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Dystopia Patched, Aftermath Dated
urinal-cake writes "The popular Half-Life 2 Modification Dystopia has been graced with a highly anticipated update patch. Dystopia is the highly awarded Source modification whose development team was flown to the Valve offices to work on the game. The update patch contains two new maps, one based on breaking in to a missile installation and the other on infiltrating a highly guarded fortress. The update can be found at their website. Dystopia represents what a team of gamers can do with free tools and a lot of spare time." Relatedly, Gamecloud is reporting that Half-Life 2 Aftermath is slated for an April 24th release date.
I think Aftermath is going to kick ass. Yep, this is just my opinion as a gamer but Half-Life 2 was one of the few games of 2004 that really held my interest from the first minute until the ending movie. Not that long, not that hard ("Hard" difficulty should be VERY difficult IMO, shame most developers just use difficulties as a way of prolonging the game experience), but very very fun. If Valve can pull off the "fun factor" again for the expansion I expect to see it winning a lot of awards this year.
I've been playing Dystopia since their first demo release a few months ago, and I've got to say it's a nice change of pace from the "realistic" Source games like Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, not to mention the creative additions which make it far more interesting than most multiplayer FPS games. With all the cool cybernetic implants available for your player, you can be like Steve Mann with a minigun, invisibility, and the ability to turn yourself into a small nuclear explosive if you're on the brink of death! Oh what fun!
It's a good mod, and is very promising. Looks like this is going to be the new Valve golden-boy (seeing as what's being developed right now is the "demo"). Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it'd round out the realistic official mods for the game with something different.
Unfortunately, theres a lot of good players right now, so it is somewhat frustrating trying to learn the game and getting ganked 10 seconds out of the base.
Still, a good fresh idea for a mod, and one of the better cyberpunk pc game adaptations I've seen in a while.
Insert Sig Here
I think you're incorrect.
Aftermath is a single expansion for Half-Life 2, it'll be released in the shops in a box (AFAIK). However, Valve have said that episodic content is the future of HL2. An example of this is the new Sin Episodes that will be distributed via Steam - these are going to be "5 hour" downloads available in the next few months.
Also in the pipeline are episodic downloads for HL2, already suggested are episodes playing as Alex and featuring her robot, Dog. These most likely won't be available in stores (unless they release a collection of them further down the line) and will last a few hours (like you said, probably much shorter for competant gamers).
Just wanted to set that straight, Aftermath is a full length expansion pack, not just an episodic download. I haven't heard anything suggesting that, anyway.
Ah, I looked there but couldn't find the info. I apologise then, I'd always assumed with the amount of coverage it was getting that Aftermath was going to be a full expansion, and that the episodic HL2 content would begin after its release. It would appear I was wrong, I bow before your superior knowledge :)
Will Aftermath be free?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So that's April 24th 2007?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
and a lot of spare time
At least it pays off a LOT!