As we approach the finale of Hunt Down the Freeman, we are walking along a cliff side. It's rather scenic. A large forest, which is untouched by the Combine, stretches out for miles. Birds are chirping. There's little to disturb us. But then there's a short quake. Dust kicks up, and a few small chunks of rock break away and fall; harmlessly, for the moment, but a warning of what we're headed into. Ahead, a ramshackle bridge. A novel warning that this area is not quite as safe as we might otherwise believe. We know what to look for, both above and below. These rocks never fall. Hunt Down the Freeman didn't begin life as a game, but as a Source Filmmaker project, a small fan film in the Half-Life universe. And depending on how you look at it, it grew, mutated, or got out of hand as it turned into a full-fledged game. Players are thrust into the role of Sergeant Mitchell, a boots-on-the-ground HECU trooper at Black Mesa, a man who swears revenge on series protagonist Gordon Freeman for acting in self-defense. And the premise only gets sillier from there. As the store page proudly states, "You are the villain..." (Sarcastic) Yeah, in a series where the villains are such underdogs. That sounds terribly exciting. The development of this game is a bit of a mess. We've got multiple accusations of stolen assets, alongside the fact that a lot of blameless freelance contributors likely won't see a cent for their efforts unless it sells a certain amount, and the bloody minefield that is the morality of those two statements put back-to-back. I can't say for certain in reading stories from the inside and watching one interview film just before the playable demo's release whether Berkan Denizyaran, the game's director and writer, is malicious or incompetent. Denizyaran: "So many people, uhhh, I work with on this progress, only couple people know the 'real' real concept of the game because... I didn't know who I can trust and who I can't." And I don't really like to bring it forward. One of the posts I will link to in the description states that they don't want things to get incendiary. So I'm leading to saying that it's a case of stupidity, rather than cruelty, if only because I like to believe that in people. I'm here for the end quality of the game. But I bring up the stolen asset accusations now so that you know I'm aware of them. But I wish to leave the real discussion of them in better informed hands. There are, however, things that I will declare as definite, and that is that Berkan is terrible at communication. And this shines through in the story of the development of the game and in the game itself. Because nobody seemed to know what the hell was going on, or what they should really be doing. There were people brought on for one job who was suddenly given multiple roles at times outside of their expertise. Voice actors have been noted as having re-recorded whole swathes of dialogue, changing entire accents and fixing mispronunciations, but their old worst tapes are still in use in the final product. It's a shit show. We have a game with accusations of stolen content, further accusations of bots being used to push it through Greenlight made on a licensed copy of Source being sold on the storefront owned by the same company that made Half-Life, its parent title, its inspiration. I do think that Half Down the Freeman does come from something of a genuine place. It just fumbles everything. It's a masterstroke of shit. And that brings me on to a more fascinating point is that, as a fan game, it takes /zero/ lessons on game design or storytelling that Half-Life could teach you. To put it nicely: It's distinct.
To put it honestly: It's clueless. While 'Hunt Down to Fuck' isn't the worst game I've played, the experience I had playing it was. So I'm going to go step by step through this game, pausing and jumping around for some key issues, but mostly pointing out the flaws and occasional good points in each chapter. Every part of this game has some of its own foibles, it's sort of a showcase of failure. And it never really escapes its core issues, certain segments just alleviate or aggravate certain ones. So, let's start. Way before the beginning. A cutscene! Well, I don't mind the use of cutscenes on their own. It's more their content that I'm going to be taking issue with. First and foremost, none of this really matters until... Now. They do try and reincorporate some elements here, but really, the fact that Mitchell had a rough childhood, was separated from his brother, and liked to drink means nothing. All of his bitterness throughout the plot comes from his time at Black Mesa, so this is all really superfluous. Then we're plopped in the midst of the Black Mesa Incident. A Black Ops soldier ambushes us, but Mitchell turns the tide. Where did he come from? Was he on the fucking ceiling? And gameplay starts. Be sure to walk backwards and get your knife. And we're less than a second in and we've gotten to our second problem: I have subtitles switched on, but as you can see there are none. The option here should really read "Do you wish for subtitles?" 'cause yes I fucking do. This is such a big problem for the mid-mission dialogue, as it is far, far too quiet. Any amount of action overshadows it completely, and we will generally not get it during peacetime. Instead, it's used to spice up combat. I am really sorry for anyone hard-of-hearing who picked this up. I use subtitles a lot myself 'cause my hearing isn't fantastic, so I'm with you on this. We fight our way through some zombies and right away the combat just feels off. *gunshots*
*zombie death noises* Every weapon, save for the knife, is pretty weak. And the knife sounds like a crowbar. *crowbar sounds* Did the HECU troopers get bloody airsoft guns? What is this...? Where did I get this?! Was I just authorized this MP5? It just appears out of nowhere! We navigate our way to a big control room littered with HECU corpses. I'd better grab the bullets. Or... I'm sorry! You can have them! [Caption Author's Note: all game subtitles were edited in by Tehsnakerer himself and don't always accurately represent what the characters actually say] And so Gordon tears us to shreds. And uh, he takes his time with it. And before the killing blow is delivered, Mitchell has a promise. Not a great position to argue from, but hey, he's impressing somebody. As Mitchell is flat-lining in a hospital, the G-Man comes forward with a deal. *Heart Monitor Flat-Lining* I will say, it's obviously not Michael Shapiro, but this guy probably has the best acting chops on display. There is, however, a problem. How did *that* get through? That isn't the actors fault! Or, at least not his alone. That's the fault of whoever didn't get a retake. Your wording is a bit too active there, G. Anyway, thanks to that, Mitchell was kept alive but the G-Man also forces a deal on him. When the time comes, Mitchell will have to fulfill a promise and he got this attention from G-Man for more than just his ability to be carried away from somewhere. You missed out the "fucking," but sure. And so, when the time comes, we'll just have to keep whatever end of the deal Mitchell's just being tossed into. But for now the most important thing is getting patched up. Outside of our room, we spy a medkit. But then Cheeky Medkit Boy sweeps in and scarpers with the goods And this is a poor and overly long way to teach the player about... Barnacles. Okay, Half-Life 2 is a game that does a fantastic job in teaching the player how a lot of elements work and it does a lot of this teaching wordlessly. The Barnacle introduction in Half-Life 2 is surprising and succinct. Meanwhile, Cheeky Medkit Boy here will likely die off-screen to the one and only Barnacle this game has. So, is this even a lesson, or is this just a really odd scene? Because if we got the medkit after leaving the room, nothing here will have changed and this whole kerfuffle is just an odd bit of drama. ...Or comedy, I don't know what it's going for. Anyway, we grab the medkit and- hey, not only health, but a stylish pair of gloves! Entering the lift, the game fades to black and then loads. Hunt Down the Freeman often does do a fade to black between stages. At times, it is justified. Unlike Half-Life 2, this won't be one unbroken journey, so a fade to black is a useful tool for displaying a greater passage of time. It will, however, also do this even when not needed, and only serves to destroy flow between stages. Not to mention the fade to black isn't tied to the loading screen starting. So, if you don't get in that lift... Then congratulations! You're blind. On top of this, the loading screens are not only worryingly lengthy, but occasionally the "LOADING" in the middle of the screen won't display. To this game's credit, when it crashes, it CRASHES. It never in my experience jammed. What follows is an escape sequence. The hospital's flooded with zombies because hospitals are flooded with zombies. Never mind that's generally because infectees and bite victims go to hospitals. Did a bunch of people turn up to A&E with bloody headcrabs on them? It's a really limp escape sequence besides, headcrab zombies aren't exactly threatening. They're not terribly fast and the utter lack of music really handicaps it. Oh boy, you don't wanna see that in a hospital. There's also a moment here to teach the player about the ability to go prone, a skill that's rarely needed, but occasionally mandatory to progress. But look at how it's teaching us, You have to scale up on a table to crawl through a slit at the top of the doorframe. Wouldn't a vent low to the ground be a better way to teach the player about going low to the ground? Especially because this is a Source game, these are objects that anywhere else would be physics objects that we could move and pick up. So I guess Cheeky Medkit Boy superglued all of this together on his way in. Okay, another teaching example, this time for a gameplay element rather than an enemy. Explosive barrels in Route Canal. Hardly an unusual trope for an FPS, but Half-Life 2 has some fun with it. First off, you just pass by the barrels. Then you go through a room where you have to confront them to continue. This will teach you that explosive barrels can be interacted with, you would have to be going out of your way to pick them up and move them. And then, beyond that door, there is a big glaring opportunity to use them against your enemies. You understand they explode, you understand they're barrels, now there are people standing next to them. Then the next time you encounter them, there's a flaming tank being shoved down the stairs right at you, but a quick trigger finger can turn the ambush around. Or if you don't understand that, you at least understand that there's danger. To put it quickly: It introduces, expands and experiments. The barrels both work for and against you. But only after it gives you a solid demonstration of how they work at all. The scant things this game does bother to teach you are tiny and irrelevant, they don't build to anything. For instance, there are no hidden paths only accessible by crawling, the thing that we just got taught. Anywho, the following is not edited! Quite a drastic lighting change. *echo-less gunfire* And no echo! Man, the ambiance and acoustics in here are fascinating. Mitchell has just been saved by the British YouTuber I Hate Everything, playing the Asian-American National Guardsman Nick. He lets us know that we're getting invaded. He hands us a map we can't look at and tells us we have to head to Brandon Street Station. In a video IHE put out regarding his role as Nick, he notes how he wasn't given much, if anything, in way of context or direction for his scenes, not knowing the story throughout, and he did point out that he is neither Asian nor American. He did later re-record lines in a more natural voice, but for whatever reason these takes aren't used. I can't say he did a bad job in these circumstances. Granted, I didn't realize it was him until after my playthrough. I watch IHE on occasion, but not enough I would solidly recognize his voice so I guess that's a bit of a compliment. I will say I do like these cutscenes, but in an extremely amateurish way. I liked Machinima when I was 12, that's the way to explain it. They're not good. The camerawork is dull, the animation's exaggerated in a really distracting way, it cuts badly. People are occasionally teleporting shot by shot, and obviously, you saw that lighting change, it clashes a lot with the actual stages. It's distractingly less flat and more harsh in cutscenes. Not to mention, how old is Mitchell meant to be exactly? Do they let you join the army if you turn up cosplaying as Geralt? We exit out onto the streets of Albuquerque, and it's here the problems really begin. What direction do you imagine you should go? I mean, naturally, you are drawn in the direction a stage starts you in. Some might explore to the left or right, but generally our first clue should be our facing. We come up to a fence blocking our path. So, that's fine, we got to check elsewhere. Off to the left, there's a store. It has a back passage connecting it to another shop, a shop which is beyond the fence. And there is a mysterious find within. So, this store leads past that fence, and gave us a knife, but we can't exit out onto the other side. I thought I had to crawl out since the last thing this game taught me was that crawling existed. But I'm on the wrong track. Instead, for whatever reason, somehow, by some miracle, picking up the knife causes the fence to fall over. There's no audible explosion to signify it, and besides that there is no cause-and-effect behind this. There's no reason this store shouldn't just lead forwards. But this weird unintuitive moment is just the beginning, a core theme that binds so many of this game's issues together. Less than a block away from where we started, there is a large scale gun fight that we could barely even hear. *many, many gunshots* So, I muck in with the troops, grab an assault rifle, and start plinking away at the frankly ridiculous-looking Combine troops. It's always good when you see an enemy and your immediate thought is, "Someone here messed up the scaling." But, no, this is purposeful. Their look just sticks out like a sore thumb. It doesn't sit well with other pieces of Combine technology. It doesn't have that modern, harsh, angular look. Instead having a bulky retro sci-fi aesthetic, which pairs awkwardly with the pulse rifle they're carrying. So I stay here for a while, shooting at Combine, and they never stop coming. I mean they might eventually, but they can afford the losses, and I'm wondering what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. Well, it turns out what it wants is for me to charge out into the open through the ever spawning enemies. Enemies which spawn so fast and die so slowly, that's not like even really creating an opening anyway And this is the second time within the same map that this game doesn't understand how to motivate a player. And the fact that you could walk into this giant battle with zero fanfare is frankly hilarious. Do you not realize that this scene needs some setup? It looks hilarious! You're just like, "Oh, hello lads!" Look at it like this: Enemies, events, light sources, landmarks; elements like these and more create an natural push and pull that can guide a player through a stage In this instance, enemies are key. In an FPS, it's generally thought that if you're killing new enemies, you're headed in the right direction. Otherwise, why would they be there? This isn't quite the case when you come to a t-junction and you have two endless hordes closing in from both sides with a heavily defended and well-equipped choke point. This communicates that you are to stay put and weather them out. But you're not meant to! You're meant to leave. Not to mention, you don't fucking need this fade to black! There's no time jump, it's a straight transition. I guess they just wanted to acknowledge it before they died. So, we run down the street getting pinged by enemies best ignored, and then get a ring from Nick. He says that with the streets the way they are, we're going to need another route. Not that I know the first route we needed, but hey, why not. *really loud explosion* Someone is listening in on their talks. We run into a hotel. I don't know how I knew to run up against this painted-on door. And then the next level spawns us facing in the wrong direction. Once turned around, we're in a large lobby with a malfunctioning elevator. A map designer spoke about his time with this stage. It started life in very late 2017 and he was told that it would be intended to be a free roaming segment set against a rainy backdrop. The player could explore and maybe find some goodies before moving on. This is impossible, as this game has no goodies. This area, as you can no doubt guess, isn't free roaming. I'm serious, you cannot go anywhere, and you don't have to search high and low for supplies, as ammo and health is just scattered everywhere. And that's because, as the map maker put it, this map is "used as some generic left 4 dead crescendo sequence waiting for an elevator to come down[.]" Left 4 Dead is right, and so very wrong. Hunt Down the Freeman has changed up the combat from Half-Life, unfortunately not in any good way. They've changed too much and too little to work. Hunt Down the Freeman does change the gunplay a fair bit, but not the enemies. Mitchell lacks a HEV suit, and by default the game wants you to play without
a crosshair, which I complied with, as there is is iron-sighting. Mitchell can also lean, and unlike Gordon, he cannot sprint in any direction, only forwards. And during a sprint, his accuracy greatly suffers. Essentially, Mitchell is far less agile than Gordon and what he's capable of points to a slower, more methodical form of combat, rather than the ability to play fast and aggressive as Gordon. Hell, the story probably accidentally establishes this when Gordon trounces Mitchell. It's like a monster truck slamming into a tuk-tuk, it's no competition! Not to mention there's no Gravity Gun nor any sort of physics manipulation equivalent. The weapon selection is a parade of pistols, assault rifles, SMGs, and occasional shotguns and bolt-action snipers. I wouldn't say the combat in Half-Life is fantastic, but it's mobile and flexible. Enemies can put the hurt on, but so can you. Not only that, but your options for avoiding damage include maneuvering and strafing. And with the Gravity Gun, you have room to get inventive. Turning your surroundings into a shield or a battering ram Not to mention the variety of locations, gimmicks, and situations you're placed in keeps the rather straightforward shooting enjoyable throughout its run time. It takes a simple base and constantly gives it variety. Hunt Down the Freeman, however, lacks its parent title's inventiveness, mostly being enemy swarms in large open boxes with cover just kind of sprinkled around. And a lot of time, it fails to incentivize you into even fighting enemies, since it barely feels worthwhile to fight. This is because both Mitchell and the enemies have way too much health and the enemy AI is brain-dead. They will just charge at the player and sit there exchanging damage until one of the two dies. Most likely the enemy because, you know, they naturally will have less health. One of the few new enemy types is an exploding drone. It acts as a manhack does and always comes in a swarm. Anything from a distant encroaching attack to around the corner ambush, but the rest are Half-Life 2 standard, if lobotomized. There's heavy use of fast zombies, hunters, Combine, and their equivalents. So it has the controls and the feel of a tactical shooter, but with Half-Life enemies who insist on charging you, and can do it pretty well, because the entire world has been equipped with Nerf guns, so they will get in your face and sit there. It's just some of the worst, most joyless, thoughtless shooting I've ever played because none of the elements here feel in sync. And while we're on the topic, if you do want me to fight enemies, perhaps don't make your environment so large I can give everyone the widest berth. Because once we're upstairs, I'm all tuckered out from the rumble downstairs. Let's look at Ravenholm. We're funneled into zombies. We technically don't have to kill them, but you really, really ought to. You're thrown into tight, cluttered corners with them at every step. Evasion is possible, but fighting them is sensible. Not to mention this is right after we get the Gravity Gun, and zombies are perfect practice. So, it's not only necessary to kill them, but it's very good practice for our new toy. Here, I can't spare any of my hundred-plus bullets. So, we wander into a conversation I have little clue why we're having. Hang on a second... Yeah, I guess it was revealed there was a sniper! (Sarcastic) Yeah, why? It's lovely! So, joking aside, Mitch is suspicious of Adam here is not because he's an oblivious idiot. Adam is Black-Ops, and so Mitchell accuses him of killing his own people when they turned on the HECU. Adam argues back that Mitchell was killing his own people by slaughtering the staff at Black Mesa. I've listened to this argument a few times through and it just gets stranger each time. Their argument boils down to, "We had different orders! But it was different when I obeyed them!" And this is my favorite part of the game's script. It has a love of big lofty action movie dialogue. Angry accusations and musings on humanity that you've heard elsewhere, are spat out at the drop of a hat. just because somebody here thinks they sound cool. But they sound alien and weird because, besides being awkwardly written, they are in no way earned. Both Adam and Mitchell dodge the question of how they escaped Black Mesa, Mitchell, because it's embarrassing, and Adam, because his sole trait is that he's shady. And he is the worst kind of shady character. He only ever opens his mouth to say things that make everyone in the room think that he's up to something, and then act mysterious when the spotlight suddenly turns on him. He tells us there's another way to get to Brandon Street and... Uh... Yeah, question: why did we even bother detouring to you when we should have just been getting to Brandon Street? And he sends us through the flood control. *boxes glitch splashing* I think I found Gordon Freeman. We then drop down into a little arena, where we're tasked with combating four Hunters who have the high ground since this game has no sense of restraint. Myself and Noonem of CommentaryComms have been doing a commentary on this game and we're sort of split on the Seven Hour War being featured here. But what I can't argue with is that this is not ground this game is equipped to cover. It's an event far greater in your head than it is in demonstration. At best, it wouldn't match up with your imagination.
At worst you get... Well... This. A slog. The Seven Hour War tells you something very important about the Combine just by being called "The Seven Hour War." It tells you that taking over Earth was trivial. The Combine is a threat incomprehensible in size and power. The only reason Gordon Freeman and the Resistance have a shot is because what they've left on Earth is little more than a token military to keep the population in check Because to them, the Earth is now little more than a water fountain. Anyway, after the four Hunters they then absolutely carpet-bomb this random flood control that has one man in it with headcrab canisters. Again, some restraint, please. We are in act 1. It's not my fault you set it during the apocalypse. Exiting out the flood gate, we come across another poorly considered section. The military has seemingly set up a turret for any bored civilian to muck in with. There's no corpse or anything nearby, so that's my best guess for why this is here. So, a turret, an elevated position, a group of soldiers this can cover, and a teleport with enemies incoming. But if you use this turret, you're just wasting time. The Combine will never stop coming. You're better off just ignoring this and getting to the next area before all the Marines die and stop soaking up bullets for you. So why offer us a turret? Why light it up as though it's important? Lighting is important as a guide in games like this, and you've misused it a number of times already. This is a problem with taking place in the Seven Hour War: we cannot win battles, that would not work with the helplessness of the situation. But then the level does a really bad job communicating that you should be stopping for nothing. The Seven Hour War should have had us skulking through alleyways, avoiding conflict, and just occasionally seeing the human forces dwindle as we can't do anything to help. It hurts the idea that we're the villain if we muck in with the war effort. I mean, sure we're /supposed/ to abandon it, but that doesn't ever seem like the right thing to do, it's not communicated that that's what we should be doing. You should have barred us off from these things But while I'm here, the lack of tracer rounds, the lack of crosshair, the very loose way we control this turret makes it an absolute bastard to use anyway. So, there's your hint to abandon it. The fact that it's fucking useless. We come across a group of stationary soldiers, one of which is yelling. The soldiers don't move, and so he keeps yelling. There's a Strider up ahead, and naturally, the soldiers are a bit hesitant to "move move move." This is supposed to be the first required use of the parkour system. But I didn't realize that on my first playthrough and fortunately, I circumvented it. Oh, yeah. The parkour system, that's another feature that's on the store page. The parkour system is accessible by going into the options menu, binding a key to holster your gun, and then holstering it. This allows you to pathetically paw up walls and pitifully move up pipes. *Wind ambiance* *Wind ambiance sped-up* So little of this game is actually made to accommodate it, and there are a number of areas where it can get you stuck. I think there's meant to be an ability to slide, I mean why else would our vision jerk like this when we go into a crouch? Because it doesn't do anything. There isn't much to say about the parkour system other than it's a broken, barely implemented feature. It doesn't tie-in with Mitchell's character, the combat system doesn't encourage movement or elevation all that much, and it's just so dreadfully dull. And animated so awkwardly it'd be better named clambering than parkour. Anyway, then we do a mad dash at a Strider and crawl into this parking lot. And the G-Man must want a word or something because the first time I beat this stage it loaded me into an inescapable void. And in the subway we run into two really bad puzzles. The first one in particular is astounding because it fails to even establish itself. We come into a room, on the left is a caged off area with elevator access. There's nothing really in there to draw the eye. On the right is a stairwell, so you go down several flights. There are floors that contain nothing and are pointless for the sake of this puzzle And at the bottom of the stairs is a locked door. So you walk around to the lift, and with nowhere else to go, you take it up. And in my experience, immediately back down. Adam rejoins you, and hands over his sniper rifle. So, beneath the stairs is a power conduit. It's bathed in darkness. And at the top of this elevator ride, secreted behind a box for some reason, is some cabling. It's not a hard puzzle because it's a brain buster, it's a hard puzzle because it has zero presence. It's so easy to miss every element involved. The power box is in pitch dark, the location of the cable makes zero sense, and the door barely looks linked to the power, this looks like a door. It's also just a really bizarre puzzle, because these features are only recognizable if you are familiar with Half-Life 2. It's entirely dependent on its own source material. These cables are recognizable on their own, sure, but you understand how they work from Half-Life 2. And more embarrassing than that still is that unlike Half-Life 2, this game never gets around to teaching you that picking up and moving objects is a thing. This is the first time it comes up! And I mean, if you look back, those superglued tables are surely teaching you that physics objects /won't/ be important. Phillip: "What's gonna be the bigger group: the group that have played Half-Life or the group that haven't played Half-Life?" Denizyaran: "Loads! Loads." Phillip: "So you- 50/50. You think it's gonna be 50/50." Denizyaran: "Yeah! 50/50." Hunt Down the Freeman is equal parts distinct and dependent on Half-Life. I get that for story purposes, you need at least a base understanding of the original, it's fanfiction. But for gameplay purposes, it's desperately trying to find its own footing, but it just can't and it's because of little things like this. Anyway, in the next room I decide to run past some zombies. Adam dies as I hit a checkpoint and then the game reloads, but is now softlocked. I am unable to move or act. Fine... I'll tackle these ones. You finally forced my hand. Anyway next up, the Army has rigged the subway entrance to blow, along with most of New Mexico. I'm really glad no zombies have wandered in here, or people seeking refuge. But, to be fair, this room, while downright silly in concept, isn't a terrible section; it just needs more visual signifiers for where you should not tread. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most people don't want to play platforming games on faith. Both times I've played through this segment, I got through this room on my second attempt, unsure what I'd really done right. This is also one of those moments where the poor parkour system really rears its head. We're playing 'the floor is made of lava,' but you won't let me stand on the tables. In the subway proper we meet Colonel Cue and his Comedy Crew. The Play-doh is a nice touch, Colonel. Dangerously close to the mouth though. So, I adore these lads, but they're all terrible and they stick out like a sore thumb. We've been going through the unrelenting horror of the Seven Hour War, every battle that we have seen has been a losing one. Then we come across these bastards hiding in a subway, having rigged everything to blow and they're fleeing. Colonel Cue: "That's right, we do have a plan. We'll run away." Their plan is also terrible. A contact of theirs, Captain Roosevelt, has noted that the Combine are on land and air, but not the sea. So we're fleeing to California to board a boat. Two important questions need to be asked about this plan: What's above the sea? What's above the sea?
And can the Combine teleport? Still, Mitchell's on board. Or well, he would be if the trains are running. So it falls to him and Larry to turn on the trains. Sadly, there's a small group of zombies in the control room and that's stopping this whole desertion business. Larry is... Unique... Let's say... We activate the trains while he observes, then Nick catches up. I have no clue why the tone has suddenly shifted to comedic down here, for these two rooms. It's completely incongruous with the tone before and immediately after. I only like it because it feels like the actors for Cue and Larry got their lines sent to them and they mistook it for a comedy. That is honestly the only way their acting makes sense to me. Because otherwise, I am at a loss for what I meant to make of them. They are so ridiculous, and if G-Man saying "Messa" isn't going to raise alarms, who is going to call these two out and ask them to take it more seriously? On the way up to the rail depot, the seventh hour ticks over and the President... President Keemstar... has an address. Really bad speech there. You shouldn't promise revolt in your address of surrender, that might just tick your conquerors off. So... let's think about this. The Army is filled with goofballs and English people, Keemstar is President, What fucking picture of America is being painted here? I love how everyone in the room is shocked and appalled the President surrendered. You're not allowed to be angry that the war was lost while you're in the middle of deserting it, you selfish pricks! How dare you be surprised! The group starts discussing how the aliens seem intelligent and Adam opens his mouth to pull his signature "look at me!" move. Everyone turns to grill him for information. And then, as if this scene couldn't be any more surreal, Pyrocynical, noted US Marine, runs in to warn us of approaching aliens. That's my favorite line reading in the game. So, uh, is this our fault? We did turn the claymores off. We're ordered to get a gate open as a pulse-pounding escape sequence really wants to happen. Simply put, this game needs greater use of music. So much of the set pieces are totally flat and awkward without it. Especially because without music, there's nothing to mask how bad the gunfights sound. It's like a bunch of printers yelling at each other. It's also another problem of direction, music influences action. A high octane piece can let you know it's time to flee, a triumphant battle track tells you when it's time to hold ground and fight. Because when we get upstairs and the map spawns me facing a fucking wall and my disorientation only worsens from there, whatever intensity this scene might have is kind of lost when I'm blindly stumbling around like Mr. Bean in the middle of a gunfight rubbing against each train wondering which one will let me leave. And that's a guess! Because I don't know if the game wants me to fight these guys off before it will let me leave. There's no music or indeed anyone telling me what I'm doing. Once on the train, the loading screen equivalent of a smash cut happens without any of the intended meaning. No doubt impressive considering the fade to black. For whatever reason, action music is playing and we can wander around. But the scene won't progress throw until we randomly decide to climb on the bloody roof of a moving train And then the most contrived defense segment I've ever played begins. *teleporting noise* *train moving sounds* I cannot believe how stupid this scenario is, and wilder still how boring is. It's five straight minutes of gunning down an endless parade of gunships as more and more of the train compartments break, and only when the engine remains are we allowed to continue. We have infinite health, infinite ammo, and the minigun cannot overheat. It's so dreadfully fucking dull. Then we arrive in Nevada. I'm stunned. They used that sequence to kill Colonel Cue, Larry, Brad and the rest of the lads. Colonel Cue: Tough, deserter, died in the back cabin. We still have a drive through the coast ahead. We have to make a stop at the warehouse on the way. You know, that one warehouse? To grab some supplies, and hopefully save some folk? We're given a Humvee, and what follows is an escort segment. ...I think. We have to get this truck through the famous Nevada Plateau. They didn't even change the noise from buggy to Humvee. It even crashes the same. Honestly, this segment is just easy. We have regenerating health and the turret shreds enemies It's really just boring and lasts too long, but it's inoffensive. The only entertaining thing here is the fact that the truck will smash through me and pull up next to enemies. I feel guilty rescuing him, it's pretty clear he wants to get blown to bits. I guess, besides anything else, I appreciate that this level has a road since that means that this is the easiest to navigate segment so far. I mean, the truck gets stuck at points, but the game is nice enough for let me go and move other Humvees and clear the way. *Buggy engine noise* *Buggy turbo noise* Honestly, this is the best the game has been so far since it hasn't made me panic that I'm doing the wrong thing. Word of warning, don't try and ram enemies, though. Both you and the game will crash. All the wrong lessons are taken forward as we make it to the factory. We pull up near a gas station, headcrab canisters block the road ahead, and an easily missed voice tells us to check out a factory. So, after wandering around this giant area for five minutes, I finally get to the factory it wants me to. And I find a bunch of locked up workers and a fellow named Boston Joe who wishes to free them. Oh, bro! You a Half-Life fan too? *Sarcastic Clapping from Tehsnakerer* A whole cutscene establishing something that doesn't matter. We switch the gas off and all of these characters disappear as we leave the factory. Outdoors, the Combine have caught up, and the convoy is fleeing. After about 10 minutes, I realize I have to save this truck, and then I can flee. We are given a warehouse full of ammunition, and enemies are constantly spawning outside. So just ignore them, just run away, just run through this way too large map. And then we get to the docks, and this is the game at its worst in terms of both combat and navigation. Let us start with this image. Some fucking restraint, please! Four (Five) Hunters, in a wide open space, with this game's combat? Confession, I have been playing on normal this whole time. It's part of why the enemies are so hardy. The game defaults to easy for a reason, I thought this was a mistake. On easy, they're still bullet sponges, but so are you. Anyway, the docks are a large, flat, repetitive area filled with cargo crates and wide sight lines. There is very little cover, and as such this is a great place to fill with Hunters and reintroduce the, for some reason, obscenely hardy Vortigaunts. I dropped down to easy here with reason, I was tired of this game. This is a segment where if you wandered into the wrong area, which is in no way signposted, insanely lethal hardy Vortigaunts will just spawn in a circle around you and you have no cover and nowhere to run. And this brings me to a question: Where are we going? I was wandering blindly for so long that I legitimately thought the map was bugged. When this map begins, we're not told what we're doing. If we're headed for that ship mentioned way earlier, the Avalon Vale, we're given no distinguishing features. And the one notable landmark, a lighthouse, which you would be drawn towards, is obscured by the draw distance. How fucking ironic. This leaves you with no clear objective to start the map with. And after scaling the lighthouse, we're blown out immediately and have to spend a minute swimming over to the opposite dock which is barely lit. From here, we're not to head towards a boat but to a random point in between some cargo crates, at which point the next map loads. Surprise surprise, a large directionless dock. This happened in the factory area as well, and I have to say I'm not impressed by how large this map is! It's horrible. It's boring. Holding down W and Shift is not engaging gameplay. I see this massive stretch of road ahead, and I'm not thinking, "Wow, that's realistic!" I'm mentally shutting off! Cut this road, it's useless. When I'm told to go to a factory, don't put two factories right next to one another. Don't place a gigantic carpark nearby and let me wander into it, you are wasting my time and your own. This is another lesson you should be taking from Half-Life, you can make an area feel expansive and complete without minute long stretches of fuck all. Half-Life creates a sense of place by running you through fleshed-out highlight reels of a space. I never thought while playing Nova Prospekt they it needed more empty corridors to really sell me on the fact that this is a big prison. It's padding of the most obvious kind. So, on the other side of the dock, the water is poisonous. I guess. Oh god, me ankles! How the hell did that damage me? I made the jump. We eventually make it to the Avalon Vale. What follows is the first scene that really lets you know that Hideo Kojima is going to be in the special thanks. Captain Roosevelt welcomes the men. "I will fucking kill you" Mitchell:Prologue Roosevelt asks who's leading the men, and without an answer and with a clear protagonist, Mitchell steps forwards. And Nick's rather strange out of nowhere opinion on him springs forth. Nick... Do you have some form of seasickness which turns you into a bitch? You were there! They were in charge of you too! You've known me for less than a day. This is the most contrived anger I've ever seen. Are you gonna go and say the President surrendered because he was Mitchell's commander-in-chief, you donut?! Oh, sure! Take the other English guy's side! Set-up. A large invasion fleet attacks. Oh well! We fight off a few hordes, I get worried that the game is repeatedly softlocked due to the sheer length of time between waves and then part of the ship explodes for some reason. Punchline. I burst out laughing. How fucking stupid! I get what they're doing, the G-Man, it is a curse, it is a deal with the Devil. But these characters have no reason to know or act like this! It's so contrived, it's trying to be clever and deep, and it's just fucking ridiculous. "Everyone in charge of him dies, so make him captain!" That is so childish. I really hope that Mitchell was so maddened that he spent the next few weeks breaking mirrors and setting up courses of ladders to sprint under to spite the superstitious twat! Not that we'd know, because this scene is followed by a three year time jump, and now, we get something really offensive: Over a solid minute of black screen. Mitchell narrates the Combine's takeover of Earth, draining of the sea and subjugation of the human race. This is the very antithesis of Half-Life's methods of telling a story. To have zero visuals and pure tell, don't show. And who is this scene for exactly? Complete newcomers to the series? Throughout my whole time with this video I have never been sure whether this game wants to appeal to just Half-Life veterans, or new people. Because it does an awkward mix of both; it feels like it's for neither. But, it just gets more and more confusing. I forgive the cutscenes; for better and (mostly) worse, they are ironically entertaining. But it takes no notes on storytelling from its source to bulk them up. The world tells no story, and what little snippets of story we get during gameplay are quiet and without subtitles. Denizyaran: "This cutscenes going to actually work because we are not taking out to all the, uh, normal Half Life... Uh, story progress, and just replacing with some cutscenes. We put... Extra stories and emotions. And storytellings with the cutscenes." So, we're in Alaska, one of a few places colder than this game's reception, and we're here to get defenses for the ship. As it turns out, the Combine are more than capable of fighting at sea. Yeah, we've been at this stupid plan for three years. Take everything I said about the last map being way too bloody big, and then add in areas that can kill you through super cold, and well it's a bit like that. The enemies aren't as awful, mind. So it's you know, swings and roundabouts. We start by falling into a cave, and I'll give some credit I had fun lighting and tossing this flare to find the way. The insane screen tearing this is causing is a bit much, mind, so I'll just switch on the V-Sync. Oh. So, it's at this chapter that the game has also started crashing whenever it loaded a manual or quick save. And so, as a substitute, I just had to start noclipping. I know I should be annoyed, but I'm more impressed by how shoddy this is. So we've got a handgun, a bolt-action rifle, too bloody far to walk, and as we're exiting this much too large stage we just walked back and forth across, we see a Hunter running from the right and passes off to our left. What is the message? What is the point of this Hunter? It surely cannot be to follow it to the left. As I said, we have a pistol and a bolt-action, hardly good weapons for taking on any number of Hunters. Of course, it's telling us to go left. We have to make an assumption that it'd be headed home. But in the next stage, indeed in this whole chapter, there are no other Hunters. And from here on out, to avoid the deep freeze, we have to follow the dead trees. Naturally. The game then introduces its first real gimmick: Snipers. They're sort of dropped on you. The game doesn't demonstrate how they work first or give you a hint on how to avoid them. The threat is just suddenly there, and you have to learn! There's no cover, so instead you have to dodge them. And it's a very basic rhythm: Sprint forward a bit to make them lead a shot, stop, wait for the shot, then repeat. For 15 minutes. I'm not joking; this obstacle is repeated with no variety for an entire stage with the deep freeze so you don't dodge too far away. The increase in difficulty over the course of this stage comes from just placing the snipers closer and closer to the player, necessitating just doing the same rhythm faster and faster, until it's at the point that you're better off just sprinting past and taking the hit. Then one of them is bugged and able to shoot you through the fucking floor. Classic escalation of difficulty! Just make it worse until it's practically broken and cheating. I put up a clip of this moment and a comment from it. Yes, so many of the walking sounds in this game are mismatched so that walking on this thick snow sheet sounds like I'm walking on tiles. If you've watched to this point, you now know that this is just a small issue hiding amongst so, so many. I'm not gonna go on this game's aesthetics too much, I've mentioned them here and there, but I'm mostly gonna talk about the gameplay experience. We enter a Combine base, and you know what? We would have lost nothing if you just started this chapter right here. You've given yourself the advantageous framing device of being able to do time skips and leave Mitchell's headspace. Please, use it a bit more. We fight through this tiny Combine base and emerge on the cusp of an even larger one. Welcome to Act 2 - Chapter 2, Welcome to City 17. Whoops... This is the only map in the game I can't claim to have beaten. It's a spotlight segment. If you're spotted, a laser will charge up and kill you. Once spotted, getting hit is inevitable. I have no clue where to go or how to get there. I'm trying, but there isn't enough feedback to avoid the spotlights. And honestly, the later towers feel like they can just decide they want you dead and the spotlight doesn't actually mean anything. I ended up noclipping to the end of this one. Not that noclipping wasn't exactly peril-less Inside we find Boris and his daughter, Sasha. This isn't the weapons factory Mitchell was after, but instead a child labor camp producing Cremators. Boris wants Mitchell to be disgusted, to bathe in Boris's self-loathing. But Mitchell instead pontificates on how humanity and the Combine aren't so different. Wow, Mitchell. I don't give a shit! This has nothing to do with the story. Still, Mitchell isn't leaving empty-handed. Wording, Mitchell! So, deciding to take the kids as his private army, he sets to destroying the factory. This isn't done by finding weak points or gumming up the machinery. No, instead a map far too large for its needs follows where it will let us leave if we kill enough Combine. So as we gun everything down and the factory burns to ashes, Boris and Sasha flee out into the wastes of Alaska. And... That was a 20-year time jump. Hard to tell. It got less fanfare than the three-year time jump. So, we now have an army of soldiers in their early 20s. The only people's Mitchell's age is Nick and Adam, so I guess all those guys died off-screen. I don't know how, seeing as Mitchell was in charge. One of our men has made a disturbing find, and Adam brings it forward. His shipment of hair dye has arrived, surely. Nope, it's a crowbar. Just... a crowbar. But this is enough to enrage Mitchell. I love this mischievous, theatrical take on G-Man. He's come to call in that favor. Mitchell must now go and Hunt Down the Freeman. G-Man recites the promise Mitchell made to Freeman, but he still isn't having it. I love this! Mitchell doesn't care about Freeman anymore, he's over it! He just wants this to be over with. He'd give it all back, basically meaning death, because he hates what this deal has gotten him. In a game called "Hunt Down the Freeman," we spend two-thirds of it not hunting Freeman, and then by the time we can actually start, the protagonist doesn't have his heart in it. That's good! That's unique! I'm into this stupid angle! Let me summarize how then the G-Man gets Mitchell to go after Freeman. Does anyone here understand how to make a threat? Anyway, Mitchell's immediate plan is to ally with the Combine to Hunt Down the Freeman. Nick wants nothing to do with it, and is massively confused with the whole thing. The two go back and forth at each other with grandiose statements for several minutes, key point being Nick saying Mitchell never cared for his troops, and it culminates in the truly wonderful exchange... Well, I mean, it's either that or he's giving it a negative review on Steam. I don't know what Nick's on about, Mitchell loves his lads! Damn it... Topside, everyone blasts the song "Nuclear" in their heads and Mitchell lies to his troops saying that the oceans will soon be dry and with nowhere to go, they must prove themselves worthy to the Combine if they're to have any hope of survival. I mean, that's all true. The lie comes about from him leaving out the whole Freeman thing. It's time to enact a stupid plan. The gang arrives in City 17 and Mitchell has a plan. He needs to get noticed by the Combine so he can have a meeting to hand over his troops. We're not told how we're going to do this, I just kinda had to wander around and accidentally carry out Mitchell's plan. The player is completely left in the dark as to what he wants to do. Whoa, look at this! A map from Half-Life 2!
Look at how much space there isn't! As with any good allegiance, it begins with us suicide bombing a security checkpoint in case of Nova Prospekt Then Mitchell sneaks into the city and breaks into a building. Not very quickly, mind, because this map is huge and the window it wants me to scale into it is very easily missed. So I wandered past it several times, and I think I spent a good 15 minutes in this map before I even noticed it. You've no doubt heard my inserts. That's because I recorded the original all in one sitting, so that's why I sound more aggravated most of the time and what happened was... The later parts of this audio file are occasionally having more problems than the early parts, so... Hello, this is me in the future. With far less bourbon in me. What you have to do is climb into that window, head through the building, and through here brazenly wander into a neighborhood on lockdown, so you can lead the Combine on a foot chase through several blocks, inevitably ending with your capture. And I am very confident at this point that what Mitchell was really after was getting turned into a Stalker, because this is fucking silly. That is such a complex and stupid idea for not being communicated to the player, that you have to know, "Oh, I'm just going to wander." How does it feel like the right thing to do when you, an unarmed character, suddenly has Metro Cops firing at them? It's stupid! And then to actually have to run away and go through several buildings. It's so insane! We're brought before Boris, revealing that if you flee your post and let your factory burn, the Combine will shower promotions on you. Boris hints that this new posting was arranged by the G-Man. He refused the deal at first, but when G-Man pointed out that it's taking the deal or Sasha freezing to death, his hands were more than a little bit tied. I should point out that in this entire scene Boris doesn't explicitly mention it was G-Man. This is so in a much later conversation, Mitchell can say something very stupid. It's so obvious that this can't possibly be the set-up for a twist. What, am I supposed to imagine Breen was out in the Alaskan wastes offering jobs to wandering snowmen? Anyway, Mitchell puts his offer forward: His ship and his men. Boris finds it a tempting offer. I can't believe it. The game is actually going to make me wait. Is there an alternate ending hidden somewhere in here? Because I haven't found it. Anyway, it turns out Breen's cool with it. But things are about to get murky. So, Mitchell asks if he knows Freeman's current whereabouts. Okay, so timeline time: We definitely blow up the checkpoint after Freeman has passed through, and Freeman makes it to Black Mesa East at the end of the first day. He's there for roughly ten minutes. But we managed to leave the Citadel, or at least I assumed that we were just in Citadel, and get all of Mitchell's men, Mitchell himself, and some Metro Cops there in time for the attack on Black Mesa East Damn, the Combine's efficient! I will say, Black Mesa East is the best this game gets, and it barely lasts any time at all. It's a lot of room-to-room small scale gunfights, and the pace does not let up. No respawning enemies, just straightforward action. And I actually understand what's going on and what I'm here to do. Not to mention, it finally feels like this game is being what it needs to be. We're the villain, after 2/3 of the run time had us doing overly long setups for this minute payoff We are Hunting Down the Freeman. Not only that, we're taking a group of brainwashed, impressionable 20-somethings who know no other leadership but Mitchell, a man who was just sold them into servitude for their alien conquerors who have immediately sicked them on the one group fighting for their interests. And the rebels are up against a man with decades more combat experience, genuine military training... This scene is cruel, in a way more of this game needed to be to sell its tone. It may be contrived, it may have me questioning how this game lines up with Half-Life 2's timeline, but I think placing Mitchell at the assault on Black Mesa East, the attack which forced Gordon into Ravenholm, is one of the best moves this game made. After hours and hours, they are finally putting a spin on Half-Life! It's not all sunshine however. Early on in this segment, Mitchell separates from his men to get around a choke point. And this leads into my complaint with this segment, and indeed a complaint I've had several times throughout this game. I have no idea what Mitchell is thinking. I get why we want to go around the turrets, but... why are we leaving Black Mesa East? Why are we running around in the woods? Where the bloody hell are we going? If there is a line of dialogue pointing this out, I could not hear it because to me, it looked like Mitchell just up and left. This happened back in Albuquerque, when boarding the train, at the docks, and at the beginning of City 17. This is a game of constant paranoia, because you are never told what the game wants you to do! There are no objective pop-ups, very few lines of dialogue from Mitchell or other characters stating what the goal of any given segment is. You are left to guess at so much. And at this stage, Mitchell has to just plain be psychic since he somehow knows that Gordon has left the building So while his men are fighting and dying in Black Mesa East, he's fucked off! And as we ascend out of Black Mesa East, a shotgun on a table transforms into a radio, and the shotgun falls through the floor. And we have to no noclip back down the elevator shaft to get it. Ideally, you don't want your video game to do this. And we then tape a flashlight onto the shotgun. Mitchell isn't allowed to leave the room until you do this. You then wander out into a ginormous pitch-black forest filled with zombies. And you just wander around in the dark for 20 minutes until you find the exit. This would be as bad as the docks if I still had expectations to lower. And hey, at least zombies are easier to evade than Hunters and Vorts. I get what this scene is going for, mind, it just does it very poorly. With the shotgun flashlight, you cannot see if you sprint. And you have a narrow field of vision, so it wants you to be slow and weary constantly checking your flanks. It's a fair idea. But I have unlimited sprint, and limited interest. We soon come upon a manor that- Hurts my ears. This then leads us into the graveyard, lifted directly from the ending of Ravenholm. But Gordon has already come and gone. So Mitchell, for whatever reason, dives into a catacomb and this leads out... Here... Uh, hey guys. Sorry I scarpered, but uh, where are we and why? We have a tiny skirmish, then Mitchell dives into another hole. At least this time we can barely hear our men on the other side of the map. This leads out into a massively simplified version of the Antlion Caves. There's so many health recovering grubs on the floor that I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that I've got infinite health. That, and we never face Antlion Workers, just regular old Antlions. And... I can't really do anything but reiterate a point for this lonely guard. If you want me to fight enemies, it's a good idea to make them an actual obstacle to progress. If I enjoy a game, I will likely stick around for a fight anyway. You know, to pay my respects. But, as I've outlined, this is trash. So farewell. Really, the caves are just dull. Fortunately, ironically, they're easy to navigate. I shouldn't complain, but in one of the few environments you could really be labyrinthine, you ended up with a straight line. Fuck, I hate when the only way forward is to rhyme. There is a very minor complaint, but it stacks up with the point that I'm steadily building examples towards. And that is that I was guessing diving through this was the right way. And my guess was getting stretched further and further because the long dive is put before the short dive. That is just the wrong way around. You do the short dive first, you show the player that they're on the right track. Don't do the long dive first, and then get bored of your own gimmick. After some terribly short platforming in the sewers this cave intersects, we come to Hunt Down the Freeman's take on Highway 17. But instead of a buggy, we get a motorbike.
Because motorbikes are cooler. It's just that it handles and makes exactly the same noise as a buggy, and... is a buggy. It just lacks any sort of offensive option. So really, it's a downgrade. The road ahead is, for whatever reason, absolutely lousy with rebels. The bike offers little protection and I am really disappointed that this game won't let me fire one-handed as I ride. We were just given a Scorpion in our pistol slot, and this feels like a big missed opportunity. This section is really oddly paced besides. Halfway through the first stage, you have to abandon the motorbike by the riverbed, climb a wall, and proceed to do the longest stretch of road on foot. Then, after clearing a rather plain and open mansion which seems to exist purely to house a gate control, you open the level exit. And sitting by the loading screen is a new bike. How serendipitous! There is another problem, however. Going through a loading screen on a motorbike will cause the game to crash. So, beyond the loading screen, there is another spare motorbike. And beyond that is two whole stages of just driving down a straight road with no enemies. Two. Entire. Stages. Well, I mean that's a bit of a lie. One of them also features no driving. Since, you know, this time they forgot to give me a spare motorbike to avoid the crash. So, one stage of driving and one of flying because I ain't running this shit. We know Gordon's at Nova Prospekt somehow, so we gotta hurry! Anyway, jumping back for a moment, while we're driving doing nothing, let's reflect a little bit. This format is really more than this game deserves. I know it's not going to get many defenders, if any. And for good reasons, both within the game and without. My expectations for this game were low. To give you an idea, I first learned of this game in December 2017. Late to the party I know, but I was excited for a bad game me and Noonem could bullshit over on CommentaryComms. But my low expectations were way too high, and they've taken a beating. I am consistently blown away by how poor this game turned out. It runs the gamut from boring to disorientating to frustrating to downright broken. And exactly one stage reaches the giddy heights of "not awful." And I had to read a lot more into it than what the game was likely doing on purpose. I have no faith in the writing of this game, that they meant what I saw in it. And when I say it was not awful, it's not because it was good. All it did was avoid the pitfalls the rest of this game was diving into headfirst! It just forgot to make every room five times too big, and put random needless corridors everywhere. I don't want games to be terrible so I have bad games to review. I want people to make the things they want to make, and I wanna play good games. But I appreciate bad jank ones for what they can tell you about good games. I think this game is a worthwhile endeavor to play, if you want to learn how not to make a game. That is the only value I can see in it. The genuine value is that this game is a teaching tool. You've just gotta question whether it's worth buying it, for so many reasons beyond its quality. Anyway, after two stages of no enemies, how about a third? We beat our feet through Nova Prospekt, trying to catch Gordon and Alex before they can activate the teleport, but we're just a moment too late. Nova Prospekt begins to collapse, and a door a couple of corridors back opens for some reason. And after blindly wandering this exploding room for five minutes, I double back and notice it. We drop down a vent directly into the sewers, and I guess it was the Rebel Capture Sluice because in the next scene, Mitchell is imprisoned. Fortunately for us, Sasha, the rebel spy sporting what looks like a loaf of bread atop her head, is here to spring us. Okay, should be good to go. What follows is a stealth segment I can't say I solved., but I did get to the other side of it. Look, I tried, but there's no signposting, it's like the spotlight puzzle. You could just get through this one by running. I can take the hit, so I may as well. Hmm, giant room escaped by noticing this barely visible broken fence. Sasha butters Mitchell up, which is dangerous.
Because this gets him talking about how horrible he is. Hang on a second... [typing noises] Now I see you haven't read the store page, Sash, uh... He's not. Phillip: "Do you think that people really want to try to kill Gordon Freeman?" Berkan: "Well, if they don't want, uhh, they don't have to play. But this is a really real experience and when you play this game, you will feel like... Berkan: Dude, that's Freeman there!" Berkan: "Because if- Okay, if you just think about it... Berkan: How many people that Gordon Freeman killed..." Did Mitchell really just suggest that Boris gained the powers of teleportation and saved himself? Besides anything else, is he just against anyone getting G-Man deals now? Did he seriously not pick up what Boris was putting down earlier? And then he asked what the deal was. Whoa. Whoa. It's... Whoa. It's... You... Okay, real talk, and partly my fault: Throughout my first playthrough I could not differentiate Nick and Adam. They are clearly different people, but I kept thinking they were just always Nick. And after the time skip, you barely see anyone's new models. This is a big issue. Adam is meant to be a pivotal character, but he has so little going on and appears so little. And in this shot that's meant to be a big twist... I couldn't get anything out of it! Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. But then as we make it to the exit, he locks us out. Mitchell's confused. Buddy, I don't remember YOU! Okay, I love the G-Man so much. You've turned him into a fucking monkey's paw. And so we get the big twist, the big Kojima-styled moment that this whole story has been building towards. That's meant to flip the script and make us rethink everything that's happened so far. It was never Gordon. It was Adam! The game proceeds to show the same cutscene, first forwards... Then in case you don't get it, backwards. Then in case it's really not settling in, from Adam's perspective. Which is a really weird cut considering that he's been the shady character, and I don't... being in his head would really give it a new angle, but you know, you got to drag these out somehow. These really slow, five second long pause cutscenes just haven't been slow enough. It's been too long since anything, you know, fun or entertaining has happened in them, like... Could Pyrocynical just run in right now and, you know, give us a line? [sigh] Fuck me... We weren't spared in Black Mesa so we could make a boat house for boys and get revenge. With Sasha dead, the Combine will split their forces and hunt us. We were a twenty year-in-the-making distraction, a footnote. All so Gordon could escape a little bit easier. I see what you're going for! It's just that I hate it! What a time waste. You're trying to make this sensible? You're going for so little impact, that you could actually slot this garbage into canon, and all it took was writing the G-Man as an omniscient trickster? Because his plan depends on so many coincidences, and people surviving, that if he was betting this all on luck, he'd be dumber than Mitchell! I'm not the biggest Half-Life fan, but I get that the G-Man is a bit of a manipulator, but he isn't fucking foolproof! Not to mention, shouldn't this change nothing about Mitchell's feelings towards Gordon? Did you not want revenge for him killing your brothers-in-arms, which is still true? Or is it just because he personally beat you up, a faceless grunt. You big baby bitch, FUCK YOU. Oh well, the 20-year hustle's done. Then you don't die, you dumbass. I love G-Man's little smile there. It says to me, "Is this man for real? I just wasted 20 years of his life, and he wants seconds?" Like... What is this? And so we arrive at those rocks. After a whole game that has sent us loose in large barren fields and hoped for the best. That had a knife knock over a fence, that never tells you between fight or flight, that never lets you into Mitchell's mind, that never communicates what it wants you to do, that had British people playing U.S. military. The game lets you know "Hey, look out for some rocks." And then they never fall. The one good piece of diegetic direction the game has just given you, is a misdirection. This is a game with many, many troubles. But the one big sticking point, the one overriding flaw which unifies so many of the little ones is direction. Not like the director, even if he too is a problem. But of directing the player. Fitting for a game called "Hunt Down the Freeman" where Freeman never actually appears. I said this wasn't the worst game I've played, but the worst experience I've had playing one. It's just put together enough to beat, but so massively inconvenient. Can I even say I've beaten it? I had to noclip through one stage. So many other reviewers — I've watched over reviews — they've had to do the same. It's a first-person shooter that lacks any and all cues: visual, auditory, and meta. It's so unrelentingly ugly, nonsensical, and jumpy. You never know what you ought to be doing and why. You have only the barest of motivations. Rarely does anything prime you to understand what's going on at any one moment. The player shouldn't be Hunting Down the Freeman. But the designer should be Hunting their own Freeman. To see what Half-Life could teach– God, I am the biggest wanker on Earth for writing that! And then, in one final little trick. The biggest, most eye-catching exit to this room leads you not out onto a walkway. But a pipe. I assumed there was glass, my mind inserted it there. But there wasn't. [sigh] And if you die in this map, which is the finale by the way, you get one of two cutscenes. And I got that one. Yep. One final twist. Everyone was calling Mitchell by his first name, the informal buggers. He's Mitchell Shephard, brother of Adrian Shephard. You're gilding the lily a little bit there, Royal Rudius. It's a meaningless reveal which only serves to make Mitchell look even sillier as a character. It's a bit Mary Sue-ish. I'm going to say. And as we stand in some random tower in the sea, we give Nick a ring. Adam's somehow on the ship telling porkies, saying we're dead. And Mitchell tells what really went down. Okay, so the G-Man has to know that we'll survive. The interpretation has to be that he's fucking omniscient. We're providing a distraction for a man who has disappeared for the next fortnight. God, this game's writing is so bad. I don't know if they mean for G-Man to be that omniscient figure, or if they've just mishandled everything. They've either misinterpreted a character or messed up on their own merits, and I don't know which. Man, if we die here, that will just be egg on G-Man's face. Anyway, Nick says he'll be here in 15 minutes, and he MEANS it! 15 minutes, a quarter of a sodding hour, defending this tower. I don't know why little rhymes keep happening. I'm so sorry. You've hated me for the last 20 years, and the last time we spoke you rightly accused Mitchell of destroying everything you two had built! "Old friend..." This finale is really, really easy. As save for one helicopter drop-off, the Combine only attack from one direction, despite there being two bridges. It's just the same wave of enemies. Over and over again. Might I repeat, for 15 minutes. Not to mention, the game has given us turrets. Again, a thing that you would only know if you played Half-Life. And for whatever reason they shoot the Combine, but not us. Fuck it, G-Man willed it. And well, at one point during this, I spent well over a minute not pressing any buttons since the Combine just cannot handle turrets. I popped all of them facing the entrance they used, and none of them ever noticed the corpse pile. 15 minutes. This game never learned restraint. Nick arrives back at the Avalon Vale with some unexpected cargo. And I'm just gonna let most of this play out. You've earned it. I guess Mitchell thought it was cool when the G-Man said it. Also, "You fucked up my face." Good to know the character arc of this game was Mitchell learning how to crack a joke. And, so Mitchell has one final order. No you're not. And thus ends Half-Life 3. I'm really sorry, I didn't want to do a joke that easy, but I'm usurping the inevitable Half-Life 3 joke in the comments. It's a game that is very, very hard to enjoy, and not worth the effort trying. It's hard to even enjoy ironically. For all the cheesiness and awkward loftiness of the cutscenes, the bizarre sidetracks into downright goofy characters, the story mistaking "characters talking about how sad they are" for a bleak atmosphere, there are HOURS of tedious gameplay breaking them up. This game started as a mistake, and never stopped making them. It attached itself to an IP that, twice over, revolutionized first-person shooters, that introduced new methods to tell a story within its medium, that's made by a studio that used to get taken the piss out of for playtesting and idiot-proofing their games to a ludicrous degree, and then made the most confusing, inept series of stages that I have ever played. Even in the first level, that tiny segment in Black Mesa, I got lost. Your eye is drawn to all the wrong places. Why would you approach what looks like a giant wall and expect it to open? It took Half-Life and made an attempt at a tactical shooter. Where this is no tactics and the shooting is weak. If I have any compliments for this game, they could only ever be backhanded. The ambition of a 20-year revenge plot is admirable, but it doesn't deliver. Black Mesa East isn't as terrible as everything else. I enjoy Cheeky Medkit Boy, but damn was he needless. You really did well getting a scam onto the storefront with the owner's IP on it. That was brave of you. Did you mistake weapon variety for just having a lot of weapons? I can see them trying to be clever and putting new spins on old Half-Life chapters, but it doesn't do any of them right. Alaska takes notes from Sandtraps, Highway 17 is Highway 17. The arrival at City 17 mirrors Gordon's entry into the city. Each of these familiar elements are blindly interpreted. All it really does is show how tightly designed Half-Life 2 is. "Hunt Down the Freeman" really is a fitting title. I'm trying to find any traces of Half-Life's identity or quality beyond surface-level aesthetics, which it also gets wrong. But, I'm finding nothing. And that brings us to the end of "The Seven Hour Chore." If you enjoyed this video and want to support the creation of further episodes of
"Playing," please support me on Patreon. People who pledge $5 or more will get access to bonus videos, where I answer viewer questions and test out things that are being requested of me. Everyone will get thanks in the comments and you can also get access to my scripts and other materials. A big thank you to my Patrons: Roomba-San, DBZKing119, Noonem, Sygard, Temascos, Armen Reddy, Austin, Wag Man, AltF4Games, Samson, [unintelligible], Corrupted, [unintelligible], Zeno, Nick Morrow, Jonathan Gutierrez, Ryghts, Elowin, The Tried Piper, Bran, Jonathan Hume, Tom Hughes, Jack Saint, Raith, Hayk Grigoryan, iluvOP, AJoJoReference, Cody Drewiega, PsychoSodaPop, Sterv the Khajiit, Andreas Huber, Pruthviji Odedra, Nioji, SimilarDude, Liam Esko, sentry_down, BrokenMusicNerd, Aboveup, Heart Corvian, Synulia, Dylan Stewart, Lyndon Swift, Urshurak, Kyle Ryan, and Saipher. And AND Josh King. You came after I recorded, but I still caught ya. Thank you all so much. I hope you've enjoyed this journey. I enjoyed it in st- I enjoyed it in parts. I think. My throat hurts. I gotta stop doing these in one burst. Again, thank you all so much.
Gaben: You fucked up my franchise.
So yeah I know this video is relatively old and all but since no one bothered to post it hear I thought I might as well do the honors.