you can PLAY the demo of the one I suggested.
i would like a mod that is within the half life universe preferably but if a mod that is in the non half life universe catches my eye that i like then i would take it
Okay then, let’s do this thing.
GoldSource mods. To install these, drop the folder that the mod is in, into your half life folder. Provided that the goldsource mod is properly patched for steam, when you restart steam, they will show up in your games list the same as if you had installed a source mod into the sourcemods folder:
Azure Sheep with the Steam Patch and the Super Definition Pack - Some people claim it as what Blue Shift should have been, but I liked Blue Shift, so I can’t say I agree. It plays fast and loose with some HL1 cannon, but also manages to tie into portions of the game from HL1, Op4, (I think Blue Shift too) and even another mod called Point of View (I’ll touch on that later) There’s a really frustrating section where you lose your weapons, and I found the end of the game to be particularly brutal. Both of them are such primarily because it’s not entirely clear what methods you are supposed to use to fight and you have to put yourself in direct danger while trying to discover those means.
Point of View with Steam Patch - This one is great if only for the variety of playing as the “other side.” It really takes a LOT of liberties about how the Vortigons and the Nihilanth function, but not badly. It also ties in with Azure Sheep prominently, which I recommend playing before hitting this one.
I also found it particularly difficult to aim without the crosshairs, which are off by default. This is particularly problematic when you consider that shooting your energy weapon is actually your primary means of recovering health. The crosshairs can be turned back on by pulling up the developer console and typing “crosshair 1” (or maybe crosshairs, it’s been a while) you might need to have sv_cheats active to change that, but it’s only needed the one time and it’s well worth it if you’re getting frustrated early on.
Half Life: Uplink Extended - This mod is actually a recreation of the demo that Valve did for Half Life, but cleaned up significantly. Any time I tried searching for Uplink, it always led me to a standalone WON version that looked horrible. I think the author of this mod also extended the gameplay a bit past the original ending but I’m not totally sure on that mark. Either way it’s definitely worth playing, if only to see some of Valve’s history.
They Hunger Trilogy with Steam Patch - This mod is a full conversion, and possibly the longest mod I’ve EVER played. It spans some 40+ chapters, and is probably even longer than HL1 in terms of gametime. Despite its massive size, it still manages to deliver unique and interesting maps and clever puzzles throughout, decent storytelling(even if does pull on cliche story elements) and an appropriately epic boss battle.
It starts out pretty easy, but by the 3rd section it gets downright brutal. It’s a horror themed mod, but it’s more cliche and cheesy than actually scary, but it still had me on edge throughout much of the game. I actually shot and killed a mission critical npc at one point because he surprised me.
USS Darkstar - Instead of being on earth, you’re now on a zoological research spaceship with numerous alien lifeforms on board to be studied. It’s well worth the playthrough though, and has some of the most interesting gameplay elements I’ve seen both from GoldSource AND source games. I’m pretty sure this was rated one of the best Goldsource mods EVER.
The Trap with Version1.2 patch - Essentially HL1’s answer to Portal, there’s no portal gun, but you’ll get access to most of HL1’s arsenal in order to deal with much the same scenario; a whole series of unique and interesting levels that are almost purely mental puzzles. There’s plenty more combat compared to portal, but the use of enemies is mostly to act as dangerous obstacles to deal with, rather than actually being the focus.
There are two points of warning about this mod: First of all, it was created recently, and does NOT go easy on the graphics. I normally run HL1 and all my other Goldsource mods at 1440x900 OpenGL mode and 32bit color. For Trap I have to bring my settings all the way down to 640x480 Software mode and 16bit color to get an even halfway decent framerate. Of course, I need to run my source games in DX8.1 to get a decent framerate on those, so you might have better luck than I did.
Second of all, THIS MOD IS HARD. It challenges both your skill and your puzzle solving skills. I was able to complete it myself without any help, but I think about 90% of the comments I’ve seen for this mod have consisted of people asking for help with at least one of the levels. I myself have actually played this mod, beaten it, then gone back to play it again and STILL had levels that I couldn’t remember what I needed to do to beat them, requiring me to discover the solution all over again.
