Mr Freeman has once again been “recruited” by the elusive and stone-faced G-man to handle a “situation’ that could prove catastrophic if not handled immediately.
It seems that a rift in the space-time continuum has allowed the minions of Xen to establish a stronghold inside one of the main reactor cores in the Lambda Complex. Somehow they have figured out a way to tap directly into the complex’s nuclear power grid. They are using this energy to continually widen the rift to allow more and more of the Xen inhabitants into our world. That’s bad.
Oh, did I mention that the military has been instructed to keep a lid on this situation by eliminating ANYONE with knowledge of it? That’s worse.
Its Gordon’s job to establish power to the test lab, and then find his way to the reactor complex via the waste tunnels connecting the two. Once inside, he’s got to find his way to the interior cores of the reactors and shut them down.
You’ll need to keep your wits about you…
You’ll need to trust your instincts…
You’ll have to rely on your GUT REACTION!
Good luck Gordon.
This was June 2015’s Classic of the Month mod.
- Title: Gut Reaction
- File Name: hl1-sp-gut-reaction.7z
- Size : 3.55MB
- Author: Tim Johnston AKA Slingblade
- Date Released: 16 November 1999
Download directly into MapTap [3.55MB]
You MUST have MapTap installed before using this link.
Download to your HDD [3.55MB]
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
The playthrough below is part of the Classic of the Month Event, run by Don AKA Unq.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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5,470Overall
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263365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 10 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 50 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 35 Mins by Hec
Longest: 1 Hours by 3485343
Total Time Played: 9 Hours, 55 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
This was the first ever user created map I played, back in 2001(Got it off a PC Gamer UK disc). It was great then and it’s still great now.
4/5 to be a Half Life map pack.
Played this today.While it is difficult its also fairly long.This was made awhile ago so I cant say much on textures etc but they really were not to bad for that era.Just a tad dark was my biggest problem.
Good mod. The only problems I had with it were some parts were REALLY CONFUSING. Other than that , It’s a great mod. 5/5 (sorry I rated 1 out of 5 “cuz I thought this was a diff. mod. I *MEANT* 5/5)
Great mod. This old stuff is really refreshing to go back to. Good mix of fighting humans and aliens and solving ‘the way through’. Properly developing adventure story with a real climactic ending. Best is the colouring and lighting – a visual treat.
Nice levels, good balanced and long playtime. Hard to find the way through.
Hey guys…I recently googled this mod just to see if it was still out there and what do you know! Glad you’ve enjoyed it. I cant believe its been 10 years since I built this thing, and also that Half Life is that old!Thanks for all the kind words. It took me many hours to build this thing. I havent really touched it since I released it. I know its not perfect but its gotten a lot of good reviews so it must be doing something right. :)Enjoy!Tim
Howdy Tim! Just dropping in from 14 years in the future to tell you that people are still playing your mod in 2023. Just got finished and I loved it. Hope all is well.
This mod is one of the better mods that I’ve run across. It’s a little short but has some interesting gameplay. A pleasant way to while away an afternoon.
Average mod, good for playing 30mins
Pro’s:
-Beginning
-Outdoor areas
-The infinite ammo alien weapon
-“Secrets”, more or less secret places to find with health / ammo
Con’s:
-Mean placed enemies or spawns
-Too much crawling
-Typical reactor scenery
Another personal favourite.
Fun gameplay, good design, a nice story. very well structured with a clear trajectory towards a very satisfying finale.
Some might not like the xenian ending, but I loved it.
Coming from a new and clearly very talented author Gut Reaction takes you back to Black Mesa once more to shut-down Lambda Core.
The plot isn’t the most original I’ve ever heard, but it is supported very well through-out the level. Gut Reaction is much more mission driven than most Half-Life levels, in that respect it’s closer to Quake 2. And this is one of its most important strengths. Although there is a fairly linear route to completion there’s a lot of backtracking through previous sections, which will often have been affected by the players actions. A sense of purpose and being somewhere is important and Gut Reaction is very successful.
Puzzles can sometimes be made slightly to hard and frustrating in amateur maps, and although sharp eye-sight will certainly help in Gut Reaction I never really felt completely lost. Primarily this was thanks to the nice intuitive design: pushing a button doesn’t just open a door for no good reason – everything fits in with the environment. I impressed by the way signs were used, so a button that opens a door would be labelled “Maintenance Access 2” or something similar and the door would look like it was indeed Maintenance Access 2. And this all fits together with the plot and setting beautifully.
