Dr. Eddy has been up to no good. To be honest, that seems like most scientists at Black Mesa.
You are part of the Black Guard, I suppose that’s like Black Shift, but maybe not.
Without warning, things really get crazy and you find yourself in the middle of it.
Do what BMRF has paid you to do: Kick some butt!
- Title: Black Guard
- File Name: hl1-sp-black-guard.7z
- Size : 124MB
- Author: Various
- Date Released: 08 July 2013
I have remove this option because with a file this big, it is much better to download it to your HDD and install it from there.
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy the Blackguard folder into your C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Half-Life: Black Guard should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
The file above comes with a grid view icon. To use it, select “Grid View” in Steam (top right corner). Make sure you have saved the image to a location on your computer – you can’t use it from the compressed archive directly. Right click on “Half-Life: Black Guard” and select “Set Custom Image”. Then browse to where you saved the image and choose it. Then click “Set Image” and that’s it.
Of course, you can create your own custom image if you prefer.
The playthrough/walkthrough below is provided by PlanetPhillip (me!). See more of his playthroughs on this site: VP: PlanetPhillip
Click on the tabs below to select the size of screenshot you would like.
All sizes are the same screenshots, just in different resolutions.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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9,270Overall
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1Today
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12Last 7 days
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53Last 30 days
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554365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 9 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 3 Hours, 43 Mins
Shortest: 1 Hours by
Longest: 10 Hours by John
Total Time Played: 40 Hours, 55 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
OMG, where do I start.
Well, I suppose I should start with explaining my recommendation. This is an interesting mod, but it is also one of the most frustrating I have ever played. I am recommending you play it, because some sections are great but some not so great.
Let’s start with the good things. It’s well built, from a technical point of view. At least it “looks” like it’s well built. Some areas are very detailed and look almost as good as the game.
Most area look realistic in the sense that they could be in the BMRF. Some of the gameplay is well designed and fun to play.
But that leads me onto to the not so good. There are WAAAAAY to many sections that require you to lead NPCs around to doors or whatever, and that SUCKS big time. It’s often not exactly clear where to lead them and if they die then the mod ends.
Next issue is the text. The English is terrible. It seems like it’s been through two or three passes of an online translator. That seems harsh but it’s really not hard to get somebody to check text these days – I would have done it if they asked.
I had to cheat twice. Once in some radioactive room with a really hard jump (image 139) and once on Xen outside Dr. Eddy’s lab. That time the difficulty just ramped up and seemed really unfair.
The next issue was that the mod should have finished after Dr. Eddy’s lab map. The rest is an anticlimax. It seems that the authors wanted to make it even longer and the mod finished earlier than they planned, but it would have been better to fit the last part in to somewhere in the middle.
It’s unusual to say mods are too long but this would certainly have benefited from an outside influence with regard to editing it down.
All in all, I probably enjoy 2 solid hours out of the 5 hours I played.
I highly recommend you played the training room – It’s almost a proper mod in itself.
Using Gauge
Medium
5 Hours, 15 Minutes
I remember playing this mod last February or March. It’s been out on ModDB for quite some time.
I started playing this around 10 p.m., after dinner, and finishing by 2 a.m. I didn’t stop playing it for all of that time. I was completely hooked, and I’m not ashamed.
The frustration was one of things that hooked me to be honest. I was so pissed I just had to go through it, no matter what.
Most of the map design was really good, the action sequences were thrilling and the mod actually attempted to create a small story (didn’t work much because I didn’t understand squat). Still, it gave me enough motivation to go forward.
But then, on the other side, you had to escort a lot of scientists, who went full retard a lot of times. Some “cutscenes” were also super frustrating, one of them in a lab with a portal had you killed because it would teleport to the place where everything is falling apart, instead of staying in the platform (where you should actually be).
Also, the mod goes super weird some times. There’s this part in which your kinda dreaming and then there’s another one in which for some reason the mod can end right there, or instead you can play through a bunch more of maps.
The mod’s apex is actually in the fight against the Doctor in Xen. I probably died like 20 times, but it was the most frustratingly awesome battle ever in a HL mod.
Maybe I’m just a masochist, but I loved playing through it.