Sweet Half Life - I’m very dual minded on this mod. This is almost certainly a case where the author pushed their modding abilities to their very limit, there are numerous cases where scripted sequences might go bad and result in something that needed to happen to progress in the game not happening, but when the scripted sequences do work, they work brilliantly. This mod actually has a divergent path, so you’ll want to play the game twice (or at least one and a half times, if you leave a save point to backtrack to at the proper point. Hint
There are also places that have bad voice acting, at least one npc model that doesn’t fit the HL1 style AT ALL, and it doesn’t protect you from getting into areas that you can get trapped in at all, but I think the various amusing skits and classical sci fi references along the way make the game well worth putting up with the few minor niggling details.
One point of note is that the beginning has a sequence where you have to protect a scientist from a Garg without any weapons at all, however the game doesn’t give you any hints at all that you need to protect the scientist except by possibly shutting down the game when he dies and saying “game over” (it doesn’t even give you a “failed to preserve mission critical personnel”) Knowing this in advance should help make that sequence far less frustrating.
Decay - this is actually a port of the PS2 coop game that came with Half Life. The easiest way to play this game is via LAN with a friend, but it is possible to set up an internet coop game using Dedicated Server through steam. It can also be played with just 1 person, but you have to use the g key to switch back and forth between the two players, so it’s really not easy. There also isn’t any way to save. If you die or restart, you’re back at the beginning of whichever level that you’re on. However, as you beat each level, your progress is saved, so you can access any level that you’ve unlocked. Also, the method to unlock the final bonus level where you play as Vortigons that was from the PS2 version still works in this version.
That’s about it for GoldSource mods. There are quite a few others like Deliverance, Someplace Else, Smart Decoy, Induction, Edge of Darkness, Poke646, Poke646:Vendetta, Operation:Nova, Redemption and Half Life:Zombie Edition, but they don’t stand out to me quite as much as the others. Even though they didn’t stand out to me, they’re still worth playing if you have the time.
I’ll get into mods for HL2, Episode 1, Episode 2, and even Portal if you’d like some suggestions for that, another day. These should keep you busy for now. Heck, I should probably have most of my source mods organized before you even get through They Hunger.
This was the first Half-life Mod I played, and I have to agree with you, it was a great one. Especially since it included Mr. Friendly and the Kingpin 
Overall, not the best mod, but basically what you said, a very, very, very good one.
dear esther for hl2
oh, I forgot to mention that the uninitiated might not realize how to install goldsource games. Unlike Source games, which only need dropped into the Sourcemods folder, Goldsource games need to be dropped into your half-life folder.
Oh god, don’t just recommend Dear Esther without saying anything about it. If you actually enjoyed the mod then you need to at least let people know what they’re getting into.
Dear Esther doesn’t have any gameplay, it’s a slightly creepy (not spooky creepy, just slightly unsettling) semi-interactive story (you can interact with some objects, and depending on what routes you take can change the order that the various sections of narrative are told in, but nothing you do will really have any overall effect) The only thing you really do is walk around while the story gets told to you, with the map often reflecting the occurrence of the events that the story describes.
To be honest, it’s extremely BORING from a gameplay perspective, but from an artistic stance it’s a very interesting experiment in what the Source engine can be used to do.
so far I have sweet half life,they hunger,azure sheep,POV, and sven co op. all of which I have yet to really get into
To put it in a way that doesn’t sound nearly as boring:
If you like a game with heavy action and gameplay, you should probably avoid this one. However, if you are looking for a short mod with some nice scenery, and a thought provoking audio track and storyline, it’s definitley worth checking out.
Uh… mods… I can name some Portal ones but that’s about it:
- Portal Flash Pack – It doesn’t have an uber storyline, but it’s got a whole bunch of challenging and enjoyable maps.
- Portal: Prelude – Better storyline, and again great maps.
I haven’t really found any mods that jumped out yet. I enjoyed Dear Esther and the Radiation 1 and 2 mods, but I won’t go into those since they create enough trouble as it is and Dear Esther has already been explained.
css hardwired I have that mod, you play as a Gordon freeman clone it’s quite fun.
