Downloaded and tried to play through it yesterday. Sorry the review is a day late, but I had other stuff going on that prevented me from doing this.
First, I applaud that you did this with stock media. A lot of people won't even attempt to create something unless they have custom media that they either pay for or are given, and it's nice to see that someone admits that all they used was stock media. So kudos for that.
However, I am not impressed with any other aspect of the game:
1. The first level is nothing more than walking through the building up a couple flights of steps until you reach some guy at the top of the building. Took me all of 22 seconds (I played through the level once then reset and timed how long it was) to get up those steps. No interaction with anyone, no searching for anything, no explanation of even why I was going up the steps. I listened to the intro a couple of times, and not once in the intro did it explain (that I heard) why I was going up those steps.
The level is far too short, and there is nothing to do. I think you could probably walk around and just look at stuff, but that isn't fun at all.
2. The level intros are...poor, at best. A black screen with someone talking? And no way to skip through it? Ugh. Is there supposed to be a video here? If so, I didn't see it.
3. One of my biggest pet peeves is player speed. I HATE not being able to move. And I hate having to keep the Shift key depressed just to be able to move at a pace that I think should be normal. I've toyed around with the player speed attribute in the player marker in FPSC, and I don't think anything less than 175 should be used. This may be just me, but I really don't like having to cross an extremely large area and being able to brew a pot of coffee before I get to the other side.
4. So the second level is basically walking back down the stairs and attempting to not get killed by all of these guys that somehow magically show up, even though the entire building was secured by friendly forces. Heck - the friendly forces AND the bad guys are all in the building at the same time. How the hell did that happen?
And on top of that, I didn't even need to kill the bad guys. I sat back, out of sight, and let the friendly forces do the job for me. I got sick of just waiting around, so I decided to get in on what little action was left. Which wasn't much. I eventually let myself get killed off because I was not having fun.
OVERALL: Not a fun game. Not for me, anyhow. And before you or anyone else says that I've given bad reviews on games, and that maybe I should make my own seeing as I'm so difficult to please...
I know what I want in a game, but I do not know how to translate that into creating a game of my own. I tend to get bogged down in the tiniest of details, such as room contents and lighting, and I have a tendency to get a billion ideas at once all competing for attention. So I cannot translate what I want in a game into a game itself.
But, because I know what I like, I know what I don't like in a game. And in this game, I don't like a whole lot.
I know you put the time and effort into this, and I will never bash someone for actually creating a game. But in my opinion, this one needs some work.
Priest of the Church of Joe Wood
In memory of Nanee. 9/1/1993 - 5/16/2009. Rest in Peace, little girl.