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'It's time to tell the story of the villain.'
Sasha: Isn't every villain a hero in their own story?
Mitchell: ..Not in this one.
Mitchell: ..Not in this one.
Hunt Down The Freeman Memes Video
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Hunt Down The Freeman is an infamous Half-Life fangame. It was released on Steam on February 23, 2018 after a few years of development by Royal Rudius Entertainment - a core team of 5 people with up to 50 others assisting them throughout development, led by Berkan Denizyaran. It became controversial even before release, due to allegations of using bots to get through then-active Steam Greenlight, suspected use of stolen or store-bought assets, and the practice of using YouTube personalities for most of the game's voice acting.
The story places you in the shoes of an HECU Marine named Mitchell. Like the rest of the HECU, he was sent into Black Mesa to contain the Resonance Cascade incident, and like most of them, he was attacked by Gordon Freeman - only, despite Freeman's best efforts, he survived the attack (though with several scars), at least long enough to be evacuated to a hospital at nearby Albuquerque. As he fades away, he sees the G-Man standing at his bedside, who reminds him of a promise he made to Freeman - 'whatever it takes, whoever it takes, however long it takes, before I die, I will kill you'. Impressed by his tenacity and conviction, the G-Man offers him a deal, promising him 'authority, power, and time', with only one caveat - when the time comes, keep that promise and kill Freeman. Reawakening after this meeting, Mitchell finds out that the Seven Hour War has already begun, and things only get worse from there.
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You fucked up my tropes:
- Adaptational Badass: The G-Man has never been shown to be capable of predicting the future. In fact, the only reason why the events of the Half-Life 2 episodes even happen is because the Vortigaunts throw a wrench in his plan. In this game, the G-Man can make a convoluted plan that would be impossible without complete omnipotence and knowledge of the future. See Gambit Roulette below.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- The G-Man is far more ruthless compared to his canon counterpart. He is willing to arrange things from behind the scenes so that every man who challenges Mitchell's authority gets killed, even if they are innocent. He also uses people and discards them when they outlive their usefulness, as both Mitchell and Adam find out the hard way, and threatens them with the lives of their loved ones if they don't agree with his deals, like with Boris and his daughter. This is a far cry from the same man who would disobey orders to save Alyx Vance and spare Adrian Shephard.
- The game also tries to paint Gordon as this, as he kills all of Mitchell's squadmates rather brutally before mercilessly beating his face in with a crowbar. Later on subverted that it actually isn't Freeman.
- One setpiece paints the Resistance in general as far more brutal than they ever were in Half-Life 2 proper, going so far as to have hanged Combine soldiers and left the corpses to rot underneath bridges.
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- An Axe to Grind: One of several melee weapons available to Mitchell is a two-handed fire axe.
- Anti-Frustration Feature: After much complaining from the playerbase, the Humvee Escort Mission in the first act was updated so that the vehicle barricade at the end of the drive can be moved. The player can now dismount from the vehicle they're driving in and wheel the Humvees away from the road, as the army truck will most definitely fail to break through on its own.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Mitchell confronts Adam in the end:Mitchell: You lied to me. You betrayed me. You used me. You fucked up my face.
- Artificial Stupidity:
- The friendly NPCs are quite inept at fighting; they typically never move from one spot (thus becoming sitting ducks for gunfire) and frequently get stuck between each other in narrow doorways.
- As an AI teammate, Adam is very fragile and very aggressive, often charging headlong into big mobs of zombies or Combine troops and helplessly buttstroking them in the face due to how close-ranged NPC combat logic are handled by the Source engine. Expectedly, this does not do well to improve his life expectancy.
- At the climax of the game, Mitchell is forced into a Hold the Line segment for 15 minutes until Nick can come to pick him up. Despite the game making a big deal out of setting up defenses and whatnot, the Combine AI only funnels out from one of the two paths leading up to the player, making them hilariously easy to pick off using the mounted turret nearby. They also fail pathetically against auto turrets set up by Mitchell despite their overall superior firepower. The developers themselves seem to acknowledge this, as after a certain point, the game ramps up in difficulty by adding in snipers, though the ground troops are still as incompetent as ever.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Downing an entire bottle of painkillers is a free ticket to a slow and agonizing death by overdose in reality. The prescription is usually written or printed onto the label for a reason.
- Artistic License – Military:
- Mitchell has a rather glorious slicked-back mane of hair and a decently-grown five o'clock shadow while still in the HECU, despite the US military's mandatory buzz cut and shave in reality, as well as in standard Half-Life canon. Ironically, his post-timeskip character model has the buzzcut.
- Both Mitchell and Adam carry two-tone Beretta M9s with an Inox frame and inlaid wooden grip panels as their personal sidearms before the Time Skip. While the gun itself was used in the original game's HD pack and was accurate for the Army at the time the game takes place, the correct regulation pistol has everything in flat or anodized black, and personal customizations are not allowed. The M16 and MP5 are also incorrect, as while the accessory list of an M203 and ACOG are correct for the Marines, general military doesn't use full-size versions of the M16 that have both a railed upper receiver and a full-auto trigger group; meanwhile the MP5 is limited to SOCOM in actual military use in America, though this is assuming the HECU isn't part of SOCOM, and even if they aren't it can be somewhat excused in that Half-Life itself made the same mistake.
- The Marines and Army soldiers in the game share the same uniform, loadout and even character models, which they don't in reality. Worse yet, despite the HECU ostensibly being marines, in this game they wear Navy-pattern camouflage.
- Mitchell was seemingly able to join the military at a whim while drunk off of his socks. In reality the Marines have a rather strict series of criteria for new recruits, such as a high school diploma, no records of substance abuse, and a background check to see if an individual is a person of strong moral character. Rather obviously, Mitchell only qualified for at most onenote out of three, which makes him ineligible for enlistment.
- The commanding officer of the 5th Ranger Company is introduced as only 'Lieutenant Harvey'. While not strictly wrong, 'Lieutenant' by itself is a Navy and/or Coast Guard rank. The proper Army equivalent would either be First or Second Lieutenant.
- Furthermore, an Army Company is usually led by a Captain or Major, not a Lieutenant. While it could be theorized that the Rangers had a senior CO who died, if such was the case then Lt. Harvey would be instantly promoted to fill the gap in the chain of command instead of keeping his old rank.
- Colonel Cue's nonchalant attitude about sacrificing his men in order to complete an objective stands at odds with what he should have learned during officer training.
- Several characters in the Seven-Hour War portion of the game recognize Adam on-sight as a 'black op', as if black ops are one specific and well-known unit in the US military akin to the aforementioned Rangers or 1st SFOD-D. While Mitchell's case can be excused - at least one such black operative wearing similar kit to Adam tried to kill him in Black Mesa, and under the circumstances he'd have no reason to believe other human beings who were obviously not part of the Black Mesa staff trying to kill him after a failed cover-up would be anything other than another cover-up - Colonel Cue also recognizing Adam as a 'black op' for no particular reason other than because he's wearing black has no reasonable explanation that would not completely defeat the purpose of black operations.
