lost your flashlight and it was hard to find the jerrycans. In the new update I made it so that the dropped flashlight has an outline that can be seen through the walls as well as it shining a little more, so that it can be seen must easier. There are total 8 jerrycans around that room, which should be fairly easy to find with the flashlight.

- I'll also mention that the little issue regarding you being able to push the wall with your hands once it's structure was damanged with the jackhammer is intended, because it is possible that the jackhammer falls to the other side or gets out of player's reach is some way.

- You mentioned human npcs ignoring the player, but that shouldn't be the case - what part of the map was that in? If it was the one Human in the basement(right after you break down the damaged wall) that could have turned at you without shooting, I'm sorry. This is now fixed as was a confusing bug. If you encountered this issue in some other part of the map, please let me know.

- You also mentioned that you had Alyx hands, although that also shouldn't be the case. Are you certain you didn't have the Gordon gloves with gravity gloves? If no, then it is a strange and very rare bug and I'm sorry. So far you're the first person I know of that experienced this(you can look at Skummeh's playthrough where it works fine).

@collindrennen Thank you for the detailed feedback. Since the judging is over now, I was now allowed to publish a small patch that adressed few of the issues you had. I'll still ask a few questions, because I'm unsure what went wrong. Please, feel free to answer them so I could improve the map based on your feedback.

- What made you unsure about you being one of the Combine soldiers? You start off in barracks on a Combine ship, with Combine soldiers that don't attack you and are instructed by a Combine Officer. Was there something that could make it seem like you were a prisoner or a human unwillingly forced into cooperation with the Combine? What would make it clearer in your opinion?

- The level feels like there are some good concepts just waiting to be discovered, but so much unpleasantless got in the way, draining a huge amount of fun out of it.
- I stopped playing when I got to City Hall and died. Reloading from an auto-save crashed the game. Having to manually save was something I had forgotten about, but with everything experienced, this was the straw the cause me to stop playing.

I'll try checking out one of the other levels later on in the week.

- Getting to one part of the level that had holes in the wall, I thought I needed that power tool to get through the wall, but found out I could just push the wall down with my hands. I did not think that was a believable scenario.
- One part of the level (inside a darkened room with a generator hitched to a trailer) was the first time I got annoyed, rather than scared, of crab zombies in the dark. One of the 3 gas cans I needed could only be seen from a certain angle; it took me nearly 10 minutes to find all three cans. That the flashlight got knocked out of my hands, never to be seen again, did not help the mood. I was surrounded by headcrab zombies, and barely took any damage.
- I do have to admit, the start of the level was nicely designed, and had a creepy feel for it.

- I was often confused on who I was in the game. I think I'm a Combine Soldier, but I have Alyx's hands. Sometimes I could walk past humans with no problem, then once in front of them they start shooting at me, and I wondered why (after all, I have Alyx's hands). This defeated any purpose I felt I had in the game, and made me feel like I was wondering ainlessly at times (If I was progressing, it felt like an accident).
Eventually, by the time I got to City Hall (?), I knew I was a Combine Soldier, but it certainly did not feel like it.
- Voice overs, for myself, were not clearly presented. The first voice over I heard, for myself, was not very clear, and I wound up missing about a third of what was said. Further voice overs were slightly better, but felt like I had to stop everything I was doing in order to listen to the voice over.

Played on a i7-8700, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070Ti on a Valve Index (90Hz refresh rate) with Medium game settings.
I only played the first level, and observations are as follows:
- There was often jitter/reprojection/frameskipping occurring intermittently throughout the level; mostly when smooth turning, but sometimes even when just waving my gun around.
- The scale of the world was off by a bit a times: stairs looked like they were twice as tall as they should be, and there was a desk that made my character feel like I was the size of a 10-year old.

I'm sorry about the crashes, it's a bug in Alyx I cannot fix. It should be a problem in the first two levels. If you're having trouble with completing some levels, I recommend to lower the difficulty or skip them entirely through the map selections. There should be enough supplies in the level to keep you alive.

@mejco67 Search for the big radio tower far to the land - inside is a console(button) you have to press to override it.
In the last level you have to firstly jump down, then kill all the enemy soldiers with the sniper rifle(you will be given more instructions once you do, so it's possible there was one enemy still alive) and then open the gate for your troops to come in. In about a minute you'll know what to do next.

Keeps crapping out on me, bit buggy and I cannot understaND A WORD OF WHAT THE NARRATOR IS saying. Needs more volume. Crashes with my own saves. If you want someone for Voice acting work (free) email me. I do voice acting and I act in real life, I could have done that voice so well. Makes a huge difference to a production. ratcat@live.com

really cool but was unable to go past foyer all saves crash to desktop

I never EVER leave any sort of review but this map is impressive, as soon as I finished I went to write this review. So many new features, amazing visuals. Honestly cannot thank you enough for the experience dude

Wow, this was really incredible. Having 5 playable maps with different objectives was something I've not seen yet. The maps may of been a bit "too" huge, but I think overall I enjoyed it simply because it's different from normal HLA mods. I had to keep myself from picking up every ammo pack! You were very generous with ammo/health, but with huge maps I could see why. My only 2 complaints were the sneaking mission was pretty easy, I could just walk in front of everyone and not be noticed (until you grabbed the thing, of course), not that I minded to much. Then, the ship level... I mean, it's ambitious, I'll give you that. It became way to laggy and time consuming to try and fix everything, and I got thrown "through" the ship. Maybe don't include the fixing parts?... or keep them all in one room? I had to skip it, but I could easily thanks to your level select. I think people will be really impressed with this

Some fantastic work here, Cement. Lots of feedback for you but the overall experience was incredible: https://youtu.be/vC9oESPTQVY