Basic Details
- Title: Half Life: Xen
- File Name: hl1-sp-half-life-xen.7z
- Original File Name: hlxen.zip
- Size : 444Kb
- Author: Steve Johnson
- Date Released: 27 January 2002
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Screenshots
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WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.
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Reader Recommendations
Total Downloads
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 6 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 6 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 10 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 5 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by AnRet
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 58 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 6 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 10 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 5 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by AnRet
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 58 Mins
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ok short and sweet/easy without that much gameplay/no real story/some good grunt combat sequences.
mel says it all. Beginners map pack.
Added 7 screenshots kindly supplied by piledriver.
At least it’s somehow finished.
It’s truly a begginer’s mappack. There is a little story, not thought really well, since freaky things appear in xen when they shouldn’t.
It’s interesting how difficult grunts can be on hard.
Give it a try, but don’t expect much, as the levels aren’t quite finished.
A tiny mappack with six maps only on Xen.
The story is nothing to bother about as it only exists in the readme and a two ingame text messages, in the meaning it’s negligible.
Mapping is below average as there’s not much variety in textures and layouts.
The architecture is quite boring too, as there are usually rooms, corridors with only one height.
There aren’t much details too.
Once in the game you have to solve a tiny, easy puzzle.
The rest is only combat until you reach the final beam which brings you back to the start, meeting some “visitors”.
Altho there are six maps, there are very short and finishing the mappack can be done in less than 10 minutes.
Therefore, and according to the things mentioned above it’s not much fun to play.
Essential things are just missing here.
Nonetheless I was surprised I didn’t hate the Xen setting here, as I usally do, because there are no tricky jumps or even longjumping required and Xen just looks very boxy in this mappack.
Summarising I have to say this is indeed “only for real fans”.
Pro’s:
-Some combat with aliens and human grunts
-Quite many weapons compared to playtime
-Good enemy placement
-One little puzzle
-No bugs
Con’s:
-Very short playtime (5-10 minutes)
-Balancing – it’s just too easy, most healthkits aren’t needed and health never drops below 50,
also: there are just too much weapons and ammo
-Very basic, boxy mapping with not much variety or anything interesting
-No puzzles
-Story isn’t there
-Some strange mapchanges
-No atmosphere
-Disappointing, open end
Conclusion: “Perfect” mappack for rookies without high demands on good mapping, puzzles and/or a story.
Half-Life: Xen. A second release for this author, and yet another one of those that takes the original Half-Life story and runs with it for something completely different. But in this case, “different” does not mean “good.”
Six maps crammed into 650KB kinda says something – it says that those maps are small. Real small. Expect to be finished up with one map before a minute is over, or the whole thing in under 10 minutes. Is something less than 10 minutes worth playing? Sometimes it is, but this one isn’t. Level design is amateur and it shows, with plain texturing arrayed across boring architecture, and Xen-ish architecture at that so it looks even poorer than it would if this were set in an Earth-like location. Granted there’s a bit of Earthy architecture but not only is it overly simplistic, it doesn’t make sense to see it on a Xen planetoid. And then there’s the simple unfulfilling combat of just a few aliens and a handful of Marines, nothing particularly exciting.
Best advice is to pass this one up in favor of something with some actual value. Move on, nothing much to see here.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Friday, 14th June, 2002 by Calyst.
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.
Mod is short, but good. If you know him by heart you put it in 10 minutes. Mod is very easy.
Walkthrough you can find here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEGYcBMgbww
Manually
Hard
7 Minutes
Half-Life: Xen is an fairly easy jaunt through a series of corridors, mostly using a single Xen texture. I’m sorry to say that there was little to no challenge throughout, with most of the ten minute playtime consisting of running through alien cuboids.
Manually
Hard
10 Minutes
Before I forget – the progression at the start is TERRIBLE. There’s no way to know you’re supposed to blow up that box in the room next to the one where you get the one satchel .
There’s a few different ways to approach Half-Life: Xen, it’s a fairly typical, low detail, linear corridor jamboree.
However, if you read the mission text at the end where it talks about Freeman, Barney, Shepard and Gman finally all being together you can look at Xen as some weird love story…
The mission texts that pop up (messages from Gman?) are so funny as well, it’s all very unintentionally campy. Maybe I’m just blazed but I found this mod to be pretty got dang entertaining when viewed from that stupid lens.
It’s easy, short, you can nade a few grunts and the script is worth a laugh or two – it’s worth a hoon.
Manually
Hard
14 Minutes
Just a decent simple mappack. Linear corridor structure and extremely number of ammo and medkits
Manually
Hard
15 Minutes
A nice travel in xen’s surroundings. Some soldiers are parked outside waiting for Freeman. At the end, we are all reunited, he says. For sure, as game character, that’s a meeting in the end. As game scripting, G-Man is a demon, Gordon is traveller and all others are side character and it seems all takes different paths in history.
Manually
Hard
5 Minutes