The Citizen is set parallel to the events of the original Half-Life 2.
The player takes the role of an ordinary man, pushed over the edge by the oppressive regime controlling his life.
His home trashed, his family dead, The Citizen leaves his apartment for the last time. He seeks new friends, and a way to help the human resistance to smash the iron grip of the Combine. What follows is a winding tale of betrayal, determination and grief.
Many obstacles lie in his path which require a sleek combination of agility, stealth, intelligence, and sheer violence to overcome.
- Title: The Citizen
- File Name: hl2-sp-the-citizen-1.1.rar
- Size : 110.09Mb
- Author: Chris Fox AKA Playbus and Jose M Ameyugo AKA Kasperg
- Date Released: 21 February 2008
Post-release comments start at comment 17. All comments need to be visible before this link will work.
Version 1.1 comments start at comment 255
Click on the thumbnails below to open a medium size image. WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers!
Here are all the videos in the walkthrough series that will provide players with the solutions to all the Easter Eggs. It won’t reveal the bonus sequence though. They were recorded by a user called HL2Mod.


















































































24 December 2008 at 3:46 pm
In anticipation of The Citizen 2, I decided to go back and play the first one again. Unfortunately while doing so I discovered I never finished it, although I enjoyed the gameplay. Seems I’m stuck at the part where you have to put the Elite Combine suit on — because I put it on and then can’t see a thing. I tried the “ent_fire eliteoverlay stopoverlays” that Kaspberg suggested, but no luck. Any help would be appreciated.
01 January 2009 at 6:28 pm
The best option is to go into the following folder, where you installed the mod:
SourceMods/The Citizen/materials/citizen
and rename the file called:
eliteoverlay2.vmt
to
eliteoverlay.vmt
And that should sort things out.
Since version 1.1, this problem only happens for people running the mod in DirectX8 mode. So you could always just play in DirectX7 mode, if your system can’t handle 9.
DX9 mode has no problems with the overlay.
24 January 2009 at 7:13 pm
The Citizen; without a shadow of a doubt, is one of the most downloaded mods and accessed by users the world’s Steam. I could not fail to write a review of one of the most acclaimed mods by players of both Half-Life 2, such as First Person Shooter in general. Read this comprehensive review very carefully, and understand why a simple mod can be as significant and successful for the world of games.
The Citizen is a mod (modification of a game, in which case, is the Half-Life 2) launched less than 1 year after the worldwide success of following the complex story of Gordon Freeman: The Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The mod was the same reference the game launched in 2004, bringing its unmatched graphics produced by the Source Engine. The focus of The Citizen is the fact the player can finish the Half-Life 2 and its episodes (Episode One and Two) in the skin of one of the rebels, who have become slaves because of the invasion of alien race and that the mod Combine, fighting fighting strength of the Combine in City 17. At the time of the events of Half-Life 2.
The user of Steam to download this mod can play in different maps of the Half-Life 2, while in the same city in which case the plot of the game. New maps were produced by the mod team, showing the same 17 that the City Valve showed the Half-Life 2. Users who play The Citizen can have fun on a single server itself Single-player and can destroy all weapons available to the Empire in the chaotic Combine City 17.
And the incredible quality of The Citizen not to there, some models to source materials of Half-Life 2: Episode One and Two were added to the mod, giving more royalty and developments in the Source Engine graphics. Unlike many other mods approved by fans already registered with Steam, The Citizen is now updated with the graphics of the game’s official Valve. He was not abandoned by his team of production and development. What advantage, because of The Citizen be below the other mods already produced until now.
Unlike Half-Life 2, in The Citizen, the player can not be in the skin of Gordon Freeman, Alyx and neither of the other important characters, like Dr. Kleiner and Barney Calhoun, for example. As with Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, drawing the Combine, the player may only be the rebels, who – following the same pattern in the history of Half-Life 2 and Episodes – are allies of Freeman, Alyx and Calhoun, and that have the same goal in three games: the final destruction of the alien race Combine.
Half-Life 2 in general (including episodes) has not been any drastic change to be included in The Citizen. The production team of the mod was very faithful to the original content of Half-Life 2. The weapons remain the same, for example. Since the classic Crowbar, to the RPG (Bazooka) were added to the mod. The audio from The Citizen is also identical to the three games of the series Half-Life 2, since the low perception of sounds (such as shooting the gun, for example), even the songs that were included in the soundtrack of the game.
The Citizen is not just a mod done by any one team that has in mind only the fame and money. Only by playing it, you feel that the mod has had much work to be produced correctly. The team probably shed much sweat make it 100% and send it to the Steam. And remember that only the most mods voted by users of Steam part of its list of games. That is, only the quality of mods go Steam, and even then, it is extremely difficult to be partner of Steam. The mods bands are like, only the good quality can contract with a record label.