- Asshole Victim: Sure, Mitchell got beaten nearly to death with a crowbar, and has a bunch of scars on his face to show for it. However, he was an officer in the HECU Marines, whose overall mission was to kill all the Black Mesa scientists and security guards to cover up the Resonance Cascade incident. While the game itself doesn't show Mitchell personally killing anyone at Black Mesa who isn't already headcrab-fodder (besides a masked Black Ops in the prologue cutscene, who attempted to assassinate him) he doesn't deny HECU's role when Adam states they killed more than half of all Black Mesa personnel before any Black Ops ever showed up.
- As the Good Book Says..: Captain Roosevelt is introduced as he quotes Hebrews 13:2.
- Badass Beard: After the second time-skip, Mitchell has a beard that's fairly similar to Gordon's.
- Bag of Spilling: Mitchell loses most or all of his weapons on three occasions, twice after time-skips and once after being captured by the Resistance.
- Bald of Awesome: Mitchell later on shaves off some of his locks to give himself a buzz cut.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Mitchell looks pretty well off for a guy that was beaten to near-death and had his face 'fucked up' by a crowbar. Instead of having an unrecognizable caved-in bloody mess for a face, he just gets a couple gashes that leave behind large scars due to loose stitching.
- Bottomless Magazines: Mitchell has access to a portable minigun with infinite ammunition during the train defense.
- Captain Obvious: Mitchell is rather prone to being this. One of his first reactions upon entering a room full of obviously-KIA marines is to immediately reiterate that yes, all of them are dead.
- The Chessmaster: The G-Man's ultimate goal is to make Gordon Freeman's fight against the Combine easier by having the Combine dedicate a large portion of their soldiers to fighting Mitchell. His deals with Mitchell, Boris, and Adam were crafted so that they intertwined with each other and created the outcome that he wanted.
- Cool Guns: The game has a large arsenal of guns with some pretty nice details and animation. You can see all of them demonstrated in this video.
- Conflict Ball: Nick accuses Mitchell of being cursed due to every person of a higher ranking of him dying than him dying, yet when Roosevelt dies and proves his point, he's perfectly okay with Mitchell being in command and forgets the whole thing.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Despite their sheer numerical advantage, the Combine invasion force has very basic AI that is capable of little more than suicide rushes and primitive combat maneuvers à la the later Overwatch, but minus the squad tactics. The earlier friendly troops and the post-Time Skip Resistance soldiers don't fare much better.
- Continuity Snarl:
- At the end of the game, Mitchell tells his crew that they're heading to Borealis. He makes this decision over a week before Judith Mossman discovers the ship and sends a message to the Resistance and the Combine invading her location and intercepting said message.
- Many a vending machine encountered prior to the Time Skip bear the post-invasion Dr. Breen's Private Reserve branding.
- Convection Schmonvection: Despite having a gigantic factory burning down around them, both Mitchell and the orphans that he took in still find the time to pose dramatically for a cutscene instead of choking to death on the floor over the lack of oxygen and heatstroke. And the factory is covered by a metal shell, which makes it a rudimentary oven with all the burning stuff in and around it.
- Covers Always Lie: Notice that the titular Freeman appears in the cover art, the trailer and the title itself? In fact, all three very clearly point to the fact that Gordon Freeman would be the main antagonist, right? Wrong! Freeman is only ever referenced by name and plays practically no part in the story, making it one of the most egregious uses of this trope out there.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Seven Hours' War is featured, and it only takes one of those hours for the Combine to wipe out most of the US military. By the time Mitchell enters the picture almost three hours in, only a small remnant of the National Guard and a single company of US Army Rangers remain.
- Cutscene Incompetence: In the first level, Mitchell gets his ass handed to him by Gordon Freeman in a cutscene that plays when you get close to a certain door. However, Mitchell could've easily fought back, if the player had control of him.
- Crowbar Combatant:
- Gordon Freeman is initially assumed to be this plot-wise, who later is revealed to be Adam in disguise.
- Subverted with Boston Joe, who initially volunteers to be this since the factory he's in has a gas leak that could be ignited by gunfire, but switches to a shotgun almost immediately after and the crowbar is never brought up again.
- Disappearing Bullets: Despite punching a rather sizable hole clean through Sasha's head, the fired magnum round somehow manages to vanish into thin air upon exiting and not nailing the next target in a straight line from its victim, a.k.a. Mitchell.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Mitchell is looking to kill Freeman for twenty years out of revenge for injuring him. It's especially petty because, despite Gordon also having killed off the HECU squad, Mitchell only cares about having his face fucked up, though it should be noted by after the second Time Skip he tries to back out of the deal with G-Man due to being disgusted by how much death it's cost him in the meantime. All of this is subverted by the end of the game, as Adam (who is the true perpetrator, with Gordon being a Red Herring) betrays Mitchell by framing him for Sasha's murder, therefore giving much more justification for his grudge.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Drill Sergeant Garrison, Mitchell's supervising officer in his earlier days, qualifies for this, though he's tamer than most examples out there.
- Dummied Out: There are entire fully-scripted sections of the game that were gutted from the final build, along with a slew of unimplemented weapons seen in this video, giving a glimpse into What Could Have Been.
- Enemy Mine: Villainous example. Mitchell offers his men and services to the Combine in order to dismantle the Resistance and fulfill his desire of killing Gordon Freeman. For the thirty minutes it lasted, that is.
- Escort Mission: One early mission sees Mitchell assuming control of a Humvee fitted with a heavy machinegun to escort a transport truck to its destination. Thankfully, the truck is invincible and the level can be completed without it.
- Faceless Mooks: Basically any unnamed or otherwise unimportant NPC in the game wears a mask or balaclava of some kind and are virtually indistinguishable from one another, be they the National Guard, the Army Rangers, the Combine, the Resistance or Mitchell's army of orphans post-Time Skip. The Resistance is of particular note, because not a single one of them hides their face in the official games (save for Barney at the beginning of Half-Life 2, but this was only for his disguise as a Civil Protection unit). Overlaps with Gas Mask Mooks in the cases of the Combine and Mitchell's original HECU outfit.
- Failure Is the Only Option: During the chase sequence through the City 17 apartments, Mitchell must allow himself to be caught and beaten down by the Civil Protection so they could take him to Boris and push the plot along.
- Fake Difficulty: Much of the game's 'difficulty' lies in the ineptitude of its design, not so much the actual challenge provided by the enemies.
- Fake Longevity: The game was touted to provide players with 14+ hours of single player campaign; however, much of the play time is instead artificially bloated by confusing map design and/or maps that are just overly-huge expanses with nothing in them that Mitchell must slowly slough through. Pyrocynical points out here that if you know exactly where to go and how to progress, the '14+ hours' of gameplay becomes about 3+ hours.
