Hello. Somehow I haven’t done anything good for a long time, and in general. There was no particular reason, because everything is either too far from the release, or so small that it’s difficult to talk about it at all. But then I came across one candidate who interested me. More details below.
Hello, here we are again with that lazy guy who writes and writes something down once every 3 months. In fact, during this time I managed to create content for several such posts, but then I looked through them and… I realized that I needed to do something new!
And the new one was already lazy, although the review of Mental Omega still needs to be completed… yes… oh yes, happy belated New Year everyone and the upcoming Jesus Day! I hope so far the coming.
And so as not to delay it for too long, I’m moving closer to our guest today.
It just so happened that making modifications that brought back the style of Half-Life 2, which it adhered to even at the beta stage, became very profitable in terms of a very wide audience.
“I’ll apologize in advance for the slightly shitty quality of the screenshots, since after recording I immediately demolished the mod with the game, because I was running out of space on the hard drive – I had to rip it out of the video”
Our guest today is one of these, while also being a long-term construction project – work on the mod began at the end of 2007, authored by a domestic mod builder under the nickname LexxoR. Such a protracted deadline can be explained by the fact that this is the author’s first major work, and, let’s say, he didn’t “swing” to such small heights.
The point is that to the author the final version of the universe that we see in the original seemed too light for the survivor of the attack of a huge army of aliens.
And therefore, taking as a basis such levels from the original game as Sand Traps and Nova Prospect, Lexor set out to either create his own version with blackjack and whores, or simply transport the player to places that were critically affected by the parasitic behavior of the Alliance.
As a result, there are two maps in the mod – the Wasteland itself, which here is actually more similar to the Wasteland than in the original, and the Prison Yard, located on a hill from this very wasteland. By the way, the modification is called Depot, and although we see the Depot itself, they won’t let us get into it. I’ll tell you why later.
Personally, I also divide https://redkingscasino.co.uk/ the campaign into two parts, but a little differently – into boring and not at all boring. Let’s start with the first one. Since the mod essentially has no plot, well, seriously, not a single line – the player simply wakes up with a meager supply of health in the cave of antlions, while being fully armed. However, this is not something that is a minus, since if you miss the moment, you can die in the first thirty seconds after the start of the game.
Then comes exactly what makes this part boring. The author added several tasks to the game using a grav gun and feropods, but not only did he not hint about them to the player, but simply made all the functional objects merge with the game environment.
For example, the second minute after the start of the game. Can you guess where to go?? Yeah, screw it. You see here a piece of metal that needs to be pulled in order for the path to open further. No? And I don’t see. And he is, and right here.
Let’s move on. Dreadful, rusty submarine deck. And here it can be really uncomfortable, but exactly until the first dullness. There is such a door that… well, how can I say it – if I hadn’t been running with the gravitational gun pull button held down, I wouldn’t even have known that it could be knocked out. Despite the fact that other such doors are tightly fixed.
/Try to find a door here!/
Okay, we survived the boat, let’s move on. Immediately after this and, I admit, a very good jumping exercise, we are thrown onto the dried bottom of the sea with antlions. And no, if you think that in the original there was enough space before the maneuver, then here there is simply a sea of it (sorry for the pun. It happened by accident, I’m serious). I wandered around for about five minutes, fighting off the bugs in the hope of finding the right path, and when I thought I had found it, it turned out that in this place I had to find the right path, because otherwise you would return back to the lions!
And yes, I’m telling you right away. Don’t try to check if this mine works after all these years.
Just don’t try, I’m serious.
/Watch the video, find out what happens in 3 seconds :3/
However, here we come to the end of the boring part of the modification. I note that that part lasted about 20-30 minutes, depending on the bluntness. But, if you overpower her, then it really makes sense to go through the mod to the end, since from the battle with Myrmidont (that’s the kosher name for the King of Antlions, or simply “oh my god, what a big and scary crap. 11”) the map seems to be transformed. In fact, she will be transformed after the battle, but since I spent all my ammunition, and I had to fuck Myrmidon with a crowbar, like the terrible Gordon Freeman, I also remembered this moment.
