“The renegade Gordon Freeman is back, and as usual, being hunted by the merciless Combine within the ruins of City17. In this scenario, the Combine have almost perfected a field teleportation device, and mounted it to a modified Combine Scanner. Once the Scanner verifies the location of Gordon within City17, it teleports in a MetroCop to deal with the situation. This fast-paced action-oriented level focused on a new dynamic-flank combat setup to keep the player on the edge of their seat as Gordon tries to escape through the sewer system of City17.”
- Title: A Scanner Darkly
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-a-scanner-darkly.7z
- Size : 1.81MB
- Author: Kennth Dilks
- Date Released: 14 July 2010
- Copy A_Scanner_Darkly.bsp into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Maps folder.
- Launch Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Open the console and type map A_Scanner_Darkly.
- Press enter/return or click the Submit button.
- Play and Enjoy.
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WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 2 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 8 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 5 Mins by LVMinerva
Longest: 0 Hours, 10 Mins by Steve
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 15 Mins
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Having new gameplay mechanics is always exciting and this certainly sets Guildhall releases apart from many of the smaller maps released in the last few years.
Occasionally, the desire to create something new clashes known universe details or just doesn’t feel right. This is one of those times. Reading Kenneth’s page it’s clear he spent time and effort trying to get it working right, and for the most part I think he did, but I feel that the basic concept of a scanner being able to teleport metrocops seems to far-fetched. Why not just drop bombs?
Not only that but why do the scanners need to appear from these strange boxes? Destroying them is too easy and it might have been better if the player were only able to temporarily disable them. That would have given the feeling of rushing the player through the level, which would have increased the tension.
I’m not entirely clear why the metrocops were red but maybe I missed that part in the well-written description. Now, it’s easy to get the impression I didn’t like the level and that’s not true, I just wanted to highlight what I feel are the negative aspects of the map.
It’s actually fun to play and the layout and environment is very nice, I don’;t have a problem here. Well, there is one part where the play must make a jump from a suspended wooden board. If they miss, they can simply climb a ladder to where they need to go. Whilst I appreciate the help, the jump isn’t that hard and having a ladder to take them back to where they were would have seemed better. Otherwise the jump is irrelevant.
Later in the level is a nice touch where a Combine soldier kicks a grate open and attacks you, nicely done.
Overall, it’s fun to play and worth your time for the 10 minutes it took me to play. I can’t ever see this new mechanic making its way into a larger mod, although I accept that was never its intended purpose. Perhaps it would have been more realistic if the scanners have been beefed up and the metrocops were hanging from them. That way the player could destroy the scanner high up and have the pleasure of watching the cops drop to their death (that makes me sound pretty evil, but you know what I mean).
It’s funny you should mention that grate getting kicked out by a combine, because that’s the exact scene that knocked this map down to a maybe, when it could have been at least a play it later.
While you apparently didn’t have any issues, I had to take about 5 different tries in order to actually get to where the gate got kicked out, because I kept getting instakilled in an explosion of unknown origin, which I later found out was accompanying the combine kicking the grate out. It apparently has a chance of the accompanying explosion being too powerful and just killing you outright. A scene in the tunnel following that section had another point where the combine dropped in on ropes was another place where the explosion had a chance to just instantly kill you.
As for the concept itself. I actually like it. Sure the combine could just teleport bombs in, but the combine aren’t ONLY about gordon. It’s also about suppressing the will of the populace, and to do that the combine need to demonstrate that they can show up instantly to deal with any hint of rebellion. If all you do is dump bombs in, then there’s no one to tell the story about how hopeless it is which keeps everyone else in line.
The only problem that I had was that the combine that are teleported in take so long to gt ready and start shooting that I could just blindly flail around with the crowbar and kill them before they even had a chance to shoot, that and they ALWAYS drop health kits and ammo, so I often just waited by the scanner things and deliberately didn’t destroy them so I could gather up a bunch of health units and ammo that I could come back to after I destroyed the spawners.
I do agree with phillip that having random spawners laying around was kinda silly. I think it would be much better if the scanners came in from all around in various places while you were on your way to the main factory that produced them, and they would just continually spawn in until you finally blew up the factory (they’d still come in afterward, but would peter out shortly after.)
Agreeing with Philip here, it was a fun map, but didn’t fit into the universe very well. It was annoying at first, being blinded by the scanners before being shot at by the metrocops, but it actually worked really well as a gameplay element and kept the action well paced. The main concept of the map, namely having the cops being teleported in, was interesting, but it did work well to create some interesting combat situations. The occasional soldier flanking you, along with the metrocops teleporting in added a nice edge. The environments were simple and well designed, and the little platforming that was there worked well to keep the pace going.
Overall, it’s never going to be anything big. It would be nice to see this worked into a slightly longer map, with more of a storyline, but I guess it was a fun concept that showed its colours well enough in this little map.
I enjoyed that.
Having enemy teleport in is hardly new but what was done here was well done.
The “new” bit was having scanners drop the teleport receivers. It’s a pity that the receivers were so badly modelled given that they are key to the map and it’s raison d’etre.
A pleasant interlude between more serous works
No time to hang around with this one, to survive you need to keep moving. Worth playing a few times to see if you can reduce the number of times you get killed.
For fun lovers this is a Play it Now, for the more seriously minded Play it Later, I seem to be caught in the middle, Play it Soon.
But fun and fast and very easy on Normal
Nice concept. Nice execution. Nice map.
Can’t see anyone using this, though.
Its worth a quick play. I agree that I don’t see this concept working as a theme for other maps. its really just a fast run from point A to point B.
I had the same insta-kill explosion issues that Grey Acumen described, although it only took me one reload to get through each. Still, the idea here is so unique – and makes for such interesting gameplay – that I’m giving this map a PIN anyway. If it were longer and used the new gameplay mechanic in some more interesting ways, I wouldn’t hesitate to give this map a Personal Favorite.
Wow, it took this long to make a mod about the City Scanner? Well, this was a so-so mod. I don’t see any EP2 Content, and with the new teleportation they can do, these aren’t the Scanner Type Ones, but the Scanner Type Threes! I say this is a good mod to play only once.
I’m sorry but I couldn’t stop laughing when I read someone was blinded by the scanner before shot by a metrocop. That’s what scanners do! I looked down whenever one came towards me trying to flash me. And metrocops are the easiest to take down. This map is short and sweet. And easy. A mustplay for a fun 3 minutes or so.
Another suitable PL rate, I like the dissposition of the elements in this map I mean like going through those scaffolds in the mid air of this map, I like that new dynamic of the scaners throwing out metrocops but the whole thing looks kind of rdimentary so is just that, I like to see this kind of mapping creations as they are: and they are experiments in the gameplay, is ok tasteing something different than just hl mayhem once in a while, because is different a play it latter I think it won’t do any harm.
This is a fun little map, I really enjoyed it. The concept is interesting, although I think the “Scanner Nests” could’ve been implemented better, perhaps by having to throw grenades into them to destroy them. The map is very well made visual-wise and the combat is fun too, although I think it would be better with a few more regular enemies (like the combine soldiers that appeared a few times). If you don’t mind very short concept maps, I recommend it, though I know it’s not for everyone so I gave it a Maybe.
Manually
Hard
5 Minutes
I enjoyed that and the idea too.. i thought the map design often left a lot to be desired but it was fun and nothing confusing, dark or annoying. Great fun download.
Manually
Medium
10 Minutes