Half-Life 2's been around since Kotaku was a bouncing baby blogglette—freshly hatched from its internet egg—but people are still making some brilliant-looking mods for it. Today, one with gut-wrenching atmosphere... and the ability to leap over buildings.
After two years in the making, Transmissions: Element 120 is out. It's a spooky, atmospheric single-player story set in the Half-Life universe after Half-Life 2: Episode 2. That's not to say, however, that it's a slow-paced stroll through narrative quicksand. There's still plenty of action, as evidenced by all the destructability and a goddamn strider marauding about way too close for comfort.
The mod's centerpiece feature, however, is a new variation on the gravity gun that "allows you to jump buildings and sustain large falls." So expect to get some serious in between stinky sewer skulks.
Transmission: Element 120 also aims to spruce up the now-creaky Source engine with some much-appreciated tweaks:
- Enhanced dynamic lighting
- Integrated Source Shader Editor 0.5 for enhanced post processing & lighting
- Improved support for complex physics structure
- Support for super massive physics objects
- Pre-processed AO
- Improved AI and group behavior on multiple AI types
You may or may not notice a lot of that stuff, but I'm all about improved AI. I'm glad massive physics objects are getting more support, too. I feel that they've been underrepresented in our society for far too long.
You can download Transmissions: Element 120 for free here. Its creators are also trying to get it onto Steam by way of Greenlight, so you can give them a thumbs-up if you like what you play.
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