Leon’s Mappack 1

for Half-Life 2

30th March 2005

You get extracted in the sewers outside a big city that is controlled by the Combine, although there are certain parts of the city that are filled with headcrabs and other creatures.

You have to find and fight your way through the sewer, over the railroad track into the city.

Once you’re in the city, your objective is to find the power plant and destroy it.

It sounds easy but you will have to fight for your life before you get there.

Basic Details
  • Title: Leon’s Mappack 1
  • Filename: hl2-sp-leons-mappack.7z
  • Size : 6.82
  • Author: Leon Stephan Brinkman
  • Date Released: 30 March 2005
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Reader Recommendations
Avoid It!
Think Twice
Maybe
Play It Later
Play It Now!

20 recommendations, average score: 4.9 (out of 5), standard deviation: 0.19 (what's that?)
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Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 50 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 40 Mins by FaumonGalf
Longest: 1 Hours by KILLER_9639
Total Time Played: 4 Hours, 10 Mins
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49 Comments

  1. grinder

    great levels design, great industrial ambiency, great playability – very good work

  2. Anonymous

    I Have played these maps ,and there very good.Also have talked to leon via e-mail and his next map pack should be oput fairly soon.This maoddrer is very good.i enjoyed playing them.

  3. Mike

    Brilliant stuff. Essential map!

  4. Mikko Sandt

    There wasn’t much variety but it was fun and didn’t look bad at all. I got stuck once and had to look online for help (the vent in the third level which you had to open by pressing space – an unexpected thing).

  5. Pajo

    This mappack is excellent, try it out. It reminds me to the “Coastline To Atmosphere” mod from Leon. But these maps don`t have very large areas, but that is not necessary. Often it is more interesting to fight in smaller spaces. These maps are full of details and there is a lot of work to do for the player. They have the content that I love most in FPS: action, enough weapons, hard fights with much of enemies. It rocks.

  6. With my new objective, I am suppose to find my way to the next street. Can somone point me in the right direction? Currently I’m on top of the building after the sreen shows me my new objective.

  7. Absolutely loved it. I wish it wouldn’t have ended.

  8. The maps are very intricate and interesting. I found them quite contrived and unrealistic in general, though. For example, you enter a vent, and…there is a ladder there? There were lots of lighting issues as well, such as a room with inexplicably-bright windows.

    There was one spot in the map where I was able to jump on top of a building, and be totally stuck–unable to get back, and jumping to the ground would have killed the character. (While up there, I was also able to see spots in the map I wasn’t supposed to–undeveloped areas. The paper-thin building looked cool though!)

    One thing that bothered me was the doors and vents that had a “lip” on the bottom. This prevents you from simply walking or crawling through–you have to jump as well. At the very end, there is a vent that I had to enter by simultaneously crouching, jumping, and moving forward.

    Like another commentator, I also got stuck because I didn’t realize the Use button (which isn’t necessarily the Space bar) was required to open a “vent”. I spent about two hours trying to get out of there before coming here and discovering the secret!

    I know these complaints make it sound like I hated these maps, but I didn’t. They were great fun to play, and very interesting. My comments are to be taken as well-intentioned constructive criticism.

  9. Neal
    Play It Now!

    Great mod! Love the action. I just activated Generator C3 and am told to get out as fast as possible. Any way I cut it, as soon as I get on the walkway above the Generator room floor it all blows and I die. Is that the end?

  10. Mel
    Play It Now!

    The story, what there is of it, is essentially find and close down the City 17 power plant.

    This is a 4 part mappack containing intense Combine engagements from beginning to end, so if you like your gameplay filled with Combine shootouts then you will play through these maps a few times. There are the odd howlers and headcrabs with one Gunship putting in an appearance, but this is very much a similar scenario throughout of lurking Combine at every turn and ambush at every advantage point, often with support from attacking scanners.

    I played through the mappack on easy setting having at first been frequently killed on normal mode. There’s plenty of ammo and health such that you won’t stay low for long, plus plenty of stores to be found with a little exploring. it’s not a hard mappack and whilst you will not get lost or stuck, I however, found a couple of encounters that needed a second play through against some tough and well in-placed Combine.

