An Unofficial Half-Life Expansion Pack [Delta Particles]

[Music] you ever wished valve had made more expansions for halflife something like opposing force or blue shift or maybe you wanted more mobs like Echo well do I have a piece of advice for you go play Delta particles yeah just go go do it you it okay bye oh why you ask [Music] well Delta particles previously known as Half-Life Delta is a mod made by XF alien along with some support from a few other moders it was released on New Year's Eve 201 23 and today I want to tell you why this just might be considered as a proper expansion for halflife 1 there are mods out there that might look better than this or play better than this but once in a blue moon there comes a mod that simply has spirit and scope Spirit of what made the original game amazing and scope to push the boundaries to stand out from the rest the mod tells the story of Nick frell an employee at the Delta base a research facility competing against black Mesa in the realm of teleportation arms manufacturing and so on the game starts off as Nick gets off the tram and proceeds to start his day through our little walk we get to explore Delta base in detail taking a page from halflife 1's book this is a parallel sequence of events that Gordon Freeman goes through as well but here the lab is not your usual Square boxy rooms with little or sparse details this lab feels a lot Al with many different people they were going about their routine and their jobs and duties while black Mesa felt retrofuturistic Delta feels industrial rough and irregular this whole sequence is what I'd like to call the ideal halflife beginning build the world build attention provide pretext to what's about to happen and the best part is all of it is shown through the world itself rather than dialogues from the characters that live in it with the anti-radiation suit equipped we head into the test room where they have an alien sample lined up in the machine we get to meet Dr Diana Hayes the lead scientist on this experiment Dr Hayes I think is a great character in the mod overall we get to see her and talk to her many times throughout and it feels like the mod does what blue shift did with Dr Rosenberg while Rosenberg felt more basic and straightforward Dr Hayes feels more Dynamic both in her dial and her actions in the story now of course I would point out that the voice actor behind her is clearly not a native English speaker like myself and therefore has a very thick accent I personally did not mind this and I think the voice actor did a pretty good job good day Mr then everybody's here we can begin until now our teleportation technology had two major drawbacks firstly they could only teleport small materials and secondly only one person could be sent to the Border Ro and there's a point in the experiment where we are on the control panel and are somewhat controlling the experiment based on Diana's instructions this right here is something I wish the original halflife did too rather than being the switch flipper and the cart Pusher I wish halflife did this too where we would have a bigger part in the experiment but to contradict my own point we're also flipping switches here too but you get the idea there's a cool little scene here where the experiment goes wrong right as black Mason say resonance Cascade is happening and we even see Gordon run away from the anti-mass spectrometer this outof body experience we have was a really nice touch in the game knocked out we finally come to our senses a while later most of the people are either dead or missing and Diana is nowhere to be seen traveling through the wind we get to meet another scientist and a security guard who uses hcu Soldier lines it's good to see you [Music] sir we need to keep moving it's very Charming I guess once again I love the way this mod tries to do cinematic set pieces like these and actually succeeds at them it genuinely feels good to see this on the gold Source engine in halflife 1 we did have sequenced events like these too but they were again simpler then we find our first weapon any Asian Shepherd fan would recognize it a wrench we also see a new enemy type a charging zombie he runs like a gonome but looks like a zombie it isn't much of a threat but it is kind of scary to see him charging at you Delta's visuals are absolutely brilliant if we remember what engine it's running on The Mod also uses detail textures which tends to make the textures look much more sharper another thing to note is that that it's also using Spirit of halflife basically Spirit adds and improves upon the gold Source engine and might be the reason why the mod looks so detailed and quote unquote modern there's also other options as well like Trinity zash 3D which is basically a separate engine then sprin that fuses together both spirit and Trinity these are all great options if you want to make a mod for halflife one with some fancy features going down a ladder Nick falls off and knocks himself out again we're then rescued by a security guard and a scientist waking up in an infirmary we get back up and get strapped let's talk about the weapons in Delta the first firearm we get is the Glock from halflife it sounds Punchy and has a nice custom animation to it it also has a burst fire mode it's the go-to weapon for saving ammo and taking out enemies at a distance then there's