Instinct for Half-Life

***NEW!!!***

Level name: Instinct

Author: Richard Martin

Date of release: 19 July 2007

Size: 10 548 ko

Number of maps: 10



website: none

download: here

Story (taken from Planetphillip):

“Otherwise… well… I can offer you a battle you have no chance of winning…..rather an anticlimax, after what you’ve just survived…”

Take the job. All that you had to do was just take the job. But, no. You decided that your pride was more sacred than your safety. And thanks to a teleport malfunction you are back right where you started… four kilometers underground in the darkest corner of the Black Mesa Research Facility.

When you regain your conciousness, sirens and screams are all you hear as you wake up to the reality of utter chaos and destruction. Corpses lie mangled in pools of their own blood.

Hallways and staircases are sealed - collapsed by airstrikes. To top it all off, most of the inhabitants of Xen have used their natural instinct to migrate here since the destruction of their home planet, and rifts in space time continue to throw Xen creatures into the bowels of Black Mesa.

Now your trapped in an alien-infested hole in the ground with only one objective - reach the surface alive. Unfortunately, that may not be as easy as it sounds, because the military has decided that rather than kill every witness individually, they are going to simply seal off all of the exits…..and then set off a thermal nuclear weapon.

Now its a race against the clock as you fight your was through infested alien nesting grounds and military blockades while constantly trying to reach the surface and get out of here alive. Hopefully you make it to the surface soon, because in about 12 hours, the entire facility will be reduced to radioactive dust.

“No regrets, Mr. Freeman.”

Review :

This episode to age to be release like the effort it was put in sadly the other decided on one day to release it fully playable with any major bugs but missing a strong ending and perhaps also some cutscenes or oriented mission by on text message.

Design is mostly above average, with a good attention to texturing and layout even if some place on low computer may be the cause of slow down most of maps are well interconnected and cleverly build together (there are sometime different way to progress), the possibility to find some 'secret places' if you sneak arround is also something i really like in all custom releases. What only give me some frustration what the huge amount of boxes from all kind used everywhere sometimes in unpossible place to store them but apart from this, attention to a good mix with puzzles and combats also enhance to whole episode.

Gameplay is quite staight forward with a good progress in think you will encounter while you progress (like in the original game) becoming harder the way you move through the 10 maps after each taught combats you will have some time to breath or the think for enjoyable small puzzles. Combats are well balanced and can be tight in some places but they never are unbeatable, progression is easy to handle and won't make you loose lots of time some good suprise awaits se at the end, that was perhaps the major disapointment being little abrupt and unpolished.

In conlcusion: a lot of time and effort have been put in this one and even if it's clearly unfinished it was a great enjoyement playing this one. If you look to another black mesa style mission this one is certainly for you .

Playtime: 1 hour 30

Rating: A B C D E (82%)