    The whole action takes place within City 17 environments of mainly apartment blocks and industrial complexes, with mostly corridors and rooms which need to be cleared out with every step of advancement. The best and hardest of the firefights take place at rooftop level with complex layouts of stairwells, gantries and rooftop platforms. This layout adds much to the gameplay in the way of navigating from rooftop to rooftop under constant fire, with in-game messages dictating your next objective as you go.

    The set designs are very well compiled being similar to the themes of the original game. Textures are varied with some transition from room to room being surprisingly changeable, going from distressed look, to brick-wall architecture and Citadel structure without much logic in the changes. Some of the action is squeezed within corridors and small rooms with the layout on the tight side making maneuvering difficult. Also, the incidental furnishings are a strange mix of distressed furniture coupled with some very classy, but out of place walnut cabinets. I may be getting picky again. The rooftop layouts are among the best designs that the mappack has to offer, apart from the admirably constructed and orchestrated escaped, amidst destruction of the final scene.

    I encountered no technical issues with the mappack with this being about the 3rd time of playing through. Although a few level changes were a bit jumpy, the transition of playing thread was smooth and constant through all levels.

    Negatives
    – Similar gameplay throughout
    – Limited use of HL2 cast & hardware
    – Weak story

    Positives
    – Action packed
    – Great rooftop layouts and design
    – Good flow throughout

    Conclusion
    The author shows a preference for action packed gameplay with a reliance on short and sharp Combine encounters normally interlaced with attacking scanners, a limited use of alien foe and only a smudge of puzzling solving. In many respects it’s a similar mix of “Coastline to Atmosphere” which is the author’s major achievement to date following on from this, his first HL2 offering. But here the environmental background and use of Combine hardware are much restricted in comparison, but then the size and content of the mappack are smaller then Leon’s mod “C to A”.

    We also experience other likeness in gameplay with comparison to Coastline to Atmosphere with long periods of play set within tight and restricted surroundings, little opportunity to wander and explore with the use of invisible boundaries, pointless use of an in-game message system, but with a similar wonderfully orchestrated ending piece, and a love for scanner attacks.

    The author is a master of taking an environmental setting depicted very similar to the original Hl2 setting then building action packed play upon its foundation. This is what Leon does the best, resulting in an enjoyable fast and frantic encounter with a high fun factor.

    My Recommendation

  11. Mel

    No Neal thats not the end, you need to get out quicker.

  12. Dark Czar

    Leon and Team,

    Firstly yes there were a few probs thoughout the maps and you do notice them now and then but generally that is only if you perposely looking for them although there were one or 2 that stood out.
    But the main gaming and challenge of the mod is great, I found all maps to fun challenging and some had a puzzel solving feel them, I did get frustrated when I could not get past certain points but with a little non logical but lateral thinking I completed your mod without a walk though or cheat.
    It took me a min to work out that Gordon did not have his suit on but was welcome it gave the game a realistic feel to it as if were the Combine and I caught Gordon that would be the very next thing I would take off him after his wepons and grv gun.
    All in all Leon and Team you did a great job almost as good as Half-Life 2 and Ep 1 and I give you 8.7 out 10 keep up the good work.
    Would like to see more work of this caliber from you all.

    P.S I loved the chance to shoot Breen and specialy G-Man been to blow that sod away from the first time I saw him in Half-Life lol

    Dark Czar

  13. I tried to load these maps with the console like in his directions but my console won’t work. I press the tilde key and no console!!??? whats up with that? I have all the HL2 updates and I wonder if they turned off that function…

  14. Mel

    Have you enabled the console through the options menu?

  15. No I didn’t, I bet thats it. Thanks Mel

  16. Play It Now!

    It was enough to play the first map to understand that Leon is an exceptional mapper on par or even better than Valve’s mappers. And everything got better on the following maps!

    This is a medium sized mod – 4 large maps – with excellent gameplay and is a lot of fun overall. Highly recommended!

  17. Harry
    Play It Now!

    Excellent MOD…lots of action fun to play!

  18. Play It Now!

    Simply brilliant! This could quite easily have been part of the original game it’s that good.

    There were several parts where I knew which way I had to go, but turned back because I knew that there was more to see. These maps are a delight to those like me who must explore every dark corner, every possible place where there might be something worthwhile, or just to admire the view.

