Late Review Thread - Awakening mod for Half-Life 2

Awakening is a short single player mod for Half-Life 2. The player assumes the role of Adrian Shephard, star of Half-Life: Opposing Force.

Just like with Half-Life itself, you could just as easily be playing as a crowbar wielding ballet dancer in a tutu, as your character remains silent throughout the game.

The mod starts off with a prolonged in-game cut-scene of Combine forces assaulting a rebel base. It’s a nice touch, but drags on quite a bit and the Combine use some questionable battle tactics such as the “put your grenade right here” box formation. Eventually the camera changes location to an underground facility that appears to function as a sort of cold storage / cryogenics lab. There’s some good machine animation and sound effects during this portion of the cut-scene. The G-man watches ominously through a window. And then he speaks!

Voice acting in a mod? It’s a phenomenal undertaking, especially with the already established characters that the mod attempts to use. Amongst the NPCs making an appearance are Barney, that annoying doctor woman that I never manage to remember the name of, and Dr Kleiner. Using these characters is probably the largest mistake in the mod. The voice actors, while decent enough for a mod, do not sound like the characters they’re supposed to be. Kleiner reminded me of a character from South Park, and the G-man did not have the same menacing quality that his stuttering randomness imposes. Dr What’s Her Face is the least grating of the characters, though she does sound too young and excitable for the NPC she is portraying. New NPCs could have enhanced the voice acting, I feel.

While the game does use the G-man as his usual prodding, poking, evilly meandering self, he could have done just as well if his role was more Half-Life “lurking menace” rather than Half-Life 2s “can’t shut him up”.

The game itself starts out in generic room paradise, but the mapping soon improves once you get outside the base. You’re treated to a decent section of buggy driving, with the Half-Life 2 mandatory stop-offs to destroy attacking forces and disable Combine power generators. It feels that for such a short game they really managed to fit in a good balance of puzzles and fighting.

Although the mapping is eye-pleasing and generally guides you in the right direction, there are a few strange moments early on in the game that stuck in my mind as showcasing the difference in quality between the first maps and the later ones. The first map suffers from huge oddities, like ladders that only allow you to climb so high on them for no evident reason. There’s also a door that closes behind you as you pick up your crowbar. If you approach this closed door you lose all health and die.

The only oddity that I experienced a little further into the game was a Combine soldier that had somehow fallen through the displacement used for the floor and was sitting on the brushwork underneath, shooting me whenever I came near him. I spent 5 minutes searching for him before eventually giving up, enabling God mode and no-clip and finding him underneath the map. What a nuisance he was!

Enemy wise there are the usual selection of Combine soldiers, Zombies and Ant Lions. As soon as I saw the first headcrab canister I began dreading the game play ahead, expecting there to be the usual tight-corridor-lots-of-zombies nuisance that has begun to bore me in the Half-Life 2 episodes. Fortunately Awakening manages to include Zombies while also maintaining a decent room size with plenty of physics items to throw at them with the Gravity Gun.

Yes, the Gravity Gun makes an appearance in the game. It just wouldn’t be a decent Half-Life 2 world mod without the ability to throw saw blades and (surprisingly weak) breeze blocks at a variety of opponents. Notably absent from the game is Shephard’s pipe wrench. He uses a crowbar instead, just like Gordon Freeman. Most of the other guns from Half-Life 2 are present and as the game is only 5 or so levels long, you seem to collect them all rather quickly, so you’re quite spoilt for choice.

Ant Lions come later in the game, and fortunately (in my opinion) you do not have to fight hordes and hordes of them as the game introduces them near the end. While enemy A.I. seems to be standard Half-Life 2 fare and performs quite well, the Combine soldiers especially don’t seem to understand their surroundings as well as they should. They don’t seem to flank, move for cover, or work as a team as much as I remember them doing. An Ant Lion guardian later in the game performed extremely badly, probably due to him being too big for the corridor he’s in.

Custom textures are used frequently towards the end of the game. At least I think they were custom textures. They fit into the world extremely well, so I’m really not sure whether they were custom, or if they were just from the original Half-Life 2 but unfamiliar to me.

This mod is short and sweet and will give you an hour or two more in the Half-Life Universe. While it’s nothing ground breaking, it is certainly an excellent mod that brings back an old friend and lets him do his thing. While it could have benefited from new NPCs and at least remodelled weapons, the lack of them does not destroy the playability of the game.

The Good
Maps feel and look professional to Valve standard
Adrian Shephard
Gravity Gun fun
Custom textures and models (world)
Action packed
Good number of puzzles for length
Good pacing

The Bad
Strange voices coming from established NPCs
First map feels lower quality
No pipe wrench!
Same weapons as Half-Life 2

Thanks for the review.