You play as a Combine soldier, who is part of a squad sent to destroy a rebel missile base.
Your objective is to set two charges deep within the base.
You will also need to stop the launch of a missile and then make a hasty escape from the base before it explodes.
- Title: Countdown to Destruction
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-countdown-to-destruction.7z
- Size : 7.44Mb
- Author: Chuwis720
- Date Released: 31 August 2009
Linking directly to the PlanetPhillip, Modsite and GamesModding Direct Downloads will not work, please link to this page. Thank you.
 
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Please Note: I requested permission to have this converted into a proper mod but the author felt that installation was easy enough. Also the ClientScheme.res file changes the colour of your HUD, and is therefore optional.
- Copy countdown_to_destruction_01.bsp into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Maps folder.
- Copy countdown_to_destruction_02.bsp into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Maps folder.
- Copy countdown_to_destruction_03.bsp into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Maps folder.
- OPTIONAL: Copy ClientScheme.res into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Resource folder. (BAck up your original file if you have one)
- Launch Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Open the console and type map countdown_to_destruction_01.
- Press enter/return or click the Submit button.
- Play and Enjoy.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 800 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.
I have just seen that image 01 should have been numbered 23 – sorry about that.
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Please note: These statistics are valid from December 2010
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2,448Overall
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1Today
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2Last 7 days
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12Last 30 days
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93365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 2 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 33 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 30 Mins by Daken50
Longest: 0 Hours, 35 Mins by Steve
Total Time Played: 1 Hours, 5 Mins
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Initially I gave this a Play It! rating but as I was writing the review I realised that it was better than that. This short review contains spoilers.
Visuals
You start outside and work your way deeper into the base. This means the visuals change dramatically the more you play. I felt the exterior sections were well built but I never felt as though I had time to look around properly. That’s not a criticism, just an observation on the gameplay style.
Gameplay
Playing as a Combine soldier seemed to make my shots more powerful and I seemed to kill the rebels quite easily. That said I died a few times because I felt almost invulnerable, which was stupid.
Most of the time you simply run from room to room killing the rebels, but twice you are required to plant bombs. The small problem is that the bombs seem to have countdown timers (as the maps” name suggests!) but no matter what I tried I couldn’t start the timer. In the end I just gave up and hope it would take care of itself.
The section within the missile silo is too rushed. I died a few times just trying to workout what to do. 45 seconds is only just enough time even when you know where to go and what to do – at least for a player like me.
Layout and Design
The interior sections are great, I really felt that I was in base. The layout was just right, twists and turns, different doors and strange corridors, in fact the addition of some curved corridors fitted perfectly.
I have to say I felt a little sorry for those poor rebels I was killing – I must be getting soft!
Summary
Great gameplay, great design and a change from playing as Gordon Freeman. What more could we ask for? Well, to be packaged as a mod. Modders forget that some players NEVER play maps; they only play mods. The fact that the graph nodes had to be updated at the start of each map is annoying (yes I could have included mine but I didn’t). There is more to making a great mod than simply making the maps. Other modders please take note: Always package you work as a proper mod, even if it’s only one map. It makes life so much easier for players and will help you work reach a wider audience.
Gameplay is everything.
6-30 shotty ammo? did you just get a lot of ammo or did you not use the shotgun?
I must have found a cache somewhere, or as you say I didn’t use the shotgun much, I can’t rememebr, I think I used the AR2 as much as possible.
Excellent modification!!
No reason not to play this. Yeah the bomb timers are a bit misleading, but it’s all cleared up at the end.
But Vortigaunts are really hard to fight, ugh.
And yeah, I got the missile blown up first try, not quite sure how I figured out I have to go in a water pipe, gamer’s intuition, probably.
Also fighting with a Hunter on your side is so fun.
Nothing special. You get to shoot some rebels in small/narrow corridors/useless cutscenes/no story, any explanation (why elite soldiers follow us)/ammo, health, and NPC placement is bad.
tl;dr, it’s a poor attempt to make you feel like a Combine Soldier doing some serious business.
