Author’s Note: “Retaliation picks up where Dark Operations left off. There will be no Xen or displacer in Retaliation.
Action is the main theme. It will mainly be an encounter against military targets, but there is a healthy dose of aliens too.
There will also be many sequences and a few puzzles to keep things interesting. Retaliation is the last of this series. Enjoy.”
Be sure to read the hints in the readme if you get stuck.
- Title: Retaliation
- File Name: of-sp-retaliation.7z
- Original File Name: retaliation.zip
- Size : 4.10MB
- Author: Barry A. Bollinger
- Date Released: 28 May 2000
Download directly into MapTap [4.10MB]
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You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
Please install with MapTap.
Please copy titles.txt into your gearbox folder. This will enable the on screen text.
This story takes place after the events in Dark Operations. You, Adrian Shephard and your buddies are traveling in an Osprey on the trip home to the Santego Military Base in Arizona.
You just received the Medal of Honor from the president himself in Washington D.C. for your recent combat experience. Your superiors also mentioned a promotion to Sergeant and a two week leave.
“Hey Tower, where’s that five bucks you me, huh?”, you say to the large grunt next to you. “Forget it man, I don’t have it.”, he replies. You smirk to yourself as the aircraft is suddenly rocked by an explosive impact.
“What the hell was that?!”, Tower yells. The fire on the right wing and the osprey’s immediate dive to the ground tells you all too well exactly what happened.
The osprey has been hit by a rocket. “Oh man, not again…”, you whisper to yourself as you strap yourself in and pray for the best.
“Hang on guys, I’ll head for that nearby canyon!”, the pilot yells back. The osprey dives at incredible speed. Everything happens in slow motion as it impacts on the ground. The osprey begins to disintegrate and parts fly everywhere. A couple of your buddies are thrown out of the sliding aircraft.
Your head is knocked up against the bulkhead and everything goes black. You wake up dizzy and have a nasty headache. The pilot and everyone else seems to be dead. You hear someone laughing not far away.
Someone is gloating over the death of your buddies. The sound of it makes your blood boil. You pull out your trusty Ka-Bar knife and head for the source of the laughter.
The Black Ops and their U.S. marine traitor allies are laying siege to the Santego Military Base, your base. Its remote location prevents anyone else from knowing about the attack.
Communications have been disabled. There is little chance of help or rescue. Your comrades are mounting a strong defense, but they are heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Many of them have already been slain. It’s time to join the fight. It’s time to act. It’s time to retaliate.
Despite what happened in Dark Operations, scientists and security guards will be your allies. Don’t shoot them, you’ll need them.
Once again I included your old nemeses from Half-life, the military grunts. I mainly did this to break up the monotony of fighting Black Ops male assassins. Show them the same courtesy as you would the Black Ops. A healthy dose of lead is suggested.
The ally grunts that you will meet will not always follow you well. I did what I could to prevent this, but the following AI in OpFor has its limitations. Not only is this frustrating to you the player, but to me as well. Just be patient with them.
I have noticed for some reason that the ally grunts will sometimes turn on you after a battle. It’s probably a bug within their AI. Be especially careful when using explosives or snarks around them.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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3,453Overall
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176365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 2 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 12 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 55 Mins by Unq
Longest: 1 Hours, 30 Mins by MisterAddy
Total Time Played: 9 Hours, 34 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Quite good, lots of action, weapons and health/power. Too easy on medium – play on hard. About 3 hours. Unfinished, last 5 maps load but are empty.
So funny!
Grunt: You got nothing! Take THIS!
*Glass shatter*
*Shepard comes*
Shepard: What the hell are YOU doing?!
Grunt: Kickin” this machine’s ass! I ordered a ice cold soda and it ate my money!
Thank you ! I just finished “Dark operations” and I couldn’t wait to get on the sequel.
Retaliation is the latest map by Barry Bollinger, who already has quite a number of single player Half-Life levels to his credit. This episode is the sequel to his enjoyable pack Dark Operations. The premise: you are returning to your home base when your Osprey is shot down by the military forces that are laying siege to your beloved base. How dare they. Your mission is of course to kick their butts all over the place.
Caution: Barry notes in his text file that Retaliation was designed and tested in software mode, and he recommends you run it in software mode. Stubborn bastard that I am, I ran it in hardware mode, and I found several graphical glitches, such as walls/buildings disappearing when they are far away, and a couple hall-of-mirrors effects. In general, this is more of an annoyance than a problem, but in one section there was a mortar firing at me from a distant corner and I couldn’t even see it. It is unfortunate that thorough testing was not done in hardware mode, which the majority of players use, but I won’t harp on the subject. Consider yourself warned.