- The entirety of Act 2 was seemingly made to be as time-wasting as possible, presumably in order to stretch the game time past the two-hour refund period. Much of the act is set in an enormous icy wasteland with very little of note, and there is zero signposting to let players know where to go, so a majority of time spent would be on random wandering. The map is is so inordinately huge that sprinting wouldn't help, and that's not mentioning how the first third of the chapter won't even let the player do that for some reason. When that's no longer an issue, the game tosses in instant-kill guard towers, aimbot snipers, and deep freezing map barriers to drag the play time out even further.
- Fingerless Gloves: Appears to be standard issue in Mitchell's army.
- First-Name Basis: Almost everyone in the game is referred to by their first names, with Lieutenant Harvey, Captain Roosevelt and Colonel Cue possibly being the exceptions, and none of them survive two chapters past their introductions. All this was done intentionally so as to set the plot up for a twist at the end of the game where Mitchell is revealed to be Adrian Shephard's brother.
- Foreshadowing
- When Gordon attacks Mitchell, he's wearing a helmet, even though the official Half-Life games never have him wear one. This seemingly Out-of-Character Moment is in fact the biggest hint that Mitchell's attacker is not actually Gordon.
- The fact that Mitchell's run-in with 'Gordon' took place in a completely foreign and unrecognizable part of Black Mesa not visited in any iteration of Half-Life should have been a giant giveaway that the former was an impostor.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Mitchell's entire squad was wiped out by Freeman, before he himself is beaten unconscious and left for dead. Yet, he doesn't ever recall any of them ever again, and when he finally confronts his attacker, all he cares about is 'YOU FUCKED UP MY FACE!'.
- Gambit Roulette: The G-Man's plan requires that the people that he manipulates follow a very big and specific set of events with minimal personal interference so that he can achieve a very specific goal in the far future.
- The beginning of his plan involves his deal with Adam, a Black Ops soldier. He tells Adam to wear an HEV suit and assault an individual named Mitchell with a crowbar during the Black Mesa incident. After that, he makes a deal with Mitchell, promising him 'authority, power, and time'. During the Seven Hour War, Mitchell meets Adam, who is told by the G-Man to meet Mitchell at that specific location and has to ally with him. The G-Man then arranges things behind-the-scenes so that anyone Mitchell meets who is of higher authority than him will die. Because of this, Mitchell gets complete command of a tanker ship. Three years later, Mitchell has to go to Alaska and meet Boris in a Cremator factory. There, he has to bring it down and rescue all the child slaves working there, with which he will raise and mold into his personal army. Because the factory is destroyed, Boris and his daughter Sasha are left out in the cold and on the run from the Combine. The G-Man makes a deal with Boris so he'll be out of the cold and back working with the Combine in City 17.
- 17 years go by and during this time, Sasha has to be tasked by the Combine to join the Resistance as a spy. The G-Man then meets Mitchell and tells him to hunt down Gordon Freeman and claims that he is the one responsible for assaulting him with a crowbar. Learning from the G-Man that Freeman is at City 17, Mitchell has to go there, get captured by the Combine, and arrange to speak with a higher-up. The G-Man then arranges so that Mitchell will speak to Boris and make a deal with him, using his personal army as collateral. Boris will then tell Mitchell the location of Freeman and Sasha's role in the Resistance. Mitchell then has to get captured by the Resistance, where he will meet Sasha. During this time, the G-Man tells Adam the location of Mitchell and has him murder Sasha and pin all the evidence on Mitchell. He also tells Adam to lure Mitchell to a specific location in the forest, where he will meet Mitchell personally and reveal his ultimate goal to him — make Freeman's attack on the Combine easier. Because Mitchell is blamed for the murder of Sasha and he's in the middle of the forest, Boris knows where he is and sends a large amount of Combine troops after him, leaving less of the Combine for Freeman to fight later on.
- It should be noted that all of this hinges on the events of Half-Life 2 happening, which means that the Combine's invasion of Earth and Gordon Freeman being brought out of stasis by the G-Man 20 years after the events of Half-Life has to happen so that the G-Man's plan can properly unfold.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite Boston Joe making a huge deal out of the gas leak in the facility he's in, the moment the scene is over he's just as happy to pull out a shotgun and start blasting zombies like it's going out of style. Sure enough, Mitchell himself can open fire as much as he wants, and nothing will blow up unlike what Joe claimed mere seconds earlier. The game itself lampshades this, followed by a very weak handwaving that the leak is actually in the 'other room'note , not this one.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Mitchell got some pretty nasty scars after having his face beaten in with crowbar. If he's on the side of good or evil is up for interpretation.
- Gray And White Morality: The central conflict appears to be this at the outset, if you believe that Gordon killed Marines in Mitchell's squad in self-defence, and attacked Mitchell himself first because there was no reason to assume he would behave any differently. In turn, Mitchell refers to himself as 'a villain' at one point, and likely killed some unarmed Black Mesa scientists before meeting Freeman. However, he does save a group of young children from Combine slavery later on, even if he's mainly doing it to train them into his own private army.
- Black And Black Morality: Mitchell's own view of the Seven Hour War, as he explains it to Combine collaborationist Boris:Mitchell: Think about it. Wasn't the main reason we were trying to go to space for decades for the resources? If we had the power to enslave them, wouldn't we? No? We enslave our own kind. Couldn't care less about an alien race. That's just nature playing out its own game. It's always been between predator and prey. That's the balance. This time, the tables are turned. They got to us before we got to them. Pulling our resources, draining the oceans, enslaving humans.
- The game's own story also takes this turn later on. Mitchell allies with the Combine so that he could finally find and kill Freeman, and uses his 'army' of rescued kids to help the Combine kill human rebels waiting for Freeman at one point. At the same time, it's revealed Mitchell was actually attacked, and had his squad killed, by Adam, not by Gordon. The latter gains no redeeming qualities by this point, as he shoots an unarmed woman in the back of the head in cold blood, all in order to frame Mitchell for it and force him to fight Combine again. Adam might have done this as part of G-Man's plan to help Gordon by eliminating the Combine's spy within the resistance, and dividing and weakening Combine forces before his awakening. However, he never seems motivated by these reasons, and at best considers these actions as his side of the deal with G-Man.
- Black And Black Morality: Mitchell's own view of the Seven Hour War, as he explains it to Combine collaborationist Boris:
- Greater-Scope Villain: The G-Man's mysterious employers, natch.
- Guide Dang It!: Most of the complaints about the game's initial release is how it never gave players an idea of what they should be doing next, leaving most to just aimlessly wander around the maps (at least some of the frustration has since been addressed through a tutorial added in a patch).
- The first map of the game hides a combat knife just behind where the player is supposed to spawn in. While Mitchell does pack his personal sidearm, the enemies in this game are far more resilient than they would normally be. The knife is all but essential as the area ahead is absolutely littered with enemies, far more than the handgun's measly starting ammo load can handle - and for some reason they hide it behind you rather than just giving it to you.
- The second map introduces the prone mechanic, where Mitchell must lie flat on his stomach to crawl through a doorway blocked by a barricade. Problem is, this mechanic has never appeared in any Half-Life game so far, the barricade was made up of what would otherwise be physics objects that could easily just be moved out of the way in Half-Life 2 proper, and there was not even a tutorial for how to use it in the game's initial release, causing many players to quit out of frustration. And again, this is only the second map of the game!
