Contents
Introducing the Prospekt
Even though the Half-Life: Opposing Force expansion pack for the iconic Half-Life first-person shooter game was relased all the way back in 1999, I have myself only recently met with corporal Adrian Shepherd as I went throught the Opposing Force, as well as the Blue Shift (released in 2001). Both games are still worth playing by the way. But, it was with great pleasure when I found about the existence of, than only few months released, fan game which establish as pretty much a sequel to the Opposing Force: the Prospekt.
Prospekt was pretty much a one-man show, developed by Richard Seabrook in a year and a half. It was released on february 18th 2016 through Steam thanks to fan voting for the game, but it is actually not a fully finished one yet, it is kinda like an early-access game. There have been many overhauls and expansions and some are yet to come. One of the greatest problems people complain about is the still-missing Black Forest chapture, despite being advertised on the Steam game page.
Since last year, Richard announced he is not fully working on the Prospekt anymore, focusing on another game. But there is now a small team of people who continue fixing stuff and adding new content. So hopefully we will see the game expansed with the Black Forest one day. I can tell you right away it is still very nice one to play already, but as a person who most likely has played the Half Life 2 (and its Episodes) more times than Fallout 2 already – and that is something – I managed to go through it in one afternoon. So more levels (or chapters) is definitelly something every player will be happy to see. Especially when it’s Black Forest we talk about!
Prospekt music
There is not much to talk about music. The Half-Life saga is not really focusing much on music at all. Besides different sounds of alarms or machinery, weapons and interaction with objects, there are some short passages with music, especially in Half-Life 2, usually to deepen some strong experience – to “jazz it up”. Like when the game gets the speed when you are running with boat or buggy. But that’s about that. It’s pretty much the same with Prospekt. There are few locations with some music to make things even more intense, and the music fits it pretty well, but it’s just not a high priority in this FPS.
Graphics
In terms of graphics, the Prospekt uses the current Source engine. So while it is not the best engine around of course, considering its age, it still looks pretty well. The old (soviet) architecture part of the game looks just OK, and the new Combine techno-style is very shiny and combines lots of lights and shadows which looks pretty effective. Especially if you do not increase the brightness as high as I did (though it is slightly easier to play than as the Prospekt stays on the same track as Half-Life 2 did – all of them are pretty dark games).
Prospekt recreates a few of the rooms seen in Half Life 2, mostly the old prison parts. Most of them are pretty damaged after Gordon Freeman went through, especially the portal room which you have to run through to the portal before it collapses alltogether. There is not really much of a reason to remake the maps anyway (as Richard surely did not get them from Valve). Take it as if you saw them from different angle.
Thanks to using the Source, the game not only looks rather well, but also the system requirements are laughable. Richard states what I decipher as Pentium D as minimum with 1 GB RAM (for XP) and DirectX 9.0 compatible graphics (with 128 MB of VRAM). It’s just somewhat space hungry as it takes 12 GB on the hard drive. Still, these are requirements for a calculator. And it still looks quite good, just take a look at this star map!
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