Lights, Camera, Distr-Action!

For many FPS players, their first-ever contact with modifications came to be Counter-Strike. A great portion will have come through a game of Team Fortress; yet there also exists a group of players who were educated by Action Quake 2. “Action,” Counter-Strike author Minh Le’s second project, had considerable influence especially on the development side of the modification landscape, pushing many hopeful groups and teams to incorporate more “action film” gameplay into FPS games (Gooseman is now working on Tactical Intervention).

Half-Life 1, for instance, had an excellent breadth of the aforementioned – The Specialists, Action Half-Life and The Opera to name a few. The sequel, nevertheless, has seen far fewer successful applications of the topos: The Specialists swear never to do a Source update, The Opera is long since dead. Therefore, it’s more than topical to mention two fresh Half-Life 2 –based projects that could help alleviate the situation on the platform.

First, Distraction was just released on the 24th and promises to be in the vein of The Specialists: 3rd person camera, slow motion, akimbos, bleeding and stunting. It’s always delightful to see a new team push out a playable release, and I would like to congratulate the team for the achievement. Nevertheless, the beta remains just that, with omitted levels, crashing bugs, missing animations, textures and sounds, and as such recommended for those who are willing to put the work in.

The team have quickly jumped in to patching the project, though, and a 1.1 update was released on the 30th, considerably improving on the weapon balance and playability. At the moment, Distraction comes with six reality-based levels that do contribute to the overall feeling, with dhl_escobar being the current highlight.

Second, Action Half-Life 2 was also surprisingly released for the EP1 version of the Source engine back in May of 2009, though with no original levels and little fanfare. Level-less and rather obscure, the modification has thus been quite the challenge for potential players to engage in. Therefore, the developers have recently chosen to open up development to all in the form of their latest Source 2007-based version of the modification. This can be acquired with the team’s “KetchUpdater,” which requires .NET 2.0. There even exists a fan-made tool for checking for currently available players.

The Orange Box builds come packaged, at the moment, with four levels (two of which are shared with Distraction; I fully expect to see more content developed simultaneously for both and shared between the two). Ministry of Action also host a directory for various levels that you can try – many Half-Life 2 Deathmatch maps are perfectly suited for a game of AHL2, and threads discussing suitable levels can be found in the game’s forums; In my mind, dm_stad_final and dm_tower_b42 are most excellent.

However, much like Distraction, both versions of AHL2 are still relatively unpolished; where the OB builds look and feel vastly better already, the EP1 version remains slightly more playable. To cite the developers, “It’s by no means done, polished or complete. It’s rough around the edges and in various other places, but so far we’ve been having a massive blast playing it, and we hope you will too.” These two projects may not have yet reached Steamworks-level professional quality, but after having played Action Half-Life 2 for quite a while now, I often find myself missing the stunt functionality in other similar games, testament to the concrete playability of both projects.

Finally, having two modifications that look, feel and play so much like each other is a very intriguing situation and very much a question of audience: Years before, players would often choose between AHL and The Specialists. Hopefully both these projects will be allowed to bloom – no easy task in a saturated marketplace!