- A few chapters later sees the player pitted against a never-ending Zerg Rush of zombies, both Fast and Standard, along with their Headcrabs while waiting for probably the slowest elevator in the universe. While the defense itself is not so bad, as the game is oddly generous about the ammo and medkit placement around the arena, the main offender here is how there is absolutely zero signposting about how long the player is expected to hold out. Neither the game nor the elevator itself provides any indication of progress, causing unobservant players to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of opponents. Many players have either quit or expressed frustration at the game over this particular segment.
- In order to utilize the game's much-touted parkour mechanism, the player must first holster their weapon. Exactly how to perform either action is, once again, never hinted at by the game aside from the post-launch tutorial.note
- One set piece features a Suspiciously Cracked Floor near an infinite grenade box. Any player with a modicum of experience would try to blow the crack up with these grenades, but again common sense is in short supply in this game. To progress, you need to stand on a completely unimportant-looking chandelier so it collapses under Mitchell's weight and crashes through the floor.
- Act Two plops the player into an infuriatingly gigantic map with zero sense of direction, leaving them to wander aimlessly before (hopefully) stumbling upon the right destination by accident. Many players have had to resort to consulting walkthroughs to make it through this chapter and even then some still manage to get lost.
- Reaches a logical conclusion when some players who would bother with playing through the game (most likely for the sake of a review so to warn others not to buy it) would just noclip through most of the maps instead of bothering to go the intended route, as it is both faster (noclip speed is faster than sprint speed), and less madness-inducing (some scripted sequences often fail to trigger, given the game's Obvious Beta state).
Yahtzee: .. and once the precedent is set, it's very tempting to keep noclipping. Hm, I could spend twenty minutes searching for the way out of this pitch black cave that I can't navigate because the game only gave me one flare and apparently I used it in the wrong place, or I could just open the console, Kitty Pryde my way out and have enough time to go out and steal some more cake. - Half the Man He Used to Be: Captain Roosevelt gets bisected in an explosion as his tanker ship is assaulted by the Combine, which then flung his upper half all the way down onto the deck in full view of Mitchell and allies. Amazingly, he survives this long enough to deliver one last sentence.Captain Roosevelt: That's not a curse. You made a deal with the devil. Here, you have it.
- Hand Cannon: Mitchell manages to get his hands on one during the course of his journey, which became his staple sidearm. Adam also uses one during the scene where he assassinates Sasha to cover up his involvement. It doesn't seem to be any singular model in particular, though it does look to be a cross between a Smith & Wesson Model 500 and Model 629, from which it borrows both the aesthetics (M500) and caliber (M629).
- His Name Is..: Sasha is just about to spill the beans regarding the G-Man's 'deal' before Adam kills her with a single shot to the head. However, this is subverted not much later, because the G-Man himself explains the deal to Mitchell and gives him all the clarity that he was looking for.
- Hollywood Silencer: Played awfully straight with the MP5SD Mitchell picks up in Black Mesa. Actually, the suppressed barrel works a bit too well, resulting in gunshots sounding very odd, much more like an electrical BB gun than any silenced..thing, in reality whatsoever.
- The suppressed barrel also does nothing in the way of eliminating the MP5's muzzle flash, resulting in a rather odd version of Muzzle Flashlight where streaks of white exit from the sides of the barrel instead of the usual flare.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: This is the amount of weapons and equipment you can carry. The game tries to downplay this with a Metal Gear Solid 3-style backpack system, where you only have specific slots for weapon types (one each for melee, pistols, submachine guns/assault rifles, shotguns/sniper rifles, consumables/throwables, and binoculars or Night-Vision Goggles) and must switch out the active weapon in a slot to equip another one in your inventory, but that still means you can be potentially carrying fourteen different firearms on top of four separate melee weapons and several other odds and ends, including several hand grenades and Claymore mines.
- Injured Player Character Stage: After his run-in with 'Gordon Freeman' at the start of the game, Mitchell wakes up with an injury that requires him to track down a medkit to heal himself up to fighting shape.
- Ironic Echo: 'You have our/my permission to die', said once by the G-Man when he leaves Mitchell for dead, and later by Mitchell himself just before he lands the killing blow on Adam.
- Knife Nut: Another melee weapon in your arsenal. Notable for being much more effective than a pistol in the opening levels: a typical Headcrab Zombie goes down in 1-2 slashes to the head with it, yet requires nearly a full pistol magazine to go down.
- Landmine Goes Click: Land mines, to be exact, which reuse the sounds of the Hopper Mines from Half-Life 2, though the click is so subtle it is often drowned out by the explosion itself. One segment of the early game sees Mitchell trying to navigate past a field of Claymore mines that, on top of being sensitive as all hell, are rigged together so that if one explodes, all of them will.
- The ones usable by Mitchell do click audibly before exploding, and unlike the stationary example above, the delay between the click and the explosion is noticeable for the playable version.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: This game is a repeat offender of this trope due to how often it has to load the next map segments or cutscenes to push the plot along. Not helped by how ungodly long it takes to load the next map segments, particularly at points where a cutscene is supposed to play. Load times prior to the Day 1 patch could take as long as 5 minutes to complete.
- Machete Mayhem: One of the melee weapons you can use; Mitchell starts with one in New Alaska and the attack on Black Mesa East.
- Major Injury Underreaction When Mitchell finally enacts his revenge on Adam, the latter seems less than bothered about the multiple point-blank shots pumped into his stomach, simply letting out various moans. One moan, in particular, is oddly.. sensual. On the other hand..
- Meaningful Name: Avalon is the magical island in Arthurian legend where King Arthur retreated to following the disastrous Battle of Camlann, in order to rest and treat his wounds. In the same vein, the Avalon Vale provides Mitchell and co. with a (relative) safe haven to regroup following their crushing defeat at the hands of the Combine invasion force.
- Minor Injury Overreaction: ..a tiny handful of relatively small, shallow cuts are apparently enough for Mitchell to harbor murderous grudge against his attacker for decades.
- Misplaced Wildlife: In-universe example. The game inexplicably has Antlions showing up in the middle of frigid Alaska despite their distribution being limited to warm grasslands in the source material.
- Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight: Played with throughout the course of the game. Mitchell's melee weapons actually deal far more damage per hit compared to a fair amount of his firearms, or even those of his enemies for that matter, making them quite effective at cutting down beefier enemies that gunfire struggle with. The main problem is getting there, however, as most of the time enemies will gang up on the player and shower them with gunfire, leaving them with little room to wiggle.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The many reveal trailers leading up to the game's release would have the player assume Mitchell's attacker was Gordon Freeman himself, while in the actual game the assailant is helmeted, leaving their true identity initially ambiguous.
- A different trailer shows him recognizing who appears to be his brother Adrian while locked up in the Resistance prison, hinting at said character's potentially notable presence in the story. In the game proper, Adrian is instead relegated to appearing only in one of two random Non-Standard Game Over cutscenes the player could get if they die in the final Hold the Line segment.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Mitchell turning off the Claymore minefield removes the only thing preventing the zombies and later Combine troops from overwhelming the National Guards' holdout.