the classic Spa 12 shotgun it has a normal attack with the pump but an alternative attack that's semi-automatic but less accurate it sounds absolutely badass and is super fun to use then there's this submachine gun that I don't really know what maker model it is it heavily reminded me of Halo because of its futuristic look later on we find a revolver with a scope it's a heavyduty accurate firearm that can deal a lot of damage but it's slow to use the Desert Eagle is similar but it's more faster but it doesn't have the range the M4 is a high- powered assault rifle with a grenade launcher that just might be the best weapon in the game then there is a Barrett sniper rifle that absolutely annihilates the [ __ ] out of the enemies and finally the light gun I love how like Doom 3's BFG you get to see it mentioned first before you actually get to use it later on the light gun is basically The BFG of this mod that deals the highest damage there's also explosive options too like the C4 which is a replacement for the Satchel charge from halflife the grenades and the rocket launcher a all of these weapons sound really good and are extremely fun to use each weapon's sound effects has this Punchy and impactful feeling that shows how devastating it is to use along with that their animations even though not as fancy as one would like have a really nice charm and personality to them it's like a homemade pizza it is pizza but you made it at home if that makes any sense so stepping out of the infirmary we don't really have a goal but to get to the surface Now Delta does something great with its World building it showcases how the lab is crumbling because of the failed experiment and the invading aliens apart from the appearance the lab itself rumbles every so often and the debris falls from the roof and coupled with the dead bodies the blocked hallways the failing machines it all adds up to make this atmosphere of being lost within this giant facility a feeling of being alone and scared of whatever lurks behind every Cor Corner Delta has a great way of showing diverse and different variety of areas throughout its campaign each major section of the lab has subtle differences in their geometry their textures and how they are laid out this makes it so that the lab doesn't feel repetitive or boring to go through in any of the levels every few hallways of combat in the lab are broken up by vent crawling that leads to a completely new part of the lab another thing that the mod does really good is what I like to call points of Divergence after playing through a bit of an area you'll come across a point where the paths diverge One path that is locked and another path that has items like a key or a card or a battery pack or maybe a button press that is required to open the lock path the design feels formulaic in the sense that the path to get to the items isn't always that long or timec consuming it usually has you engulfed in combat for a short while then you Circle back to the locked area to unlock it this simple formula is used throughout the mod and at no point does it feel repetitive or boring in any sense so right now story-wise Nick has to get out of the Delta lab but given the state of things it's not that easy since most of the exits are blocked off or sealed Delta's story is very much shown in the same vein as blue shifts even though people think of it as the lesser of the two expansions I still think blue shift did something that neither halflife or opposing Force had and that was having actual character be an important part of the story like Rosenberg usually halflife or op four had characters in them that spat out on liners and then either ran away or die Delta's formula is that what made blue shift great every 30 or 40 minutes of combat like halflife and op four you get to take a little breather where you can catch up with Diana like Rosenberg and blue shift after some head blasting some vent crawling and lab navigating we end up in Diana's office looks like she left in a hurry cuz she forgot her Hooch wouldn't be too surprised to see Diana in a dable a meeting if you know what I mean then we finally meet up with her she explains why the experiment went wrong it's because black mesa's experiment interfered with theirs and also two people are stuck in an alien world yeah don't forget about these two from the beginning before it all went wrong they actually stepped into the portal and never came back this will be important to remember for the end right now Diana sent out a distress signal and is getting some equipment to the surface she advises us to search the lab for any survivors and bring them with us to the surface oh and yeah that is a robot standing behind her it's one of Delta labs' infantry robots that's protecting Diana another thing that this mod does is that when you come across a locked door sometimes you don't need a key card or item but whether a security officer or a scientist or an electrician to open it this again goes back to my point about there being diverging paths where you have to travel a little to the side before the main path can be unlocked now I know I usually call this kind of gameplay design padding or time wasting but here it doesn't feel like that here it feels like you're accomplishing something doing something valuable so we find security man who can unlock the door we saw