If, like me, you?re getting tired of waiting for Half-Life 2 expansions The Lost Coast and Aftermath, here?s something that might satisfy your hunger for a little while.
Minerva is a cracking little mod by Adam Foster, one that takes you out of the shoes of Gordon Freeman (leaving that firmly in the hands of the people that do it best ? Valve) and into an unknown character (although a little backstory does get hinted at but I won?t spoil that here).
The plan is to release Minerva as episodes and so Minerva Part 1: Metastasis is quite short (around an hours playtime), but very, very sweet.
Dropped onto a mysterious Combine controlled island you are under orders (from your faceless and, quite frankly, sadistic commander in chief) to investigate what the enemy forces have been up to. I won?t say any more as that?d spoil it, but Minerva so far is something worthy of every HL2 owner?s attention.
The double speak and verbose text (both in game on and the games site) is designed to be a bit confusing but the mod is highly polished with some nice level design and a decent challenge. Minerva also features some subtly remixed HL2 music along with nicely done original composition. It even has some nods in the general direction of the main Half-Life story, making it feel like a direct expansion of Valve?s world without treading on their toes and maintaining an original slant on things.
Hopefully this is the start of some decent mods that the HL2 engine has been crying out for and up until now have been few and far between (probably due to the time taken to put together something semi-decent).
You can find more on the mod, and download it at http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/phosphenes.shtml (it's only a dinky 14Mb too)
Let?s also hope that part two of this story isn?t too long in being released
Minerva is a cracking little mod by Adam Foster, one that takes you out of the shoes of Gordon Freeman (leaving that firmly in the hands of the people that do it best ? Valve) and into an unknown character (although a little backstory does get hinted at but I won?t spoil that here).
The plan is to release Minerva as episodes and so Minerva Part 1: Metastasis is quite short (around an hours playtime), but very, very sweet.
Dropped onto a mysterious Combine controlled island you are under orders (from your faceless and, quite frankly, sadistic commander in chief) to investigate what the enemy forces have been up to. I won?t say any more as that?d spoil it, but Minerva so far is something worthy of every HL2 owner?s attention.
The double speak and verbose text (both in game on and the games site) is designed to be a bit confusing but the mod is highly polished with some nice level design and a decent challenge. Minerva also features some subtly remixed HL2 music along with nicely done original composition. It even has some nods in the general direction of the main Half-Life story, making it feel like a direct expansion of Valve?s world without treading on their toes and maintaining an original slant on things.
Hopefully this is the start of some decent mods that the HL2 engine has been crying out for and up until now have been few and far between (probably due to the time taken to put together something semi-decent).
You can find more on the mod, and download it at http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/phosphenes.shtml (it's only a dinky 14Mb too)
Let?s also hope that part two of this story isn?t too long in being released
. The game, although darker and a little more mysterious (so far) than Half-Life 2, certainly felt of its universe.
I think the caching is handled slightly differently than Half-Life 2 because it came up with a caching bar upon loading for the first time. The sound effects and music sounded slightly different too. 
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