Half-Life 2, Now With More Scares (And Big Jumps)

Half-Life 2‘s been around since Kotaku was a bouncing baby blogglette — freshly hatched from its internet egg — but people are still making some brilliant-looking mods for it. Today, one with gut-wrenching atmosphere… and the ability to leap over buildings.

After two years in the making, Transmissions: Element 120 is out. It’s a spooky, atmospheric single-player story set in the Half-Life universe after Half-Life 2: Episode 2. That’s not to say, however, that it’s a slow-paced stroll through narrative quicksand. There’s still plenty of action, as evidenced by all the destructibility and a goddamn strider marauding about way too close for comfort.

The mod’s centrepiece feature, however, is a new variation on the gravity gun that “allows you to jump buildings and sustain large falls.” So expect to get some serious in between stinky sewer skulks.

Transmission: Element 120 also aims to spruce up the now-creaky Source engine with some much-appreciated tweaks:

• Enhanced dynamic lighting
• Integrated Source Shader Editor 0.5 for enhanced post processing & lighting
• Improved support for complex physics structure
• Support for super massive physics objects
• Pre-processed AO
• Improved AI and group behaviour on multiple AI types

You may or may not notice a lot of that stuff, but I’m all about improved AI. I’m glad massive physics objects are getting more support, too. I feel that they have been underrepresented in our society for far too long.

You can download Transmissions: Element 120 for free here. Its creators are also trying to get it onto Steam by way of Greenlight, so you can give them a thumbs-up if you like what you play.