Grapple Mod - Half-Life 2

I haven’t played it yet, but since it says you are playing a “familiar soldier” I get the impression that the player is supposed to be Adrian Shephard from Opposing Force.

In Opposing Force the barnacle tongue would stick to organic Xen growth stuff that started to grow all over the facility during the later stages of the disaster. It is conceivable that the portal storms that covered Earth with headcrabs and antlions and leeches etc also caused the same Xen organic growth to crop up in places. If the mod isn’t set in City 17, then it is conceivable this area is infested with this Xen growth stuff, and the Combine haven’t bothered to clean it up since it doesn’t pose any sort of threat. Until the G-Man brings out barnacle-grappler extrordinaire Adrian Shephard, then the Xen growth becomes an extreme liability!

It might have helped if the weird “gel” looked more like the Xen organic stuff from Half-Life and Opfor. Perhaps textures are not the modder’s strong point and so the modder was limited to using existing Half-Life 2 materials. So the gel was the closest thing. Similarly, I guess the modder lacked the skills to give the barnacle a tongue like in opfor, so had to settle for a beam effect. A good tonue effect would require more complicated coding and a modeller.

Anyway - the mystery of the strange gel is solved! And I’ve got to give the modder MASSIVE kudos for finally coming up with a reason why G-Man would bring Adrian Shephard out of stasis. There has already been a HL2 mod where you were Shephard, and there have also been several failed attempts to create continuations of Opposing Force. In fact, I myself led a project to create a sequel to Opposing Force, called Critical Mass. But all of these mods - my own included! - struggled to give a good explanation for why G-Man would use Shephard rather than Freeman, given that G-Man only grabbed Shephard on a whim and didn’t really have future plans for him. But in this mod it makes sense - there’s a region infested by the Xen growth stuff, and Shephard has demonstrated he can use that to his advantage. A specialized mission for a certain individual. Very nice.

Is the FileFront download link to this mod working?

The images made me to download this mod and all I can say is that is very good and I really loved the new gun

This mod shows how important the presentation can be to a concept (or, in this case, how dodgy presentation can remove a lot of its effect). Firstly, the grapple itself could have done with a lot more work; part of what made the Opposing Force grapple so cool was the slurping sounds it made, here it just fires some laser beam thing that looks like it was hacked together in a few minutes, there are also other technical issues with it, like the fact it is labeled as the gravity gun on the weapon select. Plus you can’t eat stuff with it, unlike in OF, which also removes some of the personality it had there. It should have had everything the original version did effect-wise and more, but it doesn’t even match it.

The grapple points are pretty weak too, unlike the natural place the alien growths in Opposing Force had the grapples here are some indistinct jelly stuff that does not fit the enviroments at all.

However, the actual grapple mechanics are quite well realised, it takes a little practice (and I think there should have been a few more safe tutorial areas to do so), but it’s a pretty accurate remake of the Opposing Force grapple physics.

However, that leads on to another thing, as, despite being the selling point of the pack, the grapple is very underused, at least 90% of the pack after the tutorial is the just standard HL2 gameplay. I’m sure a couple of the larger areas could have been gutted and rearranged a little (with barricades or collapsing geometry) to merge the combat and grappling together and make it a constant presence in the pack, rather than just something you bring out every so often.

The HL2 gameplay I mentioned is generally pretty well done though, with some nice combat scienarios (although it’s impossible to change the difficulty so you are stuck on medium) and ambushes. The exception is the climax to the Helicopter encounter, which is set-up extremely well (in fact, it’s one of the few memorable “boss” encounters I’ve seen in HL2) until the end of the battle, where it hides behind the building and does nothing else other than pop out every few seconds, meaning you have to slowly grind its absurd amount of health down despite it being no threat to you at all.

Architecture is pretty weak, and another area that let down the presentation, there is the occasional atmospheric area, but it’s mostly pretty cubic with simple lighting and few other details.

Considering the story says you are Shepard this isn’t really built on at all, and Shepard having thoughts to himself at some points doesn’t help with giving you the impression you are him. Plus it pretty much just ends right in the middle of things. Also, at one point you are called a Colonel, when Shepard is a Corporal.

Despite all this I have to recommend it, simply because it brings something new to the game, and is short enough for it to not outstay its welcome despite the various flaws. However, I REALLY hope the team will improve their skills and make something that utilises the mechanics much better and has much better presention, or even remake this pack to a much higher standard (this is one pack where that seems appropriate).

BTW, where is the 50th ball on the bonus level, I’ve looked everywhere I can find, and even noclipped, and still can’t find it. Speaking of that, the bonus level is a great surprise and pretty much the only part where you really get to play with the grapple’s capabilities (which is kind of bad, as it should have just been a fun bonus level like the title says, rather than the main showcase of the packs new feature and the only real place you get to properly use it).

Loved the mod, but kept thinking that the barnacle was underused. There is definitely some fun to be had here, and I am hoping that the feedback we give the developer of this mod will encourage rather than discourage. The comments that Phillip and others made I agree with.

Rather than an orange patch, it would be great if only certain surfaces, or some kind of organic growth could be used to swing from.
The tongue beam looks bad, it would be better if it a real barnacle tongue texture could be used.
The tongue should be able to grab boxes to ‘eat’ them like in O.F.
Finally, if there is another mod from this developer, I would love to play it, the concepts are solid, they just need more polish.

The first maps are fairly standard for a first effort at a HL2 add-on, worth playing if you’re bored and waiting for Black Mesa Source or one of the others in progress.

The final map is a lot of fun tho’, sort of a Portal-type brain-teaser. Using only a Portal gun disquised as an OpFor barnacle, you bounce all over the map trying to collect 50 glowing balls, most of which are floating high up in hard-to-reach places.

Anyway, if you like Portal you’ll like this one. I got the impression that the 1st maps were made as an afterthought.

Anyone know where the 50th ball is? I’ve looked everywhere but can’t find it.

After an indifferent start when I considered not bothering with this mod, it settled down to a descent play and what I thought at first was a bit of a gimmick proved to be a good additional tool to the HL2 array of weapons, although the grapple is not a weapon has such. Then just as I thought the game was developing nicely it ended.