A new device was developed to stop the alien invasion. That device can disturb transporter signals, so aliens can’t beam in to attack and it is the same for humans. That means no further research in XEN. The Administrator decided to cancel the project, but some scientists blocked all entrances to the Transporter Research labs to continue their work. They finished construction, but were not able to activate it. Your mission is to find that device and activate it. It is located somewhere in the New Mesa Complex. Good luck!
Basic Details
- Title: Back to Xen 2
- File Name: hl1-sp-back-to-xen-2-mod.7z
- Original File Name: btx2.zip
- Size : 4.58Mb
- Author: Janez Brezovnik
- Date Released: 08 April 2001
PlanetPhillip Download Servers
Installation Instructions
- Copy the btx2 folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Back to Xen 2 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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Reader Recommendations
Total Downloads
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 2 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 2 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 2 Hours, 23 Mins
Shortest: 1 Hours, 45 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 3 Hours by Qwertyus
Total Time Played: 4 Hours, 45 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 2 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 2 Hours, 23 Mins
Shortest: 1 Hours, 45 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 3 Hours by Qwertyus
Total Time Played: 4 Hours, 45 Mins
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This is a direct follow on from Back to Xen (1). Again, great textures and environment design. Anyone looking for tips on how HL1 mods should look, this is a good example.
More non-linear than BTX1, some tricky paths to follow. A lot of shooting and blowin” stuff up. Lots of set peice battles. Most enemies are included. 2 to 3 hours on skill 3. Recommended.
19 screenshots added.
started out fun but eventually got boring.
As with most of the HL1 mods here on PP, the player has to remember that…
1. The mods and maps are free.
2. It takes hours, if not days, or sometimes weeks or months, to put a playable mod together.
3. The maps and mods are free.
4. Could you do any better? Or any thing like it at all?
5. The maps and mods are free.
6. Criticism should be constructive, maybe fun but not boring
Very good textures and environment, lots of bad guys, a few small visits to xen too. A must-have.
Has Anybody a Walkthrough of this Mod? In Map “Jan16” I Have activated the Generator in the Upper Level. But the Door where I entered this Area is still locked so I can’t exit this Area? Is there a hidden Ventilation Shaft anywhere or a Switch for the second Gate in the long Corridor with the two Turrets that I haven’t seen?
This was a great mod and I nearly gave it a WOW recommendation. To be honest I am not sure why I haven’t. I think it was because I felt pressured to finish it today so I could post it – I REALLY don’t want to miss one single day.
I can’t be sure but I think that’s the reason.
Anyway, some areas feel rushed – these one section where the stairwell that requires the player to duck to keep going and other areas that are fantastic.
The central area with the dropping container, is wonderful. For such a smallish area you get a lot of gameplay and there are at least two other similar areas.
I almost cheated in two places but I am very happy I persevered – and that was on EASY – so I can’t imagine what HARD would be like.
This is well worth playing but if I were a “game editor” in the same way a film editor I might have cut 30% of it. Not because those sections were really bad but just to keep things tighter.
i like this mapper (almost).
No weirdo puzzles, just good action and im having lots of fun. Maybe few too many spawning Vorts, but I had enough shotgun ammo to take them down.
Fast paced and I felt that I was going forward all the time, no “hmm, where to go next” feelings.
Big big minus for those grunts spawning from nowhere. And ending was… hmm.. stupid. Was Part III ever released?
http://www.planetphillip.com/media/2001/apr-01/1024-back-to-xen-2-12.jpg
Oh man, is this the part where you find a secret button to open a door? I always hated it.
Yeah, took me a while to figure it out too.
Yeah, what’s up with that? Had to noclip.
Anyway this 14-map mod involves you shooting your way through Xen natives and our lovable soldiers on a fun planet called Xen. Yeah, notice there are no Black Mesa skies today. However most of the time you won’t notice you’re on Xen because you’ll be spending your time in the military installations that seem like black mesa.
