After my 11 hour Rock Raiders walkthrough, I said I'd never upload another video that monstrous. I lied.
It took over a week and I ended up with over 25 hours of footage to upload, but I have created the first video evidence of 100% completion of Baz's Mod, almost 8 years after it first came out (or 6 years after the version I'm playing here I guess). This was my first time playing most of these levels too - took me long enough to finally get to it.
Up through Lava Laughter, I absolutely loved this mod. It felt like I was playing the original game again, but this time there were brand new places to explore, and actual challenges and puzzles. The original maps were all fantastic, definitely some of my favorite levels. But from Air Raiders onward, for the most part the tediousness found in the later levels of the original game came back, even worse than it ever was there at some points - I'm sorry but your version of Hot Stuff is one of the most unpleasantly frustrating maps I've ever played. Thankfully Rocky Horror was extremely satisfying the whole way through. Surprisingly, I only had to redo levels because of the AI bugging out or the game crashing, closest I came to actual failure was on the first bonus level where the air supply almost ran out before I could build a Support Station.
The spawn cooldown time for monster emerges being lowered to 10-30 seconds was pretty fun, but they still felt pathetic - I think I only got swarmed two or three times. They still have health decay for some reason, still move too slow, and even with the weaker handheld guns they still go down too easy, except with the mounted lasers which take them down too easy. The lasers were perfectly fine for mining tho, surprisingly - this was how they should've been in the original game. The bats just aren't fun. They should always be disabled and just act like scenery.
And then there was the AI... good god, the game completely broke down on Water Works and Hot Stuff, doing weird s*** I'd only seen in tutorial levels when you disabled nerps halfway through. The sad fact is, no matter how good your mod is, this game's engine is super-unstable. Really hope some of you remake guys do something great.
But I don't mean to sound overly cynical. It was a good mod, especially for its time. I enjoyed most of it, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I guess the above critique isn't really for Baz - hell I don't know if he'll ever even read it - but more for anyone else who wants to make stuff with this game. But then again, unless one of those remakes happens, I guess I'm about three years too late for that.
As for why I made this monstrous 25 hour walkthrough? Honestly I don't know, I guess I just love torturing myself for the sake of archiving and hoping at least one person will enjoy what I do lmao