After the player receives the pheropods, these sand insects become our friends, and, having freely risen a little higher, the player has a high probability of getting stuck in one place for a long time. And this is not a minus.
The thing is that from this moment on the author’s design skills are rapidly revealed. If before we only saw rocks and sand, now we see even more rocks and sand, but damn, it looks seriously cool! The higher you rise, the more you want to ignore the soldiers who have already come running in response to the noise, and just enjoy the scenery.
Moreover, if you take into account the incredibly beautiful Mission Improbable, which, after the final release, reached the apogee of beautiful views and chic design, here it is a clear example of how terrible things can bewitch.
/This is where I got stuck for a long time. Honestly./
I admit honestly – being a person with a very remarkable imagination, not every mod, or game in general, can present me with a situation where I want to stop and just look into the distance. But this one turned out to be just that.
The author seriously tried to convey “that same” world of Half-Life 2. As soon as you climb higher, all doubts about your location immediately disappear – if earlier there were doubts about the fact that this area used to be the seabed – now it becomes completely clear.
“Hey, I passed there!"- you exclaim, seeing a rusted submarine. Or a huge pipeline that used to pump the necessary resources to the city. What’s that in the distance?? Tap? Am I really that close to the shore??
And it’s impossible not to pay attention to the huge bridge stretching into the fog, along which the Alliance carries the so-called “valuable cargo”. And over there is the prison yard, with surveillance towers. Maybe I can get a better view from the lighthouse? Damn, what a tall staircase. Damn, everything here is so huge.
LexxoR clearly suffers from gigantism, although in this case this can only be called a positive property – any point where you pass is clearly visible on the map. Here you actually go through all the distance that you were supposed to go through in order to end up where you were supposed to be.
And despite all this, exactly two feelings do not leave you – loneliness and hopelessness.
And both of them are caused by the same factor – the environment. Such huge locations, from which it’s as if every living thing has been sucked out. What can one person do? One.
/Without half a minute the end of the modification. I guess it was worth it/
These are roughly the thoughts that arise when you wander around a location. But you can’t stand still all the time – and so, shooting off the guards, under the cover of antlions you run into the courtyard of the prison. Here the gameplay changes radically – there won’t be so many gorgeous landscapes and exciting
spirit of scale. But there will be action. Lots of action. Lots of cool and well-choreographed action.
If in the original, during the assault on Nova Prospect, the player still felt like he was in the center of events, the antlions followed him like a fairy-tale pied piper – then in the chapter “Prison Yard” the author decided to change the concept of the action, while making the chapter more effective than if he had adhered to the original method. Here the antlions themselves constantly go on the attack, and the prison guards are more concentrated on them than on the player. You never stop feeling like a small thorn that no one cares about – yet adrenaline still flows into your blood. You run through crowds of confused guards, you see sentinels firing from tower machine guns, and somewhere in the sky a stormtrooper is flying, which, in principle, has absolutely nothing to do with you running around the yard.
And, as the genre expects, it ends almost out of the blue. To be more precise, literally at the entrance to the Depot itself, the screen slowly goes dark and an imperishable inscription appears in front of the player
"To be continued. »
To be honest, maybe it’s for the better. With all the advantages of the mod, rough edges are immediately visible, sometimes exits beyond the map become visible, and minor bugs appear. However, even so, this does not change the fact that the “Depot” modification is a kind of outlet, a New Year’s gift to everyone who wanted to get a little of “that” Half-Life 2.
And I admit honestly, despite numerous ideas, this is one of the first major mods in this style that survived to release. And this adventure is not over yet – I personally wish the author to gain experience and take into account all the disadvantages in order to remove them in future chapters of the modification. In this case, does it make sense to wait for a continuation?? Well of course it has.
By the way, there is another domestic modification, the author of which intended to focus on the atmosphere of hopelessness and loneliness, without going beyond the world of the original universe. But about that another time – and Freeman213 was with you, good luck to everyone, bye everyone.