You wake up and remember nothing except your name – Gordon.
Where are you?
Why are you here?
What are you supposed to do?
Can you figure it out?
- Title: Rabbit Hole
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-rabbit-hole.7z
- Size : 99.50MB
- Author: Andrey Saenko AKA PuLSaR
- Date Released: 14 July 2014
Download to your HDD [99.50MB]
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy the RabbitHole folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Rabbit Hole should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
The file above comes with a grid view icon. To use it, select “Grid View” in Steam (top right corner). Make sure you have saved the image to a location on your computer – you can’t use it from the compressed archive directly. Right click on “Silent Escape” and select “Set Custom Image”. Then browse to where you saved the image and choose it. Then click “Set Image” and that’s it.
Of course, you can create your own custom image if you prefer.
The playthrough/walkthrough below is provided by PlanetPhillip. See more of my playthroughs on this site: VP: PlanetPhillip.
Click on the tabs below to select the size of screenshot you would like.
All sizes are the same screenshots, just in different resolutions.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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137365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 11 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 12 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 25 Mins by Reaven Teh Derg
Longest: 2 Hours, 15 Mins by brianthesnail
Total Time Played: 15 Hours, 30 Mins
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The first thing you should know is that a lot of the gameplay of this mod is “not Half-life style”.
There are arena areas and low gravity. The settings are typical HL2 though and well built they are.
I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy the arenas but that’s a personal preference. I did enjoy the visuals and the more standard gameplay.
I had one issue with a Autosave as I was trying to solve a problem in a non-standard way – which I feel the beta testers should have picked up.
All in all it was a fun hour or so of gameplay and I recommend you play it.
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
I liked it. The visuals were good, and the gameplay was nice. I can imagine the combat toward the begging of the middle getting a bit monotonous for people, but the story and visuals keep the mod moving forward. Some parts toward the end are a bit gamey (paths opening up without any clear indication how, a fire in a hallway comes to mind), but I think it played well into the ending. I think the ending was a little bit cliche, but I felt like that a one point I had a choice in my ending-I could of not, but that’s one thing I like about this mod. There’s a lot of exploration and views into old/new areas. There were several point where I went down a path I thought was a side area, but it turned out to be the “right” way. Because of that I missed a couple of secrets I wanted to explore, but was to lazy to turn around. A lot of the “hidden” stashes are pretty involved; they involve more then just a side room, often it’s a series of hallways with some extra enemies. Speaking of stashes, that’s one thing I have to level at this mod: there might have been too much ammo and health towards the begging. I can understand rewarding the player, but when you have 150 bullets, 60 armor, and are fighting zombies at medium range it feels like there’s a disconnect. I can understand rewarding exploration-perhaps some dynamic_resupplies could have helped.
I highly recommend this, one of the better HL2 releases of this “wave” (granted, it was worked on for several years).
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
I’m debating between a “Maybe” and a “Play it Later”.
I was looking forward to this release, following it on ModDB, and I was somewhat disappointed by it.
Starting from the opening, the start was very strong. A good intro sequence followed by some well presented combat against metropolice. Decent visuals etc. Nothing to complain about.
This progresses into a sewer system. For the most part, this area was “ok”. It suffered from adding in too many headcrab enemies that chipped away at the players health, only to have an overabundance of resupply in the endless amount of side areas. I felt that there were too many side areas to find hidden supplies, especially since the enemies here were not challenging.
Then we progress into the belly of the beast, populated with zombies galore.
At first, I really enjoyed this area. The section with the bridge over the zombie pit was particularly memorable.
The fights with zombies mixed with poison zombies were also very good, using multiple routes and obscure angles of attack to land in poison headcrab bites, which gave the zombie fights the sudden burst of intensity they needed.
However, about halfway through (after opening the big metal doors in the tunnel), I began to be worn down by the combat. Here I would stand with an ample amount of resupply easily within grasp, against an open room of shuffling zombies without any form of tension or danger.
Fights would degenerate into waiting for a weapon to reload, or waiting for a room to be slowly cleared with the GGun.
I never walked into a room thinking “Can I clear this area without dying?”. I went in wondering how long it would take for the waves of enemies to abate.
It was legwork.
Perhaps I’m just not a fan of the zombie enemies, outside of small, tight encounters (like those in Mission Improbable, Overawe and Ravenholm to name examples), but by the end of the map I was craving enemy variety.
Even the interesting scripted scenes became grating as they gave way to more zombies. Walking into a room would yield either headcrab enemies or an resupply crate to keep me on full health and ammo.
I had lost all sense of tension, and was only soldiering through in the hopes of reaching something new.
