Prospekt

This recommendation comes with serious caveats. There are 2 ways to look at Prospekt: how the game plays as-is, and what it could have been. If you take it at face value, you'll get a fairly fun Half-Life 2 fan campaign that takes 2-3 hours to beat. If you go in hoping for something like Swelter, Entropy Zero, or even Hunt Down The Freeman, you'll be sorely disappointed. It's a mostly vanilla mission set with some entertaining setpieces and good action, which could make or break how you see it.

Prospekt is a non-canon Half-Life fangame set during the events of Half-Life 2. You play as Adrian Shephard, the protagonist of Opposing Force, after Vortigaunts break him free from stasis. Gordon Freeman is storming the hellish prison of Nova Prospekt, and they want Shephard to carry out his own mission of sabotage to aid him. Shephard relives past memories of his military experience while fighting against Combine Soldiers and alien wildlife alike, taking him from the titular prison to locations far removed from Earth.

Did you like Half-Life 2: Episode 2? If the answer is "yes," then you'll mostly get the same experience from Prospekt. Aside from some retextures, there are no new enemies or weapons to set it apart from the base game. The HUD is green, and Shephard's combat vest AI has a male voice, but you're playing as Gordon Freeman in all but name. The guns of Half-Life 2 return, aside from the Gravity Gun, Bugbait, and Crossbow. You mostly fight against Combine Soldiers and Elites, though you'll occasionally go up against Antlions, Headcrabs, Barnacles, Hunters, and Zombies as well.

Prospekt's level design is typically more open than vanilla Half-Life 2, featuring several combat sections in wide-open environments. Coupled with the slight health boost to Combine Soldiers, this results in the Combine AI actually being able to use HL2's squad tactics and maneuvering without immediately dying. Enemies feel smarter and more aggressive despite not having any AI improvements. It's a strange phenomenon, but I honestly couldn't complain. It was thrilling to have the Combine enemies act more like ruthless fighters than slow-witted bullet magnets.

The story of Prospekt is pretty middling. It ultimately goes nowhere despite offering some good plotlines. The intro narration goes on far too long. The audio flashbacks to Shephard's military days are well-acted, but they contribute nothing to the overarching story. Shephard's mission lacks a core goal or objective to strive for, outside of causing problems for the Combine. The ending is also very anticlimactic and disappointing. In fact, a glitch caused one of the Vortigaunts to survive the scripted sequence for me, causing him to stand around awkwardly while the scene played out.

If you're hoping for new content and updates for Prospekt, you should just move on. The developer hasn't updated it in years, and all signs point to the game being abandoned. The Developer Commentary feature is broken and requires you to rename files to fix it. Much-requested changes and additions, like the Crowbar being replaced with a Wrench, won't happen outside of community mods. Prospekt could have been turned from a decent game to a great experience, like what happened to Hunt Down The Freeman, but that doesn't seem like it will happen.

It isn't all bad, though! Prospekt has a great soundtrack. The levels are pretty well-designed, and the puzzles were nice when they arrived. The action is exciting and mostly plays well, aside from the confusing final gunfight. The voice work is great, from the new Combine voices to the flashback audios. It might not stray far from vanilla Episode 2, but it does well with the content it utilizes.

Like I said at the start, this review comes with serious caveats. If you want to play a fun vanilla-esque Half-Life 2 fan campaign, then Prospekt might be worth a try. I would only recommend buying it with a deep discount, though. It is absolutely not worth the full price. Other free mods do more without a cash incentive, like The Burton Equation, Dark Interval, or Raising the Bar: Redux. Prospekt ranges from "okay" to "pretty good" in a playthrough, but it could have been great. It's a shame that it didn't get more updates to reach its full potential.

maybe, someone like this game, and it have for what people can like this. But for me it's just another one boring free game from steam, but which is cost money. And if we are talking about money, this game have big problems
first, this game have no story. Yeah, it have a dialogues, but I don't think there was a scenario. This is just a bunch of dialogues.
the second problem is gameplay. Like, it's just a shooter, boring shooter without any puzzles like HL. We are just going somewhere, meeting enemies, killing them, healing in next room. Repeat for the rest of the game. It's not DOOM, it's not HL, and this is boring
I spent not so much money, and maybe for this price the game is better, than any free steam game but it's better, than HDTF anymore (I haven't played HDTF)
the game is playable, and maybe i'm gonna recomend this to you (sad that steam doesn't give a neutral rating option)
this game was developed by a single person, and with this information it's good

it has a good story but if you were to make a remake of a game then just include the weapons and enemies from opposing force then add them cause people would still enjoy it if it had the enemies and weapons

do you wish hl2 episode 1 had more horde shooting and source parkour and an impossible finale? than this game is for you

Not bad. In fact I kind of like it. If you have ever played any early 00s FPS games like Serious Sam this should be in your line-up. Maps are designed with little detail yet they are spacious and full of targets. While the script they are reading is at times a bit asinine voice actors have done a great job. If you enjoy pointing and shooting lots and lots of enemies while listening to an audiobook this is a game for you.

Story is not the best but wow the environment design is something else. I really like to play this as a fun non-canon campaign and it's really quite enjoyable if you like the combine aesthetic.

challenging