Be the bad guy in this modification for Half-Life 2 : Episode 2 and step into the boots of a stranded Metrocop, left for dead in the abandoned City 10. Experience a time before the fall of City 17 - 11 months before the deployment of Gordon Freeman. Bring the brutality and chaos of the Combine regime to the hidden rebel sanctuary of City 10. Endure the bitter cold as you fight your way through rebel shanties, infested tunnels and subway systems. Survive the Combine plague, and reclaim the Combine stronghold known as ‘Pillar 10’.
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Hello fellow online user! You appear to have stumbled upon my review about Entorpy : Zero, a HL2 mod that consists of you playing as a regular Civil Protection Unit who has been stranded in the resistance infested streets and the zombie infested subway tunnels, along with a combine structure overrun by the Vortigaunts! Welcome, to City 10 and prepare yourself for a heck of a time, this mod will kick your ***.
Entropy : Zero is a mod you don't usually see on steam or out in the online community, playing as a unit from the combine, whether it be a soldier, elite or in this case a civil protection unit, its not very common. However, might I note, this is I believe the first combine perspective mod to actually make its way onto steam!
So, if you've been dwelling on the mod's steam page, you may have noticed the negative reviews. I don't blame them, this mod (like I said above) will kick your *** if you're not on your guard and not the first to react and shoot your weapon. Alot of areas need fixing up or polishing, but luckily the developer has not given up on the mod! The mod is soon to get patches and I believe some expansion! But enough of me rambling about... whatever I was rambling on about, let me get onto this review! :D
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Entropy : Zero is a very difficult mod, it consists on you playing as a pretty squishy CP just like HL2, so you will take hell of alot of damage if you're not carefull. It's not like regular HL2, being an orange tank being able to absorb alot of damage, the mod by default sets you on Hard difficulty (which isn't impossible to complete might I add and is the true way to play) and from what I've noticed is the only difficulty that has been modified to make you feel like a CP, so if you have 100% health, one bullet from an enemy smg will hurt, alot. It will make your health drop by 25% or so, very punishing (so if you have full health which is 100, you'll be on 75 health or so and that depends if you have armour or not). Don't worry though, if you don't want to die so much you can be one of those guys and set the difficulty to Normal or Easy which will assist you alot (might I add, alot of reviews over exaggerate the Normal and Easy difficulties, saying that its nothing different compared to Hard, however that's not the case. It's like if you were playing hl2 again, except you're fighting rebels and vortigaunts, which will do more damage compared to your regular soldiers and cps from hl2).
The mod also tries to teach the player not to rush into combat, you will get yourself killed very very quickly if you do so. You gotta stay low, get behind cover and shoot whatever. This is something alot of players do, which is rush into combat and then complain that the mod is too hard. You're suppose to think about what you're doing and how you're going to avoid getting yourself killed instead of blindly and thoughtlessy rushing in to kill the enemy. You gotta play the mod carefully.
Entropy : Zero has alot of cool things added into it, including nightvision/metrovision, a manhack weapon (which allows you to deploy manhacks), a voice for the player's character and new music, along with other things that I didn't mention.
There is a section in the game which was super difficult for me (that was on my first full playthrough of the mod on hard, its now not as hard now that I know what to do, etc) and that was Chapter 3 - Low. I not only on the very first map of that chapter have to compete with zombies and headcrabs, but also had to compete with my fps and that was on the very first map of that chapter! Might I add while I'm on the topic of fps problems, I don't think the mod is well optimized, you will experience performance issues sometimes and sometimes you won't. Anyways, I died so many times on this chapter, on the very first map, that I need to take a breather, take a break. I came back, died a couple times and then finally got to the next map which had much better performance. And then came what I found to be the most frustrating part of the mod, the Stalker escort mission.
I'm starting to reach the character limit for moddb, so if you want the rest of the review you can go to the link here: Steamcommunity.com
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Anyhow, I enjoyed Entropy : Zero in most areas, it was quite a different experience compared to regular old HL2. I recommend this mod to those who are ready to get their *** kicked and are up for a challange! But I do not recommend this mod to a regular ol' joe who is expecting something like HL2. The mod is very hard, and is meant to be very hard. I give this mod, in its current state, a 7/10.
The gameplay is pretty damn awful at times, I must say. Either it puts you against enemies with nearly 100% accuracy that deal insane ammount of damage, forces you through a stealth sequence in which detection means almost instant death, as you can't avoid turret fire (you can't even disable some of them anyway) and you keep getting detected all the time, as HL2's ai is obviously not designed for stealth, or makes you escort a stalker through pitch-black corridors full of zombies with no nightvision.
Maps are full of annoying invisible walls but at one point I could crawl under a train until I got to a black wall at the end of the tunnel, also becasue I had no idea where to go.
Difficulty is pretty high, probably to help the feeling of being a random CP, but it gets incredibly frustrating, instead of challenging (like in case of C.A.G.E.D.), when dealing with rebels and vortigaunts shooting you from across the map, especially during the final boss fight. Again, the mod does no job at telling you what to do at times.
The already infamous stalker escort sequence is the best example of what's wrong with Entropy: Zero's design. First off, you are unable t ouse your nightvision and have to rely on stalker's light and flares. It doesn't help much in cases when zombies just spawn behind your back and you just can't see them. There's also a new variant of fast zombies, which was made speciffically for this sequence, as they never appear again after nor before that part of the game, and the only difference is that these are made dark grey, to make them harder to spot in darkness. Obviously, I ended up cheating my way through this part, just as I did with the stealth sequence.
Another bug, this time during final boss battle. Aside from ridiculous difficulty, there's also that thing, that if you just vaporize the final boss using AR2's energy ball, the NPC will die, but the fight itself will continue indefinitely, until you die.
I don't really have much problems with the story, mostly becasue there is little story to begin with, but there's one moment, when a fellow CP you rescue from rebel outpost betrays you and turns out to be Barney undercover. And here's the question: if he was Barney all along, then why were rebels even holding him in a cell?
I liked the use of Valve's voice lines and some of the protagonist's lines themselves. The ending was awesome too.
Overall I didn't have much fun with it, but it atleast feels pofessional and has *some* good things about it. I had some other things to point out that I already forgot, but I think that's enough, atleast for now. Definitely not the best choice if you want to play a Combine.
Waiting, and hoping, for an update that'll fix atleast some of these issues I described.
So recently I've been using a hammer and I've been having problems with it. Instead of actually trying to figure out what the problem is, I just decided to go replay Entropy Zero for the millionth time and write this review. I remember when this mod came out, it was an amazing experience. Entropy Zero is an interesting case for me because every time I play it, my opinion somewhat changes or I find more cons about the mods. I mainly am talking about the steam release here, I don't know if anything is different with the mod DB release or even if it was updated or not.
Most people like to say this is half-life 2's version of opposing Force or that it is opposing Force 2. What do I think? I think the concept is an expansion pack idea made by Valve, not so much the execution though. You can clearly tell that it was made by just one guy, Breadman, which isn't always a bad thing.
The story is interesting, exploring a new city that pretty much predicts covid-19, playing as a cool protagonist that talks way before Alyx did it (except Decay) and many other more plot points within the mod. Overall, the story I like a lot. Though I wish there were voice actors or something so it wouldn’t be limited. But I get it, it was made by only Breadman. The graphics do look beautiful, even if everything is literally just blue or has a blue effect to it. The gameplay is fun as hell, guns are impactful and there are new weapons in it. This is one aspect that I felt was missing from Half-Life 2 and it is what makes Half-Life 1 more Superior imo. The soundtrack is really good and an awesome listen, though I think these tracks were already existing remixes and original tracks (mostly), but it is still a great tone.
However, every time I replay this EZ1, I find more bad things to talk about and more glitches with the game. So much so that it really starts to show that it was made by one guy. Don’t get me wrong, it won’t change my thoughts on the mod because the gunplay is really impactful. It kind of surprises me because Breadman now has a team and they could do a complete overhaul or a massive update for EZ 1. Like that training course idea that Breadman made, I would really enjoy playing that level and seeing his take on it. I mean they could add more levels, retweek the weapons etc. Not to say that they haven't done this with the steam release already, but they are more on the small updates side of things mostly. I am guessing they are putting all of their effort into EZ2.
One thing I cannot get over with this mod is how bad the level design is. I'm not saying that breadman isn't capable of it, but half of the mod I don't know how I was supposed to figure it out on my own for a first time playing. I guarantee you that on your first playthrough, or anyone else's, you probably looked up what to do. Every time I talk to someone who played this mod or watch somebody on stream, they never are able to figure it out on their own. Like there are these laser puzzles that you have to solve, yet I see most people just take an AR2 and block the laser (which is not what you're supposed to do).
I'm a little disappointed with the new weapons. Don't get me wrong I love them and the new tweeks to the old ones, but the new weapons aren't that useful: Manhacks are almost invincible to the point of it being funny (you can't even kill your own and have TOO MUCH health), the stunstick is a weapon I almost never use (thanks to a new update it's not just a reskin crowbar anymore), and the new AR 2 takes the show in a new form of an LMG (which is awesome). I just feel like there aren't any unique weapons here.
Imo, after low, the mod just keeps getting worse and worse. Pointless mechanics, a Doom 3 inspired escort (not as bad as people make it out to be), dark environments for no reason, poorly designed boss fights etc. Seriously though, you get a virus in this mod and it could have just been removed entirely and nothing would change: in my latest playthrough of EZ1, it happened once throughout my WHOLE session (when I was introduced) and it never came back. Also, this mod is really short, for me it took about 50 minutes exactly. Which is fine by me since I like short games.
EZ1 is kind of like Nightmare House 1 to me, the seeds Left behind to make a sequel are where it's really at. Entropy Zero is far from awful even if it has its moments, it is still a fun mod to play and time killer. A 7 feels about right to me, I gave it an 8 a long time ago, but I feel like a high 7 is more fair then being like everyone else and saying "ThIS m0d iS AWESOME! Op4 2z!!!" Again, don't get me wrong, the mod is pretty awesome and I still recommend it without a doubt. What you should be on the lookout for is Entropy Zero 2 because it will be beyond amazing.
Steam review I made: Steamcommunity.com
YouTube video I made (it's kind of cringe to me a little nowadays, my points still stand): Youtu.be
game made me go wowie zowie
This Is Nice mod For Half life 2
The first proper HL2 Combine mod. This one is a personal favorite of mine. I highly recommend this.
Keep movin` only forward!
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Amazing.