To Alleviate The Waiting For Episode 3

While the internet rumour mill's been getting itself in a speculative tizz over the well-duh! revelation that there'll be more Half-Life after Episode 3, I've been playing a rather good fan-made HL2 episode.

Residual Error Volume 1 may be lacking the narrative and polished puzzling of Minerva: Metastasis, but it's a remarkably proficient all-action mod.

There're a few moments where it throws odds at me which present a slightly fresh challenge from the old formula - just upping the number of simultaneous enemies in confined spaces to more than I'm normally comfortable with, but without doing the my-first-mod irritations of filling every last inch of floorspace with angry zombies. Challenging, but in a satisfying way. It's got an effective survival horror feel to it, a few neat level design tricks, it has some interesting twists on familiar HL2 architecture and it feels oddly expert. Go play - you'll like this one. And unlike Episodes 1 & 2, you don't need to pay for it.

Oh, for some reason it tried to install itself into a folder other than my actual Steam one - watch out for that. I just cut'n'pasted the files into the right place in the end.

Also, I don't think I've seen a Barnacle eat a Poison Headcrab before. So that was cool.