Because of this, all the new and interesting sections like the gravity room were significantly less enjoyable to me.
If you like zombie maps in Half Life 2, then this one might just be for you. Interesting settings and stellar music and voice acting compliments some very interesting scenes and scripted areas.
But for me, the gameplay was too monotonous.
3/5
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
Firstly, the gameplay.
Sometimes the enemies (mostly zombies) were fun, especially if you have a choice if fighting or running past them. Other times though the gameplay (I agree with Salamancer) would get monotonous, when you are forced to defeat enemies before advancing. That was one of the main reasons I did not give it a PIL, although the author did make the battles interesting by not being generous with ammo, and being very stingy with health offerings. That kept even forced battles somewhat interesting. However, constantly fighting zombies with guns starts to wear…and sometimes I would yearn for a Combine rifle orb or explosive (which we never get) and just clear the room. Every now and then we deserve a break!
Now for the environment and routing.
The entire mod takes place in the underground sewer system. It was good eye candy at first, and the author did include many off paths (that would lead back to the main path) and “dead end routes” which usually had a goodie at the end. Problem was this literally became the mod’s entire routing design. The player will often find himself choosing between several doors or several small dead end tunnels leading to doors. One door or tunnel would lead forward, and the others would be dead ends, often with a small goodie as a reward. But unlike HL2’s legendary chapter “Route Kanal”, every tunnel and door began to look alike and it started to feel generic. Worse, the author (at the dead ends) usually put piles of crates and barrels, so you had to spend time breaking big crates to find the goodie. With no grenades, this became a monotonous chore.
The lightning was good, the ambience (sounds) were very good, and although many places looked alike for too long, many other places looked fresh. There was a fair amount of good detail in the mod, and it had a good hour or more for gameplay. And although the author used mainly Zombies and head crabs, he used every kind, and that was a boon. Moreover, the player could spend a lot of time exploring, if the player is the adventurous type. Problem was there was too much exploring to do, in what was essentially the same environment throughout.
Golden rule number one…never keep the player in the same environment for too long!
Like Salamancer says, this one kind of hovers between a Maybe and a Play It Later for me. I was prepared to give it a PIL until I sat down to write this review and I realized I didn’t have a whole lot of positive things to say about it.
I did like the rebel base and Rob Martens’ voice acting. I liked hinting at the Combine doing bizarre experiments down here and I kind of wish the mod pursued that narrative angle instead of getting all surreal. The first 15-20 minutes is fairly pleasant. I don’t have much else to add.
Oh, there is one other thing. This mod is a masterclass in “gotcha” Headcrab placement. 🙂
But beyond that, this mod didn’t do much for me. At worst, it’s downright monotonous. At best, it’s trying to echo the simpler “gamey” nature of Quake using enemies that just aren’t interesting to fight.
The pacing is agonizing with swarms of Zombies and you dispatching them with whatever guns you have handy. There’s no creativity in the gameplay. The player isn’t given many options to mix things up with a grenade or two. It’s just point-click-shoot the whole way through. It’s about as interesting as a Flood level in Halo, in an environment that’s almost as repetitive.
And for some, you’ll like that. It’s a simple and straightforward, turn-your-brain-off kind of experience. Myself, I need more substance. And it’s not entirely the author’s fault – it also has to do with Half-Life’s Zombies being so dull and uninteresting. That’s why I think there’s a tendency in many mods today to downplay their usage, or at least try to make every Zombie count rather than unleashing swarms of them.
A couple other gameplay points. I think too often, the mod offers the player a choice, but it doesn’t really telegraph which branch is the way forward and which one leads to a dead end. Everything looks the same and is evenly weighted as far as drawing the player’s attention around. Second, the low gravity area. It’s awkward whenever you miss your jump because you have to wait such a long time to drift back down to solid ground to try again. That annoyance actually overshadowed the completely inexplicable nature of the low gravity area.
If you’re looking for the next great Half-Life 2 mod, this probably isn’t it. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something you can zone out to, there are worse ways to kill an hour.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
A great game, especially I liked the end with the force of gravity repealed.
Many greetings from Germany
Martina
Looks great but a bit monotonous and repetitive in terms of gameplay. I usually like long mods but in this one I found myself waiting for it to end. Still, well worth playing and some interesting variations on the usual.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
This was a well made mode. I enjoyed it. Looking forward to a sequel
absolutely amazing .. pure and simple ….. rabbit hole comes up there with other gems including final project diary ( leon brinkman) and minerva ( adam foster ) and allthough some may disagree ( which is their prerogative ) i think its the best mod ive played in a very long time
ive allways enjoyed the good old fashioned hl2 mods and i dont like alt mods which seems to stray away from what i like ( eg water ) …. and rabbit hole has kept me going for a good few hours ( hour per evening )
i really enjoyed the non-gravity area which took some time … and to be honest i cant think of any negatives with this game … it was just great
andrey should be applauded for a amazing mod and going off this he has a outstanding talent … i look forward to more maps/mods from andrey in the future .. well done mate ..a personal favourite !