Dear Esther has the atmosphere of a stuffy novel, the audio sounds like a stage actor rehearsing but it is strangely gripping. The environments are a bit choppy in places but overall the game has a surprisingly strong look going for it despite being mostly the re-arranging of half life 2 resources. It can be completed in minutes and has some legitimately good writing at display- it’d be worth blowing the time, no reason not to.
SPOILERS.
the ending was a bit of a let down in the reveal- there wasn’t much of a twist in the third act of what went on and it wasn’t very well contextualized, did the guy go crazy? did he write all of that crud on the walls and the cliffs on a bum leg? if not him then who did all that? though in most cases the mystery of what is implied or what gets left unanswered is an appealing thing, but here it sort of felt like it hinged on something a bit wider than the scope of it’s parts and just stopped.
It’s an interactive form of a pretty good short story, whatever I can say about it as a game, in that department you really can’t say anything since it’s exists for the sake of the story, it’s just half life 2 anyways, what -would- be there to say.
All in all it’s an A-.
it also has a few different versions of each bit of narration and randomly picks one of them so to get the full story youd have to play it through a few times
I’m assuming as much that they didn’t have a few different versions of the ending. If they do- I’d both like and hate that. I usually tend to hate multiple endings since as a plot element it sort of just takes a shit on the concept of finality and resolution.
However, I’d be curious.
Ugly, as in “not well made…” Or “a property of a person or thing that is unpleasant to look upon and results in a highly unfavorable evaluation”?
Right now I’m playing through fakefactory’s cinematics mod v3.05. I got it primarily because it fixes the gamepad bug in HL2 where the vehicles reverse the joystick anytime you try to drive something. The higher resolution textures are actually quite nice, and don’t even cause my framerate any noticeable hit, however I had to completely remove the ‘sounds’ folder, as well as getting rid of the ‘materials/models/barney’ and ‘materials/models/gman’ folders (they made Gman look way too normal). Most importantly was getting Alyx’s original character models back; some of the 18+ stuff was fun in a ‘hurhur’ way, but completely messed up the feel of the game.
I’m still busy tweaking things so they’re more like the original HL2. Some of the textures just annoy the hell out of me, and the gameplay has been entirely screwed with compared to the original. It’s mostly just a matter of tracking down what exactly needs fixed at this point.
NeoTokyo is an incredibly well-polished tactical team shooter with a lot of depth, and I would reccomend it to anyone with source.
Two really good multiplayer mods for HL2 are Goldeneye: Source and Perfect Dark: Source.
This.
Plus I was going to suggest “They Hunger” but Grey Acumen already covered that. As well as Azure Sheep.
Poke646 is another great HL1 mod I remember playing years ago, they added their own weapons, character models, etc. Very well done, if memory serves me.
Nowadays I barely have enough time between school and work to play through a game once, let alone enjoy modifications of those games. I need a gaming vacation 
K, so where do you extract for the Super Definition Pack, because I tried it twice on the mod and on Half-Life, and neither of them worked. For that matter, where do you extract any skins for Half-Life and its expansions/mods?
For HL, it’s valve/models for models valve/sounds for sounds, ect.
For mods, it’s [modfolder eg. Cstrike for CS]/models /sounds, ect.
So here’s the deal: When I extract to those locations on HL, nothing happens, but when I did it on OP4 in the corresponding location, it did work. I have the official HiDef pack on HL, so does that negate any skins I try to download?
Edit: When I use the Super Def Pack for HL, only the GUI, HUD, some sounds, and certain gibs and effects are changed, as well as health\ammo items, but no player models or weapon models. When I use the Opposing Force Redux pack for OP4, everything works. Is there a console command I need to enter or something?
Super Def Pack: https://www.moddb.com/mods/diamond-half-life-final
Opposing Force Redux: https://www.moddb.com/mods/opposing-force-redux
Any helpful comments would be greatly appreciated. I don’t like my Half-Life looking like it’s from a decade ago (hence Black Mesa)