Rocket Crowbar (1999)

Some mods out there work to provide a realistic atmosphere or a sense of being a part of a military unit. Others seek to bring popular movies to Half-Life in order to replicate the feeling of the movie in a game. Still others evoke fear and revulsion with a dark, gloomy feel. And then you have mods that make you laugh your ass off. Rocket Crowbar is of the latter type, and one of the best out there right now. If you're looking for wacky fun, Rocket Crowbar delivers. In spades. Rocket Crowbar is basically a weapons modification mod, but the new HL 1.1-compatible version has a couple of extra tricks up its sleeve. First of all, the server can enable a CTF mode on any deathmatch level. All you have to do is make sure teamplay is on and that at least two teams are listed in the server options. Best of all, you can have up to six teams for some really chaotic fun. Secondly, the mod includes the option of a little pregame poll. The person hosting the server just has to edit the appropriate text files in the mod directory and activate the poll via a console command (see below). There is also a very basic bot included, if you're really short on people to kill. All right, you say. Enough with the extra stuff; let's see the weapons! All of the Rocket Crowbar weapons have different effects than the standard Half-Life ones. Most notable is the secondary fire on the crowbar, which fires a rocket (and thus, the name of the mod). Weapon balance is taken up a bit in Rocket Crowbar; many weapons are quite lethal. If you're the type who's used to shrugging off a few hits and only trying to dodge shots from big weapons, you're in for a rude awakening. Fortunately, the "drunken rocket" effect helps to offset the crowbar as a major weapon. I won't list all of the new effects here, as there is fun to be had in discovering what things do. The Glock has a secondary fire that will push you a little in the direction you're facing. This lets you boost yourself to higher places without the complete mobility provided by the usual grappling hooks, which is a nice balancer. Another example of a highly lethal but fairly balanced weapon is the "gravity well" hand grenade. The effect is quite spectacular, but it's easy to get hoist with your own petard when using them. The rocket launcher throws out a friendly NPC, which is actually a very powerful proximity mine. Other effects include the shotgun firing a flying scientist, snarks with eye lasers (and the ability to look through the snarks' eyes) and the tau cannon's teleport effect.

• Release Date: December 31, 1999
• Developer: Laser