Basic Details
- Title: Freeman’s Allegiance
- File Name: hl1-sp-freemans-allegiance.7z
- Original File Name: fma.zip
- Size : 66.2Kb
- Author: John F Ievins
- Date Released: 01 October 1999
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Screenshots
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WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.
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Reader Recommendations
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 4 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 14 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 10 Mins by reaction
Longest: 0 Hours, 22 Mins by monster_urby
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 57 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 14 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 10 Mins by reaction
Longest: 0 Hours, 22 Mins by monster_urby
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 57 Mins
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Other Link :
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=348#
Enjoy!
Single map. Several poorly textured rooms, each with a button or two that opens a door. Push the buttons, kill the enemies within, push another button, kill the enemies within etc etc etc untill you meet a garg, that you cannot kill. Run to the back of this room, the map crashes out. The end.
**** really has happened 🙂
Added 7 screenshots kindly supplied by piledriver.
Single old map, only corridors and small rooms with button. Simple gruntfest with absolutely no atmosphere, a real story is missing too.
We start in a ugly, bright room (every room is like that) grab the HEV suit and see a single headcrab (just as mentioned in the readme). So we distract the headgrab from the scientist who’s our only health source (!) Next step is finding a weapon quick, to get rid of the headcrab.
Then we proceed to other rooms, hit several buttons, killing grunts and that’s it usually.
At last a little (or big?) surprise is waiting..
The whole map last only like 10 minutes, the balancing is terrible as there’s indeed no health, nor stuff for powering up the HEV suit.
Throughout the map there is nothing special to be found, or to do.
Pro’s:
-Lot of combat (gruntfest)
-Tactics required to stay alive
-A few button “puzzles”
Con’s:
-Poor, boxy mapping with ugly lighting
-Balancing
-Design oddities
-No story
-No puzzles
-No atmosphere
-Very short playtime (~5-15 minutes)
-No fun at all
Conclusion: To be honest, I was happy to finish it finally. Hands off!
I wouldn’t want you to judge a level by the screenshots, but in this case they give a good indication of the general quality. Notice anything odd about them? Like the lighting being at full brightness, indicating that the map hasn’t been compiled properly. If it had been compiled properly then it would be pitch black, because there are no lights. Or have you noticed the incredibly rectangular nature of the rooms or the rubbish texturing? Well those are best screenshots I could get. Architecture doesn’t come much worse than this. It is surprising that even the floor in one room doesn’t line up with the floor in the next room. Doors don’t fit the frame. Prefabs have been used badly and everywhere looks incredibly bland, bordering on the hideous. And to top it all off, framerates are dreadful due to the ridiculous number of monsters.
Okay, so the architecture’s bad. But its gameplay that counts, but Freeman’s Allegiance has nothing going for it there either. For some reason the author decided to not place any health in the level, instead there is a single scientist who will heal you. I assume the author believed this would provide some kind of strategic element, but I can’t see how. It just means that when you’re seriously injure you have to go all the way to the start of the level to the scientist, and he won’t even heal you fully. So you spend all your time on about 50 health. Simply by scrapping the scientist idea and putting some proper health kits in would have improved this level. Not by much but it would be a start.
The rest of the level revolves around walking into rooms filled with stupidly large crowds of marines (or sometimes alien slaves) and killing them. Then you find a button that opens a door allowing you to do some more killing. Except there is a cunning twist – some of the rooms don’t have buttons so once you’ve cleared them you discover that you’ve wasted the last 5 minutes. Wow! What a good idea! I don’t think so… As the entire level is made out of basic rectangular rooms, separated by tiny doors, the combat quickly becomes stale. The marines are apparently incapable of moving out of the rooms so no interesting situations develop. In fact its laughably easy to shoot the marines. This makes the combat almost unimaginably dull, reducing it to an exercise in holding down the trigger.
Freeman’s Allegiance is complete rubbish. Why it was ever released is beyond comprehension. It is probably one of the worst Half-Life levels ever released. The author should have deleted it as soon as it was finished. Which is what I’m going to do to my copy.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Saturday, 15th January, 2000 by Chris.
This review was originally posted on the Ten Four Website, which is now offline. Permission has been granted to republish the full review and more details can be found on the About page.
This is more along the lines of the God awful troll map I would expect from people who just got their hands on the hot new level editor for Half-Life back in ’98.
Freeman’s Allegiance drops you into a fullbright gauntlet filled with human grunts, terribly scaled prefabs and a Gargantua with its head stuck in the ceiling.
Your only source of healing is a single scientist who you have to continually run back to because the lack of any info_nodes in the map make in impossible to get him to follow you.
Bottom line, this map exists to frustrate you and it’s REALLY good at it.
Manually
Hard
22 Minutes
One of the purest expressions of “amateur level design” you can find for Half-life. It explores the idea of having to rely on a single scientist for health throughout the entire level. Bad idea that doesn’t play well. Headcrab in the first room is pointless and annoying.
Only reason I finished the map was because I was playing around with god mode, impulse 101 and ‘playersonly’ (freeze time). Don’t bother unless you really like dredging the mapping depths.
Manually
Medium
10 Minutes
I suppose it must be some kind challenge map but execution not good.
A hell of mumber Grunds on a map; no healing at – Balance just isn’t exist so are texturing
The ending is just running into black untextured wall and then just crush
Manually
Medium
15 Minutes
Make the headcrab follow you so he’s distant from the scientist. If going stealth you can eliminate too many mnarines to the headshot. In the 6 room area, I’d recommend skip this area on hard and go directly bottom right room and go further. To skip the gargantua toss 1-2 grenades on it and run away like hell for nothing.
Manually
Hard
10 Minutes