Recon

for Half-Life

8th November 1999

Basic Details
  • Title: Recon
  • File Name: hl1-sp-reconnaissance.7z
  • Original File Name: recon-hl1.zip
  • Size : 2.28Mb
  • Author: Michael Sisk
  • Date Released: 08 November 1999
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    • Reader Recommendations
      Avoid It!
      Think Twice
      Maybe
      Play It Later
      Play It Now!

      5 recommendations, average score: 3.2 (out of 5), standard deviation: 2.56 (what's that?)
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      Meta Review Data
      Statistics based on 3 comment(s) with meta review data.

      Installed:
      Using Gauge: Users
      Manually: 3 Users

      Time Taken:
      Average: 0 Hours, 31 Mins
      Shortest: 0 Hours, 19 Mins by Sheajay
      Longest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by PsyWarVeteran
      Total Time Played: 1 Hours, 34 Mins
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      Maybe?Think TwicePlay It Now!Avoid It!Play It Now!

19 Comments

  1. Gmann

    Reconnaissance:
    Author: Michael Sisk
    Date: 8/11/99

    This is the continuation of his previous mod
    Aggregate Pain

  2. AI

    I sent some screen shots to ya, hope they get there!! The maps played well, back and forth to Zen! Played with my Sierra version and no problems, like getting stuck in elevators, good one to DL!

  3. I sent some screen shots to ya, hope they get there!!

    Yes, I got them, along with a few from somebody else. Thank you both. I will add them tomorrow.

  4. Michael Sisk

    Hey guys, amazing to see people are still playing this game. =)

    Shortly after I released this map, I received a lot of e-mails from people saying that if they died at a certain point they could not reload their game and had to start all over. I never found out if it was something wrong with my maps or just a bug in the game. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed it.

  5. We did. A lot. Thanks for dropping by! Did you make anything else besides Aggregate Pain and Reconnaissance?

  6. EddieLee

    I receive the following error when I try to reload any saved game in map recon6 :
    Host_Error: PF_precache_model_I: Bad string “. None of the other 8 maps give me this error so I believe map recon6 is corrupt. I have downloaded the Recon ZIP from 3 different servers and get the same error. Does anyone have a good recon6 map they can post ?

    Thanks.

  7. Ade
    Maybe?

    I also get a “Host_Error: Bad string:” at recon6.. Too bad, really challenging maps. A bit frustrating at first, plus Barney shooting through ya, but it gets easier. No story. Not a shread of puzzles. Just pure combat with small surprizes and poor lighting.
    Will be back to rate it after finishing it.
    Thanks to the editing of comments: the next map loads with no suit.
    A couple of minutes of fighting for your life among grunts (plus 3 ninjas), zombies and some well placed slaves and crabs and.. no ending for me.
    Because of this bug, just Consider it.

  8. Gilfrarry

    the next map loads with no suit

    Do you mean you typed “map recon7” and started without an HEV suit? That’s normal with the map command. You have to use cheats like “give item_suit” to get your equipment back.

    I can’t load from map recon6 either.

  9. Ade

    Thx again (but I decided not to keep it, for just 2 more maps), I’m not a big fan of cheats, but this one is helpful. Hope it loads all the weapons, too.

  10. EddieLee

    If you play the recon6 map thru without saving, you don’t need the cheats. Luckily, I saved a game right at the end of map recon5 and was able to continue on from that point. Recon6 plays fine but you just cannot load a saved game from that map. It is a short map and it’s not difficult to get thru without saving games.

    If push came to shove, you could use GOD mode to get thru the map and turn it off for map recon7.

  11. “Hope it loads all the weapons, too.”

    That loads the HEV suit. You can also get “items” like “give item_healthkit” and “give item_longjump” and just about anything else individually. Cheats must be enabled with “sv_cheats 1” which may not take effect until the next map change. “impulse 101” gives many things, and you can repeat it anytime. GameFAQs has a list of codes, and a description of how to use them, here.

  12. Ade

    As I said, I’m no big fan of cheating, I was hoping that I could somehow get back to my state from the previous map, u know? EddieLee’s solution sounds more righteous and a bit challenging so I’ll be giving it another go. Soon.

  13. Michael Sisk

    Hey guys, sorry for the problems with map 6. I never really tried to fix it. Recon was the last map I made. I sorta got into quake 1 stuff but never released any maps. I think I need to load up Half Life and play this again. =)

  14. Think Twice

    Hmm.. I dunno, maybe it’s just I don’t like author hehe, all his maps I’ve played aren’t good, nor good playable – there are a few similarities I’ve found..
    I know it’s an old lil mappack, but hey!
    They are masterpieces you can play even after 20 years just because of their quality DOT
    And this mappack is far away from a unique precious lil diamond hehe
    It has some nice action, surprising scripts but overall it’s standard and sometimes even poor.

    Pro’s:
    -Quite much action
    -Lot of weapons + ammo
    -Many different enemy types
    -Scripted sequences which are sometimes surprising, but also annoying

    Con’s:
    -Unfair placed enemies / scripts like soldiers spawn in an opening chest? C’mon..
    -No HEV at start, tough beginning
    -Hard difficulty, nothing for greenhorns
    -Bugs, like crashes (recon6+8)
    -Weird level design altho it began so nice..

  15. Ten Four Reviews

    Holy buckfutter, Batman! Recon rocks.

    Michael Sisk has made a couple of maps for Half-Life before, and he takes giant bounds of improvement with each release; and the third time is the charm for Michael as this is the first from him where I can whole-heartedly recommend. Let me see, the visuals are great; the fighting is just awesome; and the layout is tricky enough to be interesting without being confusing. What else could you possibly want?

    Do I hear somebody mentioning storyline? Ok, Recon is a very, very crappy sequal storyline-wise. Why Michael’s previous level, Aggregate Pain, needed a sequal is beyond me. Now that he has made one, I can’t say so much for a innovative plot. Movie-wise, I can compare this with Lost Word: Jurassic Park; where people just said the heck with the story. In fact, a more appropriate title for this sequal would be Aggregate Pain 2: Bigger, fancier, but just as shallow. The only reason I am using a whole paragraph to complain about storyline, however, is because of the fact that this is big and very fancy and I can’t find much else to carp about. Which is a shame because had a original and intriguing story/plot been weeved into Recon, it could’ve been a memorable classic for Half-Life.

    In the end it’s not, but that doesn’t mean I have to deny the fact that Recon still kicks a lot of ass. Michael uses a lot, and I do mean a lot of tricks to create a superbly unpredictable battlefied. And despite all of Recon’s good qualities, it’s the fighting that stands out. Michael uses a lot of tricks that will remind you of the original Half-Life, and even one area that is reminiscent of the Half-Life: Uplink Demo. But this is far from being too derivative as was Michael’s previous Aggregate Pain. Recon is continually surprising and there were some truly startling, but delightful moments.

    If you’ve played Michael’s previous works then you probably know that his levels are brutally difficult to beat and that does not change here. What does change is that the action is a lot more smoothly balanced. The beginning is still a complaint because of an unfair first scenario, and the end is also a complaint because you can be easily under-equipped with weapons that can deal with a gargantua. But in between, Recon is a near flawless play that forces you to be alert, and strafing like crazy. There are moments in this level when I said to myself, I have never had more fun killing grunts than now. The battles are fiendishly hard, yet very satisfying.

    Recon, however, excels even beyond its battles. The design was very well done, and although not as extravagant as I would’ve liked, it’s clean, near-perfect, and as good as any reasonable player needs. And for the first time in a single-player Half-Life addon: Xen looked awesome! At a bit over 3 megabytes, Recon is still not that large. But, the author has managed to squeeze in a whole episode with well-developed human and Xen worlds. Like I said before, with a good story, and this could’ve been one of the best.

    Without one, Recon is still as good as any Half-Life level out there with grunts; which successfully eliminates USS Darkstar to compete here 😛 Do youselves a favor and download this; you’ll have a blast!

    Notes
    This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Sunday, 12th September, 1999 by Jiang.

    This review was originally posted on the Ten Four Website, which is now offline. Permission has been granted to republish the full review and more details can be found on the About page.

  16. Play It Now!

    Better than Aggregate Pain, Michael Sisk really improved his mapping and it is a treat to play. The environments look good and maps are generally fun to play and fight enemies in.

    The only criticism I can make is that you start without a suit, a couple of explosions going around in random places and hurt you, there are two soldiers near and you can’t see your health or cycle through your weapons effectively. Thankfully the suit is a couple of meters away and the problem perishes right away.

    You go in, shoot grunts and aliens, destroy a satellite dish and board a helicopter to escape. Pretty solid mappack.

  17. Avoid It!

    Reconnaissance is the sequel to “Aggregate Pain” a short mod that I didn’t care for. This mod is even worse, with the mapper learning very little since his last attempt. In many ways this map series is even a step back from the previous mod.

    As we start our eyes are drawn to the plane at the end of the last mod, it will explode twice and you’ll lose a chunk of your health, so don’t go right towards it. Since it’s the start I guess it doesn’t matter too much, still irritating though. Like the last mod you don’t start with a HEV suit and there are two grunts in the way before you get it, fortunately however you can run past them and grab the suit but probably not without them shooting at you, if you’re lucky you won’t get hit. I think the idea here is a stealth section to obtain the hev suit, but it isn’t executed very well and just gives another poor first impression to the series. Also it doesn’t make much sense that you lack a suit at this point as you had one at the end of the last mod.

    The enemy placement issues in the first mod are made even worse here, from the second map onward there’s frequently headcrabs and bullsquids hiding around corners waiting to strike, and the game even spawns in vortigaunts behind the player at frequent occasions this time. The worst case of this was after successfully killing a Gonarch, with the meager amount of remaining health a gargantua spawned directly behind me and killed me before I could do anything. This problem is however balanced out by greater use of health and armour compared to the mapper’s first attempt, but it’s still annoying to get hit by headcrabs and slaves that you can’t really avoid. I had it on normal, but I can’t imagine this being playable on hard.

    As for the map design, it’s an improvement from Aggregate Pain, there’s a few rooms and areas I liked and would make for good combat if the enemy placement was improved. That said, it’s still not that impressive, and I’m certain that the xen portion poorly imitates parts that were in the original Half-Life and Blue Shift.

    I crashed right before the last level, and the save I made on the previous map didn’t work for whatever reason. A poor finish to a poor mod.

  18. Play It Now!

    Do not play on Hard. Why? Because it’s get harder and harder and too much harder and the last area is the hardest. A bounch of alien controllers, then a spider and then running all like hell gargantua.
    Can you believe it? Gargantua can actually go inside the tunnel and just kill you there without the concern of its size. How is that? And worst of all the author gives 20 gluon gun. Mate to destroy a Gargantua on hard you need 50 gluon gun not 20. He says save it for the monster. Sure I saved, and then save grenade launcher and rockets. Save everything to him. And how on earth would you know that, you get to the end just to screw everything with that beast just because the author didn’t reconsider to add 50 Gluon Gun instead of 20. What a crap. Not even a health pack in xen. So if you go into xen with 1 HP, certainly you will never live here.

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