Mod Analysis: Thunders Leaves - Become A Living Tesla Coil

Jarek Gaming reviews a cool Halflife 2 mod - "Thunder's Leaves" that adds new weapons, NPC's, and gameplay elements.

"Bisounours Party" HL2 mod on RTSL

Saw this map called Bisounours Party on RTSL.

Colorful map with rainbows and carebears.  Visually interesting and eye-catching; have not played yet.

Pretty colours.

New COOP mod for HL2 - Black Snow

Just discovered this - A COOP mod for HL2 called BlackSnow.  It looks pretty cool!  Haven't had time myself to play it yet, but it looks to be a high quality mod.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-snow-coop

Blackmesa Fallback

This is a pretty neat mod.  It takes place in Black Mesa and puts you in the role of the soldiers sent to kill some scientists.  There's a mixture of new content along with textures from Halflife and models from Counterstrike Source.

A friendly chopper attacking hostiles.

The first third of the game has you entering various areas with your fellow squadmates.  There are no puzzles in this section of the game.  It mostly consists of 'missions' that have you opening a door to a building, clearing out an area of enemies, and heading back to your vehicle to proceed to the next area.  There are about five of these missions and I thought they were quite boring, and I was about to quit.  Then the real fun part of the game begins.  It plays quite a bit like Opposing Force, with exploration, puzzles, and fighting new enemies.

Two quick HL2 mod reviews

I just played two HL2 mods that I think are worth mentioning despite my rants about them.

The first was was called "Final Project Diary", by Leon.  The mappack is long, contains new weapons, sound and music, and a fresh storyline.  The plot is interesting, in that there really isn't one, except you're an addicted HL2 fan making a map pack play-testing the maps you built, with levels ranging from haunted houses, to zombie infestations, to wierd hallucination scenarios, to skyscrapers.  Some maps look good, a few look awful, but overall, a good mappack.

It suffers from the usual disease "Leon-itus," that is, a bunch of obvious invisible walls, cutscenes that freeze the player and make you die, and annoying 'stealth' section.  You'll lose count how many times you have your weapons taken away only to have to re-acquire them.

One thing I liked was the option to choose an 'easy' or 'hard' path at the beginning of each section. The ending was funny and nonsensical, and I'm glad the author chose not to take the mod seriously, because I was starting to get really irritated towards the end due the faults mentioned above.

The next is a mod called "1187".  It's a total conversion that's made like a sequel to Halflife 1 with seemingly little reguard to HL2 (which is a nice, fresh idea, in my opinion).  You start out in an apartment (seriously people, apartments and jail cells are the two most cliched map starts in mod history) and meet a new friend named John.  He is more annoying than Alyx, complains alot, has an annoying voice, and is really worthless.  He isn't Urkle-annoying, but I hope in 1187: Episode 2 they tone down his chatter.

E.Y.E - A new Source game coming soon?

Check this out.  A source engine first-person RPG.  Watch the video on the main page, it looks pretty awesome.

Another MustPlay map for HalfLife, Episode 2

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/research-and-development-half-life-2-ep2/

Research and Development is a puzzle-centric mod for Half-Life 2: Episode Two featuring an unarmed player but plenty of violent mayhem.

 

The player has NO weapons and there is no shooting at all. However that doesn’t mean you can’t kill things, but 95% of the mod is about solving the puzzles that are presented to you in a very natural way.

Level design is Valve-style quality, clever puzzles, and interesting combat with no guns.  Very good use of scripting and a fun blend of humor to top it off.  This could be map of the year.

Humorous Garry's Mod parody

JBMod was originally made because the nerds on HL2World wanted to get back to making sexual poses with the ragdolls in Half-Life 2, which they weren't able to do anymore since the physgun had been removed from the final game. Both prior to the release of Half-Life 2, and after the release of JBMod, just about every screenshot involved Alyx Vance.

http://www.jbmod.com/

If you're still playing that oudated Garry's mod 10, then you truly are not living life to its fullest. Become a man and grow a sack, comb your pubic hair, have lumber for breakfast and download JBMod TODAY!!

It will bring pride to your family name!

Gateways + The Great Forever Tommorrow

I am not sure how I missed these two great mods, but they're really fun :D  It's very Doom-like in that you have to kill tons of enemies but the levels in the first one are very basic.  I recommend you play 'Gateways' before The Great Forever Tommorrow.

“This is a single player Half Life 2 mod, set entirely outside of City 17. It features6 levels of action, exploring a range of locations (from an underground facility to fighting alongside the Combine on an alien world to floating color-coordinated cubes), non-linear level progression (you start near a nexus of gateways, and may choose the order in which to progress through the levels), a musical score (a total of 8 tracks), some new abstract textures and challenging gameplay. This mod is meant for those who have already completed Half Life 2″
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/gateways-half-life-2/

What I find most interesting is the "Nexus" map.  It consists of a center with power-ups and health, with portals that lead to other themed maps.  When you complete a theme level you are warped back to the center of the nexus until all levels are beaten which unlocks the final level.  The music is really catchy.  One of my all time favorites.

After you play that, play the sequel, The Great Forever Tommorrow.  It's more linear but the graphics, levels, and presentation are improved.  There are new weapons, more colorful levels, and slightly deeper plot:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/the-great-forever-tomorrow-half-life-2-ep2/

Both mods were developed by Kiwi Productions.