If I were ever to stumble upon a magical genie, one who would grant me three wishes, the first would be a ton of cash. The second would be to wipe the movie “Kazaam” from living memory, just because the whole genie experience would remind me of that atrocity. The third though, would be for a mod that’s good enough for me to want to play through the entire Half-Life 2 single player campaign for the fifteenth time.
Luckily for me, this last wish is no longer necessary. The Smod is a mod that adds so many strange and interesting elements to the original Half Life 2, that it makes the whole experience fresh and new. Some of you may be thinking “Eh, I’ve played it. What could they possibly add to it to make it worth my time?”. But this isn’t your mama’s Half Life 2. (Is anything your mama’s Half Life 2?) This is Half Life 2 on steroids. This is Half Life 2 on crack. There just aren’t enough hyperboles to describe this mod.
To start, the mod adds 26 (27 if you count the Gordon kick) new weapons, and also improves upon most of the existing ones. To get all of these weapons, you will have to use “impulse 101” because you won’t find them all during the course of the game. This is really the highlight of the mod. These are some of the most creative weapons I’ve come across.
There’s the bug spawner, which comes in the form of a miniature antlion that you throw like a grenade. Upon contact with any surface, it will explode into a life sized antlion, ready, willing, and able to do your bidding. I tried this during the highway 17 chapter, but could not for the life of me get two groups of antlions to attack each other. It could be an ethics issue, I don’t know that much about antlion philosophy.
There’s Gordon’s Magical Stick, which looks like something out of a “Hello Kitty” illustration. The primary fire slings colored lightning bolts that bounce around and multiply. This attack is somewhat devastating, if you can manage to hit anything with it. The bolts have weight, so they drop after so much distance. The secondary fire will destroy your lesser enemies in one shot instantly, as they explode in a cloud of gibs and bouncing lightning bolts. I’m not making this up. Really.
There’s the strider cannon, which is… well it’s the strider cannon. Primary fire will unleash the strider’s powerful cannon blast, killing pretty much anything in your path, including the striders themselves. The secondary fire isn’t, as you might expect, the strider machine gun. For some reason the author decided to switch that out with a kind of energy ball attack. You can fire as quickly as you want, and larger than average energy balls will fly in a straight line, snatching nearby enemies with red lightning and turning them into ash. The longer you hold the secondary fire, the bigger this energy ball will be.
There’s the hopwire, which is a little ball that you toss like a grenade, but then lifts off the ground, sucks everything, enemies, furniture (including you if you get too close) towards itself, and then explodes.
There’s the stuff launcher. The secondary fire disintegrates just about anything you fire it at, and you can then fire copies of that object at high velocity, effectively turning it into say… and exploding barrel launcher, or a saw blade launcher, or a filing cabinet launcher. You could even get creative with it, turn it into a med pack launcher or an ammo launcher if you so choose.
There’s a pair of scissors that you can throw and bounce off the walls, killing anything in it’s path. There’s a PSP that fires explosive UMD’s. There’s a shovel that doubles as both an extremely powerful melee weapon, and a kind of rocket jumping weapon. There’s something called a sweet banana which is actually a bunch of bananas that you toss like a SLAM, and then use the secondary fire and watch them split into individual exploding bananas. There are so many new an interesting weapons in this mod, that I could write an entirely separate article on them.
As great as the weapons are, they do have their flaws. The stuff launcher for example, can be used to disintegrate any enemy with one shot, effectively making it the most ridiculously powerful weapon in the game if used in this fashion. Also, if the enemy you disintegrated was tied to an event, the game will not progress further. For example, if you had to take out a strider and you used this attack, you’re basically screwed. You’ll have to load up the level again, because it will stop all other events from happening.
The flame thrower is another example of a flawed weapon. The model is the same as the gravity gun model, which is pretty disappointing because just about every other new weapon has a decent model. When you fire the weapon, you’ve got a pretty damn good chance of setting yourself on fire just by walking forward a little. The only time I found this weapon useful was during the last leg of the “We don’t go to Ravenholm” chapter, in the cave filled with headcrabs. Standing still and spraying flames in all directions, I had the illusion that I was Ripley from the movie Aliens, taking out a bunch of facehugger eggs. This illusion was quickly dispelled as I was killed by a flaming fast zombie.
