Reviews - BLACK SNOW mod for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

great ambiance, the puzzles are nice as well.

Black Snow is a survival horror mod for Half-Life 2 that takes place on a huge floating chunk of arctic ice. You play as a researcher who seems to be the last survivor in the outpost, after it was attacked by a strange force. Throughout the story of the game, you'll learn more about the base, your fellow (but now very dead) researchers, and a little bit about the strange life-form that attacks when you're in pitch darkness. Eventually you'll find a vehicle that can help you escape this nightmare, but first you need to find fuel, a key, and parts for it - thus your quest begins….
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Without giving too much away, I will say that I like how the "monster" in this game is something you can't see, which makes it quite terrifying. It is manifested by some sort of fungal colony that was unearthed (un-iced?) by the research team, and can only thrive in pure darkness, so as long as you keep the lights on, you're safe.

Many story points are kind of vague, but I did enjoy the tried and true survival horror formula of reading computer entries and written notes throughout the game to learn more about the world. The ending was vague and kind of confusing, so I didn't much care for it since I had gotten invested in the game's world and was rooting for the protagonist to escape safely.
(spoilers end here)

Using Half-Life 2s source engine, the game shines with the same level of gorgeous atmosphere that HL2 itself does. The ambience is wonderful and eerie, and whenever you're outside the buildings it feels genuinely chilling. The graphics are very nice, outside of the occasional visual bug (some doors open into a strange blinding light and there was a broken wall model that looked jarringly disconnected from the wall it had been added to). While it does borrow some visual assets from existing source games, there's plenty of original sound and art assets to make it feel unique, too.

The game-play is mostly good, but does occasionally suffer from clunky controls on certain puzzles. I don't want to be too harsh on the devs with these controls - as annoying as they were - because it feels like they were doing the best they can to simulate a custom menu in source engine, using some odd trickery. Most of the custom menu screens would display the controls at first, but then they'd fade and not come back alter - I think ti would be better if they'd stuck around, because I really struggled in places like the x-ray puzzle. It may have helped to make these menu-like puzzles work in a "physical space" instead, something like the occasional physics puzzles Half-Life 2 had. There's a bit of a screw-up in that the game tells you that you can check your inventory as soon as you start, but the button for doing so doesn't actually do anything until later in the game.

One game-play theme I did quite like was how progression in the game sometime consists of finding a way to light up previously dark and deadly areas - making an area that was once terrifying and unknown now feel safe and explorable was a cool way to keep growing the game world as the player progresses.

One thing that did really hurt my enjoyment of the game was the over-use of darkness. Ominous dark shadows make for great spooky scenery, sure - and with the monster needing shadows to be able to move around, it makes sense that the game doesn't give me a flashlight. But nevertheless - In the games very first area, I got stuck, not because I had trouble with a puzzle, but because the environment is so dark I couldn't even see the items I needed to pick up to get out of the first building. Later in the game, I encountered an area that expected me to navigate several stairways and find a door in pitch blackness while being attacked by the monster. At this point I almost gave up because I wasn't scared or excited anymore, just annoyed. Thankfully, I did find a source engine console command "create_flashlight" which will spawn a light source in whatever area you're standing in. I didn't like having to cheat like and ruin the atmosphere just to get past an area, but I play video games for fun, and being stuck in a game because you simply can't see anything, isn't fun.

Overall, I do still recommend Black Snow because it does have a great atmosphere, some solid scares, and lots of interesting backstory to explore, but it does also have some very clunky moments that I don't think you should feel bad for using cheats or a walk-through video to get by. If you enjoyed the cold and isolated feeling of the Penumbra horror games, or perhaps John carpenters The Thing, you may dig on this one, too!

Welcome to Black Snow, half of the time you will wander around wondering what to do next, and what to collect next. I completed the game without a walkthrough, yeah bragging rights are mine.

Black Snow takes us to the Arctic Circle as a response team to investigate a research station after it went dark. Of course, this mod takes place in a separate universe from Half-Life.

This mod is based around puzzle and hide-and-seek. The puzzle is alright and nothing can be said much about it. Hide-and-seek comes around when you encounter something that lurks in the darkness. Thankfully, it is repelled by light sources. But occasionally, it somehow broke the rule in the areas that were bright as day.

Because the enemy hunts in the dark, the areas in the game is almost pitch-black at time. Even on the highest brightness setting, I can’t figure out where am I going or what I am looking at.

Black Snow’s story is what you expected from horror stories. You and your team arrive, something is wrong, they die, and you are the last man standing. I have to say, they really pulled a twist at the end there. It was unexpected, but it was also sort of a downer to me. That is because I don’t think I have done much to earn that. It feels like a slap to the face even.

gg

The presentation, atmosphere, and world building are all top notch. This is a MUST PLAY, however it does have its issues. If you're worried about spoilers, don't read point 4.

1. The lighting is clearly broken in some areas. Literally pitch black, can't see a thing, but it's clearly meant to be lit at least a bit due to some of the textures being bright, and nothing else. I had to mat_fullbright 1 just to navigate through some areas (and no, I'm not talking about areas where flares are available.)

2. It's possible to get yourself into a "no win" scenario, where the "monster" is blocking your path, and you have no way to safely get past them without being hit, and there being no health source nearby.

3. Had to use a walkthrough once because I got stuck, turns out I completely missed a prop lying on the floor of the gym that contains a key.

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MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
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4. It feels WAY too short, and feels like the devs gave up 3/4 of the way through and just said "Alright we can leave it there." You're meant to collect a series of items so that you can pilot a Snowcat out of the facility. But you can only get the second to last item, because as soon as you do you get blown out the window by an explosion, and then the game ends.

That's it, nothing is really explained, nothing is wrapped up, the game dangles a bunch of interesting concepts and mysteries in your face and then doesn't even begin to satisfy your curiosity.

What SHOULD have happened after the explosion is that you get up, explore another part of the facility and learn some more things, perhaps some shocking reveals or revelations, maybe even find a deranged survivor who babbles some incoherent nonsense that actually makes sense when pieced together. Find the last piece of the snowcat and potentially escape, with the twist being that you're a carrier of this "fungi" now, and that you're going to spread it to the rest of the world. Or perhaps give the player some other choice ending.

I want to give the mod a lower score on the lackluster of an ending alone, but it's such high quality otherwise I can't bring myself to do it. If it had its lighting fixed it would be even better.

It's fine for the most part but as time went on it became harder and harder to fix every bug caused by the engine updates. The worst thing is I didn't even feel it was worth it. The ending was so sudden and dissapointing that I can't recomend this.

A masterpiece of horror.