[Guest review by MedO]
Adam Foster recently released the last part in the first episode of Minerva, his amazing Half-Life 2 mod. I’ve played through it a few days ago and I think it’s vastly better than Valve’s own HL2:Episode1. In fact, it’s one of the best games I’ve played in the last few months.
The story takes place in the Half-Life universe, on a tiny island somewhere in the Baltic Sea that has been burrowed out by the Combine. You are dropped off there by the unknown and unseen character calling herself Minerva, who sends you (sometimes cryptic) text messages to inform you of important events or sometimes just to insult you. She doesn’t seem to care about your life, but wants you to survive as long as possible to gather information, and cross the Combine’s plans. Guided by Minerva, you begin to explore what the Combine are up to, descending ever deeper into the island’s underground.
One very nice thing about the mod is that you’ll rarely see the loading screen, because they are created in a very economic way – there’s almost an hour of gameplay in each map. Since you are descending ever deeper, you have several layers of rooms on the same map, all below each other. The long time you spend in each map sometimes allows you to see into areas you will only reach a while later, and makes it possible to have enemies appear in a realistic fashion: sometimes you can see Combine hurrying along above or below you some time before they actually get to you, which adds a lot to the feeling of realism in the game.
(The Minerva Development Blog is here.)