The Citizen is set parallel to the events of the original Half-Life 2. The player takes the role of an ordinary man, pushed over the edge by the oppressive regime controlling his life. His home trashed, his family dead, The Citizen leaves his apartment for the last time. He seeks new friends, and a way to help the human resistance to smash the iron grip of the Combine. What follows is a winding tale of betrayal, determination and grief. Many obstacles lie in his path which require a sleek combination of agility, stealth, intelligence, and sheer violence to overcome
This review may contain spoilers
Overview: Overall, I found the mod to be a rather decent one (unless you count the voice acting, which I found to be nearly D-grade). Much like Half-Life: Precursor [which I know came after this, but so what? I'm doing a later take on this], nothing too earth-shattering, but a decent enough play that it merits the time.
Story: The story is a basic HL2 mod for you: new Citizen hates Combine, joins Resistance, fights Combine with arbitrary goal in mind. Though I couldn't help but wonder about some aspects: why is Breen doing his broadcasts from an office building when he could easily be safe up in the Citadel, where we've never seen him outside of? And what spurred on the betrayal? And why are Combine Advisers, who haven't been awoken yet, there? And why does G-Man suddenly come out of nowhere to help this random Citizen? Oh well.
Gameplay: Basic HL2 fare. HEV Suit somehow ends up on the player, collect the same weapons as you go along, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing I truly need to comment about. Aside from the stealth points, which were interesting. I would have liked to have seen more of that, but it still lost its touch when no matter what you did Combine Cameras and turrets spotted you. And the disguises were nice, but again very lightly implemented. It was a rather nice mechanic, though.
Mapping: Decent enough. Some rather dubious things, though, like the supposed Control Room only having a handful of couches and nothing else around. Some more detailing in the vents became apparent with a small pipe-fall, so that was nice. Though I always felt in some way like I was insanely cramped no matter what. No real breathing room, nothing beyond a direct hallway.
Voice Acting: Downright horrid. No emotion from any characters, particularly the Squad Leader near the end. I could tell he didn't care what he was doing and was reading off a script. If this project needs more voice acting in the future from better people, I'll do it.
In short, decent, but not really varied.