- Nintendo Hard: Fake Difficulty stemming from the poor game design aside, the game takes no breaks in throwing large amounts of enemies to fight. In the first act alone, you'll fight a big wave of Combine Hunters and Vortigaunts that can easily wipe the floor with you.
- Non-Indicative Name: Despite it being in the title and almost every piece of advertisement out there, the player does very little actual hunting of the Freeman in the game itself. About the first two-thirds of the game consist of Mitchell just going from point to point reaching the Avalon Vale and building up his army. The actual 'hunting' formally starts around the point after the second Time Skip, though in theory moreso than practice, as Mitchell is constantly Railroaded by the supporting cast to travel to yet more locations while fighting enemies that have very little to do with Freeman himself, ultimately leading up to a Twist Ending that involves neither hunting nor Freeman.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Everyone. Almost none of the character models in the entire game have the same visual design. For a great example, take a look at the scenes where the very high-quality Mitchell is talking with someone like Colonel Cue, or Sasha, who have far less detail on their faces, and have slapped on fake mustaches and big blocks of chiseled wood as hair, respectively.
- Non-Standard Game Over: If Mitchell dies during the final segment, one of two potential cutscenes is triggered where he has some kind of vision before he succumbs to his wounds. One is him coming across his long-lost brother, Adrian Shepard from Opposing Force, and another is him winding up inside a train filled with multiple Gordon Freemans who motion for him to sit down among them.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent:
- One of Mitchell's many followers is Nick, whose voice talent was provided by Alex of I Hate Everything. Problem is, the character himself was supposed to be an American National Guard, albeit one of Asian ancestry according to Word of Godnote , but the voiceover provided by IHE is mostly in his natural English accent. Some of it, however, is him attempting to do an American accent, since this was originally the direction he was given; he was later told to give up on it, but the 'American' voiceover was still used in the final release anyways.
- Another glaring example of this is National Guardsman Alex, who was voiced by Pyrocynical, whose accent is even thicker than that of IHE's despite the character being American.
- Captain Roosevelt is played by Colossal is Crazy, who uses his natural English accent despite being the character presumably being American. In this case, however, it does help sell Roosevelt as a proper Officer and a Gentleman.
- Sasha has a distinctly-American accent, while her father Boris sounds appropriate for someone of Slavic origin.
- The orphans rescued by Mitchell would grow up to be identical English-accented mooks despite being raised by a Slavic man in Alaska and subsequently growing up among a crew of mostly Americans.
- Not So Different: Mitchell accuses Adam of killing his own comrades, only for Adam to point out that he too was just following orders, much like how the HECU marines were following the orders to slaughter innocent Black Mesa personnel.
- Obvious Beta: The game's (eventual) release on Steam was noted to have been very broken almost to the point of being entirely unplayable. Most of the touted cutscenes were missing from the release, along with clunky AI and map triggers failing to fire every now and then which is not helped by how certain graphics settings can cause the game to hard crash given its poor optimization. A Day 1 patch was hastily pushed out, which seemed to have resolved the cutscenes not playing properly, but much of the problems still remain.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Mitchell becomes this in the second level, where you wake up after getting beaten up by Freeman, and Mitchell stays like this until he collects a medkit. However, said medkit is directly under a Barnacle, and a Headcrab starts chasing you once you enter the room directly adjacent.
- One-Woman Wail: Most of the game's more memorable tracks consist almost entirely of this.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Mitchell stops Adam at the end by shooting him in the leg with a Hand Cannon and then pumping multiple shots into his stomach. Afterwards, Adam is perfectly capable of standing up, and since his walk animation was janky even beforehandnote he doesn't seem affected by it in the slightest.
- Only One Name: Amounts to 99% of the cast. Barring Mitchell (whose last name isn't actually revealed until 98% of the way through the game at the earliest), Gordon Freeman, and other characters in the established Half-Life canon, nobody of any importance in the game has a complete name, usually only going by either their first or last, with the latter category being tiny and consisting of all Sacrificial Lions.
- Plot Hole
- After visiting Nova Prospekt, Mitchell suddenly ends up in a prison cell guarded by the Resistance, despite there being absolutely no indication of them capturing him in-between these sequences (unlike how he was captured by Civil Protection and escorted to Boris in City 17).
- Mitchell, for whatever reason, knows what Borealis is and immediately orders his entire crew to head there in the ending. Even if the Combine or the Resistance knew about the ship at the time, at no point in the game is it even implied that Mitchell learned about its existence.
- Plotline Death: No matter how well the player handles the train defense section, Colonel Cue along with most of his men still somehow manage to all die by the time Mitchell and co. reach Nevada.
- Pretty Little Headshots: Both Adam and Sasha are shot in the head at one point by the game's resident Hand Cannon. While the wounds themselves are quite graphic, the magnum rounds do very little beyond punching a hole the size of a shot glass through the victims' foreheads despite being one of the most powerful commercial handgun calibers in reality, which should have blown their heads clean off.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Despite being at sea for 20 years without coming back into port for rearm and refuel, the Avalon Vale is still as pristine-looking as the day Mitchell and co. first boarded her.
- Random Events Plot: The second half of the plot suffers from this. After Mitchell assaults Black Mesa East, he decides to go to Ravenholm, an antlion cave, and Nova Prospekt for no discernable reason. He then somehow gets captured offscreen by the Resistance and is brought to their place.
- Regenerating Health: Only during the train defense and levels that consist entirely of driving.
- Sawed-Off Shotgun: The pump-action shotgun you get during the Seven-Hour War is rather short, but does a good job killing enemies all the same. Surprisingly averted with the double-barreled shotgun you pick up later on.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Practically the right way of playing the game, owing to how certain sections feature endlessly-spawning enemiesnote that can (and must) be completely bypassed if the player knows where to go to trigger the next map load. Playing it this way crunches the total completion time down to approximately 4 hours from the intended 14.
- The entire train defense section of Act I can be bypassed by nabbing the minigun and then immediately running back to the driver's cabin. It still wouldn't alter the resulting cutscene one bit, however.
- Sequel Hook: Hunt Down the Freeman ends on a borderline Continuity Snarl cliffhanger that hints at possibilities for a sequel, which by now seems highly unlikely to happen owing to both the game's and Royal Rudius' dismal reputation.
- Series Continuity Error:
- The Cremators are depicted as projecting fire from their Immolators, with a flashback in the demo showing them doing so to execute prisoners, instead of the green corrosive substance depicted in the developmental concepts of Half-Life 2 to clear away corpses.
- Mitchell runs into 'Gordon' in a completely foreign and unrecognizable area of Black Mesa that was never visited during the latter's journey in Half-Life.
- The HECU Marines present at Black Mesa are depicted wearing black vests with Navy-camouflage clothes, rather than the drab green vests and urban camo they wore in Half-Life 1 or demos of the game.
