Black Mesa: Blue Shift – Impressions

I decided to try the Black Mesa: Blue Shift mod for Black Mesa to sate my current Half-life addiction. While it’s more of the fantastic Half-life universe and does satisfy some of the cravings, it has a couple of issues. Blue Shift is a remake of the expansion Blue Shift made by Gearbox for Half-life. I never played the expansion back in the day, so I don’t know much about it, but from what I have read, the mod is supposed to be a pretty faithful recreation. Otherwise, you might think; what would be the point? Anyway, much like Black Mesa, which itself is a remake of Half-life, the quality of the work here is substantial, and matches the same level of dedication. However, while the work by itself is impressive, I can’t say I enjoyed the gameplay all the way through. I should also mention that the mod is not finished. Only the four first chapters are complete, while missing the final four.

Continue reading “Black Mesa: Blue Shift – Impressions”

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Optimal Mod Config [mod collection continuation]

This is a follow-up to the Baldur’s Gate 3 – Third-Person Goodness [mod collection] post, since after playing for a few hours, both in exploration and combat, I have concluded that the default mod settings aren’t working that well for me. This is highly subjective of course, but I thought I would at least share my findings that have fixed the issues I’m having with the default config.

Continue reading “Baldur’s Gate 3 – Optimal Mod Config [mod collection continuation]”

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Third-Person Goodness [mod collection]

One of the biggest problems I have with Baldur’s Gate 3 is how Larian Studios treats immersion when they have the tools and the visual fidelity to truly make this aspect of the game shine. I’m talking about third-person controls and an overflow of distracting UI elements that can’t be turned off by normal means. For example, the white outline when hovering the mouse over objects like benches, boxes, and so on. Third-person controls can be achieved somewhat by plugging in a controller on the PC, but it’s a horrendous experience since you are stuck with the slow and ugly controller interface. However, with time comes mods, and finally you can play Baldur’s Gate 3 in glorious third-person with keyboard and mouse controls, and it works splendidly. It’s just a shame Larian is too stubborn to do it themself and add it as an option, but as luck will have it, it isn’t too much work to get the good stuff going.

Continue reading “Baldur’s Gate 3 – Third-Person Goodness [mod collection]”

Brutal AI for OpenXcom Extended

I have been following Brutal AI (version 6.6.3) by the user Xilmi over at OpenXcom for a couple of weeks now, and recently I decided to take the plunge myself with the mods from my own compilation The Ultimate X-com Experience. At first, not much is changed, as this modification only makes changes to the AI, mostly concentrated on battle tactics. However, as soon as I got my first ground battle, the AI improvements showed themselves very quickly.

While I find X-com and the OpenXcom mods fun, the AI has always been on the more “predictable” side (to be nice), and this is regardless of the mods I have tried. Brutal AI changes all this, and apparently, it works with all modifications from the get-go, which is very impressive. 

Continue reading “Brutal AI for OpenXcom Extended”

The Ultimate X-com Experience

There is a way to improve the legendary campaign of X-com without changing too much of the original experience. It works as an enchantment rather than an actual conversion, a bit like what the community patch 1.3 have done for Jagged Alliance 2. Now, I’m not saying my changes/mods, or the main mod itself is on the same level as that patch, but it’s based on the same principles. So, welcome to my take on the ultimate X-com experience!

Continue reading “The Ultimate X-com Experience”