earlier so we lead him to it rather than going back the way we came the security man blows up a steel reinforced door with C4 what a Madman Lama then we get on a tram and since Security man doesn't have the AI to board trams we leave him behind he waves us goodbye and we go on ahead without him even alone he fights on kicking ass godp speed you magnificent [Music] bastard getting off the tram for a brief moment we end up on the surface and I really liked the Skybox that this mod has throughout the campaign they range from Cloudy to dark cloudy to stormy then we come across a green tentacle alien along with an alien controller too and uh I'm not going to lie alien controllers aren't well liked by most people in fact I might say they're one of the worst enemies in the original halflife and this mod well has a lot of alien controllers in it especially in the last half of the campaign I don't necessarily think it ruins the experience but it sure does sore the taste in my mouth when I have to deal with their [ __ ] sometimes anyway to defeat the green tentacle we first open the gate move the radioactive waste train under the pipes and open the valve to dissolve the alien snake with some good old green goo solving this took me longer than I'd like to admit but honestly it wasn't a really difficult puzzle a little bit of tinkering solved the issue we make our way to what appears to be a train depot we meet Diana again and she finally got her [ __ ] up to the surface but now she wants us to fetch her a tram so she can move the equipment after a bit of Kur fuffle with the local train people we get one of the trams ready for Diana now you'd think the mod would pull a on a rail here but it actually doesn't we first get attacked by a bunch of controllers and Vons this was fairly simple but somewhat fun then Diana instructs us to go meet the soldiers who should have here by now thanks to her distress signal going through this level and this chapter as a whole I felt like as if I'm playing a commercial game from the early 2000s like I don't mean this in a bad way but what I'm trying to say is that it felt nostalgic or rather familiar these places this whole scenario it felt like a game that wanted to be halflife but just couldn't hit the mark so next we find an electric box that needs to be shut down for us to proceed further but again we need to find an electrician to do that again path Divergence like I mentioned before but the mod finds ways to spice things up by letting the player go through new and interesting little sections and then putting them into deadly encounters with the aliens most of this chapter consists of us going through this outside area while occasionally stepping inside for resources or to get a newer part of this outside area then comes an underground area which I actually kind of liked even though I don't usually like these areas in other games it even had ghost zombies in it these are basically the charging zombies but they have this invisibility West on so they're transparent and hard to see the atmosphere along with The Rustic color palette of the textures all looked great and very nice a big difference I need to mention between this and the original halflife is that Delta has a more colder temperature visually meaning most things seem cold dark or desaturated halflife on the other hand has a much more saturated and vibrant look to it this desat saturated dark look of Delta gives it almost a more realistic tone mapping which becomes part of its unique personality in the tunnels we turn off the power so the next area can be opened this dark area was actually kind of scary with the transparent ghost Zombies almost felt like I was playing Doom 3 coming out of the tunnels I was surprised by the rain this atmosphere is just oh and then we get to meet the soldiers that Diana told us about now you see these aren't the hcu soldiers they're busy at black Mesa right now this is a private mercenary group that's here to take advantage of the situation and steal Delta labs's [ __ ] most likely the teleportation Tech next we see something more alarming Diana's tram with her escorting security detail dead and Diana nowhere to be seen maybe they got attacked by the mercs or maybe she got kidnapped but now it's our job to look look for her and save her then we get to meet an old friend Security man he's alive then he and I tagged along to chew ass and kick some bubble gum hold up I said that wrong didn't I then we see the Despicable mercenaries stealing [ __ ] this gargant you apart kind of confused me let me explain up till this point and even till the end from here the mod takes Pages out of half-life's book meaning it takes some inspiration from the sequences and sections from halflife and remakes them in the mod and you can easily recognize them when you're playing the mod now it's not a straightup ripoff but rather something like you look at this and go oh this is just like that one part in halflife where there's also a Gargantua and the soldiers are shooting it it is understood we can't kill him normally so I guess we have to turn on the power here too and zap the big alien like halflife one but no the inspiration only ends here at the starting part with the gargantuan the soldier shooting them basically all the this long explanation is basically my way of saying my dumbass spent running around this