Oh, come on dude, it can’t be THAT bad..( Not enough to give it a “Avoid It” rating )
I was originally going to rate it three stars, heh (but didn’t like text on it). Like I said, there’s nothing special about it. There’re better map packs/mods out there where you play as Combine. It’s a rushed/poor quality work.
I thought this was an enjoyable mod. I didn’t install the optional blue color HUD since I hate messing around with that stuff if I don’t have to. Would be nice if this was a proper mod like planetphillip mention above.
I enjoyed killing the rebels for a change. The mapping was nice but very basic. Some things like a combine pal taking position on a gun turret facing the wrong way bothered me the most. He should have helped in a rebel assault or something. Cool mod and worth playing at some point.
It was not bad, but I found the combat to be infuriatingly difficult at times. There was nowhere near enough health and I found myself using the console to give extra health on several occasions. The Vortigaunts were especially challenging, particularly the one in the darkened stair well near the end. It took me about 5 attempts just to work out where he was.
The lighting and geometry was OK, nothing special. It didn’t look bad as such, but there was a fair bit of blockiness. Also the layout of the bunker seemed to have just been one room placed after another without any real thought into a bunker’s overall structure.
It was cool to have the Combine soldiers with me but unfortunately they weren’t very useful. They tended to just stay where they were and let me go off and do all the fighting. In one place a soldier DID decide to follow me, but it was in a narrow corridor and I ended up getting stuck in a dead end and couldn’t get past him. Had to noclip out.
There was a lack of ‘life” in the levels. You walk into rooms and just find the rebels standing there waiting for you. I would have liked to have seen them busy with something, then turning to fight me, or maybe running in from different angles.
Music was used well, especially after setting the first bomb.
Yet again a lot of extraordinarily critical comment about a mod which I promise you is well worth a play. @Bamz: you think it is reasonable to recommend avoiding this mod – the lowest possible rating you can give: well, I suppose I have to respect your opinion but you are simply wrong and are misleading other gamers. I suggest you play a few more mods, and try to reach a considered decision, before slagging off what is clearly a lot of carefully crafted work.
This is a decent mod. You are playing as a Combine soldier against rebels, so you have the surprising and refreshing experience of manhacks and hunters fighting on your side (I shot down a couple of manhacks before I realised they were my friends). The design is good, the flow enjoyable and the gameplay intense but not insane. It’s well worth 20 minutes of your time and I give it a PIN.
Not bad, but not great either. It’s still better than a lot of other short map-packs out there. Phillip, you sure are easy to please.
What was done seems to have been very well done but the combat was very disappointing. You can knock down a couple of rebels before they have time to point a gun at you. They seemed to waking up from a deep sleep.
If you want to execute a leisurely massacre then this is a map for you. Lots of ammo and enemy softer than warm butter.
Nice idea though, just a pity that we were not pitted against Combine for a real fight.
Very good mappack. Interesting gameplay and excellent mapping!
Uhm, hasn’t anyone got an error playing this? I did: Engine Error for the title, reads: “Too many verts for a dynamic vertex buffer (49152>32768) Tell a programmer to up VERTEX_BUFFER_SIZE.
Obviously this hasn’t been tested enough 😛 Happened after beginning of first map.
I dunno, I felt the rebels had pretty good aim and powerful guns, but they are easy targets and should move more, like in the real game.. Yea, the machine gun thing was unrealistic but I liked the mapping and the end of the 1st one got me scratchin my head for a while 🙂 Also hard to get used to the absence of g gun 😀 Think I’ll finish this tomorrow so I can rate it properly, but personally feels kinda short and should have a reminder of the purpose of, well, fighting the rebels! Despite the little scenes and music, the created atmosphere doesn’t last long, neither does the map..
Very good!!!
PLAY IT NOW!!!
