Upon reaching the surface, a large group of Combine forces is seen travelling north towards White Forest with Advisors in tow.

Gordon must fight off the Antlion Guardian, along with an Antlion Guard and several of their smaller kin, before reaching the last Resistance outpost of the Victory Mine. There, they find that the settlement has been overrun by Headcrabs.

Gordon arrives at a small Resistance outpost within the mines manned by Griggs and Sheckley.

The Vortigaunt has brought Alyx to the outpost and is awaiting the arrival of his kin in order to heal her wounds. Griggs and Sheckley introduce Gordon to the Antlion Detector, and, with the aid of reprogrammed Hoppers and Sentry Guns, are barely able to hold off several Antlion attacks until the Vortigaunts arrive.

For those that don’t know, The Replay Experience Experiment is an event where we replay all the games in the Half-Life series and discuss each chapter and how our feelings have changed since we first played them.

It was always my intention to include Black Mesa in the event but I had been hoping that it would have been finished by now.

As you probably know, Black Mesa is a remake of Half-Life in the Source engine (the engine used in newer Valve games), and whilst it’s not an exact recreation of the original it is very, very similar.

Now that BeginningVille, MiddleVille and EndVille have been released, I thought it might be nice to look back at the competition.

I have to admit that after every competition I say to myself “This is the last one” and this one is no different.

Perhaps I set my hopes too high and dream of ten entries for each competition – each one a really interesting interpretation of the theme.

Here is the final part of the 3×24 Mapping Competition series.

The plan was to allow modders the chance to build a whole mod, in pieces, then give them extra time to join the pieces together into a separate mod.

This mod contains 3 entries.

The opening chapter picks up where Episode One left off. The Citadel Core gave out as Alyx and Gordon were leaving City 17, and the resulting shock wave has derailed the train in which they were traveling.

Gordon and Alyx survive the crash, and Alyx retrieves the Gravity Gun in order to free Gordon from the wreck.

You arrive at one of the Black Mesa sectors by aircraft and due to technical problems you need to descend to the lower levels via ladders and elevators.

Part way down, the base is attacked and your only way out is back the way you came.

Can you reach the aircraft again and thence to freedom?

I am very pleased to announce that the BetaTestersCollective is now a fully independent website and project.

I had been looking for a project leader for a while and after a few failed attempts finally found Ade, one of the testers who has worked very hard over the last few months to make it happen.

Ade is now the sole leader of the project and is in complete control. I will of course, offer any guidance or help requested.

I’m sure we all agree that regular PP readers are smarter than most Half-Life players 😉 but I wanted to warn everybody about a slightly disturbing piece of news I read on the Half-Life subReddit, which linked to a Softpedia article.

Put simply; scammers are creating websites purporting to give users early access to alphas and betas of the game.

The actual URLs are listed in the Softpedia article and I won’t repeat them here, visit them at your own risk.