Also note: If you have one of the latest versions of OpFor (anything including OpForCTF), the in-game text that Barry has in Retaliation will not show up. This is due to a file called titles.txt in your gearbox directory. If you wish to see the text (which includes some hints, comments, and credits), then temporarily rename the titles.txt in your gearbox folder until you are finished playing Retaliation. I had previously criticized Retaliation for not having any type of proper ending, but after discussing this with Barry I realized the problem, and my comments have been withdrawn.
Overall, I felt Retaliation was roughly on par with Dark Operations. The main improvement I noticed in Barry’s latest work is the skilled use of sequences. There are a number of planned (and clever) sequences in Retaliationthat break up the fighting a bit. Retaliation is also a bit more challenging, but not to the point of being hard to complete.
The combat is one of the strengths of this pack – again, you are ‘treated’ to a mix of human and alien adversaries, and there is a wide variety of weapons available. Also, you have to stay on your toes when you revisit areas, since you never know when new enemies may be lurking. I like variety in combat, and Barry provided that, using nearly every enemy available in his maps. You’ll also get some welcome help from both friendly marines and the lovable security guards.
Similar to Barry’s other maps, the balance in this episode is somewhat skewed. There was just an abundance of ammo, health, and armor available again. Now this is personal preference, but I absolutely breezed through on the ‘normal’ setting; in truth, the only time my health got really low was when I took a nasty spill in the cliffside section. I played again on the ‘difficult’ setting and found it much more balanced. There were a couple sections that were moderately tough on ‘normal’ that became memorable challenges on ‘difficult.’ My recommendation for Retaliation is to give ‘difficult’ a try right off the bat if you are fairly confident in your skills.
The locations in Retaliation are in line with the desert base theme – at no time do you visit the dreaded Xen. The construction and architecture are well done, and the texturing is spot-on for the most part. The playability is good as well, as only a couple of areas (especially near the beginning) had high r_speeds causing minor slowdowns. As in Dark Operations, the layout of Retaliation is very linear – a couple of options every now and then would have gone a long way toward improving this episode.
Retaliation falls somewhat short of being a superb episode. In addition to the criticisms noted above, I felt that some more puzzles, or at least making the existing puzzles a bit more involved, would have enhanced the experience. Now I’m not one for useless puzzles, but it certainly helps to break up the linear progression through the levels when there are roadblocks.
I felt a professional touch was generally absent. For example, one of the scripted sequences didn’t seem to be timed right – there were two friendly grunts that were supposed to be talking to me, but they kept doing it at the same time making them both hard to understand – this wasn’t just random grunt chatter, these were planned moments, and it was repeatable, happening every time I played through that section. Another example is one I think is pretty funny – I could consistently get a certain grunt controlling a rocket turret to blow himself up by shooting the wall. I may be nitpicking, but Barry can now be considered a veteran Half-Life mapper, and a little more polishing and more thorough playtesting could have made a big difference.
I did enjoy Retaliation overall – if you liked Dark Operations or are just looking for some more OpFor action, you’ll enjoy Retaliation too. By the way, this is likely the last big Half-Life episode we’ll see from Barry, according to his web site – he’s moving on to bigger and better things in the near future.
Notes
This review was originally published Sunday, 5th November, 2000 by Unquenque.
This review was originally posted on the Ten Four website, which is now offline. The full review is republished here by permission and more details can be found on the About page.
I have to admit I didn’t know this was a sequel to Dark Operation but I’m not sure that would have made any difference to the review.
I enjoyed most aspects of the mod and felt the author did a good job of moving me forward and making the environments interesting and strategically varied.
As with a lot of mods recently, the choice of level change was really strange and opening a door only to be immediately fired upon is annoying when your instinctive movement is backwards, only for it to change level.
I found a lot of this mod had distance issues, where I couldn’t see the walls, making some areas seem very open.
All in all an interesting collection of maps that you should play but they didn’t really excitement that much.
Oh! One last thing, I could never work out who were friends and who enemies.
Using Gauge
Easy
1 Hour, 17 Minutes
This was a very enjoyable follow-up to Dark Operations. There was a lot of content to play through and the combat for the most part was well-balanced. I saw the same distance issues in some of the bigger areas, where walls would only come into focus when I got closer to then. I also couldn’t get the ammo out of one of the green military boxes without getting stuck inside, so I had to noclip back out. Definitely worth playing even if it isn’t perfect
In some ways an anticlimax after Dark Operations but fun nonetheless!
As with the last one looks and gameplay were passable (alright, not the walls missing in the distance) but for a follow up I did expect better.
I found the part with the Garg a little annoying as I used every explosive device I had to try to fry him, only to realise all I had to do was drop down the drain to continue!!! but at least in this one I actually needed one of my normally superfluous squad.