Give it a go and play it, at least to the point where you just can’t stand it anymore. You’ll have a great time either way.
Manually
Medium
4 Hours
This was an interesting mod and there is a lot to it. Unfortunately, I also found the NPC’s frustrating to deal with. For me the size of the mod detracted from my enjoyment of playing it. Sometimes you have to go somewhere to get a security card and then backtrack a really long way. I never did figure out how to get past the door where the security card for Dr. Eddy’s lab was stored, so I noclipped at that point. The puzzle where the pipe breaks and you die if you don’t make it past the locked door quick enough was particularly frustrating.
I thought there were too many areas that looked they were simply copied from earlier parts of the mod. The English translations were really bad and cause me a lot of confusion as well.
Despite the flaws, there is enough good content and gameplay to make this worth playing.
Damn!!! I’m sorry to start a recommendation like this, but is really bothering, and some what annoying when I have played a mod like this for so long time ago, that I can’t quite sure recall the mapping on it.
This is because I am sure I played this about a year ago, and downloaded it from Mod DB, but I have no idea why here in PP we didn’t have it back in 2013… I actually have no idea of why it delayed so long to release it here in PP, and as I see there may be quite few updates or enhancements I will try this mod again.
Just to see the screenshots I can now remember some areas and I just recall it had some very tough but nice battles, so I can recommend it, also because you play in the flesh of a security guard in BM, so yeah, for me this concept is a HL1 Classic mod plot, you know, run for your life in BM is suitable for a Janitor, a Security Guard, a Scientist, a kick arse Scientist kind of Gordon Freeman not exactly him, an external agent contractor, a Grunt, a Xenian guy, even a CAT!!! yeah a CAT!!! I’ve seen lately a mod project called Cat Life where you are a Cat trying to escape BM mayhem!!!
So considering that, play it and have fun!
I have just played the first chapter of this mod now and I agree that it has some serious issues although the overall map design is great. Right at the start you can fail by not using the elevator soon enough, but how should one know? Then the cutscene in the elevator played twice for me before it continued and as a result the sound got stuck too. Later the guard complained that I had no sidearm and uniform, but in the locker section I only got a baton and it took some time to get the armor, because the map design there was really bad! In my guarding section there were invisible walls killing the immersion and after the accident when other guards had died their guns were magically gone. Last not least I had to leave the level three times before I noticed I had to bring all three alive NPC with me. That should’ve got a HUD display message earlier and not after loading the next level!
Yeah, that the aspect of leading the NPCs is a big part of the mod.
“Right at the start you can fail by not using the elevator soon enough, but how should one know?”
Yea, that was really weird. Failed few times thanks to that.
Mediocre game design and puzzles combined with poor combat scenarios and annoying escort missions. If you like finding keycards (in the most random areas) to unlock doors, this is the game for you.
I enter the barely audible code in the radioactive area following screen shot 73, and do it repeatedly, and the door never opens. Plus the ‘aim’ for entering the code varies so that sometimes its straight ahead and sometimes aiming way right of the key. Too frustrating.
I finished the mod this morning. Interesting, although (as said) there was WAY too much ‘go back and grab an NPC, then guide them through an entire level so you can open a door’. Bleh.
Also, I spent about 15 minutes going through the titles.txt file and fixing the hilariously broken English. I’ve uploaded my updated version on my Dropbox account:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ceicpva8irlzrl/titles.txt
Just drop it into your main ‘Blackguard’ directory and it should show up in game. Can’t really fix the in-game textures, but hey ho.
After I decided to replay this mod, this helped a lot. Thanks!
I tried giving this a go but for no reason the game kept telling me “status terminated”.
From what I saw in Phillip’s vid, that’s not even the way to go. I did try the door the fat Barney was guarding and no go, but if that’s the proper way to play it, why give the player an entire office area to explore, trap him in there (as we can’t go back through the main door we came in, being Level 8 now, which is dumb) and end the game? If at least 2 people had this issue, it would’ve come up in testing easily. It’s game breaking, obviously, and being right in the beginning makes me wonder how many of these are there and I don’t plan on wasting my time to find out.
