Reviews - HALF-LIFE: Operation Rosenberg mod for Half-Life

A perfect mod in everyway.

The idea seems to be quite good, but the gameplay is terrible. Extreme lags for no apparent reason, pushing around the soldiers who get stuck behind every single corner is totally annoying, the engineer has permanently a torch stuck in his hand and every time the squad sees an enemy, they throw a bunch of grenades at him, then run towards him and get killed by the nades.
Overall rating: looks nice but annoys you too quickly.

Awesome mod !

A story-driven, almost linear, gameplay equivalent mod for OF. Interesting ways to solve barriers to progress, sometime hard to guess, but quickly discovered ways. You are soldier, and you will cooperate with other solders. Take care not to bring soldiers to room with cops, they will start warring with each other, even though not with you. You do not need to lug npc's with you, there is enough ammo to complete everything. Take notebook and writedown passcodes you encounter, you will need some of them. There are several endings. There are two secred levels. Levels are very pretty and nicely designed.

OK I'am new in MODDB and I got here just looking for Half Life mods on google. I really liked this mod and I think some people are not giving it the rating it deserves. That's why I give a 10!

Ok I give this Mod an 8. I will explain why:

---S P O I L E R S !!---

Personally, I've always loved Half Life story and specially Opposing Force spin-off. I truly love HL mods in wich you are a marine, in this case Corporal Collins, an Hecu soldier.
This marine is sent from Black Mesa to a hidden area of this facility, the Area 99. This is apparently a place where dirty experiments of the government are taken place.

This Mod has 2 endings:
1) HAPPY ONE :) - You find Dr Rosenberg, save him of being murdered by Black Ops and escape later in a chopper with him and a couple of soldiers.
2) At the middle of the game, when you are in the TrainYard, you can take one of the trains back to Black Mesa. This means you desert from your mission making the Colonel in charge really furious. At this point the marines will attack you and you become a "new Freeman". Finally you can escape in a Chinook helicopter just before the BM nuclear explotion started by Gman.

The way this 2 lines of the story of Operation Rosenberg connect with the HL original story is great ( you can also see Gordon and Barney in parts of the mod).

There is a long, challenging and enjoyable training mission.

The gameplay is interesting and the new features such as weapon skins, dialogues, keycards, keypads, C4, etc make this Mod a nice piece of work.

There are 3 secret levels: in 2 of them you find yourself in some sort of catacombs with satanic references. This is a fabulous hidden story inside Operation Rosenberg: apparently some scientists of Area99 were satanic members of a cult.
The third secret level is even more interesting: You travel to the future and end up in city 17! No combat here but a short view of what future Earth will unfortunately become.

Now, let me start with the ugly things:
It is a very tough Mod, sometimes you are overwhelmed by the enemies attacks or you can't get enough resources... you might get stuck in some parts of the levels or elevators ( this happens in HL and its official mods also). At the first 3 levels, you find it very difficult to take the marines with you. Some valuable information is only given to you once! You need to read a lot of maps and stuff to discover keys and pathways ( a bit boring to me!).

OVERALL: Great story, nice gameplay, interesting new features BUT some bothering glitches.

That's all! Sorry for writing so much folks! ;)

Info: For a quick review look at the bottom of the text.

With Operation Rosenberg we get an unofficial expansion pack for Rosenberg and Calhoun of what could've happened to them after their escape of Black Mesa.

The mod arrives with many fascinating ideas and even plenty of voice acting (Though not in perfect English.)

Gameplay: The execution here differs. Sometimes it's very good but far to often also frustrating. Especially in situations where you get swarmed by pit drones, Alien controllers etc. Far to often had I to use god mode because I simply ran out of health or ammo. That aside the mod offers a great mix of riddles and pure combat. Finding key cards, searching for batteries and fuel cans to restore specific machinery etc. The mod has it all. In the 2nd half of the mod it's mostly pure combat though.

Balance: The mod is for the most part balanced how ever there are also many sections in which you often find yourself helplessly outmatched. Either due to a lack of ammo or a cheer amount of monsters teleporting in all around you.

Mapping: The mapping varies a lot. While some sections actually look very decent & good. I also often felt that the majority of maps appeared mediocre looking. Huge corridors that felt empty or lacklustre in design. But not every room has to be bright and shining.
That aside there were unfortunately also plenty locations and spaces in which you die forcefully. Either per explosive trap you can not see nor destroy, or by holes you can fall into like a shaft with a destroyed ladder. A trigger_hurt to ensure the player really dies in such areas would've sufficed. But also to let the players know "Ok, this is a no go zone". In other instances it's the opposite. I don't mind walking into a trap but then at least I would've wished for an auto save game prior to the mentioned trap. Far to often did I have to repeat from a much older savegame as I neglected to quick save. Unfortunately most maps are so badly polished that 85% of those arrive with terrible frame rates. I suspect the author just fast compiled resulting in exactly that: Badly polished maps. A full compile would've probably done the trick.

Fun factor: That varies a lot. While I enjoyed most of it in the earlier maps I felt the further the mod progressed the lesser fun it became. At some point I started to get bored and just turned on god mode due to frame rates, an increasing difficulty & to save up on some time.

Story: Possibly the strongest aspect, despite the funny English. You're Cpl. Collins of the Hecu under orders to track down Dr. Rosenberg & Calhoun which both escaped Black Mesa and made a run for another secret research Center called Area99. In there you learn quite a lot about a nice story twist that even involves the combine, time travel - mind control and so on. But I don't want to spoil to much of it. I did enjoy it. Unfortunately that plot seemed to be left unchecked towards the end & left you with with many unanswered questions. If there were additional story dialogs then I must have missed em.

Short review:

Pro:

+Filled with tons of great ideas.

+Training course.

+Fantastic story plot and not necessarily interfering with the main Hl1&2 story line. It adds nicely.

+Plenty of riddles in the earlier levels.

+2 Different mod endings possible. Eath path containing numerous maps. As far as I know only Hl1 Deliverance provided something similar.

+Great npc scripting in form of special cut monster bosses.

+Many secret areas.

+Some great looking maps, some.

+Impressive game length.

+PDA and plenty of radios

Contra:

-Badly polished mod. Most maps lag terribly. Especially the earlier maps.

-Several locations you can get stuck at if low on health, water mazes, elevator shafts = god mode required

-Invasive sound editing. The mod author formed sentences out of many other hl1 voice file assets. You can imagine how that sounds.

-Sometimes properly balanced but to often I felt overwhelmed by the foes encountered. That or not enough ammo and med packs available in some areas.

-Many annoying traps and places where you can get stuck or die without warning. Yet often no auto saves were provided prior to these places. So make sure to quick save a lot.

-Rather monotone towards the end. You constantly fight against Black Ops standing behind every corner, sorta.

-Unanswered questions regarding the Area99 story plot.

-Sometimes good mapping but mostly mediocre in design.

-While the mod arrives with plenty of amazing scripts. It also often feels repetitive. Some more animations of Zombies eating bodies, people crawling into vents etc. wouldn't have hurt.

-Weird level transitions. But you get use to it.

Conclusion:

In present condition the mod has for the most part decent game play. And the audio and story text PDA's really help to keep it interesting. How ever due to the bad frame rates I feel as this is more a Beta than a finalized mod version. If fixed + properly balanced I'd rate this 9 of 10.

Has some lags, janky voice lines, broken English, levels are not detailed as they could be. All this is easy to gloss over when you remember that this was developed by a single person. My hat goes off to you.

This mod is perfect, the voice actor and the storyline are absolutely amazing. If this mod has different shortcut way, it would be cool as ported to Co-op. Yet, this is definitely recommended to play mod for everyone.

A very well made mod, though it has many non-obvious paths therefore it's common to get stuck in some areas.