- Just from the game itself, the leading Ranger the group meets up with in Nevada identifies himself as 'Lieutenant Harvey', but later, Nick refers to him as 'Sergeant Harvey' while listing off all the ranking officers that have died shortly after meeting up with Mitchell.
- Serious Business: Pretty much the whole reason behind the Hunt Down the Freeman's plot is some random HECU trooper who became way too obsessed with revenge against someone who attacked him in self defense.
- Shout-Out: So many to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that Michell can be seen as an Expy for Venom Snake himself.
- Skippable Boss: The Antlion Guardian in the Victory Mine can very easily be ran past, as the only obstacle in the way of the exit is a couple climbable walls.
- Something Completely Different: This game is one for the entire Half-Life franchise, touting features highly uncharacteristic of the series so far such as cutscenes, a voiced protagonist, Le Parkour, and ironsights aiming to name a few.
- Perhaps the most distinct change of style from traditional Half-Life to Hunt Down the Freeman is how mundane the gameplay is. To put it into perspective, the second generation of Half-Lifenote it tries to be part of boasts an impressive physics system which, when combined with the Gravity Gun, helps to greatly enhance the play experience. Hunt Down the Freeman, meanwhile, is a straight-up shooter with very little use of said physics system while having little to no puzzles, something every Half-Life game in the past had. It also lacks the more unique and futuristic equipment of prior titles, with the most it could offer is the Overwatch Pulse rifle, which is just a generic bullet hose.
- Space Compression: Averted; the game provides a case study on why creating smaller, easier to navigate levels rather than larger levels on realistic scale is a good idea. The game tries to emulate large, open spaces in a realistic manner, but the problem is that there are numerous sections in the game that require the player to run for minutes on end, which doesn't make for exciting gameplay, and ultimately only seems to serve as padding more than anything else. The scaling also makes many levels hard to navigate and the few guiding landmarks the game gives can get hidden by the draw distance, dockyard being probably the worst offender in this.
- Spell My Name with an 'S': The actor who provided the voiceover for the G-Man mispronounces Black Mesa as Black Messa, with emphasis put on the letter S rather than E. As YouTuber Gggmanlives pointed out, this is not a case of 'To-mah-toes and To-may-toes', the actor simply messed up his delivery trying to replicate the G-Man's usual speech pattern. This is especially notable, as even though the G-Man in the original series was liable to placing AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle, he would always pronounce Black Mesa the way it should be.
- Spiritual Successor: The game serves as one to Opposing Force, due to it featuring the same premise; you step into the shoes of an H.E.C.U. Marine and attempt to find Gordon. Since Mitchell is revealed to be related to Adrian Shephard in the credits, this is a Justified Trope.
- Super Drowning Skills: One segment of the docks level has Mitchell doing some platform-jumping across a few ships, where the water hurts him somehow. It even hurts him when he stands on a platform only a few inches above the water due to a possible programming error. Note that this is the only body of water that actively causes damage.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Hunt Down the Freeman attracted the ire of many players due to its tendency to just dump truckloads of enemies at the player, Zerg Rush style, with no clear rhyme or reason. Even at points extremely early in the plot, for no clear reason Mitchell is assailed by whole packs of Hunters and/or Vortigaunts, or has his position bombed into oblivion by nearly a dozen headcrab shells. One would really have to question why this one particular marine warrants more attention than even Gordon Freeman himself years later, especially since he's only escaping the city and not actively trying to bust down Combine infrastructure like the latter. Even worse is that the game is never consistent on the actual gameplay purpose of throwing waves upon waves of enemies at you - sections where they're meant to make you just run and sections where you have to Hold the Line follow one another almost in sequence.
- Time Skip: Twice. The first happens after Mitchell comes into command of the Avalon Vale, when the game skips ahead three years for his mission to 'City 9'. The second comes after he rescues the children in the Cremator factory, where the game once again abruptly skips seventeen years ahead to show that they've now become soldiers with Undying Loyalty for him.
- Unknown Rival: Due to Gordon not being responsible for beating up Mitchell, he has no idea that a former HECU Marine is still literally hunting him down to the ends of the Earth. Even Mitchell himself lampshades it.Mitchell: He doesn't even know.. I exist..
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: The Resistance's arsenal is completely off-limits to Mitchell. While it is possible to acquire one of their MP7-esque submachine guns or a SPAS-12 through glitches, they have their fair share of bugs due to not being intended playable weapons.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody on the tanker ship bats an eye when an extremely-pissed Mitchell starts chasing down and murdering Adam in cold blood, who up until that point had been his second-in-command for more than two decades. Keep in mind that Adam had been really busy telling people that Mitchell was killed earlier on, if Nick was to be believed. Apparently the crew cared so little about their commander that none of them even acknowledge his unlikely appearance right in front of them.
- Unwinnable by Mistake: Adam as an AI teammate is very fragile and very aggressive. Should you hit a checkpoint or quick save as he dies, the game will reload with him missing and soft lock, forcing you to revert to an older save to progress. And that's not getting into how the game has a notable habit of not registering game saves at all, and at times bricking them entirely if it does.
- Violation of Common Sense:
- Downing entire bottles of painkillers won't actually do Mitchell any good in reality. If anything, it would set him up for a very painful and drawn-out death later on by overdose.
- See that crack on the floor? See that infinite grenade box in the next room? You'd better go up a level and climb on the chandelier so that it collapses under your weight and smashes through the floor, or you could toss grenades through a small vent near the ceiling of a completely different room.
- Vocal Dissonance: Barring the Combine troops and Civil Protection who reuse dialogue from Half-Life 2, all of the masked characters in the game speak clearly without being muffled by the balaclavas they wear.
- Walking Armory: Mitchell can carry an absurd amount of weapons, with the complete loadout being just as large as (if not larger than) Gordon's or Shephard's. For reference, he has 4 melee weapons, 4 handguns, 2 machine pistols, 1 SMG, 3 rifles, 2 shotguns, 2 sniper rifles and more.
- Welcome to Corneria: Most of the friendly AI capable of following Mitchell have a very limited range of vocal responses that fire incessantly if the player refuses (or more likely fails to figure out how) to progress which, given the game's Guide Dang It! nature, happens very often. This gets annoying very fast and of course, leads to bouts of Video Game Cruelty Potential.
- Wrench Whack: You can use a wrench as a weapon, much like Adrian Shephard from Opposing Force. Appropriate, since Mitchell is Adrian's brother.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Owing to how hamfisted the narrative is delivered, several characters seemingly disappeared as the plot goes along. Mitchell arrives at the Avalon Vale with Boston Joe, several other workers from his factory, and enough Rangers to fill several football teams - very few of whom are likely to die in defense of the ship. Every one of them except Mitchell himself, Adam and Nick suddenly disappears across the two time skips, the second one showing that Mitchell's army entirely comprises of the orphans rescued from the cremator factory without any hint that the Rangers or workers ever existed.
