BlackOPS for Half-Life: Fun little mod, hard to find name.

You know what I haven't covered in a while? A game mod. How about a game mod for Half-Life, one of my favorite games of all time? Sounds good.

I've always been fascinated by Half-Life's mod scene, which had some really creative stuff being made for it. Even to this day people are doing some outstanding work with the that 25-year-old game engine. But let's jump back to 2005, when Half-Life 2 was new. Let’s talk about Black Ops.

No, not that one.

Not that one either. We talked about that one years ago.

That's more like it. Third time was the charm.

BlackOPS (or Black Operations as it’s called in-game) is a Half-Life mod that covers the Black Ops soldiers, the reskins of the HECU soldiers initially introduced in Half-Life: Opposing Force. Released in 2005, BlackOPS was the work of three folks: Stephan “little_otis” Grabenhorst, Volker “Thrillhouse” Schreiner and Daniel “DeeGee” Grabenhorst, who mostly came from the German custom mapping scene.

By this time, Half-Life 2 had been released and the Source engine was starting to be one of the go-to engines to mess around with. Despite that, GoldSource -- the old Half-Life engine -- still had some legs in it, so much so that there were still mods being made for the seven-year-old game. Honestly, the Half-Life mod scene post HL2 is really interesting to me, so let's check it out.

(Anomalous materials, eh? I see what you did there.)

The mod starts with an exposition of the creation of the Black Operations squad, and mentioning the Black Mesa incident that happened in Half-Life. The protagonist, Declan Walker, is briefed upon his mission: Go to Metro City, find Dr. Gallagher and procure a special case he was holding onto. All while fighting aliens and eventually a rival military faction.

("Here, have some dessert: Lead!")

Armed with only a silenced pistol, Declan fights his way through various headcrabs and zombies through the apartments of Metro City. His journey eventually takes him to a subway, into the belly of a drug-addled club, into the obligatory sewer, before arriving in Chinatown.

("You're in a computer game, Max- er, Declan.")

Each major chapter is bookended with these comic panels explaining parts of the plot. Clearly the designers were big Max Payne fans, as the style of the comic panels complete with ominous music playing during these section become more apparent.

(Wouldn't this be rather non-intuitive in real life?)

While the core gameplay is identical to vanilla Half-Life, the mod does throw in a few additions. There are items – usually explosives, but sometimes wires and other important things – that Declan needs to pick up to make progress. That as well as sheets of paper or computers with keycodes the player needs to make progress.

(These guys need to improve their OPSEC, because if any random schmuck can find this out, no wonder they're losing!)

It reminds me of the classic Half-Life mod Poke646. Even the logo for the mod takes a cue from the Poke646 logo. Rather fitting, since Marc Shroeder, the lead designer of Poke646, is credited in the special thanks section.

(Hope you like ledge climbing! Thankfully this doesn't last too long.)

While the levels are fairly straightforward, there are some particular issues in the early levels of having to walk along an edge to get to the next area, which may not be easy to tell if you're not used to it. Never mind the fact that asking the player to inch along a ledge to make progress is bad level design, but thankfully these stop being a thing by the halfway point.

If you think the Max Payne style comics are merely a coincidence, the levels take a few pages from that Max Payne formula. At one point, Declan gets on a lift that he can move by pressing switches on each side of the platform, like a section from the first Max Payne game. Though, it's not the only game that takes inspiration for this mod. When Declan gets captured, he escapes through a prison that also feels a bit familiar…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIkyA_f56qs

(I can’t blame them, that Half-Life 2 stuff from 2003 looked pretty cool back then.)

Honestly, I find this charming. While this mod does reference other games, they’re not hitting you over the head about it. It’s a case of “if you know, you know.” and I think that’s kinda cool. Certainly better than using the cool, but stale textures of Black Mesa for the billionth time.

(I see what you did there, mod makers.)

I’ll refrain from spoiling any further, it’s a fairly short mod to play through, which took me about a couple hours to play. For a mod that was coming out post-Half-Life 2, it really shows that the mod scene for Half-Life was really shining, and would come out with other amazing mods that push the engine to its limits while having interesting storytelling and cool locales.

Normally that would be the end of the article. But what if I told you this got updated not once, but twice?

(Same locale, higher quality models... for some reason.)