Nice mod
If you found any errors, or if you have some advises fo future – tell me, please, using this email: admin @ mapper 720.ru =) (remove the spaces)
Dunno why everyone got excited about this, it isn’t a must play. Maybe because playing as a combine is somewhat refreshing, but not for me (I play dm). Also, why in the hell did he end up using a crowbar he found lyin on the floor? That was too Freeman`ish, combines use stunsticks.. And I kinda felt I had to rush through the MAPS while listening to good music hehe, so didn’t have time to look at the mapping, but from what I saw, it was nice, nothing I could get stuck in, but tight in most of the places.. I died tryin to beat down the last turret while runnin amongst another turret and rebels through a 1 person corridor 😐 And the rebels machinery/computers got too repetitive 🙁 Still, it’s got nice puzzles here n there and some runnin and gunnin against time, that’s why I’m giving it a maybe.. Sry that my first review after all this time isn’t all that..
A very good small to medium size mappack just crammed with action as you battle from one encounter to the next.
it’s frantic pace does not leave any time to admire your environment and surrounding details, from what I can recall all was adequate and functional without being over impressive.
The action is all dominating and while there are times you need to back-off and re-figure your approach, the Combine fire is much too strange for the rebel forces without any support from Freeman, but that will always be the case.
Short, sharp but sweet melee.
What makes the mod shine is the setup and story. The combat is only average for the most part, but yes… fighting a Vort is certainly a new experience, and the novelty of being a bad guy did not wear off. C’mon, join the dark side!
Yo, pretty good map. it lastes around 30 minutes but its well made and has some improvements compared to other maps, atleast you dont kill combines here, theyre on your side! this seens like a good addition (in a player point of view that is, dont criticise me for this commentary). just the finishing is a little tricky to find but it wont take forever. good final scene too. adding up 4 out of 5 stars.
pretty beautiful looking map with a nice speed
combats were pretty plain and gameplay all in all was okay but nothing special
I didn’t like the fact that the other combines didn’t run with you, I more felt like a one man army
My thoughts in short
# Succeed in making you feel just like a combine soldier!
# Very good mapping
# More difficult than most mods/maps
Spoiler warning.
This map totally succeeded in making me feel like a combine solider…which is great! I mean, fighting alongside other combines, a hunter and manhacks, facing the treacherous rebels and Vortigaunts.
It was a bit more difficult than I prefer, died quite some times, but still not frustratingly difficult. I think the enemy placement sometimes felt a little unnatural (rebels lurking in corners as their mates gets killed, not reacting until the player comes in to view).
The mod made me want more of everything…more of moving and fighting alongside other soldiers, like a squad, more fighting alongside hunters.
I would totally want to see more mods/maps from the author, preferable where you play as a combine…I want to join the Transhuman Forces!
Real fun! The ending was hilarious too.
This was fun. It was short. Getting the rocket to not take off was the most challenging part for me.
At the very end, my health was so low I reloaded to replay that corridor (I had to crouch to get down the stairs, and for some reason I stayed crouched–maybe I was jammed up against the wall, but it shouldn’t have happened). When I reloaded I found out that was the end, so I could have just finished without the reload.
Sometimes the Combine soldiers with me would block my path, I noclipped around one and found out I didn’t have to go into that room again, but it would be nice if they would move out of my way. It is fun to have a Hunter fight for you! Too bad it doesn’t follow me. 🙂
The rebels often did seem to be just standing around; except for the ones who were triggered to run out of buildings or something.
While I have the skill to make a backup of my ClientScheme.res file, I chose not to. I think if you want to make changes like that I would prefer a mod–that way whatever you change doesn’t affect my base game without my having to perform gymnastics on my keyboard.
Very dynamic from the beginning to the end, good fights with the Rebels and the Resistance, I can also praise the team fights, such as with Overwatch Elite, and also a Hunter…
The missile sequence was very interesting, and overall this is finished in a little more than hour, but the dynamism makes it all…
I was a little “meh?” with the ending… The explosion obliterated the rebel base AND the Combine ship?
