Basic Details
- Title: 1986
- File Name: hl1-sp-1986.7z
- Original File Name: 1986.zip
- Size : 1.1 MB
- Author: Brendon Chung
- Date Released: 01 July 2002
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Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 6 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 5 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 23 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 0 Hours, 30 Mins by dethtoll
Total Time Played: 2 Hours, 20 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 5 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 23 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 0 Hours, 30 Mins by dethtoll
Total Time Played: 2 Hours, 20 Mins
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Gameplay:
This small episode really surprised me, there’s no fighting at all. What’s the catch? Well, the best scripted sequences using default Half Life sounds and animations ever. A lot of funny scenes made and thought well, some are hilarious. Some are also mysterious. My favourite cut scene would be the starting train and the zombie (2nd screenshot) some bugs, such as Barney getting stuck when killing zombies and protecting you, just make sure he follows you fully to the open stairway before the final single gate.
Design:
Above average, sometimes average. Lots of detail that felt very much like Black Mesa, lighting is good and no over use in colour lights. Textures have been chosen and aligned well; some don’t look so nice such as the brown roof in the movie room.
Conclusion:
Some of the best cut scenes I have ever seen in a HL mod.
This mod would be much better if you were able to fight the enemies .
Yah, Zhouy, I agree with you
What’s a mod without killing?
What’s a mod without action?
What’s a mod without…well…you get the point
this mod is hilarious!!!
The only good part was when walter and barney bickered.
The scripted sequences are nice. The only bad thing here, as mentioned before, is that there is no combat.
kak skachat” blya ? :O
I love such Mods! Unfortunately this is the only one 🙁
Short, scripted mod. No “real” shootouts or anything, just a lot of scripted (albeit, funny) sequences.
I’d stuck under the elevator after a few minutes of the game. I suppose (I’m not pretty sure) that I need a wrecking bar to open the vent but I can’t find it anywhere. Please, help. Anyone? 🙂
I’m guessing, from all the other reviews, that you don’t get any weapons in this mod so you should probably try and find another way out 😀
I’ll give it a play tonight and see if I can help. The mod sounds pretty sweet yet I can’t help the feeling that I’ve played this before..
ok, I made it 😉
but mod is too short and that’s why I’m changing my vote to “Consider it”.
Well glad you got to finish it. I gave it a shot, got to the part where an alien grunt manages to survive a fight with some marines then nothing. The door next to me was supposed to be opened by the grunt behind it, but that never happened. Some trigger wasn’t triggered right and I’m just standing there next to the door and spying on the alien grunt.. I noclipped further only to see that another trigger makes some grunts stand still in a not working elevator while a bullsquid spits at them. That’s where I stopped. It was fun at first (and by this I mean enjoyable to watch with a smile on your face, but not funNY), but then got boring and I got stuck, or encountered a bug and stopped. It just doesn’t seem like things add up, it’s just a series of.. events and walks. Not worth more than a Consider it. Not rating it, though, since I haven’t finished it 😀 Shame on me.
I know that place veeery well. You have to save before there is a fight between the grunt and the marines, because the grunt… have to die in that fight! If not – you’re just standing there and nothing happens. You have to try a few times and watch the fight. When the grunt is dead then the marines will come in and the door will open.
Funny, short mod with some weird, but sometimes also hilarious situation in Black Mesa, back in 79 and 86.
Pro’s:
-Nice level design
-Good scripts & cutscenes
-Humour
-Interesting gameplay, surprising
-A few puzzles
-Barney helps!
Con’s:
-No combat at all
-Minor graphic bugs
-A little scriptbug (alien grunt survived)
-Confusing feeling at all times
The ZIP file of this release is a bundle of the author’s 1979 and 1986, but this is a review of 1986 only. That said, it needs to be mentioned that neither is quite your typical HLSP map. The Readme file even states: “These maps are my little Half-Life experimental projects. They are unfinished hack jobs, but they’re fun to run around in… Most of the maps are half-complete and ramshackley… 1979 is more or less a script slideshow. 1986 is an AI-buddy adventure and is a bit more polished.”
Hmmm. Well let’s just start with what this unit doesn’t have: HL gameplay proper. That’s not a problem in itself, but the value of this unit hinges on player preference. Some people prefer gameplay (this unit doesn’t play per se), others just like to see some cool stuff. If you’re the former, you might want to skip this one.
With that out of the way, this unit is still a showcase of some neat scripts, ones that should make a cameo in every future HLSP release in some form or another. Lessons learned from this can turn out great effects if put to use in future releases from the community. Take, for example, being in a rail car violently shaking due to some alien creature walking on top of it. What happens next? You’ll have to play to find out. Needless to say, both map packs feature some positively great, creative ideas worth exploring by other authors (Black Mesa itself a conspiracy! Who would’ve thought?), along with some good level design and architecture. The author should definitely look into producing a serious map pack.
While 1979 is an exercise in confusion, 1986 is a bit better if only for the fact you have Barney for sidearm companionship. Still though, this unit is way too jarred for any real enjoyment, but it’s worth a run-through for its neat scripts. See for yourself and hoot/holler at some (go Barney! whooo!) and ponder the potential of others (like the events leading to the second screenshot).
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Thursday, 29th August, 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.
It’s like a Call of Duty in Half-Life, but without shooting 😀 .
Brendon Chung is probably best known for his indie games like Atom Zombie Smasher and Thirty Flights of Loving, but years before that he was making quirky little mods for Quake 2 (the Citizen Abel series, of which Gravity Bone and 30FOL are sequels to) and Half-Life. 1986 is an example of the latter, and judging by the date (2002, predating all his other HL mods) and its content it’s clearly his attempts to get familiar with the engine and its capabilities.