Manually
Easy
2 Hours, 15 Minutes
While this starts out in a classic C17 environment with well paced police and manhacks, it switches to an entirely different universe once we’re down in the sewers. It’s a bit misleading for the average HL fan. And as for the title, we never really go down any hole, not even the one in the water, we just go down some stairs.
It uses a bit of the ‘Daylight’ mod, where you jump through a window and automatically pick up the shotgun and start shooting enemies. The mod is fairly easy up til the voice acting part, even though it throws at you many zombies and headcrabs, this is done in fair spaces and with the proper technique you can crowbar them without losing much, if any, health or ammo.
Now the speech was done well though some of it could’ve been sped up (of course it was intentionally like this) since I had no idea when he was done talking and when I was supposed to leave and find a way out of there. Took me a while to figure out what to do after that since it seemed I already explored that entire area and the solution is visible only from a certain angle, which is a bit unfair, because how can I be sure I’m supposed to open THAT door, when another 100 doors around me are locked like that?
Found a full hom behind a door after I open the underground gates, wow. And why aren’t the rebels coming, once I did find the way out? Helping the rebels escape was like a false (sense of) objective. And once I’m down there I can run past all enemies. After the magnum, the fast zombies have slight trouble of getting up the stairs.
Now if the whole dungeon feel of the sewers felt out of place, imagine how I felt about low grav and arenas that constantly kept changing the way out, depending on whether all enemies were dead (some might not even find their way towards me and I had to find for example a fast zombie stuck in an area to continue). In the last map, I think if the fog was not hiding enemies at a certain distance, any player would’ve ragequit after seeing the amount of actual enemies in there. Not to mention the distance at which they were invisible could’ve been a bit bigger, as I would find myself attacked by fast zombies, or headcrabs, out of thin air and unfairly taking damage.
The textures themselves become boring at one point and the random props don’t help. Sure there’s some attention to detail here and there, some cracks or even holes in the wall, but it could’ve done with a lot more, especially in the symmetrical arenas with same arcades over and over. There’s also low fps all throughout which makes it feel amateurish.
Overall I think if you want your mod to feel gamey, or have gamey parts, then do it all like this, right from the start, otherwise they will really feel out of place.
Hi. Thanks for playing Rabbit Hole. And yes, it doesn’t feel like a HL2 mod. But that was the aim. I wanted to make a surreal place with different non-realistic features and Quake or Serious Sam-like gameplay.
At first I wanted to make just one map, but then I decided to make a transition from classic hl2 to my universe (I wanted to practice making HL2-like visuals also because it’s my first HL2 mod).
I expected such a reaction from HL2 community. If you want to play a classic hl2 mod than Rabbit Hole is not for you. This is a mod about shooting. A lot of shooting. And the ammo is balanced mostly for hard, since there’s a big difference between the amount of ammo you get on hard and on medium. I had to ensure that players that play on hard have enough ammo to take out all those hordes of enemies.
Most of this mod was made back in 2009. I haven’t played HL2 mods back then. If I was making this mod now, I would have done many things in a different way. I needed to finish it and finally release is since I got very tired of it hanging for all these years unfinished and unreleased.
BTW, I’m thinking of making a sequel. I suppose it will be more about horror and story and music, than about combat.
I could see the obvious Quake influence in the later areas. And as much as I don’t mind constant shooting, I felt it got rather tedious by the end in this mod. I guess my question would be, what made you decide to use nothing but Zombie-based enemies beyond a certain point? When I watched a bit of Phillip’s playthrough the other day, it reminded me how your opening segment in City 17 was actually a well-paced, varied piece of combat. You’ve got Metrocops, some Manhacks, a Combine Solder who comes to investigate, a turret… that sort of variety really helps keep the player on their toes and it’s a strong contrast against “Here’s 30 Zombies, kill them all to move on.”
The problem is that HL2 doesn’t really have many non-tech enemies. In the third level combines or anything tech-related would look out of place. I wish there were some non-tech monsters with projectile attacks or with strong melee attacks, but apart from zombies there are only antlions which I don’t like at all. So, only 3 types of zombies and 3 types of headcrabs were left for me. Oh, and barnacles.
I should have thought about it in the beginning of the development. Or probably should made a smaller mod. But as for me combine combats are about taking cover while I wanted to make combats where you have to move all the time, not just hiding. That’s the point.
You can add new npc’s without changing the codes but they are a bit wanky dont get me wrong they works but sometimes they act weird.Here is the link I hope this helps 🙂
http://gamebanana.com/prefabs/1348
I liked Rabbit Hole. From my point of view it offered an original twist to the classical plot inside HL2 Universe mods, and I think that’s nice.
To me this mod seems more like a survival horror, or better say, is a HL2 universe mod, which progressively turns out into a zombie survival horror, and I have to say I liked the idea of the mighty Combine scared by this supernatural-poltergeist forces under the city.
Now, about the gameplay, to me seems fairly good, the combat in the surface of the city feels quite right, but obviously this mod is not centered into CMB soldier combat, but in zombie combat mainly, so once you’re inside the catacombs beware of it, because there’s plenty of zombie combat down there, also is a decent point in favor to have plenty of ammo and med kits around.
The “experimental” part with almost 0 gravity was a total surprise to me, and I think it was quite good implemented into this mod so I didn’t find it annoying as some have pointed out.
So maybe the big cons about this mod, from my perspective are related mainly about the gameplay, I mean, for me is pretty much annoying to fight hordes and more hordes of HL2 zombies, because for me that kind of combat is very, very slow, I like faster and more dynamic combat in HL, so I decide battles against CMB troops than zombies a million times.
So I guess for me I would have preferred the lasts parts of the mod after the fog no-gravity section, would have been focused more in trying to scare the player than those battles against zombie hordes. Specially once you reach the underground cemetery, I found that part very hectic, because you fight hordes and hordes of ghost-zombies, so that makes it way to much struggling, and I guess the author kind of lost a cool part there in the cemetery to have a more scary ending, though the idea of having the G-Man involved in those poltergeist issues was a cool touch too.
In conclusion I found this mod quite original, because it has an out of the box concept quite apart from the classic layouts in HL2 mods, and was pretty entertaining, so yeah I liked and I think is definitely a Play it Now.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
You can add new npc’s without changing the codes but they are a bit wanky dont get me wrong they works but sometimes they act weird.Here is the link I hope this helps 🙂
http://gamebanana.com/prefabs/1348
Very good mode , i recommend
This is a beautiful mod and I like that it doesn’t restrict itself to Half Life 2 lore even if this is somewhat the problem with the mod.
It starts off well the combat is well paced and balanced throughout the mod but it feels quite formulaic and it gets repetitive. The supernatural elements end up being confusing, randomly getting 0 gravity is cool but not realizing that it has turned off again can take you by surprise. Walls randomly spawning walls and upside down rooms is also disorientating especially as the latter maps are something of a labyrinth. I also have no idea what was happening at any point in the mod, there’s some custom dialogue by Rob Martens which is really well done but I was so confused as to what the hell he was talking about or even what I was supposed to do with that information.
In this mod I was hopelessly lost, I didn’t get what I was doing or where I was going or even why. The cracks in the walls spawning zombies were a cool idea but it did mean that you never really got a sense of how you were progressing through a wave of zombies. Throughout the mod there wasn’t really a sense of progression.
This mod had a good sombre feel to it with a creeping menace, not unlike Nightmare House 2, but a lot more medieval! The sound effects were really something special and made the mod feel even more epic than its visuals.
Be warned there are a lot of zombies, slow and fast and headcrabs, and worse the poison ones and their carries! But this is balanced out by a lot of ammunition and medipacks!
The large activation crosses lend a great feel to the mod and its most thrilling effect! Watching your world slowly rotate as the grinding sound plays is epic!
Great use of low gravity, light and fog, especially in the hall of mystery and the second halls lower graveyard. Half visible walls and zombies make for creepy combat!
This is original and fits in Gordon’s weird life as one of the G-man’s side projects! Ha ha!
I had trouble with the lower hall and could not get out without a ‘noclip’ to advance. A replay is in the offing after I see how Phillip does it!
I died too much in this one!
Manually
Easy
1 Hour, 50 Minutes
This was a really great mod. I have to play mods like these for a long time.
Let’s start with the biggest negative, the combat. The enemies, even though they are fairly placed, don’t have much variety and it’s just fighting zombies basically. (apart from the beginning)
Gameplay was really enjoyful and I love it. There are exploring elements, times where I got lost, those arenas (which no one seemed to like) and some minor puzzles which add some originality to it.
My favorite part about it though were those catacombs. I LOVED that place. The atmosphere, that no gravity area, the fog, it’s all awesome.
