#modfication

Estranged: Act 1 (Beta)

I guess this Source Mod has been in development for a pretty long time; finally got around to trying it tonight. Seems pretty cool - it's sort of a survival horror mod that really seems to understand that less is more. The first half maintains a really good sense of lonely, creepy atmosphere. Unfortunately, it goes away in the second half, which trends closer to puzzle solving and action - except the puzzles are just copied out of Half-Life 2 and the action is a little timid.

Notable about this mod is its use of lighting - this is the HL2 Episode 2 version of the engine, which supports dynamic lighting, but mainly just for the player's flashlight. Estranged uses it for a lot more than just the flashlight - more half the lights in any given map seem to be dynamic lights, which looks really good but took a very obvious hit to my performance - Episode 2 does not support deferred rendering for its dynamic lighting like Portal 2 does.

Also surprised at how much was customized in terms of menus and stuff. Though typical Source assets are present, it really lends to it the feeling that you are playing a standalone game, or something (and they're up on Greenlight to become just that).