The enemy density in Tactical is supposed to make up for the fact that all the weapons are far, far more lethal and headshots are pretty much one shot, one kill.
However, the enemies’ weapons should definitely be findable.
Riot Act is pretty good… but I am really sick of prisons at this point… (CAN’T WAIT FOR ROCK2!!!@@#!!)
Hey thanks Anti-Bunny. I’d never heard of that one. I’ll add it to the list in the original post.
Little surprised no one listed Half-Life 2 Substance Gold. Granted, the fusion of Metal Gear characters into Half-Life is a bit silly, but the result is awesome. You switch between the various characters on the fly as the situation warrants. They all have their own individual special properties and powers, with a recharging power bar to use the powers. And while availability of weapons is roughly akin to that of normal Half-Life 2, every weapon behaves differently for every character, to the point of becoming entirely different weapons. The tradeoff is that the game has precisely two modes. “European Extreme”, which is a super-hard difficulty version of the standard HL2 singleplayer campaign, and “Gordon Tales”, which is a remix that’s also really hard. Admittedly, for people who can function at that level of challenge, it’s probably the best way to force you to make use of every one of the new tricks the mod includes, but I can’t hack it and wish there were easier settings so I could reap the cool without the dying every five feet.
This seems to have died, so I’m bumping it to say Minerva: Metastasis is absoutely fucking stunning. The first half is fine, but the second just schools Valve.
That might be unfair, as I believe he got a lot of help from them - but I think it’s less tied to its Halflifeness, can take liberties.
Just play it, it’s mental.
Sorry, I missed this post somehow until today. I have now added Half-Life 2 Substance Gold to the list of mods in the original post. Thanks for the heads up.
I keep thinking good first person shooters will dry up soon enough and I’ll get to try all the mods on that list that I haven’t had a chance to play yet.
Sebmojo: I played through most of the first episode of Minerva, and while it was pretty good, it wasn’t quite Valve quality. Nice to hear that it gets even better.
I hope that Black Mesa mod comes out sometime before DNF.
Just finished playing through Minerva Metastasis.
Fantastic mod, some really great level architecture towards the end, shows you corridor shooting does not have to be boring. A couple of puzzles seemed a little protracted, but it was a great effort overall. I had no idea there were single player mods with this kind of quality. Also, some of the music in it was very appropriate and well done. Also no gravity gun, so it guarantees that combat is a bit more straightforward and frantic.
Huh, I forgot that I’d posted in this thread. In fact, I read my post going “finally, someone else that’s heard of this mod”, and then I noticed my username next to it.
Alec Meer on rockpapershotgun called (in reference to M:M) the gravity gun a ‘quasi-albatross’, which i thought was quite insightful.
The second half of M:M is what i think Eps 1 and 2 should have been more like - much more focus on interesting tactical environments. There’s one place where you have two turrets and there’s a respawning flood of enemies that you can’t eliminate, and have to out manoeuver, for instance. And a lengthy passage that should be really annoying but completely isn’t (you’ll probably guess what it is if you’ve played it).
Yeah, no kidding. I don’t think its complete shovel-ware quite yet, but that mod has been in development for a long time now.
EDIT: I changed the original post again to include Portal maps. So far, I only have RenTest and the site Portal Maps. Most of the maps at Portal Maps are absolutely crap from the ones I’ve tried, so if anyone has tried some that are good, let us know, and I’ll add it to the list.
The new trailer for the Black Mesa mod looks pretty awesome. I’m still not holding my breath that the mod is coming out soon, considering they’ve been working on it since Half Life 2 was released, but it’s nice to see they’re still working on it and clearly making good progress.
They’re putting a lot of work into it though. It definitely looks like it’s going to be great…
Wow. That does look really good.
Holy. Shit.
Now if only Edge of Chaos could show that level of progress… :(
I’m confused, is Black Mesa just a remake of Half-Life 1?
It’s a remake of Half Life 1 using the Source engine. But it contains lots of enhancements, trying to use modern lighting techniques, a new music score, a Co-op mode that will let you play through the whole game in Co-op, etc. It’s kind of an enhanced remake.
Word.
IF these guys actually pull this off, I expect that this mod alone will sell a few 100k + copies of the Orange box just so past fans can opt in to play it.
Huge mods like this are an undertaking of epic proportions though. Getting that trailer out - alone - was a work of Herculean scope I am sure.
after its mention on kotaku, i’m installing the FakeFactory Cinematic mod v9 base, v9 HD, and v9.5. So far, I love the environmental effects and the hi-res textures are amazing. production quality really. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the new character models will be quite annoying. O well. The music is pretty good.
edit: nevermind about the models. the v.9 hd actually includes a “character pimper” that lets you choose which character models to use in which area of the game. alyx included.
Research and Development is out.
Really excellent mod, short (maybe 1+ hour) but very sweet puzzle-based physics game/mod based loosely on the HL2 world.