As the name suggest, this mod takes pace through the night.
You are taken through a variety of locations, within Black Mesa and beyond.
Can you escape the influence of that trouble making Gman?
This was December 2015’s Classic of the Month mod.
Basic Details
- Title: Grunt Match
- File Name: hl1-sp-the-long-night.7z
- Original File Name: longnight.zip
- Size : 3.34MB
- Author: Germano Guerrini AKA Uoz
- Date Released: 31 January 2000
PlanetPhillip Download Servers
Installation Instructions
- Copy the tln folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- The Long Night should now be listed in your Library tab (Under L, not T).
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Playthrough Videos
The playthrough below is part of the Classic of the Month Event, run by Don AKA Unq.
Screenshots
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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Reader Recommendations
Total Downloads
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3,705Overall
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1Today
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8Last 7 days
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16Last 30 days
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181365 days
Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 5 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 5 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 19 Mins
Shortest: 1 Hours by Avantgarde95
Longest: 1 Hours, 35 Mins by El_WaKa
Total Time Played: 6 Hours, 35 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 5 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 19 Mins
Shortest: 1 Hours by Avantgarde95
Longest: 1 Hours, 35 Mins by El_WaKa
Total Time Played: 6 Hours, 35 Mins
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Worth, really worth your time 4/5
I played this so long ago having got it on disc from PC Gamer Issue # 86, having kept that piece of pointess information I did not keep my comments that I made at the time. However, I do remember that it was a good game and was rated the following back then;
Mel 7.5/10
H-King 10/10
EH10 7/10
LM 8/10
H16 5/10
Fun.
OK, so this is mod is pretty ok… but I’m stuck if anyone can help… Xen.. you get past the 3 big stabby worms, navigate the floating platform, make your way all the way up to the top portal – activate the claw-like thing in there, and you’re transported back to the top portal area. Kill all the lighting-bugs at the bottom…… then what? I’ve explored the entire map, and can’t figure it out. Can’t find a walkthrough anywhere.
In the portal room, with the floating platforms and alien slaves, or lightning-bugs, there are actually two caves with portals. Activate the other claw-like thing in the other cave, near where you came in.
Here is the sequence I did..
Came into the room
Jumped on floating platform that goes around (the other is stationary)
Went into “lower” cave, and into the portal
That transported me to the upper cave
Went into that portal, activated claw-thing.
Shot all the slaves from the top. Jumped down, went back to the first cave.
Portal in that cave is now inactive.
Went to upper cave, that portal is inactive too.
So in that room, there are 2 caves, each with non-working portals. I never saw the claw-like thing in the lower portal. I may have to go back to a prefviously saved game, and try the sequence again. I’ve seen other maps where if you don’t do something in the right order, things can get messed up.
Thanks for the info though, now at least I know what should happen.
OK, that worked.. Luckily I had saved a previous game just before that point.
So I went into the upper portal first, activated the claw.
Killed the slaves, went into lower portal, and activated the 2nd claw.
I really enjoyed this one – good mix of environments, well designed, somehow immersive although I was never quite sure what exactly I was doing….
Here’s my review of The Long Night, one of my all-time favourites for Half-Life. This article was written for Alejandro’s Mapping Center back in September 2003, thus to my best guess, can be considered a Syndicated Review…
From another first time mapper, Germano Guerrini, comes this 10-map pack; and unlike most first releases it features tidy and nice design, low r_speeds and enjoyable gameplay. The game opens with a brief cutscene and according to that you’re in another part of Black Mesa, 18 hours after the disaster. You are captured by the grunts and dumped into some kind of sewer system. At this point, your adventure begins. But unfortunately, it also ends there. There’s virtually no storyline throughout the game; apart from the epilogue from Gordon’s point of view at last scene.
So, after the one and only disappointment about the pack, let’s come to pros. Despite the last four maps, the author clearly tried to emulate original Half-Life maps – in terms of level design and gameplay. And he succeeded too. So if you are looking for some new ideas in custom levels, you won’t find it here. Throughout your adventure; you’ll see lots of scripted sequences, challenging and fair enemy placement, puzzles at the right times and enough item placement – all in familiar Half-Life environments. The author created some very neat levels without too much brushes, thus keeping the r_speeds low at all times. My only bad criticism about level design is for that small Xen section at the end. While all of the other levels successfully emulates Valve’s work, the author’s Xen seems too blocky – not like original’s organic looking levels.