Without doubt, The Citizen is one of the most acclaimed mods by players, because they include the most sensational of the game successful Valve Software: Half-Life 2.
(Entered for the Orange Box Prize)
25 January 2009 at 1:13 pm
Well, it’s clear that the above review is positive, so thankyou Nicolas Rufino dos Santos!
I assume you must have used an automatic translator – unfortunately a lot of your meaning is lost on me!
One thing though … this isn’t an Orange Box mod
25 January 2009 at 1:36 pm
Chris, he didn’t use an online translator, but wrote it directly in English. The reference to the Orange Box, is for the competition, not related to the engine used.
25 January 2009 at 3:40 pm
Alo, Nicolas.
Você é parente do Oteniel Rufino dos Santos?
25 January 2009 at 10:42 pm
I still can’t understand very much of it.
09 February 2009 at 5:52 am
This looks and sounds great but i can’t get it to show up in steam. i’ve placed it in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\SourceMods twice and restarted steam and it does not show up.
09 February 2009 at 5:56 am
I have the Half-Life 2 episode pack. Is version 1.1 for the orange box set or is it supose to work with this as well?
12 February 2009 at 11:53 pm
I’m not sure if anything I’m about to comment hasn’t been already said in these 10 pages.
The beginning was oh so boring, the action was little and those doors and buttons were frustrating, as I didn’t even think to look on the walls for numbers, I only do that in Point and click games, so I just permuted the buttons to open the doors.. But it paced up and I enjoyed the final parts, especially the stealthy one and the library fights. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Advisors being used. This is my third mod for hl2, but I imagine they’re hard to use.
The dialogue is mediocre, but I also have a favorite, the speech before the infiltration. Don’t laugh now, but I was expecting to hear “This is SPARTA” at some point, to lighten up the crowd. Also, as it has been mentioned before, I would have loved to have a npc that would stick longer than a map’s length, or a whole squad, not just passerbys. Two thumbs up for the squad action type in the end.
The story and the idea were believable, but could’ve been more connected to hl2. The maps are smaaaaaaaall, I’m tired of the loading screen popping up so often.
I didn’t encounter any bugs and the airboat ride was ok for me. I loved the special views. The ending, although hard to create, left me wanting more, or an explanation, wasn’t an actual ending, but this way, I’m looking forward to playing the sequel.
13 February 2009 at 12:31 am
Ade, I think you’ll enjoy the sequel a lot. Squad action, npcs that stick with you for longer periods, an interesting story that’ll keep you motivated at all times, better dialogue, better scenes, maps that last longer etc.
But I do recommend everyone to replay the HL2 City 17 levels in the “Anticitizen One” chapter to see really small maps and really close loading spots. You’ll find they are much worse than what you actually find in “The Citizen”. But I guess since it’s Valve who made them we should forgive them and expect amateur mappers to do better than them all the time. And the “Highway 17″ coastal maps too. Now those were long loading periods and really short maps!
23 February 2009 at 3:50 am
The Citizen is a great mod. I’d say it’s certainly in my short list for favorite Half-Life 2 mods, though it’s not the best. It brings a number of interesting new ideas to the table and sells them with skill and visual panache to spare.
You are cast as a concerned citizen who, after being roughed up by the Combine, decides to exact revenge by joining up with the resistance fighters. The mod covers a nice arc, from being led to their clandestine base of operations by someone-who-knows-someone, culminating in going on a mission with your newfound friends. It’s pretty compelling, actually.
Visually, the mod is wonderful. This is a busy set, with lots of little details, at least up to the noticeably sparser later areas. Like Half-Life 2, it smoothly segues from one area to the next. You always feel like you are making progress. I liked the frequency of friendly NPC encounters. Towards the end, the mod gave that same feeling of aloneness and isolation that HL2 did when your squad left.
Perhaps the highlight of the mod, however, are the unique gameplay ideas it offers. It attempts stealth gameplay and it mostly succeeds, which is quite a feat. There’s the feeling that you’re part of a sizeable force, as you march along with your plentiful comrades. The airboat sequence, though claustrophobic, feels authentic enough. The easter eggs are a neat diversion and promote replayability. Basically, the mod spend a fair bit of time doing non-combat tasks to supplement combat, which is something I love.
So, what didn’t work?
The biggest problem was the voice acting. Quite frankly, it was awful. People either had accents that made them difficult to understand, or they simply weren’t in the moment, mostly erring on the side of being too calm. While each voice is distinctive enough to make the individual characters stand out, they don’t have the sense of the urgency that the situation demands. This comes to a head in what seems like a pivotal speech, complete with a Breencast monitor and everything, which didn’t engage me at all. The dialog, as written, was fine. It’s all in the delivery.
