Story
You are Gordon Freeman (AKA: the “Free-man”); you were placed in the city over powered by the combine force to help the resistance. After the revolt started you hear some startling news: The Combine has a new weapon in place; that place being outer space. The Combine have launched a satellite that will reign down hell on the rebels if you don’t do something fast! Luckily the satellite isn’t in full operation yet, so there is still time to deactivate it. Now you must fight your way through the city and escape so that you may some how deactivate the satellite. Enter: …Live to Fight Another Day.
Reviews
Basic Details
- Filename: smc_chapter1.zip
- Release Date: 12 April 2005
- Version: 1.0
- Size: 18.7Mb
- Author: WhiteLegion
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This map captures the spirit of HL2 very well. Some areas are beautiful – detailed and convincing. Some others are not so incredible, looking a bit square and unfinished. But the un-detailed areas are not the ones you’re going to be spending a lot of time in, the main areas of interest are very well done and overall the scenario looks very pleasing!
I must mention some of the blast holes in the walls and floors, they are really brilliant! I stood around for ages just looking at them! Excellent architectural work there.
The entity setup and scripting is very good and works well. In this respect, the scenario is completely awesome! Great job!
I found it easy the first time I played through it. I didn’t die once from start to finish! Maybe I play CS too much :p The battle where the dropship delivers the squads of men was a little tricky, but at first I’d rated the scenario as fairly easy to complete. But, then I played through it all again, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself going quite a different route through the maps! This was very cool. More than one way to do it! I also died once on the second attempt, but I also ended up with the buggy much more quickly! So it was a bit harder, and I was much more satisfied the second time around!
I will definately play it again! And again!
Gameplay is generally very nice, there were a couple of times when I spotted combines spawning in mid-air, but mostly everything was fine.
Lighting is very well done, nice shadows and light emanating from doorways. Spot on cubemap setup – I didn’t spot any reflections which were off or shadows out of place.
I also really liked the monitor work showing the battle scenes. Added a lot of atmosphere.
Overall, a very well made and enjoyable map.
I recommend you try it.
real fantastic SP Maps …!!!
It’s worth playing a few times…
That’s strange but file name and size looks like from “Half-Life 2 SP Return of the Resistance Maps (Chapter 1)”.
You are correct. “Return of the Resistance” was the name of a series of planned maps with “Live to fight Another Day” as the first chapter. I should add that information to the post above.
To my knowledge the other maps were never released and the website of the dev team is dead.
Worth the download. There is a load of HL2 rubbish about, but this is not one of them and after completing this mod I immediatly looked for Chapter 2 hence writing this view.
Please get Chapter 2 up and running.
I think I read somewhere that Chapter two will never happen after the collective known as SMC disbanded. It is a shame as these are top maps and an essential download for any HL2 fan.
ok this isnt working for me. I installed it just the way it said in the readme file. and I typed map smc_city_01 in the console. and im gettin an error saying: CModelLoader::Map_IsValid: No such map ‘smc_city_01’
map load failed: smc_city_01 not found or invalid.
plz help…
Are you 100% certain the smc_city_01 file is in the correct place? Try renaming it and then opening with the new name.
tested and works for me. make sure its in stamapps\username\half-life 2\hl2\maps\.
I installed with only the bsp and it still worked so its not other files you placed wrong just the map itself.
look im sure its there, ive installed it right where it told me too. then I open up Half Life 2, go to console and enter “map smc_city_01”
and I get the error message.
I thought it played out very well & was very fluid. Just the right amount of action in the right places. Not a lot of puzzle solving, but the action was great. Loved the look & feel of the environment. Very short though especially because of the fluidity of it. Too bad there won’t be additions from what I’ve read here.
I’m in the middle of this one and wondering what that three red/green button thing is for. I’ve never seen one where more than one button can be pushed, not to mention repeatedly, giving a variety of combinations. 🙂
Chianti, the three buttons will trigger monitor scenes. I think the first button you push will trigger the combine to attack the rebels in the street if you watch it. If you keep pressing different buttons, you will find the monitor changes to a different scene including the infamous G-man.
Thank you, Goddess (I’m married, so I say that a lot! :)). I wondered after I finished playing the mod if it was just a display-only thing, rather than invoking some action. I’m so impatient…
This was a nice mod, but seemed really short to me. I had to play the first dropship portion–the one that happens right after you disable the generator–two times. The first time, I used guns. This worked terribly: I ran out of ammo, retreated, and then was killed. I was thinking “This is ridiculously hard!” But then I replayed it and didn’t fire a single shot–I simply threw barrels using the Gravity Gun, and it seemed quite easy. Strange.
