“In Route City we play as Gordon Freeman, whom we played in original Half-Life. The game takes place in a small city named City 47 somewhere in Black Mesa. It starts when Gordon Freeman finds himself on a train heading to City 47. As he remembers, a mysterious man in a blue suit said to him something about a mission in City 47. It was something like “Gordon needs to navigate around the city and find someone that will open the awaiting route for him. He can’t remember who it was exactly and what does he need to do next”, but as the train approached the station, a security guard said that Gordon is too late and quickly opened the closet with a HEV suit and some batteries. Gordon slipped into the HEV suit, quickly ran towards Barney, but as he ran through the metal detectors, it all started! The rest of the story you will uncover while playing Route City. Good luck!”
- Title: Route City
- File Name: hl1-sp-route-city.7z
- Original File Name: hlrc_b1.rar
- Size : 9.26MB
- Author: m0rtanius
- Date Released: 20 November 2005
- Copy the hlrc_b1 folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Route City should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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2,155Overall
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1Today
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5Last 7 days
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15Last 30 days
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94365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 41 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by monster_urby
Longest: 3 Hours by Turpow
Total Time Played: 6 Hours, 45 Mins
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Any more news on this mod? downloaded the beta version but no game as such just a train ride that stops in the tunnel.
No it doesn’t, it should go again after a stop.
Ok, Thanks X-Demon, I re-started the game and this time got level changes and have arrived at City 17 station terminal. This did not happen with the first attempt to run game, the train stop in the tunnel just before the station and there it stayed the level change did not trigger, well that’s my story.
Having now finished this beta version the author and team should be encouraged to first clean up the mod before continuing the story with the release of the final game. As the mod stands it’s worth the download and play time, but with the biggest of the bugs coming in the early part may lead to some players giving up before getting deep into the action. The first elevator is the biggest of the bugs, got killed a lot going down and not sure if this was by design or fault also just could not get the elevator back up again, well not with me in it, however it did go up a couple of times before I could get in, but in the main it just would not trigger.
I would like to suggest one small detail to the mappers please sign post the “Railroad Control Center” it’s hard enough trying to get scientist to follow you, but when you dont know where you are taking them it becomes bloody difficult. The game improves with depth with no further bugs after the early sets, one jump comes to mind where you take too much damage, after crossing by way of overhead cables you jump down into a small garden with zombies, I think the plan was to first jump to the lower wall then the ground, however it would not let me make the wall and landed me in the garden every time with damage. The mod is well thought and planned out with a nice balance between alien and Grunt combat mixed with puzzle solving and climbing about. In the main only the exterior design would appear to be new or at least different from the original HL game, all other aspects of the game, such has textures, weapens, skins and interior design are has the original game, so not much new here. It would be nice to think that the team would complete the mod with first cleaning up the first half of the game and giving some new more interesting stuff in the way of design and texture in the final half. I enjoyed playing and was worth the download.
By the way, there’s a drawn sketch map of the city that was used during development.
I’m stuck after climbing the ladder to section d admin 3 high walkway the door on the other side doen’t open not sure where to go now?
This is a pretty sweet mod that has some bugs that needs to get fixed. Sometimes the bugs really gets annoying and wanna make you stop playing. Except for the bugs, pretty good maps, and good gameplay. You should give this mod a try except if you can’t tolerate bugs.
Thanks 😛
Your welcome 🙂
If your familiar with City 17 from HL2 you will be familliar with this too
Ah, yes. My beta 1 is not buggy.
Just played the game. It’s pretty short, but I had the most fun playing it that I have has I a while.
I seemed to skip around the map, not doing things in the order that the author intended to but that didn’t effect the gameplay for the worse, instead if anything, it made it more pleasantly free form.
Does anybody know, how to go on after the tank? I can’t blow it up, not even with 10 grenades. I can climb up a ladder, and onto some wires, but they’re electrified, and I can’t find a switch anywhere, to turn them off…
ATTACK IT’s WEAKPOINT FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE!