Beyond that, it’s a hodgepodge of minor criticisms. I think the mod went on a bit long; I could have done without the third “stealth” segment. It’s a bit too giddy with irritating Manhacks, sending them at you in infinite supply in a few circumstances. I also thought the loading was too frequent, justified by Valve or not, mostly during the airboat sequence. The final levels feel sparse and don’t make good use of the intriguing objective the player is given. Some contrivances, like access cards, felt out-of-place and gimmicky. Lastly, I didn’t care much for the library segment. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take cover from the Giant Bouncing Balls of Doom ™ when they are ricocheting around the stacks at insane speeds.
All that said, The Citizen is still a fantastic mod. If you’re a gamer who wants non-stop intense battles, this isn’t your mod. For the rest of us, who demand more substance in our modding diet, you’ll find it here.
23 February 2009 at 8:24 pm
Thanks for the review! We’ve certainly improved on most issues for the sequel. In such a way that making these first two chapters go in the same file as what’s coming next would lower the average quality of the release (or at least we think so).
I don’t recall having made any access cards at all. Do you remember exactly where you found those? We are not fond of keys and keycards (although you do have to use one in the church and two for a couple of easter eggs) so we did our best to avoid them.
If you are referring to the different doors for metrocops and elite soldiers opening, there are no access cards required for them. They operate on a shape recognizition pattern so having the correct disguise should be enough to open them.
The voice acting delivery, mainly towards the end, has been discussed a lot. Wether having certain non-melodramatic dialogue as oppossed to the film-like delivery of the retail game is good or bad, is not a one sided issue in my opinion. I have never been in such a situation as these characters go through, so I (and face it, most of us) have no idea how each person would react or talk like. Larry (who has the most lines in those final segments) is supposed to be a rather calm person who used to own a car repair garage. He’s not really the Morpheus-like character Valve would’ve made him be had “The Citizen” been their project (father Grigory anyone? That’s more comical than realistic). In any case, he’s a rather important character in the sequel and you’ll have a chance to better judge him in many other situations.
24 February 2009 at 9:03 am
It must have been access cards to the Easter Eggs then because, yeah, there weren’t critical path doors that required them. My memory must be blurring between mods! I actually thought at the time that the Combine doors were a bit confusing. For whatever reason, I didn’t put two-and-two together, getting the suit and being able to open doors. Though it makes perfect sense in retrospect.
I can understand the issue with the voice acting and the choice between melodrama and calmness. I’m sure it’s not easy for a person dubbing an anime, for example, to put themselves at the helm of a giant robot about to save the world. But I think that games as a whole have come a really long way on this front in the past few years, so it’s important to find that line and use it to your advantage as the situation demands. One thing that can spice up voice acting is to have your actors place emphasis on certain words. Instead of an even delivery, punctuate the key words in your sentence. That alone can make a world of difference!
As far as Larry is specifically concerned, I expected a tone of calm urgency. The kind of tone you’d expect a schoolteacher to use in a fire drill, for example. His delivery was a bit detached and uninterested, I felt. In the sequel, let’s tune the delivery. You plant the right mental picture in someone’s mind, especially if that means finding a more realistic analog for the mood you want to convey, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
13 March 2009 at 1:45 am
Fantastic mod,
couple of bugs though
in the lecture hall, after you jump down if you go around picking up ammo, the rebels see you and start shooting at you, likewise when you let them out of the gallery unless you use ‘notarget’ to get past that bit.
Also when you get to the train, I cant get the rebeld to board. so for me its the end, or was it meant to be the end anyway.
13 March 2009 at 1:51 am
Did you play version 1.1? Because those bugs you mentioned were fixed long ago.
13 March 2009 at 2:30 am
Hi, thanks – quick response, yes I already found and downloaded 1.1 but was already threequarters way through the old version, I tried movingmy saves to 1.1 but things go all queer!
Ho Hum, just have to start over, huh life is sooo hard!
Yo. and thanks for a really great mod
PS. looking forward to 2 I like the idea of alternate ways through levels, that was great feature of Duke and Wolfenstein 3d that somehow got lost when games moved up from DOS. Every time you played you in effect got a different game, especially in Wolf’ where the enemies all started moving about the moment you entered a level, so you came across them in different places depending on your speed of progress. Lots more gore in those days too.
13 March 2009 at 2:36 am
It’s more alternate choices than alternate ways through the levels. Doing a real alternate levels thing would push the sequel to 2010 or 2011. I don’t think anyone wants that
22 March 2009 at 5:47 pm
To: Chris Fox
Thanks for the heads up on the widescreen fix!
To: Mr. Phillip
I’ve gotten mods from Moddb when I first started playing mods, then I found ‘planetphillip.com’. I haven’t looked back.
Moddb can’t hold a candle to ‘planetphillip.com’!
MODdb, WHO?????????
