New Doom WAD; Custom music replacement

But not just any custom midi replacement mod.  Brand new tracks created from the ground up, featuring some pretty known names, including new tracks by Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem and other Apogee games musician: Lee Jackson!

Ultimate Midi Pack for Ultimate Doom. Description: A community music replacement for the original Doom.

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.

HalfLife 1 mod - Echoes"

Halflife 1 mod - "Mod of the Year" according to Jared from Subway Dragon.  See his review here.  Another Black Mesa/Halflife 1 mod but with the added bonus of assets from Halflife 2.

ModDB - Official ModDB with latest version
RTSL - Alternative download link with mostly positive reviews
ModCorner overview

….and full playthrough below.

HL2 - "Hunt Down The Freeman"

Really bad commercialized Halflife 2 mod: "Hunt Down the Freeman".  It costs $30 $17, but from what I read, it seems there are better Halflife 2 mods out there.  Why does VALVe and Steam allow their IP to be raped and humiliated like this?  Oh yeah, because money lol.  You can buy it here.  I will personally buy it when the price goes below $4, which I feel will happen in the next Christmas sale.

Also playthrough video which I have not bothered watching:

HL2 Mod Review: ICE Expansion - IT HAS PENGUINS!

Jarek4GamingDragon reviews HL2 mod "ICE Expansion."

Wolfenstein3d Source and Halflife 2 de-make

A remake and de-make...

ReWolfenstein 3d - A source mod

Halflife 2 - a "De-make" on GoldSource

Nostalgia - The Lost Episodes of Duke Nukem 3d

One of the first mods I found myself repeatedly playing was a Total Conversion for Duke Nukem 3D called "The Lost Episodes of Duke Nukem" back in the late 90's.  It was more a series of maps and some slight enemy sprite re-colorizations than a real TC.  Most of the level design was good, original and creative with levels revolving around a theme or some kind of wacky gimmick - ie a level revolving around a bottomless pit with a Buddha temple theme, or another level where Duke walks into a growth ray and the level takes place in a miniaturized city, and even a level that takes place in a Command and Conquer Nod base.

The one thing memorable that really stuck out about this mod was the awesome custom midi soundtrack created by the author, Mark Hadley.  If you were ever a fan of the soundtrack for Rise of the Triad you may enjoy this one, although most of the tracks are roughly 45-60 seconds long loops and could be slightly repetitive if you're lost on a level trying to figure out a puzzle.

The name Mark Hadley stuck with me and I always wondered if he ever created more music or got into videogame production - and yes - the Mark Hadley behind "Slenderman" games was the same guy that created this TC.

Hadley apparently worked on other mods which I never knew about until now including Mercs 2 and Murder: The EDF Conspiracy.  I never played these but I am interested in looking at them now after not having touched Duke 3d in over 15 years.

Detailed info on this TC at Duke 3d Wiki page.  Link to download here at ModDB (which, curiously, for the length of the campaign and content, it only weighs in at 419kB!)

Classic HL Mod: Absolute Redemption

Really old mod.  Can't seem to remember playing this but it came out in 1999 and it is touted by mod aficionados as a classic, so I dunno - judge for yourself.

Download via Planetphillip

Halflife Wikia Entry

A cute HL mod - Minimicus

A short, clever Halflife mod called minimicus - where you play a scientist who steps into a shrinking ray.  It's kind of old, but it's still one of my favorites just because it doesn't try too hard and it's funny.  It can be beaten in under fifteen minutes.

Official ModDB page
Planet Phillip Review with download

Sweet Half-Life - A long HL1 Mod

This is a pretty lengthy mod.  It's long, it's difficult, and for some reason, easily forgettable in my book, especially after playing hundreds of Half-Life mods through the years.  But this one has new weapons, new enemies and new code.  Normally that is what attracts me to playing new mods - seeing new content, but this mod came out long after HL2 was already out, so I was already burned out on Black Mesa-themed mods.  But I appreciate the effort that went into after all these years later, and it has some funny bits of humor thrown in near the end.

Here is a speed run, where, I'm pretty sure, the guy must have played through the whole game in slow motion and sped it up to normal speed.