Being an evil Combine lacky, you got your just reward.
‘wah, wah, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…………
Something like that I think 🙂
I loved this short mod. Great pacing and a timed section I did on the second run. I have to admit to not being a fan of clocked sequences, but this one was fun.
It is so nice not to panic when a ” Hunter” appears and thanks to reading the reviews, I didn’t shoot the ” Manhacks” when they appeared! It still feels odd when usually friendly faces fire at your and ” Combine Elite” have your back. But having “Vortigaunt’s” fire at you is oddly familiar! Well-crafted visuals and plenty of shooting leads to a bomb, which had me confused. Even jumping up and down on it failed to set its timer in motion so I left it and ran for the exit, taking plenty of fire along the way. A couple of red screens later and I was home and dry on a transport out of there.
But! I think I was blown to bits at the last moment?
A good action mod. Play it now, there’s plenty of ammunition!
PS. Loved the blue HUD…………..
I don’t know what got tweaked, but sweet mercy this mod was challenging! Particularly when those vortigaunts show up… Yeah, no run-n-gun here, unless you want to get 0wned. This map pack requires a much more careful approach than others; be sure to utilize cover and rely on the other combine (if not as intelligent teammates, then to take bullets for you). Lots of fun and quite a challenge.
I liked this one, was some great battles in there indeed, but I have to say that the reason because I’m not rating this to the top, is because I honestly didn’t feel like I were a combine soldier, in fact there’s a lack of detail when the author give us a combine soldier that use a crowbar!, cmb doesn’t use crowbars, they use sun-sticks!!, and when I used the crowbar I saw the orange arm of Gordon Freeman, and then I thought: oh god he is like the evil tween of Freeman in the dark side!!!, so I didn’t like that, I know that maybe put a new HUD in a CMB style would have had taken some more time to develop, but maybe for the thematic of the mod was worthy to do that, also I say is a good mood with great action, by the way the last part of having to destroy the rocket in time is a cool rush that makes you work under pressure like David Bowie sang ;), but at last I didn’t feel this like a pure mod, because were 3 connected maps, that u have to activate directly from ep2, I would have love to see this job as a proper mod I mean in the installing procedure, in order to see it on the steam list.
Loved it, what a great little map pack. it did take some getting used to being a combine soldier and having manhacks, hunters etc on “your side”, I almost felt like a traitor having to waste all those rebels, just felt weird but I gave myself the mindset of all the squad type maps where they just get in the way so I justified it to myself to waste the useless beings LOL. Playing on easy it took a few try’s to get thru it but for me it was a blast, very well put together.
That’s the second “mod” I’m not going to play because it isn’t shipped as a proper mod. I’m not going to tamper with my game files by patching custom content into it just to get a map pack running. I’m glad I got Hammer working again without crashing, I won’t test my luck any further. It’s sad the author won’t create a proper mod out of this. If he can’t be bothered to put the slightest bit of effort into his work, I can’t be bothered to play his work. Shame, really, because the description sounded quite promising.
Or you could simply use Gauge and that will take care of everything and won’t touch your base installation.
This is the best map I’ve played today (and I’ve had a great gaming day today lol). I like the older feel to it and also being a bad guy is a superb twist. But boy is this harder than I expected! However, I think this might be due to the lower number of health packs often lying around and not the action as such? Especially on the first map anyhow…
Room – to – room combat isn’t something I normally would rave over but this works well, I thought. The enemies are placed well: as if they’re real, ducking down or hiding behind boxes. Great stuff!! Totally enjoyed playing this. But (there’s always a but) I’d not only have liked more health pack help but the silo part was insane. I don’t see the point of such a short time and the need to constantly replay, over and over… This spoiled the momentum of the overall experience, for me.
But boy for a great download this is. Highly recommended!!!
Manually
Medium
35 Minutes
That’s the stuff. Looks and plays great.
Manually
Easy
30 Minutes