| John "Jhoh" Cable & Josh "Jsoh" Cable 01/27/2003 |
 |  | | | | The first thing you see in this mod, a dark room full of crates. This is basically what the entire mod is like. But since was originally a Quake 2 mod, you have to give them a little slack, since that's what ALL FPS games were like back then. | |
Overall:
John sez: It sucks.
Jsoh sez: Not much of a TC at all.
Pros:
John: It sucks.
Jsoh: Don't see how that's much of a pro, but ok.
The new weapons are all really cool. Sorta.
Ok, the only part I can say was cool was the dream sequence, because
it made no sense whatsoever and had the only good level design in the entire fucking game.
Cons:
John: It sucks.
Jsoh: I guess this is where the review really starts.
Where the hell do I actually start? [Jhoh: YES JSOH, WHERE DO YO
START HM? I DON'T KNOW LET'S FIND OUT.] This TC was being made for
about 2 years or so. The amount of changes made were more than any
other mod out there, perhaps. But where do I really start this review?
[Jhoh: GOOD QUESTION.] How about the weapons?
|  | | | | The shittiest melee weapon in game history. In a dark room. | |
The weapons, while serving their purpose to kill bad guys, most look
fucking dumb. The first one you get, a board with a nail in it, has a
fucking terrible attack animation. It looks like you're simply trying
to press the nail against your intended target. Just stupid. The laser
gun looks like an ice cream cone with a handle attached to the top
scoop. The rest of them are adequate, if you ignore the weight gain
that occurs when you switch weapons. The fattest you get is with the
sniper rifle.
The story is overhyped, like Sin's. You're some really fat guy taking
on an evil corperation that is poisoning the atmosphere. Sounds like
the type of story that riveted me to my chair, back during a movie
called "Fern Gully" in 1990-something. There's also an evil black dood
with a gun in each hand, that does backflips and is generally easy to
kill. He showed himself in an early cinema scene that I missed the
audio for. O well.
I read this quotation from a site that did their own review, take a
look:
"There are already many rave reviews online which laud Chemical
Existence as a MOD that presents a story and gameplay that rival
Half-Life itself."
That is perhaps because of the fact that no one likes to bash some mod
makers for taking two years to release shitty mods. And that's apart
from the inherent sappy, fanboy-ish nature of the comment. I myself
feel sorry for the makers of the mod, because they wasted a whole lot
of time making this crappy mod when they all could have made better
mods that, combined, would have been a longer play than CE.
The quoted statement itself is also myopic. The Half Life story was
created by a professional writer, not some fan-fic hack retard. The
story was also progressed through scripted sequences, not through
third person cinema scenes. Third person cinema being the choice of
exposition for the makers of Quake 1 and 2, Sin, and Unreal; possibly
the worst games ever released by a major company, forfuckingever.
The story didn't even come close to Half Life's. I don't see who the
above unnamed fan was trying to kid, other than his own whimpering
soul. Did he play Half Life?
Dress up your map pack with an overcomplicated story about the end of
the world or whatever, shitty gameplay still sucks ass.
From the readme:
"Chemical Existence is a TOTAL conversion that uses
the Half-Life engine, everything else is change. Its more or less a
totally new game. =)"
Everything else *is* change, they are correct about that. Minus the
graphics and sound engines. :)!!!!!! Looks like it's not a TC at all.
A TC doesn't actually exist in the natural world. No one takes a game
engine and replaces 100% of the information and coding. Anyway.
I should probably point out that this TC wasn't a fucking stupendous
asshammering waste of time to me, really. But no one on this planet
seems to be taking it for the lackluster mod it is. Everyone is
hailing it as the best thing they have ever played, better than Half
Life, better than any other TC or mod ever released ever. They are
morons, and I am the person that will set them straight.
Now I guess I should really lay into the weapons and equipment.
|  | | | | Your big flabby arm holding the sniper rifle, in patented DarkVision. The sniper scope view covers the darkness with an impenetrable green snow effect, making things even more impossible to see. | |
One thing I recall during my play experience was not having a proper
amount of ammo for certain guns, while being overstocked on the
machine gun. I believe that you don't get ANY clips for the laser gun,
dart gun and tommy gun. The plasma rifle uses the same ammo that the
laser gun does, too. You know, for a mod that only took me two hours
to beat (even with cheats on, that was a lot of wandering), perhaps
they could have left out about 10 of the weapons. And perhaps even
added a proper looking melee weapon. How am I supposed to break crates
with this board + nail that has no fucking force behind it?
John: I played without cheats, and he's right, you're understocked
with almost every other weapon, and overstocked with the machine gun,
giving you almost no incentive to ever use anything other than the
machine gun.
