Welcome to Project: Quantum Leap, a Half-Life single player episode with a bit of a twist: each map is by a different mapper – 20 maps, 15 authors, one hell of an incoherent map pack!
PQL started with an innocent post on the Valve ERC Half-Life Mapping forum on December 29, 2001. A horde of regulars at the VERC forums, both newbies and veterans, signed up to supply a map for this endeavour. Over time the number of maps and participants fluctuated a bit, and we ended up with 20 maps by 15 mappers. A short six months later, PQL is as ready as it’s ever going to be for public consumption.
Story? Pshaw! Who needs a story? We figured HL players were tired of being burdened with following a so-called “plot.” Fear not! Where precisely did we come up with the name Project: Quantum Leap? Once familiar with this project, several people remarked at its similarity to the TV show Quantum Leap, where in each episode Dr. Sam Beckett would ‘leap’ into someone else’s body from the past, giving each episode a different theme and setting. Our Half-Life pack is in a similar vein – each map has its own unique setting and style.
- Title: Project Quantum Leap
- File Name: hl1-sp-project-quantum-leap.7z
- Original File Name: pql.zip
- Size : 22.9Mb
- Author: PQL Team
- Date Released: 15 June 2002
- Note: Text and images taken from their homepage.
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stuck on map verc 11 have a diffulct or impossible jump to make, went to the website/ forum and others have the same problem. so far good mod but I think the t.v. show was better. hehe.
just finished, other then being stuck on verc 11 with the impossible/possible jump. it was a great map pac. equal to the t.v. show, but with more alien bashing hence more fun.
I found this mod pretty enjoyable, esp the donuts thing, that was funny
A quailty gathering of single player maps inter-linked into one long ‘mission’, which provides many hours of gameplay.
More of a showcase from many talented mappers than a structured single player mission.
The best thing about this concept is that you effectively get straight to the individual mappers best ideas (at that time), skipping the slow build-up found in many other maps.
Nothing ground breaking in terms of puzzles or tension.
But very amusing gameplay, never dull (except perhaps the odd short section…) and contains many gun fights.
There are a couple of real gems, surrounded by many above average maps and the odd comical map.
DLd this ages ago & have only this last week got around to finishing it…Disjointed? Heck yes, fun? mostly, and I’m sure that at least one of the maps (Adam Foster’s) was released in it’s own right….But, the idea behind it meant that some of these maps saw the light of day, which they might not otherwise have done. It has lead to other similar projects I suspect that Holoreality is a distant cousin……and it means that in the current HL1 & 2 desert that we’re in you can have a go at a varied and sometimes frustrating project.Having said all that, the cons to it are simply that there’s absolutely no story, other than continuation for it’s own sake, and that given the scope of it all, you’ll probably save & quit at the end of every other map or so anyway, so what’s the benefit of combining them all??Who knows, not me, but, if you haven’t already, then give it a whirl…..
(The last map is a complete %%% and it took me way too long to figure out what to do. Even with Google the way to get into the last area is impossible to find and poor when you do….Suffice to say without spoiling it you’ve just got to keep trying, don’t go way back on your track as you might think. The scientists are not the key, brute force might be though…..I lead the pair of them all over the place, and Barney too, what a waste of time that proved to be! Grouse, grumble, aarf….etc)
Getting an error on map vert02 when going into the teleporter at the magenta-laser shooting turret !? What’s this?
Hi Technic, sorry but unless HL or Steam is giving an error there’s not much I can help on. THERBCO’s maps (2 and another one later on) had tons of odd sounds so it might be an audio related error. You’re safe to skip to map verc_3 and give yourself an HEV suit (give item_suit).
From the Project: Quantum Leap Web site: “…each map is by a different mapper – 20 maps, 15 authors, one hell of an incoherent map pack!” And true to that, it is indeed incoherent as a whole. To review the entire unit on its own merits doesn’t really do it justice because of the great variation in quality—maps & map sets range from amateurish to excellent. Thus the standard reviewing protocol on Ten Four flies out the window and a new angle needed.
If one could disassemble Project: Quantum Leap into its component maps and map sets, and each of those reviewed separately, almost every single one would be worth playing (a few would not be, on their individual merits). The ones that miss the mark are rife with subpar level design—extremely crude architecture and/or texturing, zero complexity, and boring or otherwise uninteresting gameplay. The inclusion of such maps in this unit is really an injustice to the unit when everything else is at least passable.
That said, generally across the board the maps are of decent quality. Of course, some are better than others, and the best are stashed away in maps 13 through 20. These include map packs that would easily rank as excellent if released standalone. Two come to mind instantly—one set on a spaceship in an Alien-type setting, and another on a Xen planetoid seemingly rife with Aliens influences. The rest are standard fare with the typical Black Mesa setting, nothing special, but nothing really bad either. One aspect did seem to be consistent across most maps—too over-the-top combat…so play on Medium, or even Easy.
Question is, is it worth playing all the way through the unit, poor maps and all? Sort of—be aware that there are some fairly poor maps in it that will really devalue the experience, and because of that it starts to get tedious after a while. And the primary reason for the tedium is because if you like counting things, it’s not obvious when some map sets end. If each author had taken the time to indicate to the player when a set begins and ends using overlaid text, progression would have been a lot easier to follow.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Sunday, 23rd 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.
Good mod, some entries are too hard, some levels are too easy, but the level transition is very inconsistent. In Issues, you get to choose any entry you’d like and it has the main hub. But here, this is just a linear inconsistent transition. As for combat, there are so many gruntfest in this, making it quite challenging.