place trying to find the zappers that would kill the Gargantua turns out I just needed to shoot him multiple times with the rocket launcher after killing Big G we turn off the power and open the gate where we find Diana just sitting alone with this injured security dude once again Diana is used as a story propellant and tells us to get to the helipad to call out another distress signal since only that radio will work now she on the other hand will try to get to the old teleporter to save those two dudes from the intro this mod does a great job at pacing itself it never stays too much in one place it never reuses the same Trope again and again and even if it does like the diverging pads it does it in a way that's always refreshing and it's never the same thing twice in a row now here's this cool little section where you have to lower the generator's power level so it doesn't zap you to death this is another part where I just stopped and took in the Ambiance of the location I love it when mods and gold Source try to implement some sort of atmosphere and in this case succeed now we're in the office complex it's like the original office complex chapter but much more fancy looking and larger it provides for some real enjoyable Close Quarters combat with the aliens and the mercenaries then we come face to face with another new enemy type evil robots with guns both the mercenaries and the robots work like the hcu soldiers do there's not much of an AI change for these enemies there's also a tank here but I didn't have time for that this next gunfight was really awesome there's aliens and Merks it's like a triple threat match and then there's a humy with the machine gunner on top and then you blow it up like man it makes you feel like a proper badass the awesome thing about the later encounters is that they really do test your skill and aim while it might be a bit too much for some players if you enjoy a challenge then this will definitely give you one we finally reached the helipad where we find a new toy to play with a godamn Barrett sniper rifle shooting the [ __ ] out of enemies and seeing their head literally explode is one hell of an experience fighting our way to the radio room we send out the second distress signal that Diana asked us to send outside there's a war zone and it really hit the point about how chaotic things have become at Delta Labs our next goal is to get to Diana at the old teleporter lab but that's not going to be an easy task since she's pretty far away from us then we go through a different part of Delta base all the while the mod throws Balls to the walls crazy combat encounters at US aliens mercenaries more aliens more mercenaries and honestly it's just so good all thanks to how heavy and Punchy the guns feel and how they are animated then we end up in a Zen infested train tracks area I love this sort of implication that time has passed to a point that Zen Flora has gotten the chance to start growing on Earth we almost face two alien grunts but they get zapped to death that my friends is the light guns work but whoever shot it literally exploded or something then we end up in a completely flooded part of Delta base here we get to fight against thick latex wearing assassin GFS they do be a [ __ ] to fight against since they move a lot but I had just a solution for it my trusty grenade launcher of course passing over the Assassin gf's uh chunklet we head through the waste disposal area to get to the underground where we find Diana surrounded by aliens who are very thirsty for Diana now at the end of this chapter there is a keypad this is Diana only Diana can open that keypad but you see the problem is that there are like four dozen aliens between Diana and the keyboard do you understand this deadly predicament that I find Diana and myself in getting in some Shenanigans with the aliens such as blowing them to bits we finally cleared a path for our Diana to open the gate we find ourselves in a new part of the lab where Diana tries to get into the security room to open the door but instead gets trapped inside and we get separated from her well time to find her again now the moon has shoted the lab in darkness as we Soldier on to save ourself and Diana and those two dudes from the intro too the nighttime level goes very normal it looks nice and there's usual combat with the aliens but once I opened one of the locked Gates this thing came out of nowhere so I shot at it I shot at its testicle multiple times mostly with sniper rounds till it died not going to lie this genuinely jump scared me cuz I was not expecting a goddamn gonar to come at me like this next we end up in what I like to call the arena cuz that's what the layout is like in this section there's a whole lot of ammo and health but there will be a whole lot of enemies too it starts off normal but if you're quick to act and take down the enemies as soon as they spawn this part should not be a problem but this whole setting was something that I really liked we're now this battle tested scientist man under a dark and stormy rainy Sky kicking the [ __ ] out of anyone that crosses our path I loved it this part lasts a while before it's over and there is a constant barrage of all sorts of enemies thrown at you and by the end you'll be battered and bruised but you'll be out on top after this fight we meet up with Diana who's also