That said, this is an action packed mod with the more memorable sections usually involving large rooms with lots of soldiers/Xen squads at a time. Make like Barney and spam that glock to death. For an easy time I’d just be glocking all the soldiers in the large rooms. But it doesn’t always work. Take that large storage room for example…
[spoiler]You have to clear it of aliens then fight back through hordes of soldiers.[/spoiler]
The architecture noticeably improved since the first mod of the series. There is also better map design, which involves some backtracking instead of just going linearly from map A to map B. I also like that one part where you have to clear six portals before proceeding through the main door. This gives the player an objective in mind when going through the maps, instead of just “go from here to there, kill everything along the way’. I think we all know how many maps DO give that impression.
I would recommend you to play this. It doesn’t really stand out from the crowd, but as a mod it offers solid gameplay and design that players can enjoy, though not necessarily remember after a year. Just another day at the office for Gordon, then.
Remember the bullsquid which collapsed the floor and fell into the poison? I killed it and then hit the nearby door’s panel, opening a way to the room with health and suit rechargers. Then I returned to the teleport door and it was opened.
Great stuff, keep your guns well loaded if you going to play this one. Got to be the ultimate shooter, classic HL1 adventure with enemy at ever turn, you wont get time to rest or pee.
If you don’t like this one then please don’t play any more HL1 mods, for action and combat they don’t get any better, with many of the Grunt sequences require 2 or 3 plays through to master, you wont” get bored. The mapping and layout is spot for the grunt encounters, you will need to make your mind up weather to rush-in or hold-back, either way you are in for a taught ride.
Having said all that, it’s not to every ones liking, there are no challenging puzzles and if you were hoping for in depth Xen action then you’re going to be disappointed, also there is very little in the way of top side sequences, although this is balanced out with quite a few large indoor sets.
The set design of the mod is of a high standard with the placement of enemy dictating layout for most of the part, there is not that much in the way of outstanding architecture and the mod not going to win any models on the score, however, the author does keep the flow of action interesting with different structures and surrounds adding to, and refreshing the experience.
Three weeks in and this is the best so far for me, although I’m sure better still is yet to come.
Here we have many well made battles with soldiers and monsters which encourage wise usage of weapons. But besides the battles, there’s almost nothing else. The problem with this mod is that it is protracted. The author created more and more locations and stretched the mod to the point where the constant fighting becomes boring and repetitive.
The design is not bad, but most of the time I wasn’t impressed. There are many monotonous rooms and there is sone ventilation crawling with misaligned textures. If you fall down in Xen, it won’t load the previous save. There are some cool places like long tunnel, exploding house, storage where we have to drop the container, but they are too scarce. The author also added some non-linearity to the mod, there are some places visiting which is not obligatory to complete the mod. But with such design it doesn’t make a difference.
If you want to visit Xen, play Underground, Surface Run, Infinite Rift or Brave Brain. It is also may be worth trying The Xeno Project and The Long Night.
And only if you really like Half-Life battles, you may enjoy this mod.
There is quite a lot to this mod, and it does look nice. But I found the combat with the grunts got very repetitive and I got bored of it after awhile.
As a part 2, I was expecting maybe too much, don’t get me wrong its a great mod with lots of combat, but nothing to make me think WOW!
Layout-wise it was like part 1, good enough not to detract from enjoying playing but sometimes the amount of enemies went past fun into being a chore. Definitely worth playing but in this case it would have been better if it had been shorter with more attention payed to detail and less padding out with sometimes repetitive set pieces. The whole premise of part 1&2 is in the name ” Back to Xen” but with the exception of Xen enemies, very little of the Xen environment is in evidence.
Much better in all aspects than Back To Xen, that’s for sure. But I really think this pack needed to be tightened up – quality, not quantity is the better aim. It got so repetitive and it seemed like I was just slogging through more filler material before getting to the good stuff which never really came…
There are some really nice battles here, mixing up aliens and military, although the military will probably be the biggest challenge (besides the gargantuas). Quite often you’ll clear an area, and then when you return there will be a surprise enemy waiting for you (which in general I think is a good touch if used correctly, but it’s kind of abused here – as are teleporting aliens). There are some nice setpiece-type situations here, but I really wouldn’t consider any of them memorable.