Quite disappointing a mod. The key fetching parts were terrible. I was forced to cheat because, upon returning to an earlier map hoping to find a missing key, a scientist got immediately killed somewhere off screen, killing my progress instantly. So I just noclipped through the door. Then that scientist hiding in a container; how was I supposed to notice that? The container had no indication that it had a door, just a regular flat texture on a flat surface. So I consulted a Youtube walkthrough. (All the escort bits were tedious anyway.) I hated the buffed enemies, particularly the headcrabs (of which this mod had way too many). The less is said about the Google-translated English the better. The Xen battle was pretty impossible (I didn’t have an RPG) and forced me to cheat which I almost never do (and that’s now two times in a single mod!). It’s nice that they included some new music but it was way too loud and I was unable to adjust the volume. Really annoying. Edit: Also have to mention the laser puzzle. That made no sense; there were many of those tiny mirrors; how was I supposed to know one of them can be shot when they all looked exactly the same? First I tried to shoot a few of them but when I got no response I consulted a walkthrough.
Manually
Medium
2 Hours
This is a very weird situation, because for the first time and only, I guess I have to revisit a recommendation and actually downgrade it.
Yeah, no doubts, I first said this mod was a Play It Now because I actually didn’t remember I played it, and now that I remember, I guess it just stayed on my Steam library untouched until I saw it here on PP.com, and I realized I haven’t played it until I actually put my hands into the gameplay.
I have to tell you, I didn’t like this one. some pros, are about the good mapping, and almost ultra HD new models, and indeed we can see it has some very nice and polished parts, in a pure Black Mesa style, but oh boy!! some others like the final battle are a complete mess… And then that hectic and daunting stupid use of bots to open doors!!! I really don’t matter to use bots, but in Source engine they’re more handy than in HL1 for god sake!!, and I have to tell you this mod relies more than 40% of the time on that silly bot dynamic.
And also another super bad level designing decision is to place a backtracking dynamic, when you’re in the bio dome complex part and in the core, and in Dr. Eddie’s lab. Oh boy!!! please don’t do that!!! many stuff to search in order to open doors like more than 3 freakin’ keycards!!!! and I didn’t found the last one, so I guess that was a horrible trigger glitch, I just have to use noclip more than twice!!! that’s enough. The gameplay navigation is frankly terrible in the most crucial part of the mod, even in the confuse beginning is terrible too, and here I’m talking about of not knowing where to go and how to proceed.
Battles are OK, but at the end xenian enemies became 100 times more powerful without any explanatory reason, and also you have to take care of those stupid ally bots, so be ware of letting them get hurt because that’s gonna be the end.
Sorry but in this case as I replayed this mod, I realize the wrong points definitely outweighs the positive mapping and technical good points, so yeah, I recommend this mental mess only to truly lovers of Black Mesa Research Facility. And though the concept is good, involving some connections between the HL2 world and even Portal!, and offering 2 different finales, this mod easily goes to hell because the worst level designing decisions it makes, it was a pain in the butt to play, no joke, really. If I have to decide between this mod and Absolute Redemption I totally stay with AR mod, a million times!! that’s a classic.
Also that English screen text almost made me cry because the horrid grammar, absolutely bad!!! And I know I’m not even an English native speaker, but COME ON!!! if you want to put English text on your mod at least ask for Phillip’s help!! He’s a kind guy and I’m sure he will help you, and you will deliver a more serious or “professional” mod. I have to say the whole story was kind of ruined also because that horrid English inside the mod.
Overall, I’m sorry but sometimes when a mod is not good because gameplay sucks due to very bad level and layout designing decisions there’s nothing much to do, sometimes I really thought this mod wanted to pissed me of intentionally, it was a total disgrace and a very annoying experience to play it. Sorry but I have to speak my mind… And I even would give it an Avoid It if it wasn’t because the mapping proficiency and fair enough OK battles in most part of the mod.
In few words: if you like to play and suffer, try this. I don’t like to play and suffer, playing mods should be a fun and fluid experience, and this mod just doesn’t offer that.
Manually
Medium
4 Hours
Well, personally I also see a couple things that could’ve been done better in this mod,but for a first attempt this rather lengthy and ambitious mod works quite well,at least after
patching it with the latest patch. The mapping was clean,although a bit simplistic and repetitive at times,but again its by no means bad.
