After the incidents at Black Mesa three years ago, Gordon Freeman was recruited by a curious FBI Agent, known simply by the common nickname given to his kind, ‘G-Man’.
Now working as a highly-trained special operative, Gordon Freeman is the only man the US Government fully trusts in highly hostile situations.
The best in his business, Gordon Freeman is sent to investigate some disturbances at a local abandoned mine. Terrorist activity is suspected. However, Gordon’s past experiences and extensive training could not have prepared him for the full on war against terrorism that he is about to face…
- Title: Solo Operations
- File Name: hl1-sp-solo-operations.7z
- Original File Name: solooperations.zip
- Size : 8.08Mb
- Author: The Solo Operations Team (Zerodev)
- Date Released: 28 May 2003
- Copy the soloops folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Solo Operations should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
-
1,878Overall
-
0Today
-
1Last 7 days
-
6Last 30 days
-
85365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 2 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 13 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 55 Mins by Turpow
Longest: 1 Hours, 30 Mins by PsyWarVeteran
Total Time Played: 2 Hours, 25 Mins
This release is currently not in a collection
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Rating: 3/5
Good: New models and HUD; tasked with objectives.
Bad: Textures not well laid out; models are old originals (not hi-poly); couldn’t figure out what to do.
Review:
I though this was going to be a good mod, but it wasn’t. To put it bluntly. It had potential, but just didn’t quite measure up to the standards that most of the other, longer, single-player campaigns are at. The deal is that you are Gordon still, but the G-Man is an FBI exec, and you are an agent now. You are sent to an “abandoned” mine to gain intel on weird stuff that has been going on. There are no aliens. Just a lot of grunts, aka Terrorists. Also, the campaign ends rather abruptly, kinda just leaving you wondering, is there more? Anyway, the moddb website for this is the only website that I could find for the modification, and the promo screenies on there paint a good picture of what the mod could’ve been. The rating on there of “6/10” is about right.
Filefront download link here.
Improved with depth of play after a very weak and non-event start but does not aspirer to any great hieght and coupled with the non-structured ending, all conspire to mark it down.
After wandering around for ten extraordinarily uneventful minutes, I stopped playing. It’s always a mistake to start a mod like this, before establishing that you, the modmaker, actually know what you’re doing.
I got stuck in the outdoor market (the stalls with the 3 explosive charges near them), and an underground
room with health & ammo, and a gate that won’t open. I shot the helicopter down, but there is no
apparent way out of the market area.
Did anyone get past it ?
Thats the end.There is a bug in it that prevents it from fading to black with a message mission complete
hey, not to bad, and not to good. you are obviously gordon but the textures are QUITE BAD!
This is a mod of three distinct parts and it feels like it was mapped by two people. The person who made the mines and last outdoors areas and the person who made the bases in between.
The first part isn’t that bad and I find it hard to believe that Shawn spent ten minutes wandering around – for me the way was clear and there was nothing stopping you from progressing. That said, I’ve done the same thing myself, so perhaps it’s not hard to believe.
Once you get passed the drab mine area you get into the bases. Now, I use “bases” because there is quite a big difference between the styles of each area. Each one looks pretty good from my perspective and there is only one corridor that is plain.
I felt the mapper (s) tried to add little details, as can be seen from image 19 with the pipes and lights. I am almost fascinated by these sorts of things.
Anyway, the combat was a little “flat” but there was one really nice part with the two marines (terrorists) above you in an elevator shaft throwing grenades down at you. I felt that was nicely done.
I spent most of the mod expecting to see the assassins because I had seen them on the other side of the door but they never attacked me.
The first outdoor section, whilst being a little “empty” and lacking refinements *I go see through a gap in the wall and it was even possible to easily jump out of the map) offered some really nice tactical gameplay.
The hostages, in both situations, were a complete waste of time and would have been better left out.
The final market area is not worth playing and in fact, I could reach it by normal means. I got the key to enter the area but it didn’t do anything, so I had to noclip through.
I was lucky I had some secondly M16 grenades left otherwise I would have know how to shot the helicopter down.
Honestly, once you have killed all the grunts in the street, just stop playing.
All in all, it was plain in the mines, fun in the bases, exciting in the street and boring in the market.
Apart from a few enjoyable areas this is hard to really recommend. This map pack are plagued with some very uneven level design which consists of blocky amateurish mapping to downright bad. As mentioned a few areas look quite good but these are all too few. Problem is, as mentioned, this also makes it look inconsistent. You start off in a large mine area which has some decent lighting and make progress through a blocky prison, maintenance areas, large hallways until you finally reach a street market.
Your primary nemesis only consists of human grunts so expect a few tough firefights. You also encounter a pair of female assassins behind a locked door but you never fight them.
It’s a bit easy in the beginning but towards the end you’ll have a fairly tough time but nothing overly difficult. As usual, normal difficulty is recommended but go for hard to spice things up a bit.
One, or rather two major issues is near the very end and the actual final battle. Firstly, you’re tasked to find a security key in order to open a large gate. Problem is, there’s no, that I could see at least, way to open up this door. You’ll have to resort to cheating using noclip in order to go through it. Secondly, after progressing through to the last map, you’re engaged by a apache in a small market district. This wouldn’t be all too hard you might think considered that there has to be a rocket launcher nearby… well, there isn’t any. You can escape this area into a alley and down a ladder to find a large amount of ammo, health packs and batteries. Obviously, these ammo packs are supposed to be used against the helicopter, yeah, but I dare you try and successfully take down a large attack helicopter using only a pistol, mp5 and a shotgun. I wonder who originally thought this was a brilliant idea. It’s not, it’s a waste of time and it’ll only frustrate the hell out of you. As Phillip said, you might as well stop playing when you approach the gate near the end of the map prior to the last one.
As mentioned before it’s hard to recommend this due to inconsistency and a broken final map. However, the combat is a bit fun especially towards the end so if you’re just looking for an excuse to kill grunts then look no further. Don’t expect anything out of the ordinary, however.
The part in the mine was ok, and I didn’t mind the combat in the town area, but I couldn’t get into the last section of the mod without noclipping. It was strange that you were given objectives to find the hostages but once you did it didn’t matter if they died or not. The ending was also a letdown
The modification is fairly dynamic gameplay and totally monotonous shitty design. All maps are dull boxes, even Project North Demo remembered for its open places, but this modification is no room in which is nice. Conclusion: The cubemap sucks. Avoid it. Sorry for the brevity.
So scattered could it be the propper word to describe this mod, I mean and I played quite ago, but I remember was an ok experience and I like the new skin on the oldie shootgun, altough I don’t seriously imagine freeman as an FBI agent!, I think play this mod worth the effort because defenetly this could it be a scattered style mod, but is better than many out there in the HL1 modding world.
One of the best FBI operatives, Gordon Freeman, was sent to investigate the disturbances in some abandoned mine.
The start causes a headache – we need to crawl through some dark cavern with wooden supports. When I found the crowbar, I thought “What if I try to break the planks at the beginning of the mod?”. The answer is – nothing. The author simply didn’t foresee that the player might have such question. And there’s no wooden crunch when you hit the wood with crowbar.
There is some other crudity later – first we magically take the items from the closed cupboard, then it opens. The crowbar’s viewmodel is painted grey, but the author forgot about the worldmodel so it’s left red.
Then there are some different levels waiting for us. The detail is minimal, the texturing is monotonous. And some not hard struggle with terrorists.
This mod established a record – it has the widest func_ladder I’ve ever seen. And it’s also kinda corridorish – there are corridors, corridors… The design gets better and better with each corridor though. One time we’ll have to go through the elevator shaft, which is more interesting and detailed than such shaft in Half-Life.
The town is simple, but still, it’s fresh – you don’t see a town in Half-Life every day. In the market, helicopter arrived. I ran past it and found myself in dead end, where I took medkits, energy and ammo. No rocket launcher. When I went back, I saw a soldier who has a shotgun which can launch contact grenades. But this “new” weapon is usable only for NPC.
Looks like this is where the development stopped, because I couldn’t find a way to progress even with noclip.
Should you play it? On the one hand, the mod is not bad. On the other, there are better mods. So I’m leaving the decision to you.
That’s interesting because when I went back there was nobody there.
Yeah I didn’t see any grunts in the Apache area either. I only saw one grunt with contact grenades in the whole mod (in the town, just above the level transition to the marketplace) and he definitely had a 9mmAR.
Indeed, I loaded the last map through the console and he wasn’t there. He is on one of the roofs in the previous map, and apparently he followed me through the changelevel.
The town section of this mod was brilliant.
I’ll admit that I had to use noclip at the begining of the game because I couldn’t find a way to get out of the first section of the mine. I tried shooting the area that looks different but it made no difference.
The gameplay of this mod was really enjoyable for me. While it’s a complete grunt fest it seemed to work well for this one. The difficulty isn’t too hard but there are quite a lot of tough fights, with the one at the very end being near impossible. There are a few puzzles but it’s basically pressing a button and opening a door. There are some areas where you might get stuck but once you find the way you’ll probably kick yourself.
The town section was really fun and was the main reason I gave this a PiL rather than a Maybe. While the Barneys are completely useless and keep getting stuck, it’s still fun to do alone.
It’s worth playing when you have the time.
You find the key in one of the houses
Are you sure you picked it up, because it gives you the message as soon as you enter the room with it in. You still have to pick it up.
I did find it, it even said that I completed the objective but I still couldn’t open the gate!
Me too. Bloody key didn’t open any door!
Very Linear game play and a poor ending let down what could have been something good.
Until you get to the outside area, you pretty much have to follow the pre-set course as there’s not even the pretence you have a choice. One part I did like was the door behind wire fence, usually in HL mods a wire fence is a barrier, in real life a wire fence is climbable and so it is in this game. The game play itself was nothing special and at the end I (like others) had the key card but the door wouldn’t open! As for the look, the best I can say is I’ve seen worse.
When I first played this I thought there was a way out of the market but gave up trying, now I understand it is THE END!!!!!!
This was a very inconsistent pack, and overall it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. It starts out awfully in my opinion. I thought the dark mines were just boring and a waste of space, and then you’re forced to crawl in sections which just prolongs the agony. Why bother with them?
You eventually make your way to the base areas, which are much better than the mines and somewhat reminiscent of Black Mesa. Some of the mapping is still blocky and there are some questionable texture choices, but overall these areas are probably the best that this pack has to offer.
I for one thought that the “city” area at the end was not really that well done. It looked different (thanks to the textures) but it was really basic in design and nonsensical in the layout (particularly the perpendicular truck). Not to mention that this map is broken, in that the door that should open doesn’t. And even if you do go through the door, you end up in an impossible battle with an Apache. This screams unfinished to me.
In short: too uneven, too much filler. There are some good ideas and some good sections here but also too much boring boxy areas, and an uninteresting story.
Dont play it.
It was quite nice this mod, if only it wouldn’t look so unfinished, so halfhearted 🙁
The story and gameplay itself started nice but then it was getting crappier until you’re outside on the streets again, rescuing the hostages.
There are several positive things to say about this mod, but the negatives prevail easily, unfortunately…
Objectives were nice and clear, so you never get stuck (except for the keycard issue, there’s just nowhere to use it at the end –> noclip –> Apache –> end, meaning hit ESC and quit)
Pro’s:
-New HUD, weapons sounds, weapon & model look and some good looking maps, but poorly detailed mostly
-Objectives tell what to do and also mention when completed
-Story is quite good altho not much is known and / or clear why – something about possible terrorists
-A few scripts
Con’s:
-Looking very unfinished / empty often (empty, undetailed rooms / hallways etc.)
-Balancing – it’s too easy, as very much ammo + armor, and grunts die faster somehow (hitpoints modified?)
-Short playtime
-Long walkways sometimes (without action, story etc.)
-No puzzles
-Minor flaws like semi-“hidden” button, mean script (elevator), tricky jump needed, outjump of map etc.
Conclusion: This could habe been something very, very good if the Con’s I mentioned would be fixed, which wouldn’t be a matter of long time. It just looked like it’s heavily under construction.
Thought this was an average mod, though not as bad as everyone seems to see it here. I don’t recall having to noclip thru anything, but I don’t remember exactly how I got past the city so I can’t say for sure. The mines were indeed dark and dull but I figured it was for building suspense and all that. As for the ending battle with the apache, a number of players seems to have demanded a rocket launcher and only got a cache of bullets, like so:
Though helicopters in HL2 are immune to bullets, the apache in HL1 is semi-vulnerable to bullets, albeit with a huge damage resistance. It did take me a couple of reloads, but I managed to take down the apache using the glock handgun. Non-RPG apache battles are fairly difficult, but I’ve gone thru it in some mods (e.g. virtual reality) and it’s a real challenge as an improvised boss. Unfortunately, a good boss battle does not save this mod from having a non-ending. So it just comes down to an average rating.
The menu background of this mod looked awesome, I thought this was an awesome mod. This mod tries to be good but fails badly. The maps are decent, the part in the city was the best part. The hostages models were just simple security guards, I wonder why the creator didn’t use the Counter Strike hostages. The soldiers didn’t look like terrorists, and the final part was impossible. The market place key does not work and requires no clipping through…and the helicopter fight was impossible. I think the GameWise review on the front page was a paid review or the mod author and the reviewer were just good friends.
Manually
Easy
55 Minutes
It’s nice but semi-unfinished. It “ends” after the helicopter boss fight at the market, there isn’t a fade to black or text making it clear though. Other than that issue, it’s a mod that sometimes wastes player’s time with empty but well designed maps.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes