You are sent to Phobos IV which has a deadly virus.
Fortunately, there is an antidote. Less fortunately, creatures from Xen have taken control of the base.
Follow the on screen instructions and use your ammo VERY carefully.
Basic Details
- Title: Phobos IV
- File Name: hl1-sp-phobos-4.7z
- Original File Name: phobos4.exe
- Size : 5.89Mb
- Author: Pavel Koten
- Date Released: 22 December 2002
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Installation Instructions
- Copy the phobos folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Phboso IV should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Screenshots
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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OK to a point, mostly hard to kill Volts not much in the way of weapons, or ammo. Textures and sets similar throughtout like most of these games onboard some type of space craft. Ends shortly ofter an encounter with the Boss Spider which I could not kill or find a way round without noclip. If you give this one a miss you are not missing much, but if you are short of a game then download.
****SPOILER***** You can kill the spider with the Gauss gun if you use the secondary fire button and allow the charge to build-up to the max — about 3 or 4 hits does the trick.
I almost gave this an AVOID IT! recommendation. Partly because it really isn’t very good and partly because I ran out of ammo and had NO way of getting any.
I think this is a good example of somebody being technical able to make and produce levels but not really understanding game design.
Sure, it was nearly ten years ago and mappers were still learning their trade but you only have to look at other mods made around the same time to see that others had grasped basic concepts well.
Coloured lighting is generally a giveaway to the quality of a map and this release doesn’t change that perception.
The corridors are narrow and you have little chance of evading enemies. My advice is to draw the vortigaunts towards you and then run around the corner, saving your ammo when you really need it.
In fact, I don’t see any reason when players weren’t given a crowbar replacement.
Talking of replacements, the shotgun and gauss gun both have new models but neither is anything special.
The fight with the gonarch was impossible for me because I had no ammo left, therefore I had to cheat, which is disappointing.
It’s clear the author wanted to make something different from the BM style mods but there is more to it than a few new models, changing the textures and coloured lighting.
Only play this if you really HAVE to play something, otherwise Avoid It!
In this mod we search an abandoned facility for the cure from the deadly virus. We need to complete small quests by searching for items and using them in the right places. From time to time we hear some horror sounds, one of them is the Pig Cop “A-ha” from Duke Nukem 3D.
The design is original and there’s a nice science fiction feel. It is impressive that the author managed to achieve it with stock Half-Life textures.
The fights are somewhat repetitive – there are only two weapons and only one enemy type (if you don’t count the boss). You can’t afford to miss. At the end I ran out of ammo so I couldn’t kill the last monster. I grabbed the card and ran away.
I liked the new footstep sounds.
Second half of the mod is Xen, where design gets boxy and repetitive.
All in all, this was something different and refreshing.
I didnt like mapping at all, boring little hallways. Didnt feel like “real” base at all, more like just finished base without any equipments at all.
Always good to have some fresh monster/gun sounds (taken from here and there though), extra points for those. But then you have some weird sounds like baby crying, eh?
Good to have little tasks like “find power generator” etc. It’s not just killing mobs all the time. But why just Vorts, boring.
A good idea with some fairly good atmosphere in the beginning but unfortunately the execution is isn’t very good at all for the majority of the duration.
I can see what the author tried to do originally and for some parts it’s actually quite good in terms of overall creepiness and atmosphere. The custom sounds effects consisting mostly of sounds, and music, from the game System Shock II does a very good job of setting up the feel of the maps and in general.
You don’t encounter any enemies for a few minutes at the start which is a great way to increase the tension in that you’ll never really know when you’ll come across an enemy.
Unfortunately this is also when this great atmosphere that the author built up is completely ruined when you finally run into one of these hideous creatures that consists of nothing more than… alien slaves? Yeah, that’s the enemy you’ll fight for the rest of the duration of this map pack, albeit it possess significantly more health than its Half-Life counterpart.
The author put in loads of custom sound effects and music but never bothered to replace the alien slaves with a custom model. This is a shame and completely ruins the overall feeling.
Unfortunately, the level design is very lacking as well. Most of it consists of dull and very tightly constructed corridors with a few storage rooms and sleeping chambers. It feels empty, boring and uninspired.
Later on you’ll run into some sort of alien infested area which looks a lot like Xen only much more duller and boxy in construction.
Combat wise it can be challenging since the alien slaves takes a lot of beating and there’s a scarce limit of ammo supply but it’s still very doable on normal difficulty.
Sadly, there’s one particular boss fight near the very end that’ll have you baffled at how really stupid and broken it is. Personally, I couldn’t kill it despite having a decent amount of ammo — I tried numerous times but in the end had to resort to cheating.
Overall, this was a good idea but it didn’t hold up in the end which is unfortunate. I can see what the author wanted to do with this but it just didn’t work out as good as I hoped. Only recommended if you’re desperate and want to kill some time, otherwise stay away from it.
I have a feeling that if your looking at this from a mapping view, you’ll have a completely different opinion then someone looking at it from a gameplay view.
Personally I liked this. The gameplay of it was pretty fun, it had some new textures and sounds and was overall an action based map. You shoot Vortigaunts until you get to a Gonarch and then that’s it. There was a small puzzle at the very start but it was easy and boring. It’s way too easy too, and I didn’t struggle at all during the whole mod. Not really much more to say about the positives.
Looking through my novice mapping view I can see plenty of bad decisions and mapping that should be sorted. First of all there isn’t much health or ammo which would cause problems when you are stuck against an enemy which you have to kill to get past. The maps are also very underwhelming, the lighting was constantly annoying and there were too many Vortigaunts. I can imagine an experienced mapper will be able to spot at least double what I have just mentioned.
If your a fan of gameplay then “Play it Now!” but if your a map critic “Avoid It!”. Does anyone else think that the Tau Cannon in this map looks strangely like the Grapple from Sven Co-op’s reco map?
This could have been pretty good except for the lack of ammo and a crowbar! As it is play it if you are suffering from mod withdrawal only
Because I can’t imagine anyone getting pleasure from playing this mod, I’m advising you to Avoid It.
The word ugly springs to mind most of the time has you progress through one terrible set of passageways after another. Some of the textures rank about the worst ever seen in a HL1 mod, and you wonder what the author was on.
The set designs did little to convince one of being aboard anything, let alone a space craft, to be honest, there is very little in the way of design just repeated standard rooms and retextured passageways.
The gameplay is boring with just Volts and text messages distracting the player away from the unimaginative surrounds and pointless pursuits.
I lost complete interest having, once again, unable to overcome the Boss, cheating to the end just to see the outcome.
I know by writing the above I won’t be stopping anyone playing this mod, the sensible ones won’t have downloaded in the first place, with the rest of us always keen to play, just to see how bad it really is. Well, you have been warned.
I don’t understand how someone can release something so fundamentally broken like this mod. In order to have a fighting chance at beating the boss, you have to 1) not miss any shots at anything, 2) save all your tau cannon ammo for the boss, and 3) probably avoid/evade some or even a big chunk of the alien slaves you come across before and after the boss.
For some reason the author made Easy the exact same as Medium skill level (no difference in weapon damage, enemy health, health charger capacity), so you guys that play on Easy didn’t actually have it any easier! The total lack of ammo is not fun – without a crowbar even you’re totally helpless if you run out. Another sin of Half-Life single player design. Maybe I should write a list?
There are other basic design choices made that were odd as well, such as breaking conventions (since when have vents in Half-Life swung open instead of breaking open?) and lighting nearly everything in the Xen-like sections with the plantlights (which have ugly lighting). There is some backtracking after finding key cards and the like, but for the most part these maps are linear hallways. I’m not going to tear apart the mapping – it wasn’t good and it wasn’t terrible. I did kind of like the look of the elevator, though, go figure.