The mapping is of pretty decent quality – interesting layouts, some good lighting. But it doesn’t really feel like Xen at all – I think BTX2 is just lacking in “atmosphere” for lack of a better term. In fact, I think the Xen areas are the poorest sections of this pack – it’s much more convincing as a Black Mesa style map.
To cap it off, BTX2 sports a number of things on my “not cool” list:
– a density of more than 2.3 crates per headcrab
– you can get stuck without a way to progress (a couple spots in the Xen areas, plus falling off the Xen islands frequently won’t kill you, you’ll just be standing on air about 20 feet below where you fell from)
– spawning a gargantua 5 feet in front of my face, even if he is facing the other way
– having identical-looking smashable and non-smashable crates
– a major letdown in the anticlimactic ending (and, for the record, I loved Half-Life’s ending)
In general, it’s missing some judicious cuts that could really decrease the repetitiveness and improve flow. It could use some more polish but it does have some nifty combat situations and some flashes of cleverness.
Of all the maps realized so far, you have to play this one. the enemy’s are very sneaky, the grunts are plentiful no real puzzles. the game play is great. taken in steps you will have several days worth of playing. I hope to see more from the team and a continuance of the story.
I enjoyed it despite the repetitiveness, as it provided lots of decent gameplay. I think its either PIN (more likely) or PIL.
Not as good as the first “Back to Xen”, but it is still one of the best so far in the 100SDoN.
The first half of the game was brilliant and the most fun I have had so far, and it was a basic action map except with Xen aliens instead of grunts but grunts slowly got introduced and it became even better. Then just as I think it was the best mod to date, it just seemed to be the same thing over and over again and got boring. I think the reason that it was boring at the end was because it went on for too long, shame really. That being said the mod was still great to play and enjoyable, so top marks from me.
The difficulty was strange. It started out easy but as soon as the grunts came in it got pretty hard.
I recommend people to play it now, especially if you liked the first BtX.
This mod is a great improvement on the first installation and I have to say that, overall, I enjoyed playing this one. However, I did feel that it was very dragged out, which made it seem more of an endurance test more than anything else.
The level design was mostly pretty good, with a significant variety of indoor Black Mesa styled environments to fight through. Though, I was a little disappointed that there were only a few times I actually felt like I was in Xen as the title of the mod claims.
I was also disappointed at the inconsistencies through the mod. The most obvious one is the level design between the different maps. Some of the areas are well laid out and fun to fight through while other areas are just difficult to navigate. It’s nice to see the improvement of the mapper through the various levels but from a player’s point of view, the mod feels unpolished.
Another inconsistency that really bugged me was that the author set up a convention about which crates were breakable and how easy they were to break but then proceeded to break those conventions halfway through the mod. I think that some beta testing would have discovered that issue pretty quickly.
The combat was pretty standard run and gun through most of the mod, with just about every enemy encountered through Half-Life. There were a few places where I needed to think about how I was going to attack before I started, other wise I just got cut down. Those sections I think I enjoyed the most, even if they did seem a bit frustrating at the time.
The problem I had was that it was constant combat all the time. There weren’t any memorable puzzles to break up the fighting or just areas that you could wander around to explore. Around every corner was an enemy and half the time when I walked around the corner another enemy would spawn behind me.
The length also compounded the issue. There were so many times when I thought “This has got to be close to the end now” and it just kept going. After a while, I got tired of it and I had to turn it off to give myself a rest. I think if it was cut down by half, it would be an alright length.
This mod is worth the time to play. The visuals are, overall, pretty good and the combat will keep you on your toes. Just don’t try to play through in one sitting.
WOWW I really still don’t know how I missed this mod in the memorable 100DoN, so I missed this mod and another 2 more that soon i’ll review, in order to fullfill all my mods reviewings in this great memorable event that I really hope something similar could happen to this in the future!
Here we have a really impressive enhacement continuation of Back to Xen I, and is kind of pity hat we don’t have Back to Xen III because that would be delightful, I hope to have the last part BX 3 in Source engine, but that’s just a best wish because I really don’t know if that’s even possible, maybe the author just didn’t feel like continuing or so I dont know.
