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Editor’s Note: With the economy tanking and the holiday season breaking the bank, Daniel’s found some amazing free-to-play Half-Life 2 mods to help keep you from hemorrhaging money. I’ve checked out four of his six recommendations myself, and I have to say I was thoroughly impressed by all of them. -James
I love Half-Life 2 mods, but you won’t find me spending much time with Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, or any of the other popular multiplayer games — I’m more of a single-player kind of guy.
In my search for single-player mods, I stumbled upon a handful that are on par with full retail releases, and I decided to share them with you.
Note: You must own Half-Life 2 or another Source engine game to play these mods.
Specifically, one that doesn't add any other guns, graphics, or features to the game. The only iron sights mods I've been able to find come bundled with a bunch of other changes that I don't like. I'm not looking to overhaul the game, I just want to be able to aim down the sights. Iron sights and leaning would pretty much break the game, but there's this crazy mod I love called SMOD Redux that does it. It adds those 2 features among a bajillion other dumb things, like UMD launcher PSP, bullet time, Dark Messiah style physics-enabled kick, and explosives littered in cutscenes that would break the game progression if you don't catch them before the NPC's bump into them. A Half-Life 2: MMod (HL2:MMOD) Mod in the Pistol category, submitted by ArpeekA. Hope it can be of use to other people who want to use this addon with iron sights:).
Most single-player mods fall into one of two categories: expansions on Valve’s existing universe and wholly original concepts (also known as total conversions). Let’s start with the former….
Minerva Metastasis — Adam Foster
Minerva Metastasis is probably the most popular and highly praised Half-Life 2 mod. The guy who made it, Adam Foster, was actually hired by Valve. Why? Professional-grade level design.
The entire game is a linear adventure that takes place on a tiny island, but despite its linearity, it feels like it’s happening in a real, dynamic space.
You play as a captured Combine soldier pitted against his comrades by a mysterious woman named Minerva. At first, you get the sense that she is pushing you through a rat maze, but the game opens up as the player’s changing relationship with Minerva becomes the focal point.
It’s short — three to four hours, so I don’t want to give too much away — but Foster manages to use the familiar tools of Half-Life 2 to create something that approaches the quality of an actual Valve product. Even better, he mostly avoids the load times that have plagued every official Half-Life release.
Minerva Metastasis is a textbook lesson in minimalistic game design. It shows how preparing the same, old ingredients in a new way can yield interesting results.
Rock 24 — Henley Bailey and Richard Acherki
Rock 24 probably gets my vote for the most underrated Half-Life 2 mod. It was made by former professional level designers who applied their skills toward a pet project they clearly loved.
2 Iron Distance
While most of the Half-Life 2 mods new chunks of the timeline, Rock 24 doesn’t really connect to anything significant in the main story. It’s a one-off adventure starring Gordon Freeman.
Your job is to rescue a fellow scientist held in a mountain prison called Rock 24. Throughout six chapters, Gordon and the scientist escape the prison as it collapses around them. Of course, you fight off evacuating Combine, too. It’s a lot like the Nova Prospekt chapter in Half-Life 2.
Great set pieces, a fun narrative, and halfway decent voice acting (by fans — be lenient) tie Rock 24 together. The whole thing culminates in one of the biggest and most intense battles in any Half-Life game, official or otherwise.
Research and Development — Marcello Bortolino
Research and Development hit the scene just recently, and some are calling it the best single-player Half-Life 2 mod ever, even pinning it above Minerva Metastasis. Those people may be right. It is definitely one of the smartest and most inventive mods I’ve seen.
Basically, it turns Half-Life 2 into an action-puzzle game. Fighting your way through Combine, you escape from the lab where the gravity gun was first created. The campaign never gives you any firearms; you’ll run the whole gamut of the Half-life 2 rouges gallery, but instead of blasting your way through the usual suspects and obstacles, you’ll need to think your way around them. All you have is a crowbar, a gravity gun, and one antlion minion.
Research and Development should definitely be near the top of your list of Half-Life 2 mods to check out, especially if you’re looking for something a little different from the original.
If you’re sick of the Half-Life universe, don’t fret. Try one of these:
Total Conversions
NeoTokyo — NeoTokyo Team
NeoTokyo is the only multiplayer game on my list. For those who follow such things, NeoTokyo was featured on the 1UP Show years ago…and it seemed to turn into vaporware. Well, it rematerialized recently and was actually released back in April.
Basically, NeoTokyo is a cross between Counter-Strike and Ghost in the Shell. It’s a team-based, tactical shooter that combines realistic lethality with a cool, sleek aesthetic.
A couple of bullets are enough to kill you, and you don’t respawn, so most matches are really a few minutes of strategic maneuvering punctuated by a quick firefight. Because of the somewhat slow pacing, players don’t seem to work alone. Even without voice chat, they generally form groups.
NeoTokyo is the only Source engine shooter I’ve played that features leaning and iron sight aiming; it discards leftover rounds when you reload, as well. With a cloaking device in addition to all of this, the game plays like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six dipped in a bucket of 90s-era anime.
NeoTokyo’s presentation and soundtrack are amazing. It is one of the coolest, most unique multiplayer creations I’ve seen.
Dear Esther — The Chinese Room
Dear Esther isn’t really a game at all, but it deserves mention for what it does with the interactive medium. It’s a short story told via the Source engine; a narrative experiment from a group of British college students.
You play as an unnamed man traversing a deserted north-Atlantic island. While you’re moving about, a narrator reads a series of letters addressed to someone named Esther. The letters touch on the different landmarks of the island as you encounter them, and the effect is genuinely creepy.
You won’t interact with anyone, or even really doing much, but that’s OK. Dear Esther is all about observing. It starts on a sad, despondent note and gets very dark as you discover the underbelly of the island. The narrative gives the story just enough context for you to feel its weight.
Korsakovia — The Chinese Room
Korsakovia is a sort of spiritual successor to Dear Esther — made by the same team, with the same dark tone, but as more of an actual game.
The result: a horror mod very much in the vein of Silent Hill 2. In Korsakovia, you travel through the shattered mind of a man, named Christopher, as a psychiatrist tries to prod his mania.
Half Life 2 Iron Sights Mod L4d2
Armed with only a flashlight and a crowbar, you move through Koraskovia’s eerily bland, moribund hallways. Enemies often attack unseen and seem completely unfazed by the player’s reprisals.
Like Silent Hill, atmosphere makes Korsakovia great.. Psychological interviews work as a sort of narration and really add to the moodiness. The game never lets up — it just gets more tense as reality begins to unwind and eventually shatter.
2 Iron Golf Club
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