Research and Development

By: Xander

On: August 16th, 2009

Research and Development is a mod released for Half-life 2: Episode Two, made by someone named ‘mbortolino’. I really can’t find anything else on the man past that name, which is a real shame because if this isn’t the only product of his work then I really want to see the rest.

RAD is a short two-hour adventure in the HL universe, where you again battle combine and zombies as you travel from point A to point B. The key difference here is that you don’t actually use any guns, with the Gravity Manipulator only showing up after the first 45 minutes or so. Instead you have to pass a series of physical obstacles by putting your mind hard at work, and this is where the mod really shines.

All encounters are fairly cerebral experiences, and each test a different part of your own personal skill. Sometimes quick reactions are required, whilst other times you need to sit and understand the whole concept of what you’re trying to accomplish before setting that plan into action piece by piece. It’s an incredibly varied adventure which, aside from the occasional Source Engine malfunction and a short section with swinging bridges, is both well paced and incredibly thoughtfully designed.

What I found most amazing about it is that really it makes somewhat more sense than the regular HL2 campaign, as you do play a scientist it seems perfectly rational that he has to use his brain more than anything else to get through certain situations. The extra hoops the game has you jump through to get the afformentioned Gravity Gun enhances the feeling that you’ve really earnt the device, and there’s just an awful lot else here too good to spoil. If you can then I really do emplore you to give it a try. Again though sadly it does require you to own ‘Episode Two’ rather than vanilla HL2, but as Steam have a sale on where the episode in question is only a 1/3rd its original price I’d say now is the time to check it out.

(Also; Mr. Whirly is legendary)

Posted in Adventure, Puzzle, Windows | Tags: mbortolino

AmnEn

Play it. It’s worth every second of it. The Mod is of a very high quality that puts a lot of other mods to shame. I’m really loving the level of detail that went into it.
For example, you can read the e-mails on computers, there are small and easy to overlook jokes everywhere. There are two Flaws but the rest of the Mod is so good, it’s easy to ignore the Flaws.
(The two flaws being: some of the triggers for the buttons are just too large, making it easy to point at one button and accidently hitting ANOTHER button instead – frustrating. Second bug – well controls seem cumbersome in the later parts of the mod)
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

the author is called Matt Bortolino, but he doens’t happen to have a site, which is a shame
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

Also if you happen to not own all the Half-Life games, this is the right time to redeem your soul, there’s also an awesome pack with HL1 + Opposing Force + Blue Shift
Johnnoz

An fps mod on the front page of TIGsource? Inconceivable!

But if anything deserves it its this, this is probably the greatest puzzle based mod for any game.
yrmom

Yeah, you guys should get back to your routine of featuring pictures of friends and indie egotists drinking beer at whatever social events instead of actually featuring games that aren’t from flashbang. It’s shocking.
Koholint

I finally caved in and bought Episodes 1 and 2 just for the mods, even though I own and have beaten both of them on the 360.
http://www.stegersaurus.com/ Stegersaurus

I haven’t checked out R&D yet, but I’ve heard about it a few times.

My main problem is every time I hear the name, I think it’s a new HL2 version of Science & Industry, which was a a HL1 mod I was really into.
Joseph

LOL @ yrmom :P
Are there any vids of this in action?
AClarkFS

I’ve played through this, its amazing, there a puzzles in this game that I never thought would exist in the half life universe… one big problem though, the car eats my movement…
Xander

“If you can’t get out of the cart, open the console and type ent_fire ui deactivate ”

That’ll sort it, apparently.
Loop Gain

This really is a top-notch mod, apart from a very minor issue with a push-button keypad that’s rather difficult to use without the crosshairs (I recommend you enable the console before starting and type “crosshair 1” when you encounter this keypad). Overall, though, this mod has a bunch of great puzzles, nice environments, and is really quite enjoyable. It’s probably the best Half-Life 2 mod I’ve played.

After all, you’ve got to love it when a plan comes together…
judgespear

TIGSource is now ModDB
Jay

@Stegersaurus

Science & Industry was awesome! In fact, the whole HL1 mod community was so great! There were so many mods for HL and such a great community with so many Servers and Players! And all that for free!

Another great HL mod was Vampire Slayer xD

oh such sweet memories!
Manpon

@judgespear

There’s nothing wrong with them posting select game mods on this website. Some mods turn into great games in their own right.

That, and a lot of people get started on playing with mods, and move onto bigger and better things.

Plus, this is an exceptional mod, really. It does things differently than other mods in its class, and isn’t that independent enough for you?
kongming

C’mon guys, this isn’t a petting zoo. Don’t feed the trolls.
Xuande

Good point.
judgespear

taking everything people say at face value is a bad habit you know
Koholint

This mod is fantastic. The end felt a bit out of place, but overall it was great. I wish more games had half the cool puzzles this game has.
O

There have been HL mods on tigs in the past.
AClarkFS

I used that console command on the movement eating car, it worked to an extent.. I couldