Well, that first media release showed a really rushed Power Up (and it's quite noticeable, that tesla pic should have never ever been released, in fact it was all orange textures the day before the media release, IIRC), the second one was more refined, but still quite crappy, with some textures...
The levels will look a lot better in later stages, since we're still waiting for props, decals, new textures... etc, but I'm glad you like the pictures.
I'm not really interested in any of the "new" HL2 mods, and I'm more interested in some of the existing Half-Life 1 mods being redone for the Source engine.
With redone I mean taking advantage of the new engine, although that would take, obviously, longer.