Also the mod forces you to look for a bunch of keycards. No problem for me. But the one scientist I couldn’t find, because he was hidden too well in a container with no hint that it could be opened.
The endfight is a bit to much for a decent skilled player is guess. There is no place to hide for a moment and reload your weapons while enemies from all around you and above trying to whack you. The player simply cant play tactical.
All in all, I still say Play it now.
Manually
Medium
2 Hours, 30 Minutes
Well, I know I’m a bit late to the whole “Black Guard” thing going on, where this mod was quite famous on ModDB, but anyway…
When I first played it, I was like “This will get a Personal Favorite!”, but after I progressed through the mod, it got (unfortunately) downhill.
Combat was mediocre at best. The grunts though are surprisingly not hard to kill, but the Xen Aliens are much, MUCH more powerful than you. Also, the mood just kind of dramatically changed. I’m inside the offices and stuff, killing vortigaunts, zombies and headcrabs. You know, beginning stuff. But later, I open a door and then BAM. There are Alien Grunts and normal Grunts fighting, not to mention the Female Assasssins.
Mapping was what bothered me the most. To be honest, I didn’t even finish it. I couldn’t stand it. I was stuck in that radioactive room where you had to be very quick. After the doors were locked, there was NO sign on what to do next. Sure, I could use a walkthrough to get past, but I always want to see the HOW of the things. How am I supposed to know that certain code, apart from watching a walkthrough?
The textures were, I must say, beautiful. Yeah, there are some minor details on specific areas, but I don’t mind those. Also, the new gun models were pretty sweet too.
Now to talk about the thing that annoyed us all the most….the backtracking. The backtracking in this mod is just PAINFUL. Trust me, I have experienced a lot of backtracking in gaming. But this, THIS is just… bad. Hell, even the METROID games didn’t have that much backtracking!
Also, one thing that was new was that it included some new music, apart from the CD tracks. There was the depressing and amazing soundtrack of Black Mesa, some action music and a few others, which actually go with the mod very well.
I won’t say anything about the terrible English, because I was quite like this when I started, though to be fair, I was a little better. I visited the site that the loading screen with the console had (on the WON version), and that is dcinside.com and it’s a really weird Korean site.
Overall, if you don’t mind cheating or watching a ton of walkthroughs, then this is for you.
I downloaded the mod, placed it in the Half-life folder and restarted steam it does not show. any ideas?
What is the exact location of your Half-Life folder?
Thanks Phillip
The exact path is
This PC, Acer C:, Program Files (x86), Steam, SteamApps, Common, Half-Life
Well, that’s the right location. The first question is are you looking for “Half-Life: Black Guard” in your Library? The second question is “have you had any trouble with other HL mods recently?”. In fact, have you tried installing another HL mod?
when I go to the library it only shows the 7 games I have plus two mods, strider and black mesa.
well well, when I clicked on “games” under the library tab it showed.
Thanks for the help. I am working with a new computer now and windows 8.1, with a new install of steam, so my learning curve has been very steep.
Thanks again Phillip.
john
Ok now I am stuck. I got to the control room with the green hand pad. It wouldn’t work so I went back for Einstein. He refuses to follow me. So I kept back tracking and ended finding the A or was it C key card then a door that said level D required.
I backed tracked again and got to the green hand pad room again, still would not work.
The youtube walk-through shows Einstein following easily. I went to ModDB and found a patch 2. something, it has made no difference. Einstein agrees but will not budge out of the room. One I pushed him out but he will not follow into the first sliding door.
I tried noclip to get through the door in the green hand pad room. it does not led to another room but black. So I guess the game loads from that entry point.
Before I try to manually load the best guess at next map.
any ideas anyone?
I thought about shooting Einstein but I had nothing to chop his hand off with to take with me.
Well, I don’t know how it happened but Einstein finally decided to follow me. IT as a bear to get him to follow all the way to the room with the green hand bad.
Moving on as my adventure continues.
I say Play it Now as any long Half Life 1 mod with a story is worth playing.
However, I had a few issues playing it. One at an early point Einstein would not follow me. When I came back to the game he did. Perhaps a small glitch.