Josh: The grenade is a joke. It has three different modes. Like the
above weapons, you only see about 2 grenades fill your inventory. I
dunno what the third mode even did, but I think the first was a 5
second fuse and the second exploded on contact. That was a messy trial
and error. And the results of my trial: don't bother with the third
selection.
Don't even get me started on the fucking bio suit. It took up an extra
slot in my precious inventory, yet was only used FUCKING ONCE. The
rest of the time, it prevented me from selecting a proper weapon by
one key stroke, often causing me immense and unrecoverable harm.
Instead of health packs and stations, all you get are syringes. That's
all. At no time can you get health any other way. You can carry ten at
a time, which means that you might have to waste some when you don't
really need them, leaving you with a few less when you end up running
into the path of a stray bullet a few seconds later.
From the html manual included in the game folder:
"Health: Lets be realistic for a second here, if you take a gunshot there isn’t
much a bandage is going to do to stop you being slowed down. Chemical
Existence however has the solution: Morphine. A good shot and you wont
care what state your [sic] in and you’ll keep fighting fit, well,
until it runs out. Health is not activated by walking over it as it is
in other games, the player has to spend time administering to his
wounds. As such you have to select the health as a weapon and 'fire'
it for it to have affect. You can store up to ten health’s [sic] at
any time."
|  | | | | Here, the hero, as played by you, investigates a fucking HOLE IN THE MAP that they forgot to cover up. | |
Realistic? Last time I checked, this mod was based in a world that
didn't fucking exist. Perhaps in this "ultra realistic" world, there's
no fucking ammo for your guns anywhere and you can't just run over a
health pack to heal yourself. But if you play the mod you'll know that
health does administer immediatly, and their manual is either outdated
or simply made up by some friend of the mod makers. And how realistic
is it to carry 10 sharp needles on your person while straying into a
lead-ridden danger around the next corner? Then again, he is only
asking to be realistic "for a second." That doesn't leave very much
time for realism, if I do say so myself.
And the last time I checked the benifits of morphine, well... you get
the idea.
John: Yes, in the game, not only do the health items give you your
health immediately, they put a drain on your unidentified meter at the
bottom of the screen, which is either a weapons meter to gauge how
long you can fire before overheating your weapons, or stamina. Or
perhaps it means absolutely nothing at all, seeing as it wouldn't take
stamina to keep firing a gun while standing still. We can't tell--the
bar wasn't covered in the manual or readme.
Jsoh: Perhaps the meter measured fat cells!
John: Another thing, the health is morphine? Half-Life's story
might've been sparse, but it didn't exactly have such gaping
plotholes. The idea in this city is that it's suddenly overrun with
drugs and pollution. You see drug addicts constantly having shootouts
with the evil cops and helicopters. So if these addicts are so scary
and evil, why am I shooting up morphine fifteen times an hour, every
hour? Not even Sin made such idiotic plot mistakes, as far as I know.
What are these people, 13 year olds?
|  | | | | As promised, drug addicts fighting with evil cops and helicopters. Lightning makes the area non-dark for a split second! Wow! | |
And the actual characters are SO FUCKING WEAK. If you're within
earshot of the female junkie, you can hear her babbling to herself
about how "that sounds like fun," or "yeah, that sounds good." Or,
apparently the driving force behind her "character": "sure, as long as
we get wasted." She says some random quote once a second, and it never
makes sense, and it's almost always the same quote. Even worse: soon
into the game you'll find a woman near a tiny speedboat, who says
she's on your side. She looks like some leather super spy chick or
something. So you think that now you got an ally to help. Here's the
catch: not only is the boat too small to fit you and her on it, she
won't even get on the boat. So why is she here? No fucking clue. She
appears a couple more times in the game, having almost no purpose to
the story or action other than driving a truck once. And this
low-grade junior high storyline is supposed to be better than
Half-Life?
You know something's wrong when a mod touts realism up the ass
and includes enemies that will take a minimum of four bullets
STRAIGHT TO THE HEAD before even reacting.
Josh: Like the ammo, you only see 3 fucking pieces of armor. Two are
leg or arm plates of some kind, and one is a helmet. Where are the
vests? What the fuck is going on with the armor? There was almost none
in the game, save for the leg/arm things next to some crates in a dark
room, and then a helmet next to a truck before an extremely irritating
action scene I had to play through 3 times to figure out WHAT THAT
BITCH IS SAYING TO ME. And when I found out what she was trying to
tell me, I just wanted to quit playing and try to find something to
eat.
Summation:
John: It sucks. A chore to play. I'd rather do real chores, actually,
instead of sitting on my ass simulating one that's twice as boring and
ten times less productive, such as Chemical Existence.
Josh: And I agree with that.
 John "Jhoh" Cable & Josh "Jsoh" Cable
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