without her lap coat and has wounds on her arm meaning she's been through some [ __ ] too we fight our way to the old teleporter where Diana gears up and we step into the teleporter to save those poor fools who are trapped in Zen but right as we're about to go the mercenaries come in and start shooting it [ __ ] this messes up the teleporter and we get separated again while teleporting and so welcome to Zen Zen in this mod takes a page not from the original halflife thankfully but from Blue shift's book most of you will agree that the Zen chapter in blue shift was in many ways more fun to play than the original halflife one that's the same style this mod wants to emulate now here's the thing don't play this mod in one sitting because as much fun at it is by the time you'll reach Zen you'll be wanting a quick resolution to the story but uh yeah Zen is really [ __ ] long in this mod like very long the only reason why I'm not [ __ ] on right now is because it looks great and it plays okay the only gripe I had in these Zen levels were that the ammo to enemy ratio was way off repeatedly I would find myself out of ammo for all of my equipment and I would be forced to use the pistol or sometimes even the Crowbar the encounters with the aliens turn up the difficulty so it's really a hard time playing this chapter on medium difficulty I imagine the easy difficulty must be a breeze here but I was playing on medium and [ __ ] was actually not medium [ __ ] was hard as hell most of the time I played this mod constantly and while recording I kept thinking why did the mod fail so hard and Zen but that's not the case at all looking back at the footage I was just tired from playing this too much I can't game for long periods of time and that's why I was such in a bad mood when I started this chapter all of that aside Zen looks great and there are even some scenes that make you stop and take a proper look at things because of how awesome it looks the original Zen had a problem where it was very limited in terms of texture usage thankfully this Zen feels much more versatile both in terms of textures and geometry there's all sorts of caves tunnels and open areas to go through cliffsides and floating islands like you get the idea now I'm not going to show all of Zen areas since my gameplay footage is kind of bad but you just need to keep in mind that there will be sparse ammo here so after what I guess is almost an hour of very very diverse Zen levels we get to the research station that the Delta people had set up throughout our journey we saw dead researchers in anti-radiation suits so those two dudes from the intro um definitely dead now we need to find where Diana is and get the hell out of here looking around the research station we do find her in one of the rooms now going back to the teleporter Diana will have to initiate and operate the control panels to make it work this isn't a long section by any means but Diana has to do this at three different control panels while we keep getting attacked by aliens this was another high ADV ventalin sort of section that I enjoyed I was hoping the mod would have uh had a final boss fight like nailen but unfortunately there was none instead of that we only had the defending section with Diana once the teleporter opens we both get in and teleport away this was a fitting ending a somber moment where our heroes meet and unknown fate but I had a gut feeling there would be a post credit scene and there was we come out on the other side of the lab and it looks overgrown and desolate as if decades had passed by since we left slowly going through the place we try to get out of it only to see this this is also a very fitting ending but you know what I was imagining that when we came out of the teleporter 20 years later or whatever and right as the gate opens we see a bunch of combined soldiers approaching us to arrest us or something I don't know I think it would have been cool to see that and Link this mod to have life to like that and maybe have a possibility of a sequel to the mod on the source engine I don't know I'm just talking out of my ass but yeah that was Delta particles a mod that I like to call an unofficial expansion for halflife just like previous masterpieces like Half-Life Echoes or hunt down the Freeman it plays like it's an officially sanctioned expansion mention that a game Studio like gearbox made but it's just one madman assisted by a handful of people great job on the mod XF this was one hell of a memorable experience and a great way to start my new year and that's pretty much it for Delta particles definitely give it a check if you're interested Link's going to be in the description and uh thanks for watching and a big thanks to these benefactors for supporting the channel Nicholas go Imperial Embers unusual T boy 301 Tombstone Jack 5282 tonium Bubba quiltman 501st clone boy iner CS TTG RoboCop Noel nobody important Franco sley chams Boger Justin IM Griff tsaur Oran nachos lambre roadkill Walter hob gabes no click geod Fisher GCE Hawk assult mistress babon jellen a normal Street Lamp T Droid and bip poet thanks again and see you in the next one

Channel: Radiation Hazard

Views: 73,498

Keywords: half life, half life 2, valve, steam, half life 2 beta, mods, mod review, maps, map showcase

Id: DFbEU2O3kxg

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2024