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It's finally that time – Hunt Down the Freeman was released yesterday on Steam for $25. Notorious before it even released thanks to stolen assets, silly cutscenes, and Keemstar's involvement, it's immediately attracted almost exclusively negative reviews. Upon release, crashes were rampant and the game was bugged to the point where cutscenes didn't load. The Half-Life community is mocking it mercilessly and it's already attracted some memeing (and destroyed Tyler McVicker's soul). What's KYM think of this masterpiece?

This 'game' is an insult to the half life brand and his fans. It's borderline unplayable. Level design sucks. And the worst of all; the trailer makes you think is a decent game worth buying. Even if it weren't based on the half life lore it would still be an awful game.

I really hope Project Borealis ends up being better.

Given Valve seems open to just letting fans profit off the Half Life franchise at this point (though Valve and the people behind these "for profit" fan projects obviously make some kind of deal that involves a profit split), I feel like it'll actually be fans who make Half Life 3 using the story Mark Laidlaw released on his blog in 2017. Were it not for the fact Crowbar Collective is a small team that has their hands full working on Black Mesa (Xen STILL isn't out yet as of posting this message, plus they're updating the engine to run smoother while also having better looking lighting and effects) I'd say they would be up to the task, but I can't really think of any other Half Life mod creators who come close to the quality of Valve when they were at their peak.

(Hunt this freeman)

(capture him)

(he has no freedoms)
(wait)
(are we in the right country)

(who cares)
(REKKED)
(RIP FOOL)
(sells bones as 'arifacts" to scientific researchers)
(me- eats a Banana for the minerals that cure depression) a.k.a potassium

Personally, I think that even without the reported stolen assets, the bad but funny looking cutscenes or the fact that it's a p a i d m o d, the concept itself from the start doesn't seem very fitting in the half life universe (or lore) at all. Ofc there's the people who are stating the obvious by saying "oh, this is worse than Half-Life: prospekt".
I have seen and do believe that people in the Half-life community can pitch stories and create fascinating ideas that can live up to its predecessor; this though is just a dissapointment in my eyes and in many others.
also from my knowledge and quick research, I dont believe the cremator was created to kill living subjects, but to be more like a janitor of sorts (while originally intending to be faught by the player at some point in the story of HL2).

Well time to find out just how shitty this is.
grabs a small alcoholic drink for this
two minutes in
Fuck this; I'm going to need all the beer to get through this.

My first gripe with this game is the voice acting. It's obvious they're using the same three people for all the voice actors. Honestly in games like this that are minimum budget I wish they would have less speaking roles rather than-
"Hey person who is totally not voiced by the same person look at this"
"See what? Do you see this other person who is totally not voiced by the same person?"

Also the shitty robotic voice. Seriously there's hundreds of free to use voice filters and you just used the first one you saw on the internet?

The inventory system is annoying. You have to unzip your backpack then grab a gun.

There is one thing I do like though; the knife. If you knife someone in the fucking head they should die. This game is one of the few single player fps games that understand this.

At least this game understands that Half-life 2 ladders were shit.

They reused Half-Life 1 assets… Seriously?

STOP TALKING! OH MY GOD! STOP TALKING! I would have preferred a game where nobody talks than listen to this.

I have a sudden appreciation for silent protagonists after this.

I have a sudden liking for shorter games after this. I would prefer a short good game than a shitty long long long long long game.

And I fell through the floor.

Honestly the concept of a zombie horde is kind of cool. Someone on the team understands the concept of zombies. Kind of wish they made a zombie game instead. The horror of zombies is their shear fucking numbers and the idea that standing and fighting is a bad idea against hordes.

I fell through the floor.

I kind of wish they introduced physics based gameplay instead of rehashing what Half-Life 2 did. Like tilt a vending machine against a door to block out enemies.

And the only amount of effort anywhere in this game was the cutscene.

Oh hello generic helicopter on the asset store #23423423

You really couldn't do a better portal effect? Seriously? Even a storm effect or something would have looked better.

PLEASE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY STOP TALKING!

That new enemy type isn't half-assed; it's quarter-assed.

I'm patriotic and all but do you really have to say "god bless america!" every two sentences?

Oh hey generic shooter #234234523523423

The ai in this is dumber than a kid on the short bus.

This game would have been so much better as just a generic zombie shooter.

My teammates are literally just standing there not moving.