    The design was 99% flawless, and I loved the fact that you could see some of the locations in the distance that you knew you’d get to eventually, but had no idea how! If I didn’t get to those locations in the course of playing, I would have gone back to find a way! I particularly enjoyed the rooftop scenario, that was excellent.

    The gameplay was just exactly what I like. It was not forced along at a fast pace allowing me as much time as I wanted to explore each area extensively. The enemies in each area were well chosen and well placed, and indeed, the amount of enemies seemed just right – not too few to make the action boring, and not too many to make it impossible to progress through each section.

    Lastly, I think that the ending was perhaps the best I’ve seen in any map or mod so far.

    I thoroughly enjoyed playing, and will be looking for more of Leon’s work. Well Done! 10/10

  19. Robspace1
    Play It Now!

    Really good!! Once again you show how to make a fast paced map that is not confusing or so hard to follow I spend more time lost then fighting. This is the kind of game play I like. It. It feels more like HL2 then alot of the mods and along with a good storyline and zero bugs, I had alot of fun with this one. I did get stuck and think it must be me but when I went through the last tunnel and came to the end there was bars blocking me. I could find no way through that so I ended up noclipping and it worked just fine. Was I supposed to even go that way? It looked right and it didn’t mess up the next scene. Anyway, thanks and looking forward to more from you-good job!

  20. Tom

    nothing like being a little late in finding these maps lol but wow, great job once again Leon this was a really fun map pak to play. enjoyed it from start to finish, just palyed Strider Mt pre realese , great job. looking forward to it conclusion. Leon, you are a very talented, well thought out, nice placement and gameplay. keep up the great work, much appreciated thank you.

  21. Play It Now!

    This may as well be a mod, not a map pack (though I suppose the map changes would have to be different).

    Like the other mods I’ve played that Leon has been involved in, the maps were well done and the enemy placement I thought was well done. Not a lot of variety in the enemies, but that was fine.

  22. Play It Now!

    Nice map pack, although the bit at the end with the power plant was frustrating. But still, very nice.

  23. Personal Favourite

    Wow I didn’t realize how long this had been out ! I went to Leons site after he recently announced his upcoming mod in the forums. being a fan of his work, I was pleaded to find it and truly stunned at just how fantastic this set was. Very challenging, well done mapping with wonderful game play stress on exploration and finding your way around in some really tight areas.

    All around great time for me ! I’m keeping this set ! I believe it’s because his mapping style matches my style of play so well, that I appreciate his work so much.

  24. Play It Now!

    Leon always makes very enjoyable and playable maps, this is no exception. I have played this many times just got around to posting about it. I agree with jj review above and am looking forward to leons final swan song to HL with his upcoming work

  25. I held off commenting because the PP FileCloud DL link will not work.
    Since others have downloaded it’s a shame to deny the chance to those who have not played this masterpiece.
    You will find a DL link at Leon SPY-maps Brinkman’s website here:
    http://www.leon.triplebit.nl/
    Click the SP-MAPS tab then Half Life 2/
    It’s the first listed and the other 2 mods are strongly recommended must plays for me.

    It’s just brilliant and I echo all the plaudits above.
    Pros everything
    Cons none, well, the sniper was a absolute b’mmer but I got him.
    A combat player’s dream come true.

  26. Personal Favourite

    I’m sure I gave this a PF in my comment. Never mind.
    Here it is; a psrt copy with grammar corrected:
    it’s just brilliant and I echo all the plaudits above.
    Pros: Everything
    Cons: None, well, the sniper was an absolute bummer but I got him.
    A combat player’s dream come true.

  27. 2muchvideogames

    this is a good map pack, but there was some design flaws where I could get to where I am notsupposed to go, first, I jumped down from the rooftops from a ledge and was able to skip half of the second map. Also, I fell into the canal on the third map and found that I’m not supposed to be there. Nevertheless if you actually play normally and not be cheap like me, you will enjoy this levels.

  28. Play It Now!

    My feeling is, as usual with Leon’s mappack’s : countless waves of Manhacks, Combine, fights and fights and DIE!!! (no), go to point A for the door at point B to open (opened, as usual, by Combine).

    The good news is, on the contrary of Strider Mountain and Coastline to Atmosphere, that it is short to medium, there is (again, as usual) an explosive grand finale with the baddie’s station exploding everywhere…

    It is dynamic, fun, with a sympathic rooftop part (I wait for your rooftop ville map, Leon πŸ™‚ ), well, it is Leon’s style ^^

    Maybe I will do Final Project one day (but not now… Strider Mountain with it’s 17 hour-gametime nearly killed me in last july…).

  29. So far a personal favorite!
    Spoiler alert –

    I have 3 launch grenades and even well placed they don’t bring down the gunship. Hints?

    1. Gilfrarry

      Hint: remember you’re supposed to open the gate.

      Answer:
      [spoiler] There’s a box of rockets in the tall building overlooking the gate, next to the switch. From where you picked up the rocket launcher, work your way around the street over the rooftops.[/spoiler]

  30. Personal Favourite

    This map pack was a blast! Had a lot of fun, puzzles very hard but not so hard I couldn’t do them with out hints or cheats. Just enough life packs to keep me from panicking when my health got down to 1, which it did often. Enough shotgun and .357 ammo…my personal favorite weapons. Congratulations Leon on a sterling achievement! Going to get your other mappack now!
    Carolyn

  31. Hec
    Play It Now!

    This is the last work I played from Leon’s and so with this i’ve played all their work so far. I liked it, is hard to not have fun in almost all Leon’s maps, sure you have some low polished details and a really barroque mapping layout which is a natural Leon’s style.

    Also I conssider this a MUST PLAY, if you want to understand Leon Brinkman’s mapper mind, because this is the funding stone of all his previous works and is just esential if you want to play ALL the work of this HL2 community famous designer.

    This is, after Strider Mountain, the mappack i’ve enjoyed the most from Leon, is the perfect combination of leon’s style and I found it better than “Cost to Atm.” and waay better than “MPD” releases, also is medium lenght short within four maps but worths the action on them, some areas are a delightful classic old school HL2 Battles, like when you get to the gunship part.

    I like the classic combat style on leon’s map, because we got back to the roots, and well this is from 2005!!! I was in highschool back then when this was released, I mean, I like it now and it’s been 7 years!”, but beliveme, this definietely worths your time becuase you will find the classic reason because many of us love HL: The combat action against the CMB.

    So this is definitely a hardcore combat map, forget about the grav gun, or hectic puzzles, this is a very lovley shoot and kkep moving mod!! I missed that sensation and this was a very good change in the recently mods i’ve try.

    So if u haven’t play this, go for it, you maybe won’t get bored that’s for sure.

    I hope the last job from leon’s rooftop retreat soon to be released, and we have again that classic lovley action leon’s is get used to deliver in all his mod work.

    PD. hey Phillip!,

    Why you haven’t reviewed this??, this is maybe one of the more important reviews you can give us, about Leon’s work.

  32. Ten Four Reviews

    Ah, remember the good ol” days of the single-player Half-Life 1 mapping scene? Leon Brinkmann remembers! Remember invisible force fields that prevent you from jumping over low walls and taking obvious shortcuts?

    Leon Brinkmann remembers! Remember wandering around a deserted courtyard long after the last grunt has been killed, shooting random machines and jumping on top of background elements, trying desperately to figure out how to advance, only to find out that the door was hiding in plain sight the whole time? Then get ready to taste the down-home goodness of Leon Brinkmann maps. Because Leon Brinkmann remembers!

    All bread commercial parodies aside, what you’ve got here is some moderately well-developed, sufficiently long, decently detailed HL2 maps that scale in difficulty. Individually, these maps are as reminiscent of the HL1 mapping scene a couple few years ago as they are of HL2’s original single player levels. As a collection, they come across as… adequate. Not great, but with nothing horribly wrong with them, either. If you liked (or tolerated) HL1 single player maps such as Portrait of Freeman, Be Careful, and Experimental Problems, you’ll probably be equally enthusiastic about this HL2 map pack.

    Visuals are typical HL2 ruined city, with the occasional helicopter or siren sound thrown in for ambiance. Citadel-style hallways make an appearance, but the transition between the shiny alien steel and the brick-and-mortar city is often too jarring. There’s certainly no grand citadel stretching into the clouds overhead, so one wonders if these sections were supposed to have been refurbished sections of the original building, or teleported in, or what the deal is.

    I didn’t find any visual errors per sey. Some details, such as windows, hatches, or buttons, seemed like decals painted onto the wall, and weren’t particularly realistic. Some rooms and outdoor areas are well-designed and populated with physics models, some almost as good a HL2’s city maps, but these are often connected via blocky, uninteresting hallways. Various debris and overwatch technology is strewn all around the city, but it didn’t paint as vivid a picture as Valve’s original levels, or Adam Foster’s Minerva.

    One pet peeve I had was the aforementioned invisible clip brushes constraining gameplay. The occasional blue force field, combined with high walls and fences, I can handle. But putting a clip brush over the top of every rooftop and railing, so that the player can never even attempt to step outside the invisible boundaries set by the author is, to me, a poor design decision. It hinders exploration, prevents the player from experimenting, and ultimately restricts him to a path that he is not even aware of, until he tries to color outside the lines.

    Continue reading the review on Ten Four…

    Notes
    This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Monday, 24th October, 2005 by WarpZone.

  33. Personal Favourite

    These are some of the most well decorated maps I’ve ever seen. I can tell that Leon spent a lot of time making these. The level design, the enemy placement, the decor, it’s all perfection. These four maps are most certainly essential to have if you like HL2. I only have a few complaints, such as the Ravenholm intro music playing whenever I loaded a save on the first map. There was also one part in the map LeonHL2_1b where you had to go along the rim of a building to get where you need to go, which is pretty ludicrous to find. I was stuck at that part for about five minutes before I finally found it. I also got stuck on the same map at one point (literally in a position where I had to load a save to get out of where I was). Other than that, my only other complaint is the sniper on (again) the same map that you never get to kill and gets really annoying. I have no other complaints, this mappack is amazing. It was very fun to play through and I love the part at the end and finally escaping. Play it, it’s an awesome mappack.

    1. On the subject of the sniper there is a point where you come out onto the roof very close to the window where the sniper is. It’s an easy matter to lob a grenade in at that point and avoid any further hassle.

  34. Is this no longer available? The link does not work πŸ™

    1. I’ll update the link tomorrow.

      1. the link’s not updated yet πŸ™

  35. Ron Grainger

    Where can we get this now the link above doesn’t lead to it?

    1. I have added a working link. Sorry for the delay.

      1. Just playing through this today and found a problem near the end where the room goes dark. I can still see the HUD but everything else is pitch black and the flashlight doesn’t light up even though I can hear the on-off clicking when I hit F. I waited for ages but no lights of any kind. Went back to my saves and tried again but still at some point the lights go out and the flashlight does not work. So unfortunately I couldn’t finish the level. Shame as this was going really well up until then.

        1. Ok so after getting stuck in the dark I replayed the game using the manual install (as opposed to Gauge) and the lighting problem was not there so I was able to complete the map. Wondering if the glitch I experienced was as a result of installing and playing via Gauge. With the Gauge install I also had the flashlight on all the time with no power drain or switch off until the dark section at the end.

  36. Play It Now!

    It’s old but it’s still got the Leon stamp of quality even though it’s obviously nothing on what he created later on. It’s worth playing but remember its age before picking. Very enjoyable and worth playing, I liked this pack a lot. (hated the ending however lol)

  37. Play It Now!

    I thought this was good. Playing 14 years later it still holds up well. There wasn’t really a great variation of enemies and not many health kits but it adds into the challenge. I really love the verticality of the first two maps blended with close quarters combat. Great even by some maps that are created today.

  38. Maybe?

    At first it seems that this is a good job, but since the middle of the 1st card the fierce horror begins. Incomprehensible level design, all the while moving in a direction that you don’t understand. A large number of bugs with textures, objects, entities and other things. A bunch of invisible barriers and even a big pile of enemies, which is annoying to shoot instantly. I strongly advise you to think before downloading these cards.

  39. Play It Now!

    Leon’s Mappack 1

    This small pack created by Leon tasks the player with one simple objective. Kill some Combine, Go through the city, Escape. I don’t feel the use of text was useful because; the map should guide the player through on its own. The ending bit got a bit tedious; considering the amount of unnecessary damage. Other than that, for maps made 1 year after Half-Life 2 came out; it’s fairly solid.

  40. Personal Favourite

    Just great. Looks and plays great. Good use of space. Love these types of maps where you keep going around in a central area. As good as it gets. Love leon’s other stuff. All good.

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