- Wolverine Publicity: Despite being titled 'Hunt Down the Freeman' and that the entire premise of the plot hinges on Mitchell's desire for Disproportionate Retribution against the bespectacled scientist for supposedly killing his men and messing up his face, Gordon himself does not appear in the plot proper outside of certain cutscenes and offhanded mentions. In fact, his character has nothing to do with the plot itself, as the HEV-suited assailant who struck down Mitchell and co. was in reality one of his newfound followers, whom he hastily assumed to be Gordon Freeman because there was only one HEV-clad Crowbar Combatant he was aware of. The G-Man's out-of-character lies about the identity of the attacker didn't help.
- You Are in Command Now
- After the Black Mesa level, a near-dead Mitchell is visited by the G-Man, who promises 'authority, power, and time'. The way he's given the former two is by way of every figure of authority he links up with during the Seven-Hour War dying under convenient circumstances - Colonel Cue dies when the group escapes by train and most of the cars behind the engine itself are destroyed; Lieutenant Harvey dies on the road while escaping to the Avalon Vale; and then Captain Roosevelt dies when the bridge of the Vale blows up for no discernible reason after they push back the last of the Combine forces on-board. The other soldiers that Mitchell ends up with were already seeing him as the leader by the time they get to the Vale, and after Roosevelt's death, Nick - who was otherwise the first to bring up the possibility that Mitchell is 'cursed' - outright names him the new Captain.
- Implied to be the case with Lieutenant Harvey and the Rangers. An Army Company is typically led by a Captain or Major, not a Lieutenant, thus suggesting that the 5th Ranger Company's original CO died sometime prior to Mitchell's arrival in Nevada, and Harvey assumed command in their stead.
- You Don't Look Like You:
- For some unspoken reason, Royal Rudius Entertainment decided to completely alter the looks of the HECU in this game from their official descriptions. Partly due to this reason, it is actually quite hard to buy into the fact that Adrian Shephard is the marine Mitchell sees when he dies in the last level, despite the reveal trailer already spoiling this twist rotten. To make matters more confusing, the HECU design in the 2016 demo of the game was more or less in line with that of the original, due to that build simply reusing Black Mesa's assets and some samples taken from Garry's Mod, before the developers switched to this style.
- The few weapons that do return from the original games have had their appearances and mechanics completely overhauled for Hunt Down The Freeman. The version of the USP Match pistol only vaguely resembles the one used in Half-Life 2 (although this is more due to poor modeling than anything else), and the Overwatch Pulse Rifle looks even bulkier and more angular than before. Another example would be the Magnum, which appears to be a frankengun of Smith & Wesson's .44 Magnum Model 629 with the barrel of the Model 500 instead of the old .357 Colt Python.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When 'the deal' reaches its conclusion near the end of the game, the G-Man tries to do this to Mitchell by leaving him for dead, but this backfires in the latter's favor, as he survives the assault from the Combine and kills Adam (who happened to be another important figure in the deal).
- Zerg Rush: This game provides no shortage of hostiles for players to waste their precious ammunition on, particularly zombies. Special mention goes to a sewer-like level early in the Seven Hour War, where the area is bombarded with dozens of headcrab canisters despite Mitchell being the only person there at the time, and the finale, where Mitchell has to fight off never-ending waves of Combine soldiers for 15 minutes in real-time.
Index
El juego no es tan malo,es cierto que hizo Half Life un Call Of Duty,pero tenemos que ver la parte buena,en si te puede llegar a entretenerteEl juego no es tan malo,es cierto que hizo Half Life un Call Of Duty,pero tenemos que ver la parte buena,en si te puede llegar a entretenerte un rato,la calidad grafica si no es la mejor,es decente para lo que puede hacer Source. El soundtrack es de lo mejor que tiene,es hermosa,la historia es interesante hasta cierto punto,pero no tiene nada que ver co la jugabilidad,principal razón por la que lo consideran el peor Fan-Made de Half Life. Las cinemáticas también,hicieron 'empeorar' el juego. Pero no hay que exagerar. Acá es donde la calidad gráfica brilla,los modelos y texturas bastante detalladas,algo que es obvio de SFM (Source Film Maker),que muestra lo que es imposible mostrar por la parte jugable de este titulo. En fin. ¿Era tan malo? No,puede ser aceptable si no consideramos el juego original del todo.…Expand
So a few days out from launch and Hunt Down the Freeman is sitting at a staggeringly low 22% on steam.
For those that don't know. Hunt Down the Freeman is a game set in the Half-Life universe. An interquel set between Half Life and Half life 2. You play as Captain Mitchell. A man with a mission. Gordon Freeman fucked up your face and now you gotta go kick his ass. But shitty gameplay, endless amounts of enemies, bugs, invisible walls, president keemstar, your sidekick IHE, and pretty much you need to cheat to get through the game to finish it make it a fun seven hour experience.
It's shit. And it was sold on a false premise. Not only is the plot a lie but the lead 'developer' Berkan Denizyaran stole assets from other games. Such as Black Mesa Source, Left for Dead, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to name a few. All while claiming to have either purchased them or have permission to use them. So while the entire game is an asset flip, they have the audacity to charge $25 for it.
Here are a few videos for my claims.
Oh and I was casually browsing /v/ and I found this.
The Devs left in a nude kid model in the game. for some reason. Yay!
Hopefully Valve takes action and pulls this piece of shit off steam. Usually they have poor quality control. But this is Half Life. This is their property. Hopefully they plan on doing something.
There's a game on Steam called Hunt Down The Freeman, released on February 23 by developer Royal Rudius Entertainment. It's bound to cause a few double-takes for anyone browsing the Steam store because it's got Gordon Freeman's picture stuck right on it. This isn't some free Half-Life mod: it was made using a license for the Source engine, and it's being sold for about $25 (with a discount until March 2).
If you go to its store page you'll immediately notice a few hundred extremely negative Steam reviews. Dig into the discussions page and you'll find more than just complaints of bugs and glitches, but also scores of accusations that the developers are using assets from other mods and games without permission. You'll also see a strange explanation from the developers who say the release was rushed in response to harassment from Half-Life fans—as well as a claim that the version of the game that was released isn't the version that was intended.
Malwarebyte license key 2019. Hunt Down the Freeman had a troubled start—a couple of years ago its Indiegogo campaign raised exactly $12 from a single backer—and now that it's been released (or some version of it has, anyway), the trouble continues. Along the way, it's managed to piss a hell of a lot of people off.
I talked with the developers of Hunt Down The Freeman to try to unravel the drama.
Did the creators of HDTF use assets from other mods without permission?
This appears to be the reason for a lot of complaints in the forums, but according to the developers, including game director Berkan Denizyaran, who I spoke to on the phone, and a member of Royal Rudius Entertainment, who answered a few questions via email: no, there are no stolen assets in the game. An early demo of the HDTF did use assets from other mods, I was told, but they were used as placeholders during development. The developers say these placeholder assets are not present in the finished product.
The Steam forums are filled with posts from users comparing various textures and assets to those from other games and mods, and it can be a bit of a nebulous process trying to verify their accuracy, what version of the game they're from, and if these assets are in fact taken from other mods or games. However, a member of the team of one of the mods in question, Holymac from Firearms: Source, posted in the Steam forums that the team had looked into it and didn't see any of their work being used.
