A sequel to the first Entropy: Zero. This is a significant improvement all around! It's still using Half-Life 2 as a framework, so there's some stuff inherent to that, which I just don't care for. But all things considered, this is a fairly decent mod, with some rougher bits here and there. As someone who dislikes Half-Life 2, I will acknowledge that I do think this is more fun than Half-Life 2 itself. Stuff like being able to shoot while zooming in, or the Xen Relay Grenades, can be fun to utilize.

Better than the first game in every conceivable way.

The details are so meticulously crafted to ensure the player is constantly engaged and knows what they're supposed to do. Visual cues—whether it be consumables or enemies—are abundant, and the use of color to draw your eye is present in the pathing of almost every junction. Dangerous hazards are annotated quickly, and interactable objects are highlighted or obvious in function. The world itself is sprawling and gorgeous, flush with environmental storytelling, and the use of vistas in the outdoors sections to let the player know their next destination is nothing short of how Valve does it; perhaps even better.

Combat is steady and gripping, with new weapons in your arsenal preparing you for lengthy encounters that purposefully serve the story. Most arenas are oppressive and require attentiveness, yet the pacing and fragility of enemies makes sure you aren't overwhelmed. The addition of squads to command is neat from a combine perspective, but like in Half Life 2 it makes almost no difference. It's easier to kill things yourself than to extend combat and risk injury by tactically designating unreliable NPCs.

The story is pretty good. The focus on delving into the psyche of Bad Cop and Clone Cop rather than focusing solely on the Mossman mission was a great decision, and the timeline of events is believable enough to fit into the official lore. A subtle detail I liked is Clone Cop never directly mentioning what the big corporate secret was to Bad Cop, because it doesn't matter what the secret was to either of them, and they know that. Only that they could get their hands on it and make use of it.

The only major issues are the amount of flavor dialogue that 3650 spouts at random, which is meaningless enough to take away from when he's actually saying something important. Wilson remedies this to an extent by chiming in on things the player ought to know, but this assumes you went to the trouble of bringing Wilson with you, which leads to something I wish was in the base game; a Wilson backpack. He's good for stopping bullets or explosions and has sections of the game dedicated to moving him (unlike the gnome in Episode 2), but he gets caught on geometry a frustrating amount. At the very least, supply caches that can be opened only by him are placed the chapters, rewarding you for bringing him.

Overall, easily trumps any Valve Half Life experience.

bad boy meets good bot
7,5/10 - Length
7,5/10 - Enjoyment
7,5/10 - Story/Experience
8,5/10 - Originality
6,5/10 - Gameplay

Score = 7,5/10

An awesome community made expansion for half life 2. The level design throughout the whole thing was consistently great, bad cop I thought was going to be goofy at first but he was actually a pretty enjoyable protagonist and had some funny lines and I also loved the story and its integration with that “other valve game” that’s done it a tasteful way that doesn’t make it seem like a cringe fan fiction.

The biggest issue I thought of while playing this was the voice acting for the rebel radio guy sucks lol

This was a blast, probably the best mod ever made for a game. The premise inmediately reminded me of the gearbox half-life 1 games and it blew them out of the water.

Entropy: Zero adds a lot of new features and has a really good story and characters. The story reminded me of a few sci-fi movies, the 2009 movie 'moon' in particular. It also elaborates on the Half-Life plot in a few unique ways. I really liked the mix of the Portal and Half-Life. The 'Plan C' section of the game can fuck right off, though.

It's free and I wholeheartedly recommend everyone to give it a try. The game isn't that hard, so I would recommend playing it on Bad Cop difficulty.

Talk about aiming for the fucking moon in scope. After the uninspired, generic, and frankly aimless first mod, I honestly did not expect to have such an amazing time as I did with its sequel.

This HL2 mod is one of the most ambitious that I've seen since Black Mesa, and its a delight from start to finish. Everything from the combat, music, and visuals is an absolute treat and is a triumph of the modding community. However, the main element that really hooked me was the story and characters. Never have I ever been as attached to the characters in any mod before as I was in this one, and the narrative was a really fun fanfiction of a post Episode 2 world.

My only issues is that the middle of the mod drags a bit with the final Mossman chase, and I feel the Wilson plotline at times felt like it could have been expanded on a bit more. Also, some of the voice acting and jokes can be pretty distracting (the rebel on the radio's voice.....), but Im willing to be a bit more lenient about that stuff since its by such a small development team. Either way, I would die for Wilson and the true ending post scene made me almost cry.

Easily one of the best pieces of Half-Life media, managing to not step on the toes of canon, not go too far into its own stories, not shift the tone too hard, and doubles down on all the things that made the peak moments of the series.

Weapons are pretty similar to the set-up in HL2, mostly reanimated and rebalanced, my only major criticism is that a lot of the roster is wasted on 3 AR/SMGs that play very similarly, and are all insanely strong, typically 1-tapping most common enemies to the head, but I never found that I was too often filled with ammo, as the more survival horror ammo economies mean you're always going to be rotating through your loadout, the kick is also a great addition that plays really well with the physics sandbox, and in over-all execution I prefer it over the Gravity Gun, the Xen Grenade was also a really creative idea, although I found its more common uses lacking and enjoyed it more when used with puzzles, or in the final boss fight to spawn in a bunch of enemies to help you take him down.

The levels are over-all really great, but it starts off with quite possibly the worst by far, just running around Nova Prospekt as you dump grenades in holes, but from there it's incredibly fun, especially the levels that take inspiration from the route Episode 2 and Epistle 3 were heading for, by incorporating Aperture Science test chambers that feel like they could be straight out of a Portal mod.

Enemy design was a bit lacking, but HL2 and mods for it don't really rely on it for the enemy design, and are more of scene setters, but I did find the temporal crabs interesting, and the large zombies (presumably inspired by Jeff in Half-Life: Alyx, especially in their first appearance where you have to not be spotted by not making too much noise) were a lot of fun in most scenes they were in.

It even manages to pull off some fun boss fights, something the original Entropy: Zero struggled incredibly with.

Another thing it does better than the original is have an actual enjoyable story and characters, rather than an edgy punisher wannabe protagonist gunning down rebels as the only thing he adds to the story being insults to said rebels, only to have his teeth kicked in when a canon HL2 character shows up, Walker and his clone have an interesting dynamic in practice being a method of development for Walker's character, the protagonist being an emotional development, and his AWOL counterpart, being awareness of the reality of his situation with the Combine after the events of the first game, and the futility of trying to appease them.

Not sure why they had to make every other piece of dialogue a meme though, it really hurt the dialogue.

Over-all, this is a must-play for any Half-Life fan, and probably my second favorite Half-Life piece of media, coming right behind Half-Life: Alyx.