This mod might otherwise score a couple of points in my book for the custom models and sounds, and a hint of a decent atmosphere. But overall the broken gameplay damns this to the bottom of the pack.
Here we have nice design and textures, so well hold and put together along a good mapping design, I mean it supposed that you are into some kind of alien station or so. untill those detaills everything is ok, SO FAR……
Then these scandinavian guys ruined everything, with that worst stupid-idiotic idea, (no offense to anyone intended) of having only 2 dam, guns and besides that fact, have to take care of the Ammo, in the gameplay!!!!, gosh!, NEVER and I meant NEVER!!!, do something like that and put it as a rule in the gameplay, because those vortigaunts were even so hard ass to kill!!!; I mean how do you expect that I take care of my ammo, if you have to kill those vortis, with 4 shootgun shoots!!! and not being happy with this the guys here gave us a Big Momma, to kill as a boss of the mod just a little bit before it ends!; by that time when I had to face the big momma, I was so done with the ammo, so empty as a supermarket in xmas day!!!!!!!!, even Call of duty MW2, have refill ammo strations in the middle of one big battle field, and i’m telling you that in there, you waste lots of bullets in every weapon u use!!!!!!; by that time when I was in the Big momma room, I used impulse 101, and that was the only way I could end the freakin mod!; so god bless cheat codes because if they were not invented I would then feel so rip off by this mod, oh god, even with the super mighty crosbow, those vortigaunts got killed with 2 darts!!!!!!!, Come on!!, I mean this is a perfect example of how to ruin a possible cool mod, with just a bad gameplay layout!!
I think some of the influences for Phobos IV might have come from Star Trek: The Next Generation as some of the architecture was reminiscent of a Borg Cube and there the enjoyment ended. Lack of ammo was a big problem in some parts and overall the mod was boring. The lack of ammo was not the only problem, usually at close range a single head shot takes a Vort down but here multiple shots were needed.
Only play this if you are OK with using cheats otherwise you will not want to finish it.
Futuristic mod in a non-HL universe. It’s the year 2036 and humanity suffers due to an virus. Your mission is to retrieve a cure located inside an abandoned base…
Story is okay, but don’t expect too much of it. The maps are looking different than usual HL maps or mods, lighting is nice in the base but not much variety of textures.
Also it’s all very boxy and basic, long corridors and smaller rooms only.
There’s also a Xen-like section at the end where you have to stop the alien breed.
There are new weapon models and sounds, music and textures if I’m right.
Some things are taken from other games or HL mods.
Somehow it feels unfinished, there are only 2 weapons and very less ammo.
Very less because you’ll need every single bullet! So don’t waste ammo!
I suggest to play on easy, not because it’s tough but enemy hitpoints have been changed dramatically. I first played on “medium” and alien slaves need 4 shotgun shells to be killed, 5 on hard (!!!) Therefore I was totally out of ammo during the boss fight in the end…
Variety is the magic word here: less weapons, less textures, less architecture, less enemy types, less puzzles etc. etc.
What’s sort of cool is the atmosphere and some sounds, I like the door sounds and there’s lil ambience. Some easy find-a-keycard-or-item puzzles are okay too, but as said, not challenging.
Layouts are very linear and it’s always clear what to do or where to go, also because of text messages showing your objectives.
Not that interesting as it lacks of more playtime, variety, balancing and map design.
I’m close to give it a “think twice” at least, but I just can’t…
Playtime: 10 minutes
Not the worst mod I’ve ever played, but definitely not the best either.
I usually like those “Alien” mods where a virus spreads in a spaceship and such. It tried to be a bit like USS Darkstar, but it failed really. There was only one main enemy, that is the vortigaunt. No really, that’s the combat. The main mapping even though was nice, had too many corridors and with the use of only one enemy, you will get easily bored.
Overall, if you like this idea, then give it a go. You will like it, but after the first half of the mod you could get bored.