This mod I could define it as the perfect mix between Black Mesa and Xen, and I think that’s the idea in this mod, I mean, this mod made me say to myself while I was playing: “oh how beautiful is xen, what a beautiful xeninan sights we have!!!” we have to state clearly that this mod is TOUGH! we have really rough combat against xenians and grunts, is really the hell combat in Xen!!!, I didn’t like too much the length of he mod, but I think it was ok for the whole combat mod feeling, at the beggining I think that just the xenian spawning ambushes were just too much, I mean were abbusive appearings of headcrabs and vortis, that was kind of annoying, but I have to accept it adds spicy taste to the mod, so that’s cool and well set in there. maybe the bad points for this goes in the sense that sometimes paths were too long and those secret areas were cool but u can easyly can get confused wheter to keep going to one certain point or other, also got my hated ennemy option in mapping lay out: ” go to point A and return to B” to go on, so please don’t do that, here they don exceed that point but, I preffer to go on a dynamic adn not twisted mod path or route till I reach the end of it.
Overall this is great and a 3rd part as well done as this one would be excellent and perfectly well recived by HL nostalgia mods lovers. so I want More!! hell yes.
WOW!
Must admit first I was a sceptic when reading the name as I don’t like the Xen settings, even in original HL…but this here? Almost no Xen, yay! 🙂
PLUS, it’s an very good mod!
I also have to say I played the 2nd part before the 1st, don’t ask me why, I don’t remember myself hehe
If you like pretty and plenty of action, this mod is made for you, because:
Pro’s:
-Very nice combat action
-Many weapons and ammo
-Secret areas (+semi-secrets) with goodies
-Decent level design
-No long shaft crawling or sneaking, nor that much or hard puzzles
Con’s:
-Sometimes very poor level design
-Only indoor
-Mean placed or spawning enemies
-No real story
Nonetheless, one of the best mods I’ve played this year (and I already played a lot, trust me!)
Great mod! A lot of combat and good mapping. The only lack is abrupted ending.
Manually
Hard
3 Hours
I apologize if I’m completely missing something but how do I install this?
Please check the Installation Instructions in the main post.
I don’t have a btx2 folder though, just a zip containing two txt files (btx2 and btx2-slo) with directions that didn’t work, two zips (BTX2Doc and BTX2DSLO), a wad file (jan) and a pak (pak1). I tried putting them in a folder and placing that into my mods folder (other mods work fine) and I can’t open pak1. Do I need the WON version and not Steam?
Please download the file again. I just checked and it was missing from my server so it must have been a different file. The file I just re-uploaded has the “BTX2” folder in it. It definitely works with Steam and should work with the WON version too. Please let me know if you have any other issues.
Thanks a bunch, that fixed it. 🙂
Better than the first but way too difficult, it’s frustratiing.
The mapping is better the first one but have way too much soldiers.
If this wasn’t bad soldier spawn sometimes in place where you have killed other soldiers.
I played it on Hard and it wasn’t fun at all. Think Twice.
Playing on Hard was a terror, the last part was horrible, I still live, I don’t know how
The Four Secret Locations: 1. Take the ladder down to the bridge over the acid water, after the bridge turn to the right and break the planks. 1/10 Hard
2. In a Grunt Area, take a large elevator (no railing) to the second floor, go inside a dark vent and turn to the right taking the longest vent route toward another secret. 2/10 Hard (need to walk)
3. Go into the fifth portal, go past both medic stations and in the tunnel with both ceiling turrets hard to destroy, go left. The gate appear to be broken and not openning, there’s an invisible small crack on the wall on the ground. 9/10 Hard (no way to clearly see it)
4. Before you go into the area with a hanging red big container by a hook, in the corridor, by the end of it, there’s a railing and some creates, break those, you’ll see in the dark a ledge going along the wall and drives you to a dark vent, follow it to reveal the final prize, HIVE GUN. Can help in last sections since there’s no health. 10/10 Hard (it’s easy not to pay attention to dark areas)
Manually
Hard
1 Hour, 45 Minutes