Half-Life: Absolute Zero
released on Apr 17, 2017
A mod for Half-Life
Half-Life: Absolute Zero is a fan-made modification that re-creates the original ideas and plans from the award-winning classic: Half-Life.
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(Edit 2: Unfortunately, Cobalt-57 has made the decision to cease production on Absolute Zero and will be delisting the mod from steam. If you intend to play the mod regardless, you can download it by pasting "steam://install/812440" in your web browser, or download the mod from the official ModDB page.)
(Edit: the bug where the medical cabinets would not work in Unforeseen Consequences has since been fixed. Thanks!)
I want to preface this review with this: I acknowledge that Half-Life: Absolute Zero is nowhere near a completed state. I am not reviewing Absolute Zero as a finished mod. I simply want to give the development team some useful feedback, as I understand that's very useful to an in-production project.
Firstly, I want to go over what I like about Absolute Zero. Overall, after around three hours of gameplay (though I didn't finish it, for reasons I will mention later), I can safely say that I would recommend Absolute Zero. It's a good mod, although it does have some noticeable issues that hold it back. The mod accurately recreates the early development concepts of Half-Life and it successfully implements many unfinished concepts in a way that feels natural, as opposed to incredibly forced like many other mods of its ilk. Visually, it's quite good looking, considering the intended art style and the age and limitations of the GoldSrc engine. Design-wise, Absolute Zero doesn't do much to change the pre-established Half-Life gameplay, though it doesn't need to, other than the addition of colored vials which give Gordon Freeman certain abilities (reincarnation after death, immunity to toxins). The level design (the levels that are completable, I mean) is great. Just like what Valve managed to pull off with the original Half-Life, the environments manage to feel like living, breathing areas while also being intuitively designed and most importantly, fun. The PantherEye is a great enemy, though unfortunately underutilized. Like every great FPS enemy, it has a certain pattern one needs to memorize to evade or kill the beast. The area it is introduced in particularly compliments the PantherEye's AI. The HECU Sergeant is another well-implemented enemy. It's certainly great to see more variety among the HECU marines, and the sergeant's windup for his minigun prevents the enemy from being too overpowered. The mod also delivers a very tense, often creepy atmosphere, which is always commendable, especially within GoldSrc. I particularly loved the area where the headcrab zombies would burst out of the walls. It made the map feel dynamic, and it made me feel a little more paranoid wandering those halls.
However, as I said earlier, Absolute Zero isn't perfect. It's got some serious issues that I hope can be patched out when the mod fully releases. Firstly, the mod is very buggy. Now, this is to be expected in an unfinished development build, though I figured it would be constructive to list what broke in particular. The health chargers in the earlier part of the mod often didn't work at all for me. They would play their animation, yet I wouldn't gain any additional health. The scientist (and to a lesser extent, security guard) AI needs some serious work. They often will not follow you despite the player giving them the explicit order to do so. There was a particular part where I tried and tried to get a scientist to use a retinal scanner, but he refused to. The guards are a little too aggressive, charging into the fray immediately and almost killing themselves. Speaking of the scientists, sometimes their voice lines will glitch out, looping infinitely. In the map a1a4f, the sewage door doesn't open, preventing progress, though from what I've read, the developers are well aware of that issue already. Sometimes, though infrequently, level transitions would break, leaving me in an infinite loop. On occasion, the game would just outright crash (something related to sound volume?). Shadows would sometimes glitch out, revealing hidden enemies, such as headcrabs hiding in the ceiling.
I just outlined all of the bugs and glitches I experienced in my time with Absolute Zero, however, there are some problems that I experienced that aren't due to a technical error. Firstly, the video settings have been downgraded from the original Half-Life. There is no anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, or vsync of any kind. I understand this may be an artistic decision, though I feel the mod would benefit from the option, as it is a little immersion-breaking to see the floor in front of me get increasingly less detailed the further I look. Moreover, I feel Absolute Zero would benefit from a field of view slider (though I understand this is a fault that Half-Life has as well). I managed to adjust the FOV via the command console, but small quality-of-life improvements go a long way. The mod could also benefit from a higher framerate, as for me the game was locked at 60FPS. Higher framerates (particularly 120FPS and above) make gameplay feel and look more fluid, reduce input latency, and may make screen tearing and stuttering less noticeable. From a design standpoint, movement feels slipperier than Half-Life, causing the crate puzzle to be unnecessarily more difficult. The section where Black Mesa is being bombed by the HECU is incredibly unbalanced and unfair. The bombs give you very little margin for error and make for a frustrating experience.
Overall, I would recommend Half-Life: Absolute Zero. It's a pretty good mod that does a lot of things right, even in such an early state. Just go into it knowing that it's not even close to completion, and you'll have a fun time.
(Edit: the bug where the medical cabinets would not work in Unforeseen Consequences has since been fixed. Thanks!)
I want to preface this review with this: I acknowledge that Half-Life: Absolute Zero is nowhere near a completed state. I am not reviewing Absolute Zero as a finished mod. I simply want to give the development team some useful feedback, as I understand that's very useful to an in-production project.
Firstly, I want to go over what I like about Absolute Zero. Overall, after around three hours of gameplay (though I didn't finish it, for reasons I will mention later), I can safely say that I would recommend Absolute Zero. It's a good mod, although it does have some noticeable issues that hold it back. The mod accurately recreates the early development concepts of Half-Life and it successfully implements many unfinished concepts in a way that feels natural, as opposed to incredibly forced like many other mods of its ilk. Visually, it's quite good looking, considering the intended art style and the age and limitations of the GoldSrc engine. Design-wise, Absolute Zero doesn't do much to change the pre-established Half-Life gameplay, though it doesn't need to, other than the addition of colored vials which give Gordon Freeman certain abilities (reincarnation after death, immunity to toxins). The level design (the levels that are completable, I mean) is great. Just like what Valve managed to pull off with the original Half-Life, the environments manage to feel like living, breathing areas while also being intuitively designed and most importantly, fun. The PantherEye is a great enemy, though unfortunately underutilized. Like every great FPS enemy, it has a certain pattern one needs to memorize to evade or kill the beast. The area it is introduced in particularly compliments the PantherEye's AI. The HECU Sergeant is another well-implemented enemy. It's certainly great to see more variety among the HECU marines, and the sergeant's windup for his minigun prevents the enemy from being too overpowered. The mod also delivers a very tense, often creepy atmosphere, which is always commendable, especially within GoldSrc. I particularly loved the area where the headcrab zombies would burst out of the walls. It made the map feel dynamic, and it made me feel a little more paranoid wandering those halls.
However, as I said earlier, Absolute Zero isn't perfect. It's got some serious issues that I hope can be patched out when the mod fully releases. Firstly, the mod is very buggy. Now, this is to be expected in an unfinished development build, though I figured it would be constructive to list what broke in particular. The health chargers in the earlier part of the mod often didn't work at all for me. They would play their animation, yet I wouldn't gain any additional health. The scientist (and to a lesser extent, security guard) AI needs some serious work. They often will not follow you despite the player giving them the explicit order to do so. There was a particular part where I tried and tried to get a scientist to use a retinal scanner, but he refused to. The guards are a little too aggressive, charging into the fray immediately and almost killing themselves. Speaking of the scientists, sometimes their voice lines will glitch out, looping infinitely. In the map a1a4f, the sewage door doesn't open, preventing progress, though from what I've read, the developers are well aware of that issue already. Sometimes, though infrequently, level transitions would break, leaving me in an infinite loop. On occasion, the game would just outright crash (something related to sound volume?). Shadows would sometimes glitch out, revealing hidden enemies, such as headcrabs hiding in the ceiling.
I just outlined all of the bugs and glitches I experienced in my time with Absolute Zero, however, there are some problems that I experienced that aren't due to a technical error. Firstly, the video settings have been downgraded from the original Half-Life. There is no anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, or vsync of any kind. I understand this may be an artistic decision, though I feel the mod would benefit from the option, as it is a little immersion-breaking to see the floor in front of me get increasingly less detailed the further I look. Moreover, I feel Absolute Zero would benefit from a field of view slider (though I understand this is a fault that Half-Life has as well). I managed to adjust the FOV via the command console, but small quality-of-life improvements go a long way. The mod could also benefit from a higher framerate, as for me the game was locked at 60FPS. Higher framerates (particularly 120FPS and above) make gameplay feel and look more fluid, reduce input latency, and may make screen tearing and stuttering less noticeable. From a design standpoint, movement feels slipperier than Half-Life, causing the crate puzzle to be unnecessarily more difficult. The section where Black Mesa is being bombed by the HECU is incredibly unbalanced and unfair. The bombs give you very little margin for error and make for a frustrating experience.
Overall, I would recommend Half-Life: Absolute Zero. It's a pretty good mod that does a lot of things right, even in such an early state. Just go into it knowing that it's not even close to completion, and you'll have a fun time.