Authro’s Notes: “Shadow of Breen takes place after the events of Half Life 2: Episode 1.
A small group of rebel commandos sets out to destroy Dr. Breen’s broadcasting and propaganda facility.
The level takes place in a narrow canyon located somewhere in an eastern European forest.
Play style focuses on action-based decision making with emphasis on environmental cues.
Elements of a scene such as lighting, geometry, sound, and detail draw attention and spark a player’s curiosity (even subconsciously).
A central theme in this level is the player’s use of the crossbow (a typically underutilized weapon) to trigger environmental events.
Ensuing action prompts players to make strategic decisions about what they have observed. For example, a flickering light draws a player’s attention to an empty room with some explosive barrels by the door.
The player continues forward and a few moments later a powerful enemy draws near.
The player can now use the room as a trap to draw the enemy near the door and ignite the barrels. Enemies facing the player become more perilous as the player progresses through the level thereby making such observations all the more useful.
The enjoyment for players comes from their own perception of their success: Since the method they use to accomplish the level’s objectives is something they thought of, they can take a sense of pride upon the success of their own method.
The more subtly a designer can get the player to notice a particular element, the better the design (as this leads to less chance of the player realizing it was the designer’s intention).
Such experiences become memorable as players can later relate their methods to other players and enjoy a sense of uniqueness (if their solution was different) or comradely (if their solution was similar).”
- Title: Shadow of Breen
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-shadow-of-breen.7z
- Size : 3.4MB
- Author: Allen Tucker
- Date Released: 11 July 2014
Download directly into MapTap [3.43MB]
You MUST have MapTap installed before using this link.
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy the SP-ShadowOfBreen.bsp file into your C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Half-Life 2\ep2\maps folder.
- Launch Episode Two
- Open the console and type map SP-ShadowOfBreen and press ENTER.
Alternatively, just use MapTap and save yourself a lot of trouble.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
The playthrough/walkthrough below is provided by PlanetPhillip. See more of my playthroughs on this site: VP: PlanetPhillip
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1,939Overall
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0Today
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0Last 7 days
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1Last 30 days
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59365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 29 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 10 Mins by Daken50
Longest: 1 Hours by Sarah Evans
Total Time Played: 3 Hours, 24 Mins
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The author told me this was his best work and to be honest, I can’t remember Target Practise (Which I gave a HOF rating) but I certainly enjoyed this.
The gameplay was well designed and the new mechanic with the crossbow is welcome.
The areas are adequate but could have been better lit and polished.
There is some replay value here, in the sense that you could try some different strategies, especially with regard to the use of the crossbow, which might have had too much ammo – to be honest.
Overall, I am pretty sure you will enjoy playing this map.
Using Gauge
Easy
14 Minutes
up to now its a good map .. however it seems to be crashing after opening the gate … this has to be do with the map as all other maps ive played over the last few days ( and theres been a few ) have been ok …. any ideas ?
I can’t really suggest anything, except offer to send you my save just after the gate opens. Let me know if you would like me to do that.
must of been a glitch (maybe a update in the background … apple updates sometimes crash games ) … however working fine now and i will write my review below .. thanks phillip
I am very satisfied . A lot of mods recently …
OK, about this release, I think overall the whole map it has a good concept, and clearly we can se a neat mapping layout, the whole map is quite huge once you think in hindsight and it uses a puzzle mechanic that require the crossbow 100% so be careful and don´t waste the ammo for that weapon because you’re going to need it a lot.
The combat was cool and offered quite cool entertaining value, also offered some possibilities to combat strategically, it has a hunter you have to face directly so that’s definitely a plus, and also it has a Strider, but frankly you can’t kill him so don’t waste your RPG ammo on him once you face it.
Now, the only thing I dislike and quite a lot from this mod is the lighting in al the map. It is very, very dark!!! And I really dislike dark maps because they kind of be harmful to our eyes, I mean I really don’t know why this map was so dark, but if that shortfall is corrected then I think we can appreciate more the visuals in the whole map, so I hope that can be corrected.
Also about the glitches I found, there was a sniper part that once I pass through a room that blocked the sniper vision, magically made the sniper guy disappear without needing to deploy the metal protection curtain.
I also like the detail of the turrets shooting down my RPG Rockets when I attempted to target the radio communication tower, I think that’s a clever and realistic detail we don’t usually see in many mods.
In conclusion this is a cool entry, because is entertaining and it has a realistic Combat mission into the HL2 world, I guess is perfect to play it later and the only major issue I can complain about is the very poorly illuminated areas in more than an 80% of the whole mod.
Using Gauge
Medium
35 Minutes
i was impressed with “shadow of breen ” .. and it was only after around 5 to 10 minutes of gameplay that i realised why … the use of the “sniper rifle” is outstanding and it takes a good proportion of the game before you realise you need this to progress
the mapping is outstanding and i enjoyed allen tuckers website were you can read the story behind “shadow of breen ” and also check out his other work
its obvious allen has a unique talent in mapping and game creation and unlike many of us ( who make the odd fun map for our own enjoyment ) he may be able to get employment in the games industry )
one of the problems with being a grand old age of 48 is i was never brought up with video games and pc games .. when i was 10 all we had was “pong” and some 4bit racing games … so i only discovered the hammer editor at 45 .. and we all know how hard it is to learn something new at that age ….
but the new generation have game creation lessons at school .. my 16yr old neighbour was telling me he,s been working on the “unreal engine ” … wow !
anyway “shadow of breen ” was extremely enjoyable and i look forward to more of allen’s work … well done dude !
Manually
Easy
35 Minutes
Map has a different feel to it, being night time, also something made me go this looks like it was made for dm, since it’s not linear and it’s all in one big area.
Exploration sadly is not always rewarded, and there’s not enough sense of direction.
Did not understand why I had to shoot the buttons even if I were near them, using the mechanic only once (the first time) would’ve sufficed.
Overall, mapping and texturing are quite basic or maybe unpolished, though no visible bugs, but certainly no optimization.
The building we’re climbing in has interesting flights of stairs. I actually liked the final area but was too short of a battle, and although the mission mentions rebels, I never actually saw one. And frankly I was disappointed to not have being given the chance to fight the strider. I forgot I had rpg in the beginning (don’t just put stuff in inventory, but give weapons gradually) and it ran off on me anyways, and was only remembered when I saw some rockets in the water. It’s good for a few minutes but brings nothing new (the crossbow used to shoot buttons has been done before) or exciting to the table.
A decent enough mod, some interesting parts to it, but I admit the rating is on the lower end of a PIN.
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
Rating was a PIN, don’t know why that didn’t show as it usually does.
same here doug …. i gave it a maybe … nothing there…. is there a problem with the recommendation system ?
Hi everyone,
Thanks for playing my map. Its been years since I’ve played it and looking back I now see immediate ways I can improve it, and I thank you all for the feedback. My computer’s been a bit touchy lately, but once I get it stable again I’ll look at revamping this map in an EX version that incorporates this feedback.
Thanks Again – Allen Tucker
Hi Mr. author! I really like the combat in your map, but i hope you can fix the light issues in your map, i know is dark because is played by night. but in some parts it really gets very, very dark so i wasn’t able to see a thing in front of my nose, so once the light is all balanced in the mod maybe brighter to see the textures better, i think that improvement could be very handy!
Many thanks to share us your work!
This map is average at best.
First of all, the combat is… meh. The enemies you mostly fight are Combine soldiers, but there are also some weirdly placed zombies which serve no purpose whatsoever to be in this map.
Also, the crossbow mechanic in this map is interesting, but it’s not something original (play HL1 mods and you’ll see what I mean) and sometimes its pointless to even shoot the buttons because sometimes you are in front of them and you still have to shoot them with the crossbow!!
Overall, this map is really short and if you’re bored, then play it.
Didnt work for me
Using Gauge
Easy
1 Hour
You played for 1 hour but it didn’t work?
Maybe the concept didn’t work for her?
Then she should re-phrase it as it sounds like it was broken. It’s not the first time she has written the same review and not responded to my follow up. And I highly doubt that map took one hour to play.
really special map…sad to have a correct layout and architcture put into a night environment, progress is some kind of eratic not really knowing what’s next
combat are not really challenging
let me a mixed feeling…
Manually
Medium
20 Minutes
Looks great. Plays good.
Manually
Easy
10 Minutes
For some reason my game crashes at the start of the game so I can’t leave this a review for now