Half-Quake Amen Coop - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Half-Quake Amen is a rather famous mod with a focus on save scumming and nasty traps. I haven't played the standalone mod but from what I hear it's really focused on messing with the player. Now it is available for Sven Co-op at the expense of some of its features.

SCMapDB page

Original mod authors: Muddasheep

Conversion authors: Royal-soldier

Date of original mod release: 2002

Date of final Sven Map release: 2009

Maps in package: 26

Map review of Half-Quake Amen Coop

(originally posted on SCMapDB) 

by dunkelschwamm | December 1, 2021 | 3027 characters

    Half-Quake Amen is one of my personal favorite Half-Life mods. It's funny, tricky, and does a lot of weird gonzo shit that pokes fun at the concepts of "intuitive gameplay" and "rule of fun" which were all the craze when Half-Life had come out. Often the player is comedically punished for relying on intuition, and the mod reminds you from beginning to end that this is Half-Quake and you are here to die.

    The Half-Quake Amen port for Sven Coop is a slapdash copy-paste job that seems to work mostly by way of Half-Quake Amen's maps housing so much of the mechanics of the mod that plugging them directly into Sven Coop is almost enough for them to work. However, there are a plethora of issues. Some maps are broken, including the iconic train station map, two maps which lack spawn points, one map whose spawn is ruined after a player death, and one map which is ruined because the author of the port didn't think to include a necessary text file. The holes in the mod are so severe that the headcrab replacement (the "dragon", as it is called ingame) which is a major enough part of the mod to be part of the chorus of its theme song, is entirely absent from the port.

    That's not all that was ruined, though. Some resources, specifically some skyboxes, seem to be defined in such a way that they must overwrite existing resources. Additionally, some of the musical tracks abruptly end after only partial completion.

    Frankly, during the playthrough I came to another realization: Half-Quake isn't a series that works in Sven. Its atmosphere and story depend entirely on the player being alone and alienated, and the challenges are set up around save-scumming as a feature. Neither of these are conducive to Sven Coop. I don't think this is a port that CAN work, even if placed in more competent hands.

    If you're setting up a server, I think this port can safely stay off of your rotation. It's broken, simply put. The fragments which remain are mostly playable, but feel empty and unoptimized. If you want to play with a friend, I'd honestly recommend skipping this too. I tried introducing a friend to Half-Quake for the first time through this and I think it was a mistake. Play the Half-Quake Trilogy instead of this port, you can find it easily on Steam.

Pros:

• Half-Quake Amen is a fantastic mod
• Many of the maps seem to work alright

Cons:

• Many of the maps do not work alright, or even at all in some cases.
• The port is lazily done and lacks some necessary resources, even including some maps.
• Some of the resources which are present are improperly ported or damaged.
• If you play this whole campaign through there are multiple maps you will need to skip because they are literally unplayable.
• Half-Quake just isn't really a game that's meant to be played the way Sven works.

Score: 3 / 10