Hour-Glass for Half-Life

***this review was previously available at Alejandro Map Center***

Level name: Hour Glass

Author: Grey Dog

Date of release: 18 July 2001

Size: 24 835 Ko

Number of maps: 30


website: Author's site

download: At Planetphillip.com

Story:

After turning down the Gman's offer of employment, you managed to escape using an intergalactic teleporter that returned you to Earth. Hiding out within the inner city, you soon believe that the Gman is no longer interested in you. A calm peaceful feeling begins to replace the fear, terror and horror that overwhelmed you during your nightmare with Black Mesa, the soldiers and the Xen species. Feeling confident that it is now safe to return home to your wife and look up some old friends, you make your way back to the old neighbourhood.
Your apartment looks different somehow. There are no signs of your wife or anything that would belong to a woman. You also notice other strange things like items are missing, neighbours no longer live in the building. You turn on the television to watch some news and many of the anchors are new, but what really gives you that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach is the content of the news. Facts are no longer true, companies and products don't exist, people have vanished and been replaced by someone else.. Many things have changed.
Your agitation brings you to telephone your mother-in-law in order to talk to your wife, who must have moved out for some reason. Your mother-in-law informs you that she has never heard of you and insists that they never had a daughter. You try to call up on some old buddies but can only find two and they insist that they don't know the other missing friends at all.
You are sitting in your chair, in a state of shock, staring at the television, when there is a knock at the door. Two men dressed in black greet you. They are ITR agents. Employees of a newly formed organization called Intergalactic Time Reassurance, Inc.. They explain that they are time-space enforcement officers and have been sent to offer you a job as an ITR agent. Time-space...hmm... maybe I can get to the bottom of what the hell has happened to my wife and friends etc. You decide to accept the job and complete a special forces training program. You are now an ITR enforcement officer and have been teleported to a secret base of operations. It's monday morning 9:30 am and you are running late as usual.....

Review:

After the release of Adam, a good half-life experience that integrate a lot of vertical moving, Greydog came in 2001 with a master piece…Hour-Glass.
Everything fits well in this add-on, new textures (under others some hot babes), new weapons ( under others coming from Counter-strike), some memorable theme revisited (Duke nukem, Quake 1&2), this all put together with new voice acting and some huge scripts.
Nothing about storyline? Sure and it is certainly a good and original one; Like in most half-life experience, the G-man is leading you to an impossible mission… but this time you’re gonna be surprise…through travelling to time, that you have a close link with the G-man… only way to destroy him…just think about. The all ‘quest’ is made by separate mission that make you travel trough time and solar system, this with all the stuffs that is needed to do it in the good way: puzzle to solve (sometimes tricky), descent combat (in the first half a little to easy, but after, sometimes challenging especially when you are going to encounter some invisible grunts) you will find those situation in some well experienced place that will remember you some good memory according to quake and duke (in this way you have 6 secrets zone to find !!!).
Is there any flaws, some small but more depending on the easy way to criticise them, to close to the original Half-life game and some part that are close to original game (especially some quake2 area), but this is nothing to compare to the enjoyment of this add-on.

In conclusion: A good use of FPS history to add some value to a really good experience that reach is paroxysm with The End scene


Playtime: 7 hours

Rating: A B C D E (91 %)

Picture were curtously taken from tenfour...without permission...