Ok I downloaded Route City. I turned it on and I got to the train station. I go pass the metal detectors but then I don;t know what to do next. I can;t get through any of the guards because I have no weapon. I was able to get between the train to the little train yard. I went up the ladder on the side of the building but I couldn’t open the window.
I don’t know what to do and its pissing me off. If thats the entire mod then tell me. So what DO I DO now at the train station?
ok ok I just found out how. Sorry about that… oh I feel so stupid right now.
OK one LAST question. I have the scientist with me and I took him to the train station with the metal detectors and I brought him everywhere but he didn’t do anything. I took him to the building where the assassins spawn and he wouldn’t;t come up the stairs.
What do I do?
You need to lead him to the building to the control room up the stairs, it takes some time to get him up the stairs.
Where exactly is the Railroad Control Center? Wait – Never mind. I found it. Wasn’t that hard getting the scientist up there either.
Long time I guessed what happened in the years between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Now I could play it! … and found it worth, something between my personal favorite and play it now.
I find all the good reviews puzzling. For me this was not very good. The initial train ride was a little interesting but the whole feel was one of emptiness, which is normal considering this is a beta.
I found the route confusing, for example, when you get to the ground level, should you go to the door on the right or far down the left?
Going down the left changes level suggesting that it is the way to go, but there’s no where to go, so you go back.
I had to jump a fence to get to the water, which kills you instantly with no warning. Then you go across the bridge and buildings suddenly appear.
How the heck are you supposed to get past the Garg with no real weapons and if you do, the damn scientist won’t go through the gate.
It was at this point, I gave up.
We’re supposed to find weapons before going to the Garg.
He went when I opened the gate in the opposite direction.
The the mapper should make sure it’s impossible for me to get there without the weapons. I couldn’t open any doors or reach any weapons in that area.
There’s a nice city location with new textures and sky. Some events are based on the beginning of Half-Life 2. The town is populated by scientists, Barneys, soldiers and monsters. I didn’t understand what’s going on.
The city is interesting, but the indoor locations are bland. The levelchange between two city locations is impressive. The author did a good job and created a city which doesn’t feel like a corridor which walls look like buildings. There are many different places in the city, and that’s great. The encounter with ninjas in the storage is done very well and overall gameplay is good. The puzzles where we search for a way to progress are very clever. Solving the puzzles unlocks new city areas.
It’s possible to get stuck in the train after the map change. The rotating doors are not convenient. It’s too bad that the development stopped, it would be great to see a finished version with fixed bugs and well designed indoors. But what we have is much better than nothing.
The ending was absolutely unexpected, and that’s good.
Despite its flaws, this mod is worth playing, because it has a great unique point – very open environment.
Not a bad modification, caused me to positive emotions, and some fun gameplay. But it lacks the full mapping, it’s pretty weak.
The objective of the game to save scientists trapped in Route City, perhaps it is a military town. We arrive in this city at a famous vagon, which was presented as elevated train. Coming from him, seeing the bored soldiers, who did not respond to us.
We go to the train station where we were met by a guard who obligingly opened the door to the room with HEV suit. Clothed him, with a confident view of trying to pass through a metal detector as it is written in a text file with a description of the story. But for myself I have not seen any detector, a room more like a big cafeteria for labs. It was then that the soldiers at once will become our enemies, and we no have weapons in our inventory and there to fast naff. It is unclear what they do not like my HEV. In addition, they are not saying anything to me, began to shoot, not searching me all sorts of detectors, whether it is an error the script, whether such a strange idea. Beat modmapmakers (developers) for this.
But do not worry, because soon the hands will get different kinds of weapons and we have no fear.
The whole process of the game will be in Route City, where we will move back and forth, including something, then drive for a guard, then scientists, by the way is the only moment in the game, which is slightly unnerving. Just hostage very reluctantly following us, yelling at each step and saying that he would not go further.
Will certainly a lot of battles and soldiers, and monsters, including Gargantua. However, the city made a terrible mapping and to wander, my eyes wants to be closed, getting into other areas, I want to go back. If the open part of the city made normal, but the room awful, especially something one, seems a nightclub for the military is very dark and not a damn thing to make out even with a flashlight, in addition to shoot us women assassins.
The game is almost linear and all the difficulties should arise. On normal difficulty it is passed without any problems and complications, the main thing to not forget about Gargantua and keep ammo for him.
That said, I think you’re able to draw conclusions about this modification and make a decision about its download.
Hmmm! Not as bad as Phillip says, not great but not bad.
Some of the parts are a pain the doors being my main gripe, unless you are in exactly the right place (which made it difficult to get the scientist into the railroad control centre) the jam, close or stick you in position. This suffers from bad planning with areas only coming into view after a map change and some areas not being obvious where to go, but it was for the most part fun (which is what I look for). This is yet another mod that really would have been good if more testing had been done, but alas it comes from a time when testing was just something on most authors wish list.
This showed a lot of promise but never really delivered on those promises which seems to be true of quite a few of the 100 so far.
I too managed to kill the big fella, but no amount of door opening in either direction or talking and pushing that whitecoat could get him to go any further….even if I actually knew where we were supposed to be going in the first place…sooo, I too gave up at that point… 🙁 Shame really, was all going rather well until then…anyway……NEXT !
This was a really pleasant mod. I personally like the city setting, and it is designed good in here.The mod had a very good flow, and even had few unexpected things happen and it had some good scripted sequences.However, there are a lot of tiny things that kinda work against the mod. But still very enjoyable mod, I recommend you play it.
I’m at a loss as to where to go next. I’ve cut the power generator off (although not sure I needed to since I didn’t need to use the power wires overhead, I just entered through the front door). I can’t find any way to get over to where the scientist is waiting at the locked gate. Any suggestions?
update: scratch that question, I found a new area and was able to proceed.
Well this pack turned out to be pretty decent after all. If you can get past the directionless wandering that is inevitable in the first set of maps (the actual Route City maps) then you might have some fun with this one. The finale battle is pretty good.
There are a couple issues with this pack. First is the lack of polish and testing (as this is clearly a beta version). Things like the city appearing upon a level change, general layout issues, and the severe problems with escorting anyone (scientists, Barnies). But I think the key issue with Route City is its nearly complete lack of direction (at least until you get access to the small 1-person train car). You can end up wandering for ages (like me) or do things way out of the author’s intended order (like Phillip). By the time I got to the Garg I was armed to the teeth and he was a piece of cake.
There are other drawbacks to this pack, like some really basic map sections, lack of detail, and tons of impossible crates, but they aren’t too major. And at least nearly every crate holds something of value.
There are some pretty fun parts here, particularly after you get on the 1-person train car and take it for a ride. There’s a nifty script after you get off the train. The end battle takes place in a warehouse, with teleporting aliens and an Osprey that drops off grunts. It makes for a fun challenge, at least until you realize you can just walk right past everything without even dropping down to the floor (you enter on a catwalk) thanks to the longjump module. I was also able to cross the river (which normally kills you) starting with a long jump and high health, and that didn’t trigger a level change so it was clear the mapper didn’t plan for that.
It’s worth a play but don’t expect a polished mod. But there is some fun here, it is really too bad it wasn’t tested, polished, and wrapped up for a proper release.
I don’t know why the city is city 47, conssidering cities with numbers were named like that under the cmb rule, so I suspect this was released when HL2 was alredy out or so and defenetly that fact inspired the author of this mod, here we have a complex maze of routes that doesn’t set a clear path and many strange maps interconection, possible normal because it was a beta, this for me was like an archeollogical discovery because when I first played it I didn’0tr complete it because I was so confuse and most probably because I was an incompetent gamer so I didn’t finished feeling it was a really bad done mod with no end, untill I found the way to pas to the garg, and kill it and then proceed to the train rail, and go to the last part, which ahs an interesting fight against xenian and grunties falling from an oorion, so finding that part was cool but complicated due to the door that leads to the garg was stucked and I had to us noclip to open it, so that’s an annoying detail.
Mapping is original but ackward and complicated and falls in to the Assault on Roswell effect, that’s going backwards for geting some esential assets like that freakin RPG to destroy that really difficult APC, or going to desactivate the generator and then carry the scientist with u to lift up the barrier that stopped the train rail that leads to the last section, so that akes the player works harder in a really disproporsionated way like 10/90 in pareto terms, so be warned that u going to waste many time here with the puzzles and the paths, also many paths are unclear and some of them are so dumb and don’t lead anywhere or to a no way out like that vent duct that leads you to the toxic waste pool.
I’d say that the only thing worthy about this mod is a different design plus an attempt of making interesting in the pulzzes but no in the combat..
I had a mixed feeling about this mod. Some parts were nicely done while some others were tedious and frustrating.
Over the course of the mod I felt that the environments I was travelling through were of inconsistent design and quality. Some areas felt really claustrophobic, while others felt really open and empty. Towards the end, I thought that the quality of the levels and detailing was improving, which lent itself to some very cool set-pieces. On the whole, though, the visuals were very basic and boxy and I really didn’t feel like I was in a city.
The combat through this one was pretty sporadic. Like the environments, I felt that the combat was very inconsistent. Some areas played very well, while others seemed to have enemies just thrown in for the sake of it. Again, I felt the combat picked up near the end with the large scale battle.
The most frustrating thing I found with this mod was that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing for most of the time and it was only by trial and error did I find buttons to push. The author needs to make it clear to the player where to go next and hopefully throw in the why as well.
If you enjoy puzzle and button hunting with the odd but of combat in between then this may be worth your time. However, if you don’t like tedious, obscure puzzles or just generally feeling lost, then you will probably want to skip this one.
I had to give up on this was due to how confusing it was.
The action of this was fun but I kept finding that I would be getting stuck and would have to glitch or cheat to find the way to go. Also I had to fight a Gargantua and a Tank without any weapons good enough to beat them. I found an explosive stash in a building right behind the tank but I had to use god to get to it. After I had killed the Gargantua with the explosives from the building you have to escort a scientist to somewhere and have the hassle of him getting stuck, I had to noclip to get past this and then I found an RPG which I presumed I was meant to use to defeat the tank and Garg.
I can’t really think of much to say on this one. Fun action but the huge amount of bugs ruined it for me.
I also played this mod several years ago and had the same issue with the confusion, although I managed to get further this time.
Related to our discussion in the 100 Summer Days of Nostalgia Podcast #4, the map to load directly to start in the base after the city is rcbase1. If you want a challenge, give yourself a bunch of weapons but not the long jump module. The base isn’t outstanding but I did like the final battle setpiece.
I really wanted to like this but I couldn’t.
I agree Dr. Amazing and Philip, it started nice but running is the most you can do, though I know it’s just a beta and it’s City 17 style but meh.. doesn’t turn me on, sorry
I’m puzzled by the fact that this was released as a beta. I think this barely reaches alpha standards.
The quality of the mapping was poor, there was little to no narrative throughout which left me completely unaware of what I was working towards and above all it seems that it hasn’t been play tested by the author, let alone anyone else. On numerous occasions I got physically stuck in some of the cramped areas and had to noclip to continue. On the flipside, some areas were so needlessly open that the rare appearance of props or furniture fell into insignificance.
The entire mod just feels bland and lifeless and the only challenge I faced throughout was trying to stay awake.
Avoid it!
Manually
Easy
45 Minutes
This is one of my favorite mods. I love the city settings, very few half life mods uses a city setting (mods like Poke646, Vendetta, Black Operations…).
The mapping was very simple but I liked it. The outdoor maps were amazing, the skybox was awesome and the mapping was good. The indoor maps were blocky and the textures looked ugly. The combat was balanced with a lot of interesting battles (APC battle, Gargantua battle). The mod was very short, I completed it in 3 hours because the day when I was playing was raining and there was a blackout.
Unfortunately this mod was just a beta, and the creator will never release a full version. This mod is one of the few mods with a city setting, that’s why this is one of my favorite mods.
Manually
Easy
3 Hours
The maps aren’t really that well made, though outside sections are more impressive than interiors, but Route City saves itself by being a greatly planned and thought out experience.
Every major action you perform helps you overcome a problem in another section. An example: You switch off the electricity and then go back out and walk on the electric wires , get inside a room and grab a long jump, use that long jump to cross a destroyed bridge and open a door from the other side to reach a scientist.
Progression like this in such small amount of maps not only makes the experience seem bigger but it is also very fun to solve problem after problem until you reach to the end. It almost feels like a Metroidvania.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
Well here is me again after 11 years! wow, 11 years… that seemed like yesterday but is a hell of a time. And well I just replayed this one almost by mere coincidence, because I set up a personal goal of just playing every HL1 mod available here in RTSL.com so checking the “Play” list this one wasn’t properly marked, I really don’t know why as I played it before but apparently the website didn’t recognize my credentials as “Hec” and mark my review as an “Anon” user.
Anyway. I guess is it because I am a more experienced gamer now than I was 11 years ago. But I enjoyed this mod more than the very first time I tried it.
I must confess that the first time I played this one again was kind of annoying, especially when Freeman gets to the train station and those grunts start to get aggressive with no reason after you cross the metal detectors. There the mod is made by pure Half-Life 2 Inspiration to replicate the scene where Freeman runs from the CMB in the ceilings of City 17 until he meets Alyx or in this case Barney.
Then the direction to go I know it was kind of confusing to proceed but you can do it with careful observation and the hints the mod gives to you once you complete a key task. Here, I mean in the first two parts of the city map, here You have to cross the river by getting the long-jump module, the gameplay of this mod is pure half-life old school gaming as you have to fetch some specific things to proceed to the further parts of the mod.
Also, I found combat quite nicely planned and entertaining, and for some reason, I didn’t feel it was predictable or linear, I also quite don’t know why most of the people who played this found the Gargantua hard to beat, I think for me it was easy as I just shoot all my RPG’s to it and then finished her with some C4 explosives and a couple of grenades.
Then the last rail part of the mod felt neat, and the final battle is like a never-ending battle You can perfectly skip or fight in order to find the G-Man in that elevator at the end. So to be a beta, this mod was solid because despite that backtracking dynamic the whole maps fill the circle of a coherent mod.
Yeah, I truly enjoy it after all of this time. I may replay some other mods to see if my experience improves or just stay the same.
Manually
Medium
2 Hours
Great visuals but the layout is pretty bad, affecting the gameplay. I sure do love the layout of exploring around the city but hl1 is not designed that way. With that, you’d see buildings disappearing when you’re far away. The doors are a huge pain in the ass because they stop you from escorting NPCs most of the time and I’ve encountered this many times in this entry. The first part of the map is where you get off to the train station and suddenly the marines start shooting you once you wear the suit. After that, Barney saves you, and the real combat begins. Seriously, did the author rip off Point Insertion from Half-Life 2? It’s also easy to skip parts of the map by crossing the bridge and I know that the main bridge is closed with two gates but you can cross over it. There’s a vehicle next to it and jump on the rail of the bridge and you can finally cross to the second map quick. Now speaking of combat, it’s quite decent, not too hard apparently so not much of a comment in that. What I like about this map is the visuals, skybox, map design except again the layout of it is a disadvantage to the gameplay but still an eye candy to it. I’m gonna give it a “Play it later” if you wanna see good visuals in Half-Life.