Story: You are a black ops male agent, sent to eliminate DR. Gallagher, former member of the Black mesa science team, who is hiding in the Dead end night club. You aren't able to find him, but in the warehouse, you hear a .357 Magnum being fired. It was DR. Gallagher, that commited suicide. You pick up the bomb (As seen in the case in Opposing Force, with 2 Black ops activating the bomb), Let yourself captured by the grunts, in the jail, go to a dirty rotten cell. you make your way out, get to Black mesa. When you set the bomb, you are shot by Adrian Shepard, but NOT killed. You see the G-man re-arming the bomb, you wake up, but you must get out of there.
Uses the Poke 646 mods street textures and other urban areas... which is awesome considering it was the only mod to take place in such areas. To be able to go to these sorts of places again instead of the usual Black Mesa is a real treat.
Its quite a long mod to.
Oddly enough the game doesn't take any advantage of Opposing Force which is a shame, the mod came out way after it and it really could have used a military grade knife and sniper rifle (perhaps even a silenced snipe rifle variant for black ops?)
I also think this was a missed opportunity for fighting along side team mates, I mean we only got a chance for that in Opposing Force.
Theres some non-sensical stuff like finding a shotgun at a crime scene which realistically speaking would have been taken as evidence... and no explanation as to how aliens got into metro city.
Its another one of those mods that seems like it adds alot environment wise, unique premise and gives alot of potential for a good storyline.. but then doesn't deliver.
Its also got some pacing issues, being slow and.. well slow. One would think a Black Operative would know what to do, where to go, and fast.
I think the occasional nude poster was quite... eh interesting XD
The female assassins are quite chesty.
Not to distract myself, I felt like it could have been alot more.
This is the definitive experience in playing as a Black Ops agent for the task of retrieving a brief case and hunting a rogue doctor. Awesome stuff.
The story is not merely bare-bones, but also completely nonsensical. A dyslexic attention-deficit toddler could write a more compelling sequence of events than this drivel. Whoever wrote this clearly has a poor grasp of how clandestine government operations work. The level design is competent and kept interesting and the graphic novel format for the cutscenes is an interesting work-around for the modder's apparent inability to script sequences involving NPC movement and dialogue, but the gameplay is buggy as all hell and after my first death the UI broke completely, leaving me unable to change weapons and stuck at the mercy of a very angry helicopter and unable to switch to rockets. Don't recommend.
While it has a fresh ambience and an interesting premise, Black Ops doesn't live up to expectations. The overall environment is mostly dull, the story is confusing and the gameplay becomes somewhat tedious towards midgame.
Half-Life mods based on secret agents and black operations are rare, and while Black Ops draws heavily from the textures and modelling of Poke646, it offers a varied combination of urban environments. It begins in the city, with great night ambience sounds, transitioning to more industrial areas with numerous warehouses. The Black Ops HQ and the subway are well developed, with the latter containing advertisements that are a nod to classical cult movies. However, it should be noted that this is just the shell. Textures are low-quality and often plain, revealing the artificiality of the background. Even custom textures can appear bland at times. On a positive note, there are several posters of semi-naked girls scattered in unusual places, which can pass as Easter eggs.
The mod features a story that is somewhat of a spin-off of Half-Life’s, though it diverges to the point it ends up not being very interesting. The protagonist Declan Walker has a very straightforward mission throughout the plot that must achieve at all costs, which aligns to the secret agent theme, though the narrative pace is disappointingly reduced to a cycle of “objective is not here, mission pending”. While it has its share of plot twists, by that point the interest in the story likely fades. It's worth mentioning that the developer makes good use of the scripted text lines to establish the plot. Along with the comic panels at the end of each chapter, with drawing that closely resembles the original models, they give a breath of fresh air balancing flexibility and creativity into the story while sticking to Half-Life roots. Unfortunately, these elements are not enough to compensate for the overall shortcomings of a very plain narrative with an extremely blunt ending. And this is without even going over continuity flaws that can happen between gameplay and the comic panels.
Speaking of gameplay, it is the biggest letdown in Black Ops. The whole point of a mod with this theme is to emulate the feeling of being a special secret agent, capable of stealth kills and cunning thinking. The only element in the entire mod that evocates this theme in playability is the silenced pistol. The rest of the weapons are vanilla Half-Life, which, apart from the unfitting crossbow are the exact opposite of stealth. Having such a vast close-quarters arsenal for a spy, how is the melee weapon a simple nailed plank? The puzzles however are somewhat interesting compared to those in Half-Life, although at times they walk the thin line between the exasperatingly unintuitive and the unimpressive obviousness. In general terms, mod’s flow is adequate, though in certain areas rendering issues can be unforgiving for older machines.
Simply put, Black Ops is an example of wasted potential. The theme is one of the less explored in the Half-Life modding universe and it is generally set up right (which is why I still recommend giving it a try), but be aware that it is not developed enough to deliver a black ops game as the title suggests.
Great mod!
A pretty good mod, one of the few that describes the adventures of a black operative. The original idea of the developers was to use comics for cut scenes, and for the player - objects and computers to complete the mission. I also liked the design of the city levels, in particular the bar and Chinatown. And somehow suspiciously often come across posters with explicit content)) Like other users, I can attribute the rather slow movement of the player to the minuses - given how the girl operatives ran and jumped in the original... And there are not enough weapons when compared with Opposing Force.
Good level design (except the metro part. The way to progress wasn't indicated well) Nice scripting, it has a few little funny gags and I like the comic strip idea.
However, there could be more stuff - the mod should take the advantage of OP4 stuff. The hands are just recolored HEV (no biggie, but details are important too). It kind of tries to be lore accurate, but it changes things around a little, also I'm not the fan of the Black Ops Assassin texture (They should stay normal) also there's some inconsistency with them because you fight them in one place (they should have a different texture there, so it doesn't confuse the player). Also the ending is a little bit weird. Other than that, it's worth checking out.
Unique!
A great mod.
We play as a Black Ops operative and travel through extremely well made urban areas, which is rarely seen and in such quality in HL mods, and try to foil a terrorist plan. As stated before the mapping is fantastic, the only rival for its city locations may be Poke646 which this mod shares textures with, I think. The weapons or enemies are nothing special, instead of a crowbar you have a nail plank for example. The real meat of the mod is definitely its varied settings. Chinatown, sewers, clubs, warehouses etc. These regular spots of our everyday life are so well crafted that playing through them is a blast. The mod also tells its story with Max Payne style comic book pages, another original idea.
Overall pretty solid and a bit underrated classic.