Me and you both know what to do now, kill the only witness of our rogue intentions — Gordon Freeman.” the Lieutenant said. “But…how? We have no idea where he is..” sighed Allen Morris, ” !@#$%^&* Morris, there is no time for questions, we kill him, or they kill us. He was here about 30 minutes ago, load up... we are going to kill Gordon Freeman.”
Ground Zero 2 starts right from where the first ended. This time you play as one of the soldiers, who were apparently working behind the US Military while attacking the facility. You have to find and kill Freeman because he could let the world know about your unofficial attack.
The first thing you'll notice is that this mappack is much more action packed than the first. You get nearly every weapon OP4 has to offer and fight with both Xen and Race X aliens, plus with grunts who's figured out you were the traitors that attacked Black Mesa. The mapping is again hit and miss. Some areas look fine and have a nice industrial / silo look. Others are more uninteresting and it feels like the creator was getting bored. Despite this, I wouldn't call any of the maps bad.
There are some weird design choices. For example, the buttons you have to press doesn't look like buttons, instead they look like consoles. There is also one "button" you have to shoot instead of pressing it. In one baffling section there is a mini-puzzle, where you have to disable a laser to push some boxes towards a vent entrance higher up, and use the box to climb inside. The laser must be shut off because it breaks the boxes, but you can too! So if you attack them with the crowbar out of habit, you basically ruin the entire puzzle. Finally, the ending is abrupt and the final event is just two large groups of grunts blocking your way. The issues can go on and on and unfortunately, all these tiny issues stack up bit by bit and negatively affect the experience.
It's not all bad of course. Alongside some well designed maps, there are fun scenarios here and there. You can come across a grunt commiting suicide or discover a funny graffiti by Freeman. Little things like that improve the fun factor of any mod / map. There is custom voice acting like the first part and it's still as distracting as ever, though it's definitely not a negative. I'm sure many players will enjoy the fast paced, run-n-gun style too.
Finally, I suggest everyone who wants to try this pack to install my barrel fix. There is a section where you have to use cheats because of a broken pushable barrel, the fix solves that problem.
While I enjoyed playing Ground Zero 2, I also liked the first part better. There is still fun to be had here however. Definitely try it if you've played the first mappack or if you're looking for an old school, action packed experience.