Here, you look hungry. Eat this. You may or may not remember that in the original Half Life 2 there were no fast zombies at that point in the game. One of the things the mod does, and does it exceedingly well, is jumble up the enemy placement. For those of you who, like myself, have played Half Life 2 one too many times, you get used to coming around this corner or that and knowing exactly which enemy will be there. This is not the case with Smod. Headcrabs come out of unexpected corners. Zombies show up in maps where there previously were none. There is even an added strider during the airboat mission. These changes seem to be deliberately designed to keep you on your toes, and this adds greatly to the replay value.
Also adding to the replay value are a few modified enemies mixed in with the old ones. There are Combine Soldier’s with RPG’s. There are Combine Elite that are jump around and run faster than the regular Elite. There are blue exploding headcrabs that shine with bright white light before they kill you. There are stalkers who actually attack you with their lasers instead of sprucing up the ol’ citadel.
A neat little extra to add to the replay value, are the holiday easter eggs. Change the date on your computer to Christmas, load it up, and many of the main characters will be wearing Santa hats, and you’ll find a nice little gift waiting in the lab during the “Red Letter Day” chapter. Try a few other holidays too, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
A few of the modified enemies tend to be a little tiresome. In the “Nova Prospekt” chapter there are fully invisible Combine Soldiers. All you see is a floating gun. This wouldn’t be a problem if Nova Prospekt hadn’t won the “Darkest Prison of the Year Award” for the fifth year running. So all you usually see are muzzle flashes in the dark.
The combine gunship’s guns are now far too powerful. Make one false move, and you’ll be sent airborne, spinning across the map, usually ending up in a place that Valve never intended for the player to be able to reach, and sometimes stranding you there until you get riddled with bullets.
One huge help in the gameplay department is the addition of bullet time, which works off your suit battery and employs sounds that may or may not be ripped from the movie “The Matrix”. This addition is perfectly balanced with the added number of enemies on all levels of difficulty. Combine that with the Gordon Kick and the amped up versions of the original Half Life 2 weapons, and you’ve got an experience that most fans of Half Life 2 will love.
The added number of enemies is also offset by the addition of more allies during many parts of the game. Barney, with an AK-47 in tow, helps you out during the “Sandtraps” mission. Oddly enough though, he seems immune to the whole “If-you-touch-the-sand-antlions-will-come-to-kill-you” thing. There are even two rebel Combine Soldiers that accompany you in the early parts of the “We don’t go to Ravenholm” chapter. These latter tended to get in the way, and got me killed a few times because of the confined spaces in that chapter. I recommend killing them both to save yourself the hassle.
The Gordon kick is another great game play addition. This is a separate button that allows you to kick while still wielding a weapon. This has been made more powerful than in earlier iterations of the mod, and has become one of my favorite features. Not only can you pummel your enemies to death with it, but you can also use it to kick objects at them. For some reason, kicking an object at the lesser enemies tends to be more powerful than a direct kick. I don’t know why this would be, but it’s quite fun crushing combine soldiers with chairs and other furniture while still using another weapon. There’s also something tremendously satisfying about kicking headcrabs into a gibby oblivion, kicking manhacks out of the air, and smashing dead combine into pulp. This is such a fun feature that I could even see it being adopted in future official Half Life episodes.
Earlier editions of this mod were plagued by crashes, most often these had to do with using the stuff launcher a little too much. While most of the crashes and bugs have been fixed, there are still a few that remain. You can now kill any NPC in the game, which means that if Alyx strides into your line of fire during a firefight, or if you just get tired of her during a dialog scene, that’s game over. The map won’t end, but you won’t be able to progress if she is needed to open a door or a security checkpoint. As far as crashes go, I only came across one place where the game totally crashed, going through an alleyway during the early part of the “Anticitizen One” chapter.
Overall I’d have to say that Smod is not only one of the best mods for Half Life 2, but also one of the best mods of any game I’ve ever played. The massive number of added weapons, the new gameplay elements and varied enemy placement are more than enough to overlook the few bugs and annoyances in the mod. Any fan of the original Half Life 2 single player game looking for a reason to load it up again need look no further than Smod.and here's some picture i've captured
to download this mod please click or copas(copy-paste) the link below
http://www.fileplanet.com/180732/180000/fileinfo/SMOD-3.9-Full (28MB only)
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