I’m not sure why there was a buggy at all. I felt as if I may as well be on foot, since the road was so much of an obstacle course I was practically going at walk-speed the whole time. When I have the buggy, I like to drive it!
The second dropship scene was also problematic for me, but in a different way. As Combines were getting off of the ship, they just stopped. The dropship kept hovering in place, and the one Combine in front of it just stood there, unresponsive. Once I killed him, the scene progressed. I doubt this was intentional.
I have play so much things that I not sure if this is the correct one but I think I used the buggy a lot especially for firing, If I remeber right you come at a kind of central place at the end where dropship send several hord of combine…? After You have a corner where the road is destroyed and set on fire, I think when I played this one one year ago a manage to jump accross with the buggy using the ‘turbo” I don’t remember what happens after…
Yes, the buggy has infinite ammo, which is great (except I hate the sound it makes–sounds like someone banging a cooking spoon against a sheet of aluminum foil). But as I mentioned, in the dropship portion of the final map, the Combine got “stuck” for me, so I had to exit the buggy anyway.
When you jump through the fire, that’s it–the end of the entire mod. A let down.
I found that several of the map loads occurred in sub-optimal places. Several times, I almost retreated back into a previous map, or actually had to go back… These things do not happen in (for example) Half-Life 2 itself. I find a lot of mappers aren’t careful of where map loads occur, or they don’t care, or they don’t know.
Having played this mappack some time ago, maybe before it was on PlanetPhillip, I downloaded it as the “Return of the Resistance”. You may find that the pack is still called this on some download sites. Here on PlanetPhillip it’s known for its intended 1st chapter title “live To Fight Another Day”.
I rated this mappack fairly high when I first played through, scoring it well above average back then. However, half way through a replay prior to compiling this review, I was wondering why. I was beginning to think that subsequent releases had left these maps behind, with vastly improved standards since Return of the Resistance first hit the HL2 community.
The first two maps are very basic with little in the way of inspiring design and or textures. Being basic and boxy in places, the tenement rooms were both boring settings and lifeless in incidental content. The action however, within the first few levels was adequate and kept the player involved; one well designed set piece had engaging Combine attacking from three sides. This sequence called for more than the basic tactics of just stand and fire, but not saying any more on that, you need to sort your own tactics out.
Having left the distressed apartment rooms behind, I was still wondering what it was I found good about this mappack first time around, then I saw the buggy just parked there in the underground lot. Both the architecture and action now opens up with much more gameplay content, including intensified encounters with the Combine, some original design pieces, Dropship encounters, and yes the buggy.
From a slow, drab and enclosed start the mappack now blossoms into a fast and furious topside encounter. The architecture takes on the form of an intercity race track, set amidst admirably designed buildings and structures with the use of realistic textures. The maps are now a complete turn around from the early levels, with plenty of player involvement including a chance to wander around for both supplies and sightseeing.
Having finished playing through the maps, I remembered the positive points and why I had rated the mappack so high. it’s one of those pieces of work where you feel the author grows with its development, sensing that even greater things are to come with each level change.
Negative Points
– Basic design and boxy in parts
– No real story
– Limited use of HL2 cast and hardware
– Incomplete
Positive Points
– Architecture impressive in parts
– Some good and intense Combine encounters
– Well designed road and buggy sequences
– Improves with depth
Conclusion
The big shame is that this game was never finished, nor will it ever by finished with the team now abondended and its website no more. So, we are left with only chapter 1 of what may have been one of the top HL2 custom games. If we extrapolate the improvement of mapping and gameplay experience within Chapter 1, on say further potential new chapters, who knows what treats we may have encountered before the intended end to the Return of the Resistance? It’s always nice to speculate.
My Recommendation
Had a bugger with this one. In the area with the grav gun, I used the wood planks to climb over the fence, which caused me to skip the part about getting the car. So after I got to the final map, where you’re supposed to jump over the road with the car I didn’t have a car and was stuck
One of the great things about the PP site is this recommend/comments page. not only do you get good insight about a particular map/mod but with the 1000’s available it gets hard to remember “did I play that already” by using this I can scroll down and find my own comments if I had played. it saves time dloading something and then saying “oh yeah I played this one already” it also helps for the times you might be looking to replay a map/mod that you may have really enjoyed.
Thats how I came about this one and im glad I did. it was well made with plenty of action and a variety of areas and enemies. too bad it was never continued further.
oh I found the dload available at filefront search
Dead file link.
What a great map set. Only took me 19 years to find it.