The Theme: USS Darkstar keeps its theme throughout each and every one of the 17 levels included in this episode. The beginning of the episode had all of the NPC’s in a pre-disaster state just like in the Anomalous Materials episode in Half-Life. And after the disaster occurs, the whole place is in a wreck and you must venture back to where you started out from in order to escape.

Architecture/Design: The architecture in this episode was amazing and reminded me a lot of his stile of his other episodes for Quake 2 and even for Quake. The USS Darkstar (the starship, not the episode) looked incredibly like a real starship and had many new textures (more on that later) to make it even look more realistic. The placement for every single block that made up the level seemed like it was thought out. And there were some amazing looking things (I don’t want to give anything away) that you get to see on your journey to escape.

Texturing: The texturing in this huge episode was perfect. I could not find one misaligned texture throughout the whole thing. There are also many new textures that look awesome and fit perfectly in the USS Darkstar. There is also a new sky box which looks very cool and also fits perfectly into the setting.

Item/Foe Placement: This was probably the only part of USS Darkstar that had a little fault in it. The fault is that some times the monsters did not see me. The reason for this could be that Neil did not put enough info_node entries into some of the maps or it could be simply that the Half-Life engine still has some bugs in it. For me, another bad part has to deal with the ammo crates. Until FearFactory told me, I did not know that the crates could be broken open. I did not know that because in Half-Life, there were identical crates that could not be broken. So, for more then half of the episode, I was playing with little to no ammo making it much more challenging! However, besides those two minor faults, the Item/Foe Placement was perfect. Especially the alien placement which just like in Half-Life, had some major snark/headcrab scares in it. The weapon placement was also really nicely done and I could not find any mistakes there. To top things off there were many very, very, very, cool scripted sequences involving the scientists and the Barney’s!

Extra Stuff: Well an addon wouldn’t be an addon unless it had its share of extra stuff in it would it? Well USS Darkstar had monsters which never appeared in Half-Life, loads of new sounds, and already mentioned above, new textures.

I thought the new sounds in the game were really funny. Especially the new scientist voice included. Also, the new monsters were placed very nicely. Unfortunately, they did not attack. However, there was this weird transparent Alien Slave…. 

Conclusion: With almost no faults, this episode has raised the bar for all to come. Including Half-Life 2. I have no clue in my mind why Neil does not have a job at any gaming company because he definitely has all of the skills needed. Overall, I found this level more enjoying that Half-Life itself and it is a must get for every single person. It is worth the 12 meg download.

Plot: 100%
Theme: 100%
Architecture/Design: 98%
Texturing: 100%
Item/Foe Placement: 92%
Extra Stuff: 100%
OVERALL: 98%
Download It!  (PCGAMER) 

A picture of some of the new aliens included.	A new alien inside some sort of a containment tank.	Scenes like these are just another reason to download Darkstar.
One phrase comes to my mind while looking at this picture. OMFG!!!!	This cool "little" part of the map reminded me a lot of the SiN DM Level Spry.	I have never seen anything this cool in a game ever.