Secondly, when I was on Xen the battle at Dr. Eddies lab is a time puzzle. I got so frustrated with the content spawning and no way to survive. I had to load GOD and even then my previous save did not allow enough time till the place detonated.
I watched the YouTube walk-through and it seems the authors had GOD on or somehow I missed a trigger.
Long story short, I am taking it out, unfinished.
Please don’t let my experiences stop you from playing it. Load it and have fun, for this is what gaming is all about and thank you to the developers for making it, I did enjoy it.
Manually
Medium
10 Hours
where to start just wow just wow that was awesome new characters new graphic ( well a little ) the guns are new and the soldiers just wow if i was u i play this game this is awesome
good things: guards are old and a new one
the zombies
the guns
bad things: when your allies dies the games over just what? why
key cards i don’t know why
i don’t know how to best the ending but i’ll try
rating 10/10= nice
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
good
Manually
Medium
3 Hours
Black Guard is not about a guard with dark skin, but a guard whose uniform is black, which is a bit weird. It was never explained too why is there such thing as this type of guard.
Of course, you are trying to get out of Black Mesa but it seems like something is going on about Dr. Eddy and he somehow must be stopped. I have no idea why because the English of this mod is terrible, like goddamn, can you please get some native speakers to proofread it.
I don’t like that the mod increase health for Houndeyes, Vortigaunts, and Headcrabs. It does not make them more challenging, it makes them really annoying to kill. Although, I like the fact that they manage to make the Headcrabs jumping off a Zombie’s head, but they do it every time so…yeah, quite annoying. The mod also makes the Assassins have less health, which is OK I guess.
The level design could have been better, it relies a lot on key-fetching and NPC escorting, and the mod never tells you who you need to escort or don’t kill. There are some levels that I flat out don’t like, such as the part where you have to go back and forth, in a very long path, to do get a keycard that opens a door. Another example is where you are trapped in a room full of radiation and you have to listen to the announcer to put in the code for a door. Speaking of radiation, this mod forces you to take a lot of environmental damage, which feels like a cheap way to chip away health and armor. Also, because you are a guard, you have to pick up helmets and body armor which are quite rare to come by in this mod.
I also don’t like the boss fight, infinitely respawning enemies are the worst and you can only progress by making a Gargantuar spawn, which can become bugged and it will never show up. What happens afterward feels like it was dragging the mod out, especially the part where the character has a weird hallucination and you have to wait for a huge while for stuff to happen.
Black Guard also uses music from other things, some of which is quite fitting such as Black Mesa OST but there is a bit that I just go flat out “what?”, like Modern Warfare music.
The mod has good cutscenes and some memorable scripted sequence, but I don’t like how the mod straight up put invisible wall and sorts of boxing you in, it breaks the immersion if the broken English had not already.
So…what is the good of this mod? It has good models for weapons, the levels are decorated well with details, the “intro” is good, and I sort of like the ending. If you can ignore the broken English, some weird level designs and buffed enemies, it is a decent mod.
Manually
Medium
4 Hours
Overall the mod was pretty entertaining.
The first parts of the mod were pretty nice and had a lot of good levels in it. Unfortunately how close I got to the ending of the mod, how more I got disappointed with weird soundtracks and a story I couldn’t quite follow anymore.
Also, the English in this mod was, let’s say, not the best I’ve seen.
But overall I was entertained. That’s why you should PLAY IT LATER.
I really don’t like this one.
-absurd amount of backtracking
-key cards
-underpowered weapons
– overly loud orchestral music you can’t turn down in the menu,
-broken english making stuff you might have to figure out difficult
-having to enable godmode cause you get gibbed right after a cutscene
-respawning enemies at the xen fight
-areas where you cannot avoid damage in the slightest
-a pinpad thats a pain to use.
-ETC.
Every-time I enjoy myself in this mod there’s some bullshit that comes back up. I am very disappointed as I heard this was pretty good. You may like it. I might’ve had a really unlucky playthrough, who knows! Personally I do not recommend it.
Manually
Medium
4 Hours
oh and how can I forget
-really questionable level design I.E. very obscure paths you would have no idea where to go, and again, the absurd backtracking.