Half-Life: Urbicide is a 11 map singleplayer modification for Half-Life set during the Xen invasion of Earth sometime during the events of Half-Life. You play as Bruce, a warehouse supervisor, who, during the alien invasion together with a colleague, gets stuck inside one of the warehouse buildings. Bruce's fiancรฉ, Rebecca, is not far from his location and decides to go and get her.
Once again, Forsete cranks out another fantastically detailed mod in the form of Half-Life: Urbicide. Set in an undisclosed city during the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade, you must fight your way to your apartment to rescue your fiance.
Urbicide features some nicely detailed maps which really sell the setting that it is going for. There are one or two spots where this detail is a hindrance and the player can get caught on small details during frantic combat.
There are also some spots where the gameplay is a little inconsistent, with cardboard boxes being breakable in some maps and not others. Same goes for the number of locked doors throughout. A lot of the time it's hard to tell which doors are merely detailing and which are your means to progress.
I also feel that for all the great sound design included, it's a shame that the mod resorts to on screen text to convey story moments, rather than a handful of lines of voice acting.
In spite of this, Urbicide was an absolute blast to play and a real challenge on Hard difficulty.
๐๐ณ๐ฃ๐ช๐ค๐ช๐ฅ๐ฆ ๐ช๐ด ๐ข ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฎ ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ช๐ค๐ฉ ๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐ต๐ณ๐ข๐ฏ๐ด๐ญ๐ข๐ต๐ฆ๐ด (๐๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ฏ: ๐ถ๐ณ๐ฃ๐ด: ๐ค๐ช๐ต๐บ + ๐๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ฏ: ๐ฐ๐ค๐ค๐ช๐ฅ๐ฐ: ๐ต๐ฐ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ) ๐ข๐ด "๐ค๐ช๐ต๐บ-๐ฌ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ".
Half Life: Urbicide is a total-conversion mod where you play as Bruce who tasks himself with the duty of saving his fiancรฉ, while traversing his way in a chaotic war-torn city.
The characters itself aren't the key focus, rather the focus is on the environment. This mod perfectly encapsulates how a Xen Invasion would take place in an urban scenario. Absolute chaos. My words aren't enough to describe this mod's environment, you need to see it to believe it.
I played the mod in medium difficulty. You don't have any "HEV" or "Armor" system. As such, the enemies deal less damage and they also have lower health points. The puzzles are alright for the most part.
All the praises aside, there are two issues I have regarding the mod. Number 1, the HECU. It doesn't make much sense for them to be an enemy combatant. The reason why it works for the original Half-Life is because they were tasked to cover up the Incident and also to prevent any sort of research stuff from getting into public hands. It doesn't make any sense for the civilians to be targeted. I have no issue with HECU being present, I have issues with them attacking civilians for no good reason. Number 2, the Puzzle elements are inconsistent. For example: in 2nd map, you have to break a lock with your crowbar. Later on, you also get more doors with locks, but you can't break them, rather you need to find keys for them. It is just odd.
I really wish this mod had some NPC Civilians. The city is entirely desolate if you exclude the HECU, the NPC Civs would have made the environment slightly more believable . Regardless, this will remain one of my favorite conversion mods for Half-Life. If it weren't for those slight imperfections, this mod would have earned an easy 10/10. Bravo.
Gameplay, Story, Details... This is a great mod! However... There's one problem I can't stand...
What the **** is the H.E.C.U doing here? And why the **** are they attacking you? Why don't make them into National Guard or something, If you wanna keep the soldiers, that's fine, but... don't you think they should protect people? **** me, man! I don't even care If they're robots from Germany, just make some sense on why they should do that/be there!
Good mapping, cool combat situations, decent balance, cool ending. This mod suprised me really. Good job!
Incredible environments! Expansive, detailed, and immersive. Excellent intro with some tricky, atmospheric platforming to set the stage. Felt a bit like the HL2 bridge. Then the window to the gorgeous and detailed outside world? Nice homage. Already starting strong. Dammit, Andersen! Your head's facing the wrong way!
Excellent scripting, although some parts did feel like a knock-off of Half-Life and great mods like Echoes. Cut scenes were excellently choreographed.
Tough mod. Minimal health pickups and so many Grunt ambushes. Hell, too many ambushes in general. Brutal.
A few confusing "press the button" sections with non-obvious interactable objects. Kinda tiring having to mash E in a dead-end room to move forward.
Subtle, but effective music that imbues a haunting, militaristic feel.
Weird ending, but whatever. Not a fan of the jump puzzle since that's not intuitive Half-Life platforming and had me looking for another solution, but overall it was a solid mod. Loved the well-placed environments. Clearly a lot of thought went into Urbicide.
A wonderful Half-Life modification with very datailed and flawless mapping, lighting and texture work. Great amount of custom content.
It features nice puzzles and sometimes you have think outside of the box, which I think is great. I won't spoil anything, just play it - this mod needs more attention!
Excellent MOD ! The level design is amazing, polished with many details, it has been a pleasure to pay attention to everything you built with love (I'm a true fan, and it's a reference for me as a goldsrc mapper :))
The only "bad thing" that make me putting a 9 and not a 10 is the gameplay, good but a bit linear, it's a shame. Although even with that, it's a good Half life MOD to play so far ! Thank you for giving this MOD to the Half-Life community !
This mod has very beautiful visuals for an engine that came out over 20 years ago. The overall gameplay was fine, but I had moments where I had no idea how to progress. I also like the story and the way it isn't another "you are a part of the black mesa disaster, you have to get out of here" thing.
Outside of a nasty crash bug I was able to circumvent with some file deletion, this is a pretty solid if not flawed mod!
As someone who adored Poke 646, it was great to see another take on those Aesthetics with a much higher attention to detail and larger scope. The use of textures is fantastic and the industrial level design is very intricate.
Sadly, it's pretty samey, with a good half of the mod taking place in a Sewer setting before stretching it's legs in a beautiful hospital and run-down apartments, and the use of the HECU feels weird as they are pretty far from Black Mesa so their containment procedures seems to be of service to gameplay more then anything else.
Also worth noting is the difficulty spike near the end when the HECU become an enemy combatant and without armor the firefights are extraordinarily difficult given the close-quarters combat.
Regardless, Urbicide is a fun little romp and I can't wait for more, if there is any! :D
looks good