'Our art team determined that upon a cursory look of the content released with the demo,' wrote Holymac, 'and assets the HDTF team provided willingly, it appears no theft of intellectual property has taken place.'
I sent a follow-up email to the Firearms: Source team to ask if they had done any more investigation since January, and received a response from project coordinator Vincent Micelo, stating: 'The source content in question was inspected by some of our team members and they agree that it is original content. Fallout 4 crash on save fixture. We have no further statements.'
The developers of Hunt Down The Freeman also point out that just because an asset looks familiar, doesn't mean it's been stolen. In an email to PC Gamer, Gabe, who identifies himself as Head of PR for Royal Rudius Entertainment, writes:
'People have found assets that they stated were stolen, but then we've given them the source we bought it from, like the US soldiers in our game, they are from TurboSquid, a site where you can buy models and use them for commercial purposes. Another example would be a shot-up car from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was found in our game and paraded as definitive proof that we were stealing. It took me three minutes to find the car, and it was in one of L4D2's DLC files, of which we have permission to use.'
I've also sent an email to the Black Mesa development team—some of the textures and models in HDTF are said by some forums posters to be taken from Black Mesa without permission—though I have not received a response yet.
Is it as broken and buggy as Steam reviews say?
Hunt Down The Freeman Memes
Well, yes. I can confirm this particular complaint. I played about 30 minutes of Hunt Down The Freeman this week and I ran into a number of bugs, which brings us to the developer's claim that the wrong version of the game was ultimately released:
'We kind of failed on the file organization,' Denizyaran told me on the phone, 'and the person who was supposed to release the final version, released an older version of the game. And right now we are basically collecting all the files, the final versions of everything, which is .. it's a pretty big game.'
'On the day of the release, it was a big shock for all of us when we saw the game on streams and realizing it wasn't the game that we had on our end,' Gabe said in his email.
I can't say if their the developer's claim that an older version of Hunt For The Freeman was accidentally released is accurate, all I can say is that what I played certainly doesn't feel like a finished game.
Apart from bugs, how is the game?
This is kind of the sticking point for me: while I haven't played much, what I have played hasn't been good, and it's not really something that bug fixes or visual improvements alone will change.
I was initially impressed by the cutscenes, particularly the cinematic opening sequence, in which scenes from the main character's traumatic life are blended together as he grows from a child to an adult, joins the military, and ships out during the Black Mesa crisis from Half-Life (including a couple nice cameos from G-Man). Later scenes, however, feel like a change in tone, consistency, and quality. More importantly, between these scenes are a collection of mostly unimpressive FPS levels. And again, the quality and consistency varies from one level to the next.
It begins (rather abruptly) with a brief level where you battle a few zombies and headcrabs as your character attempts to locate his squad within the Black Mesa complex. Even on the small starter levels I became lost more than once, with no real indication of where I was meant to go. There are no on-screen prompts as to what your character can do—I discovered, eventually, that I could go prone and even cling to walls.
After these few small levels, I eventually wound up in a massive outdoor firefight between human soldiers and some sort of alien enemies that advance from three directions. I joined the fray, grabbing a rifle and firing at the slowly encroaching aliens. I killed several and kept fighting, but eventually I realized they were never going to stop spawning. In the gif below you can see a clip of this street fight, and I have about seven more minutes of recorded that are basically identical.
Finally, I just picked a direction and ran down the street past the enemies, wound up stuck in a loading screen that took over a minute to resolve, and then arrived in another bland level of city streets filled with more aliens (and several Source Engine Error icons). I kept running until, for some reason, the screen slowly went black, though I could still hear and even fire my own gun, and I could still see the UI. I waited in the dark for about a minute, then finally quit.
In short, what I played feels like an unfinished mod project with rudimentary level design. I was told a re-release of the completed game would happen Monday, March 5, so I plan to revisit the game after the update and see how it looks, and what exactly has changed. Bug fixes would certainly be welcome, but I don't think a glitch-free experience would make up for the general quality of the FPS levels I played. If a large team of experienced developers worked on HDTF, as I was told, it's definitely not evident in what I've seen so far.
If Valve is done making Half-Life games, which seems pretty likely at this point, then should we welcome enthusiastic fans picking up the torch? I do like the concept of HDTF and how it views Freeman not as an unlikely hero but as a crowbar-wielding serial killer, which makes sense from the perspective of a confused soldier just trying to do his job. Different takes on familiar source material can be jarring (hearing G-Man with a new voice in HDTF certainly was) but it's not a bad thing. Except when, y'know, it's bad.
It's natural that fans of Half-Life are protective of the series, and any game associated with the characters and universe we care about is going to face extra scrutiny. This will especially be the case when a licensed Half-Life game features Gordon Freeman, G-Man, and other characters so prominently, and even more so when the game being sold appears to be a bad one.
That doesn't excuse the many abusive forum posts I've seen aimed at the developers, but the negative reviews and complaints are perfectly understandable considering the state of the game. We'll see if any of those reviews become more positive after the game is updated on Monday.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Memes/HuntDownTheFreeman Polk audio monitor 65t ebay list.
Hunt Down The Freeman Memes
Go To
'You lied to me. You betrayed me. You used me. You fucked up my face.'
Due to the game's infamous nature and Narm moments, many memes were created.Advertisement:
- 'You fucked up my face.' *gunshot*Explanation
- Thanks to the fan compilations, we got these lines:
- You lied to my face!
- You betrayed my face!
- You used my face!
- You X'd my face!
- Thanks to the fan compilations, we got these lines:
- Mitch, please! Explanation (spoilers)
- The ending cutscene itself has become memetic considering the amount of narmtastic moments it has.
- BitchellExplanation
- MichelleExplanation
- 'My mother's DEAD?!' Explanation
- 'DON'T buy Hunt Down The Freeman.' Explanation
- 'Hunt Down the Refund.' Explanation
Advertisement:
- game SUCKS i go to BEDExplanation
- WHERE'S GORDON!? WHERE IS THE FREEMAN!?Explanation
- 'Black Messah' Explanation
- Colonel Cue and his Comedy CrewExplanation
- 'Looks guys..' Explanation The full rant
- The amount of comparisons to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain have been made by almost everyone. In fact it's common for people to edit the song 'Nuclear' into its trailers or just add the whole audio or music from other MGSV trailersdueto how surprisingly fitting they are. Made even funnier by fact that Hideo Kojima is actually shown in credits in 'Special thanks' section.
- A Hideo Kojima Production.
- Node Graph Out of Date. Rebuilding..Explanation
- #HL2_GameOver_AllyExplanation
- 'Fifty Thousand Dollars'Explanation
- President Keemstar. Explanation
- Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet's get riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight into the surrender!
- What's up, American Nation?
- Being invaded by Jake Paulers.
- What..the..fuck..?Explanation
- 'We uploaded the wrong version.'Explanation