22 March 2009 at 6:02 pm
Thank you for your kind words. Being more specialized than ModDB allows me to focus but even though I don’t agree with everything ModDB does, we have to recognize they have done a fantastic job of bringing modding to more players than ever before.
27 March 2009 at 9:38 pm
Im not sure about you lot but when i extract it to my default sourcemods folder when i restart steam its not in my games menu!
Any ideas?
27 March 2009 at 10:38 pm
Some people for whom that happened didn’t have HL2 installed, just Ep1 or Ep2. Full standard HL2 must be correctly installed for The Citizen to show up.
27 March 2009 at 11:19 pm
But I can’t afford it right now so that just sucks!
28 March 2009 at 12:56 pm
Why would you download mods for a game you can’t afford? Makes no sense whatsoever
Most of the content you’ll find in The Citizen consists of HL2 materials, models and sounds. I believe there’s no other way to play it than having the full game.
09 April 2009 at 12:11 am
WHERE DO I DOWNLOAD IT
09 April 2009 at 7:37 am
@Theguy:
Firstly, please stop shouting.
Secondly, look under Version 1.1 Downloads.
Enjoy.
14 April 2009 at 7:24 am
The Citizen is a very exceptional mod and I enjoyed playing it a year ago. However, now it crashes more frequently than ever. The crashes ONLY occur when the map changes into the next map. I see the LOADING screen for a minute or so before it crashes with an “HL2.exe has encountered a problem and must be shutdown sorry for the inconvienence etc…” then it throws me back to desktop. Occasionally, another error message follows it with the dreaded “Internal driver error in IDirect3DDevice9:: present()”
Here are my system specs:
OS: Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
SP: Service Pack 3
Processor: Intel Pentium D Processor 820
Memory: 1024 MB of RAM
Hard Drive: 250GB Hard Drive Space
DX: DirectX 9 (latest version March 2009)
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon Xpress 200
Sound Card: Realtek High Definition Audio
I don’t think it has anything to do with the lack of memory because I used this handy link to disable many useless background services:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6721-RYHB-2201
My Hard Drive is not full either, as i have only used a quarter of it.
I’d appreciate any help anybody can offer. Thanks!
25 August 2009 at 1:15 am
Well done mod. One of the few good ones for HL2 so far. Ive no problem with the voiceacting or the small puzzles at the beginning. In my opinion the whole mod
is very good fan content.
12 November 2009 at 3:54 am
I’ve played this mod last years I guess, though I found it on ModDB and just now I noticed It’s also for Planet Phillip. But anyway, this mod is absolutely very fun, entertaining and I loved so much the Infiltration mission. Just plain awesome! I’am very excited to play The Citizen 2.
20 December 2009 at 6:19 pm
I’m getting a runtime error every time I try to launch the mod.
It says that the application has attempted to run the C runtime library incorrectly or somesuch.
I can’t seem to fix this.
Could someone help?
20 December 2009 at 6:24 pm
Have you had any problems running HL2 or other mods, since receiving this error?
23 December 2009 at 7:40 pm
No, I haven’t. I’m not sure what the problem is.
23 December 2009 at 7:42 pm
WAIT, OF COURSE I HAVE!!
I just realized that I get the SAME error with Half Life 2!!
I’ll reinstall that.
23 December 2009 at 11:42 pm
Reinstalled, and to no avail. Still getting the engine error.
02 January 2010 at 8:43 pm
When i start the mod from Steam, i get an error message that says that it can’t find background image in materials/console/thecitizen, and the file it can’t find is thecitizen_bg1_widescreen.vtf. There was no such file that was included in the mapp that i downloaded.
03 January 2010 at 12:52 am
Oh, never mind. Figured out that i just needed to add the “_widescreen” to thecitizen_bg1.vtf file.
15 January 2010 at 5:31 pm
I was looking through the Reader’s Recommendation section and was intrigued when I saw The Citizen.
Is there any reason why all the “Too buggy” recommendations for this mod automatically became “Avoit It”?
To further question this fact, most of the “Too buggy” recommendations were related to a mistake that was fixed in the 1.1 version
15 January 2010 at 7:37 pm
I played before version 1.1. Had a few problems but got through.
I didn’t leave a comment, just glad to get to the end!
I need to play 1.1 before you two come out with Citizen 2.
Thanks for the gee up. Don’t know the answer to your question though Kaspberg.
Any chance of hanging on for a couple of weeks? Please?
20 January 2010 at 9:30 pm
One more PIN. Your mod must have the record number of PINs of any mod.
Here’s another one.
Found 15 out of 15 Easter eggs. The one early on in the warehouse was an SOB to find. Nearly missed it.
There’s already loads of comments and I agree with all the good ones so I’ll not bore everyone to death by adding more.
The niggle that stopped me giving this a PF was the very very long Rebel Base part after the Strider. The Strider followed by the Combine fight was hard and most enjoyable.
Version 1.1 played just great.