That said, Chung obviously had a very good grasp on scripting. He’s strung together otherwise disparate and random NPC dialog into actual conversations that make for some hilarious scenes (notably the scientist and guard nearly throwing down on the tram before they’re interrupted.) He’s also designed several other scripted sequences that rival Valve or Gearbox. His design sense is also quite good, creating a level of detail that at times surpasses what was common for early 2000s Half-Life maps. And the sense of humor that would be his trademark (clearly influenced by the likes of the early Quake 2/Half-Life community as well as 90s Bungie games) is shot throughout the mod, showing in his writing as well as cute gags like stumbling upon what looks to be a soundstage designed to look like the Anomalous Materials lobby.
There’s zero combat in 1986. Now, some might view that as a negative, but I think it’s best to remember that, given the age of this mod compared to the others he’s done, this is clearly more of an experiment for Chung than anything else — its short nature and focus on scripted sequences make that obvious.
There were some hitches. After you’re dropped off in a hallway with some scientists, it took me a few minutes to figure out what I needed to do to proceed. (I’m still not sure what I did.) A scripting error necessitated my reloading a save because the 2nd tram ride got stuck. Having to rely on Barney at the end wasn’t painless, though it could have been worse.
Overall, for what amounts to Chung’s earliest Half-Life efforts this is actually a pretty decent little romp. Play it for the humor and the scripting (when it’s functioning, anyway), not for the traditional HL gameplay.
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
The download link for this mod is broken, I managed to find another download here: https://www.quaddicted.com/files/mirrors/ftp.telefragged.com/tenfourmaps/hl/1986.zip
This mod is cinematic, you don’t get any guns and the only shooting is between NPCs. I will admit this style of gameplay isn’t my cup of tea, but there are many flaws that cannot be looked past, most notably scripting bugs which prevent you from beating the mod without cheats, for example the alien grunt scene which several other people have already mentioned. There’s some cool and convincing Black Mesa level design in here but there’s also many areas of geometry that are bland or are inconvenient, so overall I wasn’t too impressed. As this mod is entirely cinematic you would expect the cutscenes to be of high standard, however this isn’t the case with many of them dragging on for far too long, or just simply not being at all interesting. There are some good ideas thrown in here, particularly the walking simulator segments, but they’re few and far between. I did quite like the scientist jumping in the obstacle course and I was impressed by the scripting during the alient grunt part until it broke.
The concept is interesting, but it’s not something I particularly like and I can’t recommend to even people that may be fond of the idea when the scripting that the mod relies so heavily on falls apart so easily.
Manually
Medium
20 Minutes
Updated the download link, thanks. It was actually already on the RTSL server, just not linked here.
But I didn’t know Quaddicted had a mirror of the old Ten Four FTP, thanks for linking that!
If someone asked me to make a list of classic Half-Life mods, I would put this one on it. This is one of the most enigmatic mods of all: instead of showing us what happens after the disaster at Black Mesa, it shows us what happened before that event. Specifically, during the years 1979 and 1986. I said “enigmatic” because the scenes we see are surreal: for example, we see a film studio where a montage of the entrance to the Sector C Test Labs in Black Mesa takes place, and we even see how scientists and soldiers disappear in the blink of an eye.
Apparently we are mere spectators of what Gina Junias does, who in theory we are in this mod (weird, right?).
The author of this mod is a certain Brendon Chung, who has gone down in the history of Half-Life mods for this masterpiece.
I agree with the majority: there is almost no combat and it is missed. But the scenes we see are memorable.
It took me 20 minutes to go through each corner of the seven maps that make up this mod. The chosen difficulty is appreciated towards the end, where a security guard assists us to kill some monsters.
If you haven’t played it yet, download it and play it now.
Manually
Hard
20 Minutes
This is a very bizarre mod. I can get around the fact that it doesn’t have any combat, but what about everything else? The story is questionable at best.
First off, contrary to what the title of the mod suggests, you’re actually in Black Mesa…in 1986? This is the first strange story element, given that the facility looks exactly the same as when Freeman worked there, so it’s 200-, not 1986.
Also, for some reason aliens spawn in the facility frequently throughout the mod, without there being any resonance cascade happening. Furthermore you see the HECU too often throughout the facility, sometimes even forbidding scientists from leaving an area?!
Perhaps the strangest story element is the appearance Gina Cross, who for some reason always says the word “fantastic!” completely randomly and appears to work with the HECU, given the scenario at the end of the mod (where she appears to somehow betray you??), and that the grunts also let her leave any guarded areas (again by saying “fantastic!”).
Anyway, i’m focusing too much on this without much of a purpose. I would recommend you play this mod if you just want to kill 30 minutes of your time. Just be aware that the creator wasn’t very careful with the scripted scenes, because they can break without you doing anything, since they involve npc vs npc fights. In those cases you either restart the map or you just use noclip.
Manually
Hard
30 Minutes
Nice scripted scenes although I couldn´t continue because of some bugs in the cutscenes.
Using Gauge
Medium
25 Minutes
What’s the point of playing on Hard, it can make battles tricky between Alien Grunt and Marines. Beside of this I don’t know if Barney can even survive the last corridor full of zombies. Zombies get close to him and sometimes he is doing nothing and then get killed, it’s like you have to save-load here too to be able Barney stronger near the end to open that fence. Even if it’s movie, still it’s not easy to make a interesting movie, it’s just lack of personal conversations.
Manually
Easy
15 Minutes