Okay I know I haven't served in the military but I'm pretty sure proper military procedure for when you're completely surrounded isn't to stand out in the fucking open.

Game is frozen on loading screen.

Game still frozen.

I'm going to take a break and wait for the game to load.

Ten minutes to load.. Ten fucking minutes with a top of the line computer.

This is just lazy.

Isn't that a clip from a movie?

More laziness.

This is even lazier than Prospekt.

That new enemy design is literally just a combine police with a different visual for it.

S.T.O.P. T.A.L.K.I.N.G!
God now I understand why feminists think you can be raped without someone physically touching you, cause that voice acting is just ear rape.

Why are there grenades in a police car? I understand it's cause people associate police with having guns, but I'm just wondering why? Was the police officer tired of his job and was planning on bombing his coworkers that day?

Black screen.

Why is there a glass door right under a support pillar for a building? The only explanation for this game is it was designed by a madman.

Another black screen

That doesn't canonically timeline wise make sense. How the hell are there already zombines? The combine police don't even exist yet.

I'm starting to feel as though whoever made this hasn't played the half-life franchise and is just using the name to get money.

Oh hey another crappy poorly done filter. Why am I not surprised.

I wouldn't say this is the worst game ever, rather this is one of the games that satan forces you to play in hell. Right along with Metal Gear Survive and Day One Garry's Incident.

HOLY FUCK! THAT LOADING SCREEN WAS EVEN LONGER?! WHAT THE HELL?

That doesn't make sense either canonically.

Hi scrolling 240p jpeg image as sky.

Hi crappy physics.

Hi crappy enemy ai that literally thinks I've disappeared as soon as it loses direct line of sight.

That doesn't canonically make sense either.

Throwing three fucking unofficial bosses at you in one area with no cover? That's low dude.

Why are the combine using headcrab launchers? That canonically doesn't make sense, as far as the combine knew at this point headcrabs were like rats. They didn't know headcrabs loved humans.

I love being a camping bitch against dumb bots that run into your bullets.

Hello broken textures.

Hello foreshadowing.

Excuse me? Since when could the tripods use their laser cannon thing like a fucking machinegun?

Manhacks? Manhacks weren't even invented yet.

The walking animation is legitimately making me physically ill at this point. I know having your character's viewpoint stationary while moving is unrealistic and all, but this is giving me motion sickness.

Is this really what passes for a puzzle mini game in this day and age?

Okay the camp gay guy was kind of funny.
"My mother's dead?"

And now the joke has worn off now that they told the same joke four times in a row. Listen there's a reason for the rule of three in comedy.

Why are they still fighting after having surrendered? In the game the USA has already surrendered.

Now just a up and regular old combine police officer popped out of the sky.

And now it's a rail shooter (pun intended).

And now it's purely fanfiction.

I'm going to spoiler the game cause fuck it: in this fanfiction of a game the combine are literally draining the Earth's oceans and controlling children by putting gasmasks on them.

I've officially reached the level of "fuck it".

I did it. I finally got through this fucking game.

How would I rate this game? Needing one drink to get through? A daiquiri?

If you made someone play this game and Metal Gear Survive that would be considered a act of war. It is nowhere near the worst game in existence, but a 21% approval vote on steam is generous. It's a broken unfunctional mess.

Extremely bad things about this game that everyone can agree is bad:
Half of the time loading levels doesn't work
VERY long loading times
Constant black screens
One of the levels is so broken that I went fuck it and noclipped cause the trigger sequence wouldn't activate.
Half of the time loading levels won't activate.
Five enemy types in the whole game.
Said five enemy types are dumb as rocks.

I think this "masterpiece" is defiantly a piece of something. Its a piece of Shit thats what.
The Voice Acting is just down right horrendous. Including arguably my "favorite" line, "WHERE IS HE! WHERE IS THE FREE MAN!!!" They managed to somehow be horrendous with the voice acting. You have horribly written dialogue that sounds like it was written by a middle schooler, a plethora of VA's that range from decent to down right horrendous. You got some peoples sound quality that is just horrid. One guy sounds like he was recording himself in the bathroom. One guys audio quality dipped when compared to the protagonist. Did I forget to mention they had Keemstar and Pyrocynical in the game? Because they do and I'm still wondering how a drama reporter and a dying content creator are guaranteed to be good VA's. Also how do you fuck up a G Man impression/voice. His natural stutters and pauses could have been easy to do but they some how fucked it up. Also what's with everyone pronouncing Black Mesa wrong? In the game series its pronounced like Black M*a*sa. You put an emphasis on the E to almost make an A sound. Not a hard E. The Game Voice Acting is a 2/10.
The gameplay is just……… to quote someone, "You need to no clip through the entire game just to finish it." If you need to noclip through entire levels then you know your game was a waste of time and resources. The "game" is chock full of glitches and bugs. The "gameplay" is your generic modern fps with a Half Life paint job half painted on. The level designs are unoriginal and its boring and bland. Gun Play is as clunky and terrible as it can get. 1/10 for Gameplay.
The Story is a train wreck. You play as a marine during the Black Mesa event and he gets beaten to near death by a psycho in a hazmat suit from Black Mesa with a crowbar. You then wake up during the 7 hours war in which your main task is to hunt down Gordon Freeman and get answers and blah blah blah. The story sounds interesting on paper but then you realize you're playing a game which is as haphazardly put together and sounds more like a money scheme than anything. All around the story is horrible. One plot twist is that it wasn't freeman who beat the MC to near death to get shitty looking scars it was one of his squad mates. Saved you a 4+ hour slog fest to beat this game. Story gets a 1
The only redeeming qualities of this dumpster fire of a game is the cinematic done in SFM. You can tell the animator knows his way around SFM though he wouldn't wanna put this shit show of a game on his résumé in the near future. That is this games only redeeming feature, its cinematic.
All around this game is another reason to get rid of Steam Greenlight. Games like these slip through the cracks and try to latch onto beloved titles names and act as a part of the franchise. This game is honestly a refund simulator. Don't buy it even for an enemy as a gift. A portion of the funds go back to the company that made this fiery shit show and unless you wanna fund another disaster, don't buy this game.

I Hate Everything has released a video regarding his involvment in the game as a voice actor.
A few highlights of the video:
1.) He was supposed to be paid, he's yet to get any money
2.) The reason he agreed to be in the game was basically to try something new so to speak. Colossal is crazy gave him a shoutout and that's how he got the offer.
3.) He's English, but he was cast to play an Asian-American character
4.) He never got a script (He doesn't even know what the story is). He was just occasionally given lines, and the only direction he got was that his performance should "make you cry"
5.) He was originally told to do his lines in an American accent, but that was scraped and he did all his lines in his normal voice, but some of the takes with the American accent made it into the final game.
6.) In regard to the devs claiming they released the wrong version, he thinks that it's impossible to fix the game since it's become too much of a meme fest to ever be taken seriously like the developers wanted
7.) In terms of a lot of the voice cast being youtubers, he thinks that a youtuber cast of voices could work in something more tongue and cheek, but not something that's supposed to be gritty and overdramatic like HDTF was supposed to be.

Pyrocynical also just uploaded a video of his Black Mesa Playthrough. He didn't directly address his involvement like IHE did, but he did make multiple jokes at the expense of the game, including one about his own performance (which he jokingly refers to as ">oscar worthy".

tbf to my knowledge of half life lore the draining the oceans thing and killing kids did actually happen.
doesn't stop the game from being absolute laughable garbage but just stating what to my knowledge is true.

Draining the oceans definitely happened. I'm not sure about killing kids; I think they just let whatever children survived the invasion grow up into a lot of the citizens you see.

Yea, plus even if the latter part about killing the kids gets confirmed by valve[on the unlikely chance considering they don't give a single fuck about half life anymore] I highly doubt they did it by putting on some random evil mask of evil.

Child Labor and Draining the Oceans were bits of lore that were in the HL2 Beta, but I think they were removed due to factors like story ideas contradicting older ones, such as adding that humans were no longer able to reproduce (something to do with instinct and trying to get rid of it), and wanting to give the game a less gritty tone. I'm not sure if these ideas were completely removed from the new lore, or if they were kept in and made to fit into the lore.

Or, HDTF just saw the beta ideas of draining oceans, Child labor, and cremators and thought that it was so edgy they had to fit into its edgy fan-fiction/bootleg MGS:V storyline.

Draining the oceans was kept. Evidence of it is most prominent in Water Hazard and Highway 17, where the water level is obviously lower than it should be both in the city canals and along the coast.

/v/ made their own dub of the game