| DATA | |
|---|---|
| Base game | Half-Life |
| Developer(s) | Ben Greenwood |
| Release date | 2008-09-04 |
One of those brief but satisfactory Half-Life mods that is better precisely because of its short length, as it wouldn't feel as good if it lasted two hours. In this one you embody a Black Mesa cleaner named John Skinner, who gets caught in the middle of the disaster while wearing his protective HEV suit. The bad part is that this also makes the HECU mistake him for Gordon Freeman (well, him and the several dozen others with a suit I guess?), so it's kind of a bullet magnet.
Skinner's main objective will be to destroy a surface-to-air missile launcher that threatens to shoot down an important rocket (if you played the original game, you'll know which one, as this mod takes place during the events of its "On a Rail" chapter). So after escaping his own execution, he gets in touch with more surviving personnel to orchestrate the destruction of the armored vehicle.
Like I mentioned, Operation: Nova can be finished in 20 minutes in the easiest difficulty, and it takes place in our beloved facility (no trips to Xen), so don't expect anything new. There are nevertheless two things that make it stand out a little. The first are some nice nighttime outdoor areas, including the one with the SAM launcher itself.
The second is the voice acting. If you've played enough HL mods in the past, you already know that they tend to be pretty lousy (if any at all), with low sound quality, forced delivery of lines, teenagers trying to pass themselves off as adults, or several or all of them at the same time . Well, not here. It's a welcome touch to get plot exposition this way.
The action is mostly OK, but the main drawback is the high amount of backtracking. Perhaps to make the most of the few maps available, your character will need to go from one end to the other several times like a yo-yo, running errands. This can feel a bit irritating sometimes, perhaps stupid. On a couple of occasions, it can be confusing to know where to go next.
Other than that, gameplay is nice. In summary, I'd say that this mod was unjustly ignored back then. Time to set things right.
Playing