A really fantastic visual and audio overhaul that attempts to modernize and add some more weight to the gameplay of Half-Life 2 without removing anything that made the game perfect in the first place. The game also does make new additions and personal changeups to provide a somewhat new experience which was certainly a lot of fun, things like being able to remove turrets and keep them as weapons, a much more talkative HEV suit, as well as that famous creepy reversed “GOD HELP ME” line from the zombies being re-reversed so you can hear them speak it as it originally was.

There are a couple things that I couldn’t tell were glitches or just bad choices, such as a lot of the fires having these annoying strobe light effects that seemed like an extremely exaggerated version of how flames flicker.

The improved enemy AI the mod offers coupled with the game’s vanilla hard difficulty (my first rodeo with it) provided a truly hardening experience where Combine can absolutely ruin you if you’re not careful. The Alyx defense section in Anticitizen One was borderline impossible without some flagrant savescumming.