Overall, this is a mod you should really try out.
I didnt enjoyed the “catacomb” part because its personal preference after that said there is a thing that bothered me a bit, why there is lamps in a catacomb you could have used a torch or something like more ancient.Anyways everything else was great it was an interesting stroy and gameplay.Even ı dont like “catacomb” designed mods and games ı will give “Play it now” because as ı said “nteresting stroy and gameplay”.
Sorry if ı made grammer mistakes English is not my mother language 🙂
Manually
Medium
25 Minutes
I really enjoyed this. What a great download and I found the map areas well designed and interesting. Exploring was fun and I found the action well balanced too. Wasn’t overly eager on the later low-grav areas but at least they had some fascinating places to fight and a few cool traps.
Must say I liked the footstep sound effects and others, really creepy atmosphere! The see-through monsters were fun too. Very different to what I expected. As was the ending 🙂
If i had to moan about something it would be those high areas halfway through the game. Quite often I was thinking to myself, I wish I had some grenades to drop down on those zombies! Or a crossbow. Just for a little fun…
Anyhow, what a fantastic mod. Brilliant.
I was having doubts about playing this mod, but after completing it, it wasn’t all that bad! Rabbit Hole almost had all of its gameplay aspects done correctly, while having a few flaws there and there. As a person who isn’t a professional reviewer, I’ll try to make things short while also pointing towards the pros and cons.
While the aesthetics are basic, the map design is good as it goes with the theme of the mod based on Half Life 2. However, getting lost sometimes is one thing that bugged me out a bit. In that one big area that you come in before the citizen you chased falls onto the bottom has a lot of doors. As a suggestion, you should place something that lets the player know where they need to head to next (e.g. a red light lamp).
The combat was at least decent. There were several groups of zombies that I encountered throughout the mod. The problem I had with this is the number of headcrabs that I needed to kill. There were ALOT of them, I mean ALOT. For me, having to deal with it was pretty annoying. The combat felt normal at the beginning of the mod, but as I was getting to the end, it got interesting. For example, the part where the map turned upside down was a neat touch.
Once I got to the final area, I got pumped up for the battle as zombies, fast zombies, and poison zombies begin appearing. To be honest, I thought this was an intense fight because those zombies are slightly invisible, which makes them difficult to tell where they are. This also makes me anxious as poison headcrabs were able to poison me without detecting them.
That’s all I had to say about this review. This is probably a mod that pretty much anyone would go ahead and play right now. I also feel this is the kind of mod that would be good enough for me to play several times before having enough of it.
Manually
Medium
40 Minutes
Very well made medium length mod. I loved the use of low gravity. Very well balanced difficulty/ammo placement. No negatives I can think of. Play it.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour
You start off in a city with some Combine combat. Enjoy the sunlight and the city, because it is the first and last time you will see it. You descend into a sewer system. From this point on there is no more Combine combat. A bit strange, considering I just killed about 30 Metrocops, which would send out a signal for more troops.
The enemies you do get are all the headcrabs and zombies. After a while I was a bit bored of the same enemies appearing over and over. I was kind of hoping the Combine would make a return (they didn’t). It still manages to be enjoyable to play nontheless, as your arsenal increases. When I got the shotgun, it was my main weapon to use because there was so much ammo lying around for it. I even ended up shooting wooden boxes that were in my way with the shotgun. There was more ammo lying around than I could shoot enemies with.
After the sewer system comes a type of ancient place with a bit of a horror aspect to it. There were some jump puzzles with low gravity, which I liked. What I didn’t like about the low gravity, was that you could easily be hit by a Fast Zombie mid-air because you move relatively slow when your feet are off the ground. The end arena was a bit annoying; the Zombies in it are almost invisible, which isn’t really a problem until the Fast Zombies spawn in. You basically can’t see them until they jump at your face.
Overall I thought this was a pretty good mod, altough it had some obvious flaws.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
Well this is a pretty decent mod. Honestly, I never expected the mod to have a catacomb under the city which is the best feature of the mod, very good level design. Next, the combat at first is pretty good, fighting some combine but unfortunately it would be your first and last combat against them because 70% of your enemies are zombies and headcrabs. The combat is quite challenging by simply fighting a horde of zombies but it gets tedious the more you play. I was expecting a decent boss battle or a good puzzle in the catacombs area but no. You just run and gun the zombies. Remarks: Less combat especially for the zombies.
Excellent mod. Worth your time and worth an AR5.
Gameplay was fun at start and cointain a lot of original idea, the design was a little repetitive and the end was even a little bit odd to confusing making the expereince frustrating
It was still a quite enjoyable release
Using Gauge
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes