There are a lot of great fan-made Half-Life games out there, which is great since Valve doesn’t seem too interested in giving us a Half-Life sequel outside a VR game (which admittedly might just be the best VR title ever made). However, not every Half-Life game can be a Black Mesa. Some of them turn out to be Hunt Down The Freeman.
Released by Royal Rudius Entertainment in 2018, Hunt Down the Freeman is sort of like Half-Life: Opposing Force. You play as H.E.C.U Sergeant Mitchell, who wakes up in a hospital after an unfortunate meeting with Gordon Freeman’s crowbar. After regaining consciousness, Mitchell finds the world under attack by aliens from another dimension. Hilarity ensues.
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Hunt Down the Freeman was made using Half-Life 2’s Source engine, and despite some high-poly models and high-rez textures that push "Source to the limit," the game still doesn’t look great even by 2018 standards. It’s also short at just over two hours long which isn’t helped by the 45 minutes of cutscenes. Hunt Down the Freeman has mixed reviews, although we should point out that it’s still receiving regular updates that have helped bump its recent reviews up to 66 percent on Steam.
Perhaps Hunt Down The Freeman was a little too ambitious. What it really should have done was forget about the Source engine and go back to the original GoldSrc engine used in the first Half-Life. That’s what Hunt Down The Freeman: Classic does, which you can download a demo for over on ModDB.
Hunt Down The Freeman: Classic is essentially a demake of the 2018 game. It’s still in active development, with the most recent update adding parkour, night vision goggles, aim-down-sights, special weapon modes, and several new monsters including fast zombies and Synths. There are also several new maps, which fans of the original game are likely to appreciate.
There’s no release date for the full demake, but there is a demo available to give you a sense of what you’re in for. Keep an eye on the mod’s ModDB page for future updates.