I really liked the architecture. In fact I personally feel it’s some of the best I’ve seen in an amateur level. It reminded me more of the style used by Gearbox in Opposing Forces than Valve’s work (but this was being made long before OpFor’s release so that’s probably coincidence). Everything looks great, with lots of nice details, such as sparking wires, hissing vents and rubble. Possibly more attention could have been paid to r_speeds. I noticed certain places where they got very high. Fortunately this is far from a major problem as these weren’t high combat areas and people with lower spec. computers will be able to enjoy this as much as those with the latest PC.
Enemy placement was very good. For one thing there’s a good mix of enemy types so you don’t get stuck in a repeatitive grunt-fest. But surprise attacks are the true forte of this level. By the end I was constantly on the look out for aliens teleporting in behind me. And obvious care has been taken to make sure the player is caught up in the action, but not completely overwhelmed. Certain sections were hard, but success was never beyond reach. And the excellent enemy placement was supported by the item placement. Health was where it was needed and weapons such as contact grenades weren’t allowed to dominate.
The final section was slightly disappointing. Like many other levels, Gut Reaction follows Valve’s example and ends with an alien setting. Featuring platforms. To jump between. Damn. I’ll never understand why such an environment has to feature platform jumping when that style of gameplay is so widely disliked and so many other possibilities exist. It isn’t exactly bad and won’t detract much from the overall enjoyment of the level, but it just doesn’t live up to the quality of the prior sections. It’s a pity really as it’s also one of the most impressive pieces of alien architecture I’ve seen, the construction looks very organic and suitably weird, creating just the right atmosphere.
Perhaps the only thing missing from this level are scripted sequences and large set-pieces. There was a lot of interaction with scenery, but not many spectacular and attention grabbing set-pieces. The original Half-Life speech is used well and fits in nicely, but there isn’t anything new or surprising. But these sorts of things are basically just trimming and the level can go without them.
This is a very enjoyable level. It’s not original or long enough to be incredible, but almost every element is polished and well thought out. Definitely not one to miss.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Sunday, 13th February, 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.
OK, so I can see now why some people say this mod is a HL1 classic. Because, back then in 1999 one year after HL1 was released, I guess this mod sure it was impressive. With a coherent story involving Gordon having to achieve an epic goal and the whole combat against grunts and xenians, and also some puzzles along the way, this mod sure blew the minds of many gamers whose desires for more HL1 maps were big.
Now its been 13 years after and to me it doesn’t look great, actually I had terrible troubles to find the crowbar at first place, sure or maybe it was my mistake and I didn’t see it in the first maps at all, I just found a glock which it was practically useless due to the amount of enemies you have to deal with at the first steps.
Also I believe the whole map design sometimes feels boxy, and some areas are just too narrow, so it felt that after some years of HL mapping some mods were definitely better than this one, compare “smart decoy” to this one and you see what I mean, the former is an almost perfect HL1 map, or kind of closest to the HL1 perfection in map development terms, also the celebrated Adam Foster’s “Some Place Else” a prequel to “Minerva” was also between the really well done maps for HL1.
The previous doesn’t quit credit in this mod, because it was one of the first in HL1 mod universe back then when Planethalflife or Halflifefiles were the big and almost unique HL1 dedicated mod spaces. Also the coherent story tell of the mod and some clever combat parts make this mod worth to be played.
Manually
Medium
35 Minutes
Installation needs help, since the txt file in the zip mentions “put your Half Life cd in your drive”. >_> Doesn’t work from just adding it to the half life folder.
I just installed this a couple days ago. You should be able to just put the ‘reaction’ folder in your HL directory, then restart Steam and Gut Reaction will be in the list. I suggest you delete the config.cfg file since you don’t want to use the mapper’s keybinds.
Having the HL CD in the drive is just so the music plays – you don’t need that anymore since Steam converted it to mp3s. 🙂
Hm, it hadn’t worked when I did it the first time, maybe I’ll move it and try again. Crossing fingers. 🙂
That worked, though I think it was my steam client. It restarted with some update on one of the betas I’m in, and… there it was 🙂
Okay, make sure you have the crowbar before you carry on too far. I didn’t and that changed the whole first couple of levels for me.
Putting aside the fact that you should NEVER miss the crowbar, I had a lot of fun with this. That said, I was never really excited but without going into details, that might not be the mod’s fault.
I didn’t enjoy the multiple paths, because for me that means I have to retrace my steps and double check. I like linear.
I enjoyed the little touches like the snarks and the hidden scientist with the health pack. Details matter.
I had to noclip once because I seemed to get stuck to a wall, but besides that everything worked smoothly.
All in all, a great pack but I am struggling to call it a CLASSIC. However, this was made in November 1999 and the quality still shines through.
Using Gauge
Medium
45 Minutes
A pretty solid Black Mesa style mod here. It’s about 10 maps and took me just under an hour.
The mapping is generally good. The areas are not completely linear so there is some backtracking and exploration required. There are some straightforward puzzles included, but nothing we haven’t seen before. I did also at first miss the crowbar but had the sneaking feeling as soon as I encountered some alien slaves that I missed something. Yes, the crowbar should be ‘gated’ in mods (which means you come across a roadblock that requires the crowbar, like the glass in HL or a set of boards in HL2), but here it was merely hinted at.
The difficulty is decent but a little uneven. It felt really easy until the arena with the spawning alien grunts. Typically health is right where you need it, but if you break open all the crates there’s more than enough.
Overall, still recommended but not quite the classic I remembered it to be. Still definitely worth a play, it’s a nice distraction for an hour or so.
Manually
Medium
55 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyIru_aTukc
I also like how the mod isn’t too linear and there are puzzles here and there. I played on Hard and it was quite a challenge. Right at the beginning I’m up against slaves with only a can of potato chips. The mod always keeps you on edge, whether it is sudden snarks, teleporting in aliens, rappel grunts, sentries. The difficulty ramp up is pretty reasonable, even as short as the mod is. The mapping is alright, with a bit repetitive use of some concrete textures but nothing noticeably bad. I thought this was too short to be a classic, but it makes sense since it’s a really early one (1999)
This is another basic Black Mesa mod, but it’s done in a pretty solid way.
The mapping is great, but one thing that I thought was unnecessary was the multiple paths. It’s not that I prefer linear over multiple paths, but here it’s not done so well. Also, there are some areas which (I think) force you to take damage. I’ve seen this in some TR4 mods and even though you don’t deal a lot of damage, it’s still kind of stupid. But those issues you can easily forget due to the fact that the combat is ace. Never did I feel that sometimes it was unbalanced or unfair. Also, this mod was released in 1999, which is very impressive.
Overall, this is a great mod that you should definitely try out.
Right. This was released when the euphoria (among fps gamers) about HL was at its peak
and everybody thought this genre will have a bright and creative future. I mean System Shock 2
and UT was released that year….
Anyway,Gut Reaction is a medium sized map pack that easily finds a place in the all time top third. Its a classic.
I find it not bad but i find it not that good. It was a little interessting but nothing new experience. The puzzles wasnt not that bad and it wasnt too linear but not really something for me.
Using Gauge
Medium
50 Minutes
good
Manually
Easy
1 Hour
Personally, this is one of my favourite hl mods ever. I’m not sure why
This one was fun, and the combat at the start when you only have a pistol and a crowbar made fights a little “intense”, as you have to attack alien slaves up close while evading their attacks, and even, later on, you never feel that you have lots of ammo to spare, so that was a good balance there, now, what I didn’t like about the mod is that I got stuck twice and had to look up a walkthrough, sometimes it was confusing to navigate, add to the fact that there are a few branching paths here and there and counterintuitive level design on some places (you have to dive in the toxic waste when hundreds of hour playing half-life have taught us that you have to avoid touching the stuff)
But overall, it was nice, give it a try sometime
Manually
Medium
45 Minutes
Good mod! Combats, puzzles, and map design are very nice. PS. There are some places in the first area that the player can be stuck.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
Impressive and nice level design!
Manually
Medium
40 Minutes
For a 1999 mod, this quite a piece of work.
It’s balanced for the most part and has great mapping.
Manually
Hard
40 Minutes
Good mod with level design and combat. But where’s the crowbar? I’ve fought through the whole mod without one and I had more challenged with it.
Okay so turns out I’ve managed to find the crowbar. Took me over a year to find it huh but I’m quite surprised I’ve managed to get through the entire mod without one on my first play.
Balanced between all difficulties, the mod is long, don’t lose your balance
So Gordon spwan up in Xen without HEV suit, how is that, how am I supposed to live inside xen without HEV? And suddenly it’s there in the next platform. I see it and can’t believe it. I am an Alien like G-Man that’s why Gordon is so special, he’s one of them too.
The mod is great but I found out that some areas are boxy. Marines are smart in this mod, which sometimes could be a challange. There’s a lot of situations where you can be damaged by the environment, lake falling from the ladder, to the pit, excesive time in the radioactive water. Not being able or moving with freedom, etc.. The mod is quite long, so you need over 40 min to complete it, it’s like 1/6 of Half Life. So if you play 6 mods like this is like beating Half-Life itself.
Manually
Hard
45 Minutes
I like this mod, it’s pretty good, there were some errors but I played the mod quite a while ago so… I don’t remember it enough
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
goofy aah nahhh
Manually
Easy
1 Hour