Originally posted by Colt:

My review of Prevarication, since my feedback was too long to fit into a comment but I felt I had some feedback worth sharing.

What does this mod do well?

-It makes creative use of existing maps to remix it in a way that feels original and gives a lot of fun combat encounters.

-The new weapons in the Sandbox are pretty spectacular (I'm particularly fond of the Overcharged PR and the incendiary BR).

-There are some great atmospheric setpieces throughout the mod that help contribute to a creepy ambience that suits a flood-centric mod like this very well.

-The new enemy types are creative and fun, for the most part. For me I felt the Flood that basically just act like marines to be kind of a miss, as enemies with hit-scan weapons are never particularly engaging to face, but the fast carrier forms and the larger carrier forms add some nice variety, as well as the camo brute combat forms.

They mix in well enough with existing flood forms to keep the combat fresh and interesting for the mod's whole run time.

-The length of the mod was good. It felt long enough to explore the concept thoroughly but didn't overstay its welcome by dragging itself out. A lot of Halo mods either are so short you're left wanting more, or you can tell the mod author was just shoving extra content in without thinking. Prevarication's structure strikes me as a lot more well thought out than that.

-Creative use of level geometry in encounters made it quite fun. I'm particularly fond of the re-use of the underground tunnels from the data center, placing enemies on the high ground and making you fight your way up was a clever way to mix up combat in those enclosed spaces.

-Many of the custom assets are very high quality. I am personally very fond of a lot of the new models for enemies. Standout examples for me include the huge carrier forms and the hazop Jackals.


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What does this mod do poorly? (Keep in mind, this is not meant to be an attack on anyone behind this as the work they have done is incredible, this is just my personal nitpicks and constructive criticism)

-Much of the flood biomass lacks collision. This usually isn't a problem, but there are times when enemies will be able to shoot you and you can't understand why, because a piece of biomass you were using as cover is not in fact a solid object.


-The story of this mod is written very sub par. It ranges from badly written to non-present, and imo the parts where the mod doesn't even bother trying to tell a coherent story are better than the parts where it does. As someone whose love of the Halo franchise started with my love for the stories in the campaign, I found this a let down. The story is very poorly thought out and cliche'd, and I know the mod talks about its non-adherence to the games' lore but it feels at times inconsistent even with its own attempts at world building.

In my opinion you should probably just ignore the story and play it for the gameplay, which is where Prevarication shines brightest.

Overall the story feels kind of forced in. If you want to a gameplay-centric mod that's great but tacking on an attempt at a coherent overarching plot feels somewhat rushed in my opinion.


-The voice acting can be quite mixed. While this is to be expected from a fan project, as ones with stellar voice acting are the exception and not the norm - most of the voice acting hiccups in this mod sound less like the VAs lack skill and more like they lacked coherent direction in the script for the inflection and emotion they should be portraying.

The voice acting is generally serviceable but there's a couple moments that stand out to me as not great that could've worked better if those recording had some better inspiration for their lines.




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Overall, in my opinion Prevarication is very worth playing. The story might not be engaging but the actual combat encounters are fun and well thought out enough to make up for the criticisms and nitpicks I have. It does about as good a job with a flood-centric campaign as you could expect in terms of the actual fighting and levels, but if you're looking for a compelling story, keep looking.

Final score: 8/10