Conclusion: Even three years after its release, this brilliant pack shines between new but not-so-good Half-Life levels. Definitely a must play. – 84%
Cool mapping, but gameplay is boring and annoying for me. I felt no pleasure, when I tryied to replay it lately.
I was really pleasantly surprised by this. Actually, that’s not strictly true because I have already played one of Germano’s releases before. It’s called Riot Act is it was a very polished piece of work.
It leads me to believe that that you can spot a really good mapper by their work, not matter when they released it. The mappers of today should take note. Anyway, back to the mod.
It has a well-polished feel to it, and only once did I mange to find an error (the first open area, where you can walk up a concrete siding and see out of the map.)
The screenshots speak for themselves; plenty of variety ion the corridors, very little coloured lighting, large areas joined by smaller ones etc.
You got a basic objective behind the mod, some interesting areas and a Xen excursion. Very much like a mini-Half-Life, which is exactly what the author was aiming for.
All in all, this is a great mod, but I never got really excited. The mapping and design were very good, but the overall feel is lacking atmosphere. Still, it’s well worth the playing.
After the disaster that was Assault, I was fairly apprehensive about another large mission pack from an author I’d never seen before. Fortunately, my fears were, more or less, unfounded with this new release.
The plot to The Long Night is, at best, vague. There’s no story in the accompanying textfile and you seem to have simply arrived at some base, eighteen hours after the original accident, to do something. As I said, vague. Once the somewhat bizarre introduction is over with, however, the action starts and there’s little time to wonder about what you’re actually supposed to be doing.
The first few scenes are not especially encouraging in a visual sense but this proves to be fairly misleading too. While the looks of this pack are never going to set the world on fire, they’re generally tidy and even border on impressive at times. There’s the occasional misjudged piece of lighting – the fierce and over-used light flares near the beginning, for instance – but things are generally fine otherwise.
This unit’s real strengths lie in the gameplay. For a start, it’s a good challenge. The quite evil enemy placement is the main contributing factor and there are some nice mini-traps where Germano will draw your eye to one side with some set-piece or other and then suddenly spawn in an alien over in the other corner. The munitions are kept in pretty short supply near the start as well and these elements combine to create quite a difficult task. It’s not frustrating, though, at least apart from a couple of over-populated spots closer to the end, and it’s certainly enjoyable.
The author has also found space for numerous little scripted events to keep you guessing at almost every turn. I can’t say I saw anything hugely original but, again, it all went towards creating a great experience. There were various fights already in progress as I arrived and with things bursting or falling through walls or ceilings all over the place, the variety was good.
There are, of course, a few problems other than the uninspired visuals and the over-zealous enemy counts at times. The structure of the levels is not always great: the last few levels are all part of one large puzzle and there’s a lot of backtracking involved, especially if you don’t happen to select the right path from the three or four initially presented to you. It’s also rather confusing as to what you’re supposed to be doing, something that’s not really helped by the lack of any background story. The fact that there’s no story seemed a bit strange, in fact, considering that, as illustrated by the ending, the author obviously had some plot in mind. Nevertheless, some hints would have been appreciated.
Bearing in mind that this appears to be Germano’s first work, however, such criticisms are maybe a little unfair. He’s succeeded where most newcomers fail in that he’s created a set of levels that look reasonable, last a good while, and, most importantly, play very well. Other aspiring mappers could do a lot worse than to try and match this. There are mistakes and flaws but they’re generally pretty minor and definitely nothing serious enough to spoil the fun you’ll be having. With SPHL continuing to be served up in pretty meagre portions, this is well worth a look.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Monday, 24th January 2000 by Morgan.
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.
No need to replay it. I beat this more than ten times. It’s one of the best mods out there.
It’s pretty good but I found there wasn’t enough med-kits in the middle of the mod. I also encountered an issue when jumping over the broken bridge and landing on the barnacle line. After I shot the barnacle I was stuck for some strange reason. Still worth playing
A solid Black Mesa style pack that is all-around high quality and a pretty fun time. There’s a bit of potential frustration in the last quarter or so of the pack, since it’s not really clear what you should be doing.
The main fault I have with The Long Night, other than some confusion near the end, is the lack of story. You get a tiny bit of text setting the stage at the start, and no real information until the very end other than chapter names. Even the text at the end doesn’t really make for a good story, but oh well.
But overall I liked this pack. It’s a pretty fun romp though Black Mesa and it’s very well mapped, laid out, and nicely lit. The puzzles are pretty simple, and you rarely end up taking the direct route you think you should. There are plenty of out-of-the-way areas for exploration, and you’re generally rewarded with health or ammo.
The combat is pretty easy, though can get tough near the end. You have a wide variety of weapons but for much of the pack not much ammo. Even though I never felt defenseless, you might find yourself with a couple of you weapons out of ammo – you’ll just have to rely on weapons that aren’t typically your first choice.
In short: a pretty polished pack that doesn’t do anything really out of the ordinary but is nice to look at and pretty fun to play though. Recommended.
Quite a good mod that was fun to play for the most part but a lack of health at times was a bit annoying!
There was a reasonable look and feel to this one and it’s got the look of BM about it. The gameplay is not overly hard but the afore mentioned lack of health in places make some parts touch and go (but that may have been the authors intention)! As has already been indicated there’s nothing that makes this mod special but at the end of the day it’s fun to play and to me that’s what counts most.
Like others in the 100 this is not really for those who like hard gameplay, but it is worth playing.
was a very fun mod. at times the ammo was so scarce you had to really use your brains to find a winning combat solution. good stuff.
Ok so this is the best i’ve played so far in the week, is suprising actually because is work of the guy who made riot act whch is a really good mod and a must play for HL2 mods, I think that one is kind of classy, I say is suprising because here we have a mod of that author but for HL1!, and I have kind of the same feeling with riot act mod, and that’s really good mapping design and layouts, here we have a pplenety of maps with cool interesting paths and good battles altough I felt in some parts ambush by xenian aliens was abused by the modder, and in some other parts hallways felt too empty, overall was a good mod, and have a pretty BM feeling, so that’s good, some say it doesn’t have any environmental feeling but for me at least I felt I was playing into Black Mesa Again.
This was quite a good HL1 mod! Not too long, but hard enough in places that I took breaks. A little confusing here and there in certain passageways because there was no specific instruction or indication of what was needed. However, got it done.
Several parts were very familiar, from hl1, but nicely ‘different’.
Definitely a must-play, very smooth work here. Light on story, but well-paced in general.
This is a really well made mod.
This is worth playing. It’s enjoyable with several challenging moments although the majority is pretty easy. It’s relatively long, but there was never any stage where it got boring. The main reason I liked it though was because it was robust with very few bugs. It’s got both combat and puzzles in and I thought they were both pretty well done.
The difficulty was a little too easy for my liking. There were also areas where the lack of direction was a little frustrating. Another area where this mod could have improved was the story, because I feel it could have done much better. There was a lot of areas near the start where there was very little ammo and so you had to conserve what you had. On top of that I also missed the crossbow which was a little annoying.
There are also a few bugs in this mod, such as an area where you can go out of the map near the beginning, an invisible wall in the area with the explosives triggered by lasers/grunt and being able to get into the area with the spinning ball near the end. These are only minor however and won’t do any harm unless you haven’t saved in a while.
It’s worth playing and one of the very few in which you don’t have to noclip.
Probably it’s just an ordinary well made mod for most players, but for me it’s special, because it’s one of the first well made mods that I completed. It’s a great and long enough game with small filesize, which was important, because I had dial-up connection back then. Everything starts with an interesting cutscene, where Freeman is hiding from soldiers. This cutscene can be shown even in the old version of Half-Life, and that was also important for me, because I was using that version.
The design is beautiful, various and believable. The architecture is original, but has Black Mesa atmosphere. The battles are challenging, but not too much. It’s fun to come to turrets and break them with crowbar.
There are interesting scripted events, some of them are successful remakes of similar events from original Half-Life. But there also will be new, original events. Optional exploration is also present, and it is rewarded with supplies.
Unfortunately, there are some bugs. When the soldier blows up the bombs and runs away, we can follow him and get stuck. And that is not the only place where it’s possible to get stuck.
Nice touch: at the labs entrance we can take the scientist with us and he will help us out if we’ll be wounded.
Xen is quite interesting, albeit different from the Half-Life one.
Conclusion: this mod is impressive, because it’s original enough, but still true to Half-Life and Black Mesa.
Another Black Mesa map pack.This one has really no story to it.Combat is pretty easy until later on where it gets pretty hard.Also ammo is pretty limited,so you’ll have to other guns that you probably wouldn’t use.Worth a play.
Classic mappack with already everything important written about, so if you haven’t yet go play it! (unless you want a sophisticated story and puzzles)
Pro’s:
-Very cool combat action
-Good balancing – not too easy, but mostly fair
-Decent mapping, good lighting, sometimes nice architecture (also good-looking Xen section), but usually undetailed
-Some cool scripted events
-Secret areas with goodies
-Short tramride
-Good playtime
Con’s:
-Usual HL story, in the meaning of “none” – it’s just taking place 18 hours after the BM incident
-Almost no puzzles
-Sometimes empty rooms, often undetailed
-Therefore not that good BM atmosphere (that’s what I felt)
-Minor design flaws, such as some scripts that kill you
Conclusion: You want action? Pick this mod!
I definitely enjoyed this mod. It is fairly challenging due to a lack of health pickups and many enemies at certain points, but fair. I enjoyed the Black Mesa feel of it all.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Amazing mod.
The story is that you’re Freeman, and it’s 18 hours after the Resonance Cascade. You’re in some military basement, hiding behind some rocks. Though unfortunately, a guard found out you’re there (Did he smell you?) and he puts you in the sewers. So, the goal is to escape. Nothing really special here.
The combat was great. Maybe, in the last levels, it was TOO great.
The atmosphere was nice and the mod felt like a mini Half-Life, which was really sweet.
Definitely play this mod. No regrets.
Looks like a nice mod, only one problem for me. When he picks up the crowbar, then later the pistol, I cant cycle back to the crowbar. It simply is gone. Can someone help me with this please? This happens on a few other mods that I have tried to play, most all the mods work, its just a few that do this. Thanks in advance!
Have you tried selecting the weapon directly with the keyboard number?
Thats the way i always select weapons. It is some kind of glitch, cause it only happens on a few mods. this particular one is the one that comes to mind. Thanks, but its a little more complicated than that my friend. Its gonna be something in the files for the game im afraid!
Have you tried deleting or editing directly the config.cfg file?
i have tried to replace it with one that works in another mod. to no avail. Just tried infinate rift, thats another one that wont let me select. pick up crowbar, go through door, pick up 357, cant go to crowbar again. Yes, i have the keys selected correctly, i have about 40 mods in and these are some that just wont let me select.
Super strange. What about deleting it completely and letting HL re-create it?
Have not tried that, gonna give it a shot. nothing to lose! I must say, I am playing with a downloaded won version of half life, but everything seems to work fine on all other mods, with the exception of a few.
Nope, that didnt work. When you press 1 2 ect, there is simply nothing. no weapons menu at all.
Im left with the last weapon i pick up, and thats it.
running 1112 patch, so everything is good, and no hd packs.
So this is a WON installation? I wonder if that makes a difference. I know that the original file for this mod was released in 2000 but perhaps the file I have available for download has been updated for Steam and maybe the other ones you are having trouble with too.
That may very well be the case. I refuse to use steam, dont like it on my system, It eats up rec. and i have a fairly old machine. Perhaps its time to give up on the fix and play what i have!
okey dokie, enough of this, im gonna go play something that does work, thanks.
A kinda old but pretty solid mod, the difficulty is a bit uneven at the times but nothing that takes away from the experience, the mapping is great and there are some really good sequences here and there, overall, a very enjoyable mod, give it a try
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 35 Minutes
Good mod. I like that the mod gives a similar feeling to HL1. (ex. ‘Office complex’, ‘On the rail’ chapter of HL1) The combats are fun but a little bit tough, since there are not many health kits and ammo. Finding the routes is almost straightforward but some places are a little bit complex. I like the Xen part which uses the portal frequently. I enjoyed the mod!
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
Very long very hard, very tiring, too many ambushes and more ambushes and more of them. I would call this designer a master of ambushes. I think it would be nice he design a 100% ambush game where you 1 attack one enemy and then 100 more will spawn behind just to kill you while you running like a chicken backward in the corridor. The number of vortgaunts in his mod is quite high, and kill like 4-5 alien grunts in succession is quite rare to see as well.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour
Great action, but very poor item pickups.
In some parts, I had almost no Ammunition, and the Health pickups or Healing Stations were almost nonexistent.
I like the cutscenes but the story was okay.
I can call a good mod, but the detailing and the enemy positioning are not that good.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 30 Minutes