Conundrums mixed within the deteriorating setting of one of Earth's last thriving cities - City 17. Explore a hidden story twist in the climax of the mod, and enjoy every minute of the exploration and fighting. Thank you for downloading.
Calamity is more action-oriented mod from 2009 that explains it's narrative through graffiti and audio logs.
The combat for the most part is decent but eventually gets a major difficulty spike that might ruin it for you.
The narrative isn't too strong but it seems to have predicted Half-Life Alyx's Citadel construction plot point.
Overall it's a tightly packed mod that doesn't go on longer than what was necessary, the only thing that ruined it for me was the difficulty spike I spoke of earlier, it's well worth a playthrough however!
Too much enemys for HL2, get boring for killing them.
There is not enough of atmosphere and sounds on the levels.
But here there is a small story, the plot, so I put 6.5 / 10
I really enjoyed this! Fast paced and to the point. Very few mods just let you get to the action right away.
This is a pretty solid Half-Life 2 mod. Great gameplay, story, and level design. I highly recommend this one!
Combat was tense and exciting, although it often felt a bit cheap. You know how it doesn't feel "fair" when an enemy spawns behind you? There were a few too many ambushes. We're in the middle of uprising, why are so many Combine just hanging around, lying in wait? Shouldn't you be mobilizing? That said, the ambush stacking kept you on your toes and constantly forced the player into a sense of chaotic confusion which was pleasantly thrilling.
Too much janky platforming with non-obvious solutions that encourages the player to waste a lot of time trying to "break" the game because there's a chance that extremely precise crouch jump to catch that corner of a shipping container could be the way forward!
The radio transmission exposition was cool but poorly executed. These logs were way too long with nothing for the player to do while listening. Even worse, the audio was muffled and quiet with war sounds in the background, meaning you had to crouch right up against the radio and stare deep into its green eye for like 7 hours just to miss something because of an explosion in the background.
Speaking of 7 hours... or should I say days? I guess when the world is being flat-out dominated like that, hours must've felt like days.
Red writing on the walls felt natural and emotional at first, then soon became subtle clues which was intriguing and clever, but quickly devolved into a short paragraph detailing exactly what the next goal was. Hmph. If you literally have to spell it out for me, you're not scripting it right. Honestly could've done without the red writing altogether, so keep it brief!
Music worked great, when it played. Mostly silent mod with a few good battle bangers, although sometimes it had this weird muffled distortion to it which I guess was intentional for effect, but in practice, it had me wondering if my headphones were going.
Map design was solid for the most part, with the exception of a few wide open areas that just wasted sprint energy.
Final sequence was INTENSE. It felt amazing mowing down Elites, but at the same time terrifying that you're on the edge of being overwhelmed. I think the gunplay would've been a bit less sloggish had the overall number of enemies been reduced, but angles of attack increased. It was also a clumsy battle arena that wasn't as challenging as it should've been.
Overall a great mod with some awkward shortcomings. There are some great ideas at work tainted by poor execution in an attempt to increase difficulty, but at the same time my heart is still pounding from that Strider battle. Gripping, moody, and most importantly: fun.
Good little mod!
Mapping is great, areas are atmosperic and immersive. Puzzles are not too difficult, but fun to solve.
Voiceacting could be better though, voice actor for the radio man expressed 0 emotions, which really ruined mod's story a bit. The music is good, but it doesn't fit half-life atmosphere at all. Also, difficulty is too high in some areas, for example, the final scene with train.
7/10
Half-Life 2 Calamity is a very well made mod! If you enjoy fast paced combat then Calamity is the mod for you! It throws combat setpiece after combat setpiece at you and doesn't let up. It also manages to ensure that, despite being 90% combat with little downtime, the mod never becomes boring. It's best to compare it to the City 17 uprising chapters like "Follow Freeman!" from base Half-Life 2 but without any companions.
The environments in this mod are beautiful, too. Don't let the mod being over a decade old fool you, a lot of the levels in this game look even better than some of the stuff Valve made in Half-Life 2! The outside areas have a beautiful winter-y atmosphere with cold icy-blue cloudy skies that are a stark contrast to the oppressive overcast weather in Half-Life 2. The indoor areas are really just more of the same that you'd find in normal Half-Life 2 though, but I don't blame the developers since it's harder to change up the visual aesthetic of an indoor area than an outdoor one. There are lots of factory areas and the such in the first half of the mod, the second half having more focus on the proper street areas of City 17 and eventually ending in an underground Combine base which serves as the foundation for the Citadel's construction.
And at the mention of the Citadel still being under construction, that brings us to the plot of the mod.
As evidenced by the Citadel still being built, this mod is infact a prequel of sorts to Half-Life 2! The mod opens with Gordon witnessing the resonance cascade from the original Half-Life. During the sequence of the cascade in which Gordon is teleported to Xen and then back to the test chamber, Gordon is also teleported forwards through time into City 17 during the events of the 7 Hour War (although for some reason the mod developer decided to change 7 Hours to 7 Days. I have no idea why they did this, since it makes the Combine seem far less threatening and just completely breaks canon).
Over the course of the mod the player can come across radios that broadcast the thoughts of a random man who is just trying to survive the war. It seems that even in Eastern Europe, just days after the Black Mesa Incident, Gordon Freeman is still incredibly well known and is already seen as a symbol of hope to the Resistance... for some reason. Anyway, these radio broadcasts are basically just there to show how much of a toll the 7 Hour War is taking on normal people like the unknown broadcaster, who is understandably angry at Black Mesa for causing all of these events, but is even angrier at the Combine for invading. The writing for the unknown broadcaster is pretty good in theory but, in execution, kinda falls flat. It's just not written that well and can come across as a little edgy at some points due to the amount of swear words shoved into sentences.
As Gordon Freeman makes his way through City 17 he comes across graffiti written by Resistance members, detailing a plan to hijack a Razor Train loaded with explosives and ride it into an underground Combine base where construction on the Citadel is underway. For some reason this plot point is never really touched on again. I assumed Gordon was meant to hijack the train himself but that never actually happens. Instead he just finds an elevator down into the under-construction Citadel and fights his way in through that way instead. Eventually Gordon comes across some sort of power generator thingy which he overloads and, I assume, blows up. I say "I assume" because, after surviving a massive horde of Combine Elites who keep pouring into the generator area (a setpiece which goes on for just slightly too long in my opinion), the explosion is never actually shown. Instead Gordon is teleported away by the G-Man (who I really didn't enjoy being thrown into the plot this abruptly since it doesn't make sense that the G-Man would make himself known to Gordon at a point in time which is technically right after the resonance cascade, and also just because it's very abrupt) and shown that the explosion Gordon caused did nothing to halt the construction of the Citadel. Gordon is then thrown back into the test chamber from the first Half-Life, where the chapter Unforseen Consquences would take place. Roll credits (of which contains some amazing drum and bass credits music composed by one of the mod's developers).
As you may be able to gleam, the plot of this mod is a little messy and somewhat barebones. It has some good ideas but a fair few of them aren't executed all too well. Despite the somewhat lackluster plot, however, Calamity's main attraction is still fast paced FPS gameplay and not story. And as a combat-heavy action-oriented mod, Calamity hits the mark almost perfectly. It provides an incredibly fun challenge for experienced Half-Life 2 players, with exhilarating and challenging combat setpieces around every corner.
I give Calamity an 8/10.
Nice stuff
This mod mostly takes place around 'junkyards' and wastelands' and crates, etc. Most of this mod entails fast and furious combat primarily fighting against the combine militant 'pig' (cop) bastards....but there are other aliens such as zombies, etc. The combat level of difficulty of "Calamity" is very fair and balanced until the latter part of this mod.
The level design is very competent throughout. However, the closer one progresses towards the end of the mod; the harder and more unrealistic the combat is. The level design of the combine headquarters is very, very well done -- but it is offset by the uber-increasing level of difficulty of combat: I was CONSTANTLY utilizing 'no-clip,' 'invincibility,' and 'impulse 101' (all ammo) cheats for the final 15-20 mintues+ in order to have any chance.
This mod is definitely NOT a 'keeper' for me due to the ultra-unrealistically difficulty of combat towards the ending.
The final 'boss battles,' esp. of "Calamity" was a ludicrous impossibility and ruined the entire experience of this mod completely for me; thus, I rate "Calamity" a 6/10.