Overall compared to some of the others in the OFNF this was at least enjoyable.
Using Gauge
Easy
1 Hour, 2 Minutes
Yep I guess that’s a big flaw, actually you can skip that part totally, it looks like that garg part was just stuffed kind of forced in there…
This is a sequel to Dark Operations but to be honest I didn’t find it as fun. The gameplay seemed quite samey to me without much differentiation in combat situations, and there weren’t any stand-out areas. The graphics were OK, but still quite blocky in some places, and as others mentioned there is an issue with rendering in large open spaces which can affect gameplay.
One nice bit was a return to an area from the OpForce boot camp, but apart from that there was nothing which set the military base apart from just another Black Mesa clone.
Maybe it was just me, but during the later levels I found myself wondering when the end was coming, and I played over several short sessions. Doubtless most people will enjoy it, but there was nothing great about this one for me.
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Yeah as misteraddy says that part was just really cool, a clever touch in this mappack.
This mappack is way better than Ground Zero, and I compare them, because they are quite similar ambitious projects, but in this case Retalitaion has better quality and the textures fits right in the maps, the maps are especially cool because they look and they feel a lot like Black Mesa, some huge indoors and outdoor areas, so that’s a nice scenario to experience the heavy cool battles you found in this mappack.
All OPF weaponery are availabble and the combat againsts ennemy black ops and ennemy grunts are just entretaining, also againts the aliens they appear at the right time and momment.
I think the ennemy mortar is a great touch for this mod, as offers challenge and cool siege atmosphere, also the F-16 strikes were just beautiful, delightful, me being a military aviation fan I got charmed by the beauty of that F-16 modell, conssidering is not easy to custom model in HL1…
The only flaws I see on this one, are about those strange progression of the combat. I mean we arrive to the base but then there are some areas whit friendly guys and in the next steps we find ennemys, and I think, how the heck they get there??, Why the ally grunts aren’t kicking their arses??? Anyway I think they are into a game so there’s no need to be million percent real and accurate..
Overall a great mod to play, try it and have good kills!!
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 20 Minutes
Our helicopter was shot by traitors. We see a traitor with rocket launcher in front of us and avenge the deaths of our comrades. Apparently the rocket launcher is magical, because the helicopter became holographic after the hit. It also hit the cliff sides, so they become invisible when we get far from them. Environments which are bigger than maximum rendering distance is a flaw that we’re going to encounter throughout the whole mod. One of them will even cause a hall of mirrors effect. A while later we see another accomplishment of sorcery – an airplane which is able to hang in the air motionlessly!
Soon we find ourselves in rooms and corridors which resemble military base from boot camp. The design is good, it manages to capture look and feel of that base, but there’s nothing outstanding. There are nice scripted events: scientist in the infirmary, soldier who fights the soda machine.
The mod uses Opposing Force music, which is great to hear, install the Opposing Force soundtrack before playing if you haven’t already.
A while later, originally designed places appear. It’s good that author convinced us that we’re really in that base before introducing new designs. These designs are pleasing to look at, despite being simple. There is also nice variety of different places. The battles are balanced well. The layouts use vertical axis, so they don’t feel 2d.
At the beginning of the mod, there is a black op who looks in the water and don’t react to the player. If you try to pick up chaingun ammo from the openable crate, you’ll get stuck there. At the ending cutscene the author decided to hang player in the air instead of adding proper cameraview.
Overall, this mod is good and enjoyable despite its flaws.
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour
There were a number of operational glitches, already mentioned above, however overall it was enjoyable and although I hesitated about it, I decided to give it a PIN.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Overall I feel this was not as good as Dark Operations. Unfortunately it suffers from some of the same issues – namely the huge open area syndrome. Combined with not designing the map for hardware mode (this was released in 2000) and you have a visually problematic map with some hall of mirrors areas and some places where the draw distance is poor and things just cut in and out of view as you run around.
The combat is pretty good and you get a good mix of Op4 weapons. By the way, did anyone find a spore launcher? I kept getting ammo for it but didn’t get the actual launcher. This pack kind of feels all over the place – there are some mundane areas and some interesting ones, but some design doesn’t make sense. The mapping itself is decent if a bit blocky.
The combat is the main draw, but if you’re looking for solid Op4 packs I’d have to say skip this one.
Using Gauge
Medium
55 Minutes
Pretty good, action packed and no obtuse progression, not as good looking as more recent mods but other than that it was fun
hate you, Gemma 😡
I think you UNDER RATED this mod, HOW DARE YOU, it has a high variation scenarios like in the movies, maps are big, and all well made
I still thinking you don’t play too much James Bond at all
If you like James Bond movies, this is your mod. You will feel like it.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour