Intolerable Threat is a single player map set made for Opposing Force. As Gordon Freeman, you must face down the Administrator for the last time. The Administrator has taken control of "HANGAR 16" a government command and control facility in the desert. From here he is possibly planning a coup against the government of the United States, and vengeance against those who have opposed him in the past. You need to meet with an agent who has the access codes to enter the heavily guarded base, infiltrate it and prepare the way for friendly forces to attack.
I always liked how older mods mostly set their plots to be about the most extreme and ambitious things and still made it all work without getting caught up in details. It was like the Wild West back in the late 90s to early to mid 2000s, people didn't care how outlandish their ideas were, they just mapped them, and we got great experiences that put fun first above everything else, while commonly doing away with everything else, quality control and coherence included.
Intolerable Threat is one of those mods. We learn that G-Man has taken over a base in Arizona and planning to go against the government with the help of his mercenaries. We, as the special agent Freeman, have to stop his plans by infiltrating the base and killing him. It's nothing we'd see nowadays: Secret bases? Agents? G-Man being anything other than that one guy who watches you from unreachable places and making deep, lore heavy remarks that makes those who are obsessed with lore and the canon of the series pull their hair out? Unthinkable :)
Even though I appreciate the fun premise, the execution hasn't been that smooth. First things first, the mapping quality is inconsistent. It starts out average, improves in some places heavily like the enemy base, starts to decline in quality rapidly in the middle, only to improve towards the end yet again. In one area you have to wait for a couple of soldiers to fight some aliens but their AI and some map issues prevent them from having a quick fight, so you wait and wait for them to shoot every alien so that the script to let you out gets triggered, it's frustrating. After that we come across a more eye-pleasing area and you notice immediately that it was created by a different person. Not because we see a character speak using text for the first time or the brushwork looks better but because the creator's name pops up immediately when the map starts! Inconsistencies like this is the result of this being made by a team of mappers, it's obvious that people with different levels of skill were involved in mapping. It sometimes feels like a map collab project and even though I like collabs, I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect the experience. This is a single mod after all, it has to have a coherent story, style and gameplay.
The mod is built on Opposing Force so it has everything the expansion brought to the table plus some new skins and sounds. The new sounds are taken from different games and it seems the creators and me have similar taste in games :) It's both jarring and funny to hear barneys and grunts howl with the voice of Blood's cultists, also, it seems we're playing as Caleb himself, just fall down from a high enough place and see :)
Overall, this is a pretty long, but like mentioned before, inconsistent experience. You may like some sections while hating others. The ending is pretty abrupt too. That "well done, the end" text comes out of nowhere and it just ends. If you're looking for a long, mostly gruntfest experience with OP4 features however, this might scratch that itch.
Cool Mod
this mod is great with what i have played so far have a video up on it in the comments going to finish the rest of it tonight
One of my favorite OP4 mods.
A very long and amazing mod that NEEDS to be played ! Well Done.