The first one is BlackOPS Redux. This ports the mod to the Half-Life: REBIRTH code, adding new features and abilities previously unheard of for the Half-Life engine. The core story is identical, but the gameplay has significant differences: More high quality models, a medical syringe instead of the standard Half-Life medkits, the works.

(Just what this mod needed: Realistic movement to give even the most seasoned FPS veterans motion sickness!)

However, the mod has a lot of flaws. Due to updates to Half-Life over the years, the mod tends to crash the game unless you load the first campaign map in the console. Second, Redux tries to go for a tactical  shooter vibe, where the camera movement is more realistic. The constant jerking of the camera was very off-putting, so much so that I can imagine someone getting motion sickness problems playing this. I only got about halfway through this version before shutting it off, the movement system kinda ruined things.

(It's Payne!)

Thankfully, the second one is much better, and it brings us back to an old mod I covered years ago. Half Payne Black Operations is a mod-within-a-mod: With the help of one ZikShadow and using suXin's Half Payne as a base, BlackOPS became one of the few Half-Life mods to get this special treatment of adding one gameplay style to another. I’ve written about Half Payne before, you can check it out here.

(Gotta have those akimbo Berettas. Silenced too!)

The Half Payne version of BlackOPS does change a few things, though: We’re playing as Declan Payne, complete with occasional Max Payne comments from the various games, just like in Half Payne. Weapons like the silenced pistol can now be dual-wielded. The crossbow is replaced with a more appropriate bolt-action sniper. The mod even introduces the Ingrams from Max Payne and a full auto machine gun called the RPK, as a substitute for the M249 in vanilla Half Payne.

(Bullet time, akimbo Ingrams, shooting soldiers in a warehouse... feels like home.)

Adding in bullet time and shoot dodging really makes a big difference to the gameplay. While the original BlackOPS mod can be a bit too cramped to really do some of the iconic Max Payne things, it’s still fun to just climb up the steps in one of the later chapters and mow down soldiers in slomo with akimbo Ingrams. It’s very exhilarating.

(Now these feel like they fit the mod more.)

Half Payne BlackOPS wears the original mod’s Max Payne influences on its sleeve, using the gameplay and style of Half Payne on what would’ve been a solid but mostly forgotten mod. It made going through the mod again much more fun the second time around, though stuff like the RPK did break a lot of later fights. But that’s okay, I’m having fun, that’s really all that matters to me.

(So much for being subtle.)

BlackOPS as a mod is a pretty solid B-tier mod. It’s not among the greats like Poke646, but it’s a fun little time-waster if you wanted more Half-Life levels to shoot aliens and grunts in, which was all we wanted back then. Redux adds unnecessary additions that make it less fun, whereas Half Payne BlackOPS mixes the elements of Half-Life and Max Payne together into something outstanding and fun.

I do hope that little_otis and Thrillhouse did eventually keep on making stuff. Hopefully they’re in the actual game industry now. Though, I’m curious if they’re aware of the other versions of this mod. It’s probably gotta be interesting to see your work be remade not once, but twice, each with their own unique flair.

If you wanna play the original BlackOPS, RunThinkShootLive has the original mod here, as well as the later Redux mod (ugh). Both of these require Half-Life to run, natch. Since the original BlackOPS was a mod made before Steam was mainstream, the original mod doesn’t come with unique menu graphics, but don’t fret, it will play the mod just fine.

As for the Half Payne version, it’s a bit more complicated. You need the original Half Payne to run it, available here, then to play the BlackOPS mod, you need to download this and put it in a folder separate from Half Payne. This may seem tough, but I assure you it’s worth playing. Hell, you get two good mods for the price of one! Can’t beat that.

(Hey, what's this Doom 3 guy doing here)

Honestly, this is why I miss the mod scene: The concept of expanding a game beyond its original package to have seemingly infinite new places to mess around in is fun. It’s what keeps a game alive beyond the official content. It really feels like the modern gaming landscape is a walled garden where fun’s only allowed between certain parameters, and it sucks. It’s slowly getting better, with games like Fortnite introducing its Creative 2.0 and putting out some pretty bonkers stuff. But we need more of that, because the current landscape is kinda dull at the moment.

The days of people just making a bunch of custom stuff like the old days of Doom, Quake and Half-Life is gone, relegated to a small niche community these days. That’s kinda sad, really. Here’s hoping we can get back to those glory days sometime.