What The Headcrab! Special: Hunt Down The Freeman

7th July 2016

So here is the first in what I hope will be a new regular video, a What The Headcrab! Special.

It’s a little rushed, but that’s the nature of these types of videos.

This one covers a recently announced new Half-Life standalone game called Hunt Down The Freeman.

Watch the video for full details.

Watch the Video

What are your thoughts?

18 Comments

  1. I have mixed feelings about this.

    The story sounds cool and very original and it looks promising enough, however the rest is just OK to me. First of all, I know the character models are for now placeholders, but still, they don’t look like they belong in a HL game. Also, I hope this modder won’t have any licensing issues, since most of the models are from the GMod workshop.

    One last thing I have to say is that I really, really, REALLY don’t want this to be the next Prospekt. Everyone in the YouTube comment section for this vid and the trailer says so. I really hope the whole IndieGoGo campaign is worth it.

  2. “Release Date: End of 2016”

    BWAAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAH. That’s a good one.

    Wait, what? They’re serious? They actually want $100,000 for this?

    It looks like crap. And those aren’t even their own models, they ganked them from Garry’s Mod. Absurd. And clearly a lot of people agree considering it has a whole $12 to its name, proving that a lot of these weirdos in the Steam comments praising and defending it aren’t putting their money where their mouths are. Not surprised.

    Also, some of the developer’s comments are hilarious, like on Reddit where he takes a swipe at Black Mesa in “We didn’t wanted this game to take ‘Years’ to finish like other community mods.” You might as well be saying you aren’t interested in quality. Get your head out of the clouds and release some real content.

    And if they really intend to release this in six months, and they have 30 levels, why ask for money now? Seems to me like they’d need to have most of it done already. Unless they’re just phoning it in. Or have no clue how long it actually takes to make a great level.

    $12… can’t make this stuff up. I’m sorry. I just get salty as heck when I see projects like this begging for money. You know how long modders like me have cut our teeth to actually get good at this stuff? This new generation, they show up out of the blue with no track record of quality and think they can just fire up a Kickstarter or Indiegogo and have people rain money down on them because of their “ideas.” It’s ridiculous.

  3. Breezeep

    Oh wow, I’ve heard of this over at Facepunch. The fact that they need $500,000 to make an animated movie out of their game is just pathetic to me.

  4. I don’t like it.

    The character models are inconsistent, they could have just used either the old human models or the new models exclusively in the trailer, changing them in development.
    Having both at the same time shows their lack of “resource usage” skills.
    The moment where the HL1 zombies appear is when i just lost my cool watching the trailer.
    They don’t even look that good, with some of the models looking like they belong in something like Telltale’s The Walking Dead (but weirder).

    General weapon models aren’t really lore friendly, i don’t mind some of them being different, but having the USP/MP7-GL/SPAS/AR2/RPG should have been a rule.
    (I saw that the world models in the trailer is still the original HL2 ones, either this issue has already been addressed or the author is too lazy to change the world models for the trailer)

    Cutscenes in HL?
    Take a good look at the reception for any cutscene heavy HL mod/”game”, and you’ll see just how much people HATE that kind of thing for HL, it just doesn’t work.

    From what i can tell, the story is that you’re supposed to be this HECU guy who managed to survive both the Black Mesa incident and the 7 Hour War, and hates Freeman a lot for killing his buddies, despite the fact that right now he’s the only hope for humanity against the obviously-evil-destroy-all-humans Combine.

    Anyone who still doubted Freeman pretty much sods off the moment he tore down Nova Prospekt/The Citadel.

    And somehow he and his (apparently other BM survivors?) squad manages to make friends with the Combine without getting themselves combined.
    HOW!?

    Breen didn’t got whacked only because he’s their puppet for controlling the population, and any other humans that have the slightest thought of joining the Combine either got turned to the CP or straight out combined to the soldiers/elite soldiers.

    Should have just made something like “Human Error”.
    At least there you’re legitimately a Combine soldier that IS tasked to destroy the Resistance (yes, including Freeman!), and can even work around the canon, OP4-style.

    This looks like something that’s all about canon and lore breaking.
    And no one likes that.

    The Closure is still being bombshelled by the HL community for doing a lot of that, and that is a free mod.

    Something like this that demands $100.000 is just asking for everyone to carry torches and crowbars.

    1. And somehow he and his (apparently other BM survivors?) squad manages to make friends with the Combine without getting themselves combined.
      HOW!?

      Breen didn’t got whacked only because he’s their puppet for controlling the population, and any other humans that have the slightest thought of joining the Combine either got turned to the CP or straight out combined to the soldiers/elite soldiers.

      This is even weirder when you consider the fact that the Combine have only two goals on Earth: mastering teleportation through the use of Eli’s research (even if it has to be Judith who steals the work), and assimilating humanity if it proves worthy of joining ‘Our Benefactors’.
      Debates whether Dr. Breen is in it for himself or really cares about evolving humans aside, his main job is to prove that humanity (via Overwatch) are worthy of joining the larger Combine forces, even if only for his own sake. That’s what he stresses to Overwatch in Nova Prospekt – stopping Freeman is not just because he’s a threat to their plans, but also because, if they can’t stop this one man, humanity is worthless to the Combine.

      With that in mind, and taking into account that ‘humanity’ within the Combine is really ‘transhumanity’ once you get to the military force (and the future of all mankind), why in the hell would Breen, and more importantly ‘Our Benefactors’, allow a bunch of regular unconverted humans, presumably with no loyalty to the Combine, to do Overwatch’s job for them? If anything it will only hamper their reputation and ruin Breen’s whole plan.

  5. It’s clear to me that they just want to get as much money they can, and that’s all. They don’t care about the mod, they only care about money. They are probably a bunch of guys that just seen how easy it’s to grab some cash on crowdfunding sites and how broken Steam Greenlight is.
    No original content, a bunch of bland screenshots showing nothing, terrible trailer and very wide promo campaign. Suspicious?
    It’s just wrong.
    The worse thing is, they probably get greenlit. Thankfully Source licnece doesn’t allow selling a game wtihout valve permission, and they won’t allow this for sure. Becaue there is nothing and won’t be nothing to consider as a game here (right now, not even a mod).
    I just hope they won’t get any more money on indiegogo.

    1. Yep. Greenlight must be the most broken Steam aspect to date.

      Unfortunately though, from the moment Before got greenlit, then this will too. 🙁

  6. please lets not give attention to projects like this. They dont deserve it, we dont deserve to waste our time with it.

    1. Amen, crowbar. Amen.

    2. Eh, normally I’d agree. But I kind of like hearing about these “mods.” It gives me a good laugh.

  7. Eh. I’d rather play one of the dozens of great free mods here on RTSL.

    Also, you’d think I’d be used to it by now, having been around the creation of webcomics using Garry’s Mod since 2007, but it still annoys me to no end how fan projects love ‘reinterpreting’ the Half-Life series in such a way that it doesn’t feel like Half-Life anymore. Half of the scenes in those trailers look like Call of Duty to me, rather than Half-Life.

    Honestly, give me a good mod (or even a good comic like Apostasy) over this stuff any day.

  8. This won’t succeed even the 10K goal , lol , everyone that knows at least a little bit about mods will give crap on this mod + the story didn’t even seem interesting in my opinion.

    1. It’s really clueless people making mods for the equally clueless.

      1. Couldn’t have said it better 🙂

  9. Well i eventually got round to putting this topic into a podcast on my channel. Its one of these Mods that probably wont go anywhere but it was fun to really look into how badly designed and thought out it is!

  10. Very mixed.
    At least make a free mod first so people know what they’re getting.
    Because I’d throw money at an Underhell Chapter 2 or Estranged Act 2, but this?
    Not likely.

  11. As exciting of an idea as it is, the developer’s idea of reaching $100k is extremely unrealistic along with the fact that they haven’t even paid licensing fees and their indiegogo is currently sitting at $12. I’m also not getting a very professional vibe from them and find their current footage on Steam Greenlight extremely poor. It didn’t interest me at all so I was extremely disappointed to see I won’t be getting a cool fan-made HL inspired game soon.

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