Eternal Silence

Eternal Silence is played between two stationary, indestructible capital ships and involves dogfighting with futuristic spacecraft and fighting onboard ships with a wide array of laser and traditional ballistic weapons.

That the mod even exists or functions on any level is an impressive technical achievement, given the Source engine’s map size restrictions. The developers employed a clever gimmick by shrinking the space outside the ships by a ratio of 16:1 to fit in a very large area for ships to fight into a very small area on the map. Other aspects of the mod (the mapping, modeling, and general production values) reflect the same level of painstaking construction and attention to detail. This is probably the sharpest-looking mod of any for Half-Life 2, especially for a first release.

Gameplay is focused largely on two things: fighting the enemy in the corridors of their own starship and fighting them in space. Since there’s no way to transport more than 1 person at a time in any of the spacecraft, most ‘boarding operations’ are over in a few seconds after the unlucky pilot pops out of his cockpit and into the enemy hangar, filled with people waiting to grab a ship. Thus, the battles around a capital ship’s engines or in the control room are rare, as most people don’t make it beyond the hangar. When shipboard battles do occur, things are pretty hectic, owing to the powerful weapons and cramped spaces. If players can secure a beachhead and capture one of the points onboard their enemy’s ship, then they can respawn at that point and take over the entire ship. The first team to manage to pull this off wins the game.

Battles in space are an entirely different animal. Most of the combat takes place there, and it’s in space that the most exciting action can be found. Each side is equipped with more or less the same weapons and spacecraft, and there are obstacles on most maps (asteroid fields, the larger ships, space stations) that provide cover and make dogfights more interesting and protracted. Gamers familiar with Freespace (especially its control system) should slip right into the space-based game without a problem, but even for those completely new to space shooters, it’s extremely simple to learn and start slinging lasers and setting off missiles with style.

Overall, the mod is blessed with excellent production values, solid gameplay, and good, well-populated servers. Hop on this one.

Link: The official Eternal Silence website

Iron Grip: The Oppression

Iron Grip takes place in a vaguely Eastern European setting, and it pits rebels against jack-booted soldiers. The setup is unremarkable except for the fact that the rebel team is composed of several humans, each controlling a single character, squaring off against another human player who commands all of the forces of the oppressors. The anti-insurgent general can build tanks, form squads of infantry, and order them all over the map via a buggy RTS interface. His objective is to capture and hold several points of interest across the map and secure his own commander, a character on the battlefield who, if killed by the rebels, results in defeat. The rebels have the opposite objective -- to kill the enemy commander and to take control of the map.

The action is fast, explosive, and, for the most part, hilarious. The sterile maps provide little cover and few opportunities to venture into buildings, choke points guarantee that players and AI alike will be jittering and clipping their way through a mass of burned-out tanks a few minutes into a match, and the limited spawnpoints for the rebels mean that you’re not guaranteed to spawn the first time around -- or the second, or even the third. If Iron Grip had halfway decent maps it might be entertaining (the buggy RTS interface and brain-dead AI for the jackboots notwithstanding), but as it stands gamers would be best to let the dev team generate some quality playing spaces and fix things up to be more entertaining and less frustrating.

Link: The official Iron Grip website

Excite

Excite is a tiny mod put out by the same fine folks that brought us the pilotable strider mod, and it’s so far one of the most entertaining mods for the Source engine.

It’s difficult to describe Excite’s gameplay; suffice it to say that anyone that saw the trailer for the upcoming Portal already knows what it’s like (because Excite copies it exactly and shamelessly). Players can create portals -- one shot with a portal gun creates an entrance portal and another shot creates an exit -- and then can pass through them or get others to do so. Following this simple principle, players can shoot an exit into a ceiling, then shoot an entrance below them and suddenly find themselves falling from the ceiling. Creating an exit on a wall and an entrance underneath a box sends the box falling out of the hole in the wall, and shooting an exit directly above you and an entrance directly below guarantees a mind-altering infinite fall.

The game is multiplayer, which on some servers means peaceful exploration and experimentation with the portal gun, and on other servers means incredibly fun shenanigans throwing people into pits and knocking people around the map by shooting portals at their feet.

The most remarkable aspect of this mod is its extremely high signal to noise ratio. Whereas other mods carry out long, drawn out development schedules that produce mods short on original gameplay ideas but long on intricate graphics and moody music, Excite was released after a few weeks' development and uses all stock HL2 models, weapons, and textures. In fact, the map textures are all mockup, shades of orange and gray covered in sharp white gridlines. It’s refreshing to find a mod so dedicated to gameplay and so unconcerned with everything else. And gameplay, at least in my estimation, is what separates mods from mainstream retail games.

Links: The official Excite website

Conclusion

The value of Half-Life 2, whatever your opinion of the game itself, is rapidly climbing. Mods are making this game an even larger success than the first one, and the cycle is far from over. On the horizon are these mods I’ve mentioned in their later iterations, as well as brand new mods covering everything from zombies to Iraq. Stay tuned.

Miss Mod Squad Part 1? You can find that article here.