[map] Joutomaa

This is a a discussion topic for the map "Joutomaa" by Devath which can be found here

Map description:

Joutomaa

Half-life 2: Episode Two modification

Enter the mind of Filip Valkas, who lost his parents in the Seven Hour War, and take your revenge on your Combine captors in a new story centred on the Half-Life Universe. Pick up your own crowbar and force your way out of Citizen Containment Zone 19, and lead in the uprising against the alien agressors.

Features Include:

A brand new story taking place in the Half-life universe.

The stunning graphics of the Source engine.

Additional music and voice actors to enhance the playing experience.

Character backround

Filip Valkas

Age: 31

Family status: dead

Filip was born and bred in the countryside before the portal storms began. After losing his family in aftermath of Seven hour war, he was forced to move into citizen containment zone 19.

Years later, Filip makes the difficult decision to join the Human resistance in order to help smuggle forbidden goods, like clean water and food, into the city and organize the underground resistance. Soon after, he becomes the political prisoner of the Combine.

Map screenshots:

WOW, great job! This is an inspirational addition to HL2 for us want to be's. Thank you.

I played through it and I gotta say, the quality is there!

This SP mod is well-made and well-paced. It re-uses areas intelligently, and obviously has good planning and playtesting, as the gameplay and environments don't get boring or repetitive.

The voice acting and scripted sequences are a must now IMO for SP levels. I may not have been able to follow why I was there, or where I was if it weren't for the characters talking to me directly. I think they drove the story along quite nicely.

I will say though, that this mod didn't follow the gameplay conventions of HL2 in that, halfway through the end of the game, it's like the health packs stop. Usually in HL2, they'll place small health close together and not far apart. There wasn't any health (except the stuff dropped by fallen Combine) leading up to some of the big fights. And because of this, I died often towards the end. It was way too hard because I was working with 10 health or less. I managed to get by after many attempts on the harder parts and I think I finished the game at like 33 health.

Other than that though, this mod really put you in the mood, and the beginning was very fun to watch. It was very, very well scripted, and the Gman's voice was done really really well. After hearing it at the end, I didn't notice it wasn't the original.

Thanks for uploading here! I enjoyed playing it!

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I just finished this mod, and I must say I was very impressed! Near flawless job capturing the atmosphere and gameplay of halflife 2. I assume you plan to continue this mod? I hope you do - looking forward to more of it. Bravo!

I just finished this, and Ive gotta hand it to you in the atmosphere department. If I ever go back and play hl2 sp it's always in the 'canals' so it's a nice extension of that without being too similar. I can only imagine the hours spent on this, as I don't have the patience or the time to author single player, so many thanks for a Sunday morning adventure!

It's too bad there isn't some better AI for this platform, as surviving is really only a matter of how much is thrown at you at once, but that's neither your fault nor a fair comparison to multiplayer. I actually liked the lack of HP, more in line with an HL1 ethic, but still was puzzled by having other types of pickups being plentiful.

A couple of technical issues: For some reason on my 2-speaker system the ( very well-done ) voice acting was abnormally quiet and difficult to discern. Especially Gman at the end with the music going, all but inaudible. Were you exclusively playtesting in X.1?...And there was a one-time crash but who knows what that was.

And finally I have to bitch about the install procedure, I figured it all out, but man what a pain. Again not your fault but you shouldn't need to burrow down into mulitple dir's to do it. And then when I started up EP2 I wasn't entirely sure I was going to get the mod via 'new game' or restart ep2. Suggest a blatant INSTALL_README for noobs in any further iterations. Speaking of which, nice job on the open ending, I look forward to seeing that hunter next time!