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

Residual Life

Another Black Mesa simulator, but this is actually fun.  Level design is true to the original Halflife and there was enough interesting things to see in the intro that made me keep playing through.  Fun mod, one new enemy type, no new weapons, and good, consistant level design.  There were a few memorable combat areas and clever puzzles. All in all, a good, solid Halflife mod.

A short review - Vengeance

I know I haven't updated in a while, but I've had this Halflife mod installed in my Steam folder for a while now, called Vengeance.  It's just another HL1 mod, set in Black Mesa, that is no different than any other mod of similar nature.

It starts out with text that fades in and out, along with camera cuts that fade in and out.  The text is in broken English, and the title states that this is 'Episode 2' or 'Part 2,' I don't remember.  My gameplay experience consisted of waking up in a dorm room or something, walking into a train car, then seeing a three minute cutscene of a train slowly making it's way across an underground lake, and finally I got out.  I walked my way into a series of rooms with bad design, came across a very narrow hallway with a scientist walking through it, and my adventure ended when said scientist plowed right through me, squashing me into chunks of meat.

So why am I bothering to showcase this?  I have no idea, but after months without playing a Halflife mod, I thought I might as well.  Maybe it gets good after that, but probably not.  I think what probably drew me in was the 62 mb filesize.  I expected maybe it would have some interesting music in it, or some new enemy models or weapons, but nope.  There's about 23 maps about 3 megabytes each.  I hate to judge a map based on a short playtime, but I think I just lost the will to play any mod that is set in Black Mesa or that doesn't contain new assets.

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/vengeance-half-life/

"The Evil Thing," by Nathan Ruck

Following PlanetPhillip's 100 Day's of Halflife Maps, an old Halflife map pack titled "The Evil Thing" appeared.  I remember this map pack very vaguely, but I remember that it was funny and the unique ending.  I remember it was one of the first custom maps I played for Halflife and I thought it was original and fun at the time.

I guess I must have played hundreds of Halflife maps that are basically set in the same setting (IE: desert, lab, etc...) and I just grew tired of the same thing because I found this mapset hasn't aged well.  The humor seems very "Beavis and Butthead"-like, the environment is pretty bland (lacks ambient sound effects; lots of silence), and even on easy mode I found myself with very little health left and having to fight rooms full of grunts that kill you with three bullets.

I just wanna post this here because it is one of the first Halflife maps I've played and it inspired me, at the time, to start learning VALVe Hammer editor.  Oddly enough, after mapping for years, I haven't released a single map to date.  On a related note, you should check out "Little Skyscraper of Horrors," and "Heart of Evil," two very good map packs, the latter being really long, and both by the author of "The Evil Thing."

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.

School Shooter North American Tour 2012

How about a school shooting mod?  Seems lame they'd do something like this for the sole purpose of getting attention, but I guess any publicity is good publicity in the world of videogame mods.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/school-shooter-north-american-tour-2012

It's been done before, anyways.  Anyone remember Pupils of Cyberdemon's School Doom 2?  It was a pretty enjoyable Doom 2 total conversion, and it was made a few years before Columine.

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.

"Carbon Stars..."

Tom Kranis recently released his mappack containing rejected levels and cutscenes.  I was first made aware of Tom Kranis when he released his very interesting Halflife 2 map entitled "A Dog Was Hit In The Head With An Ax".  Of the cutscenes, included are scenes of Dog getting hit in the head with a BSP-designed axe, Dr. Breen giving his famous 'Carbon Stars' speech in various locales, and lots of other stuff.  If anything, I'd say that 90 percent of the mappack is rubbish, but it's definitely worth checking out if you're into mapping as there are really cool effects, gameplay concepts and ideas that have not been seen in any other Halflife 2 mod (remote controlled scientists, an automatic oil drum launcher, npc who follows you and wears a machinegun on his head that you can control, just to name a few) in addition to humourous cinematography (most of which I've recorded so you don't have to go through them).

Be sure to watch this video walkthrough of "A Dog Was Hit In The Head With An Axe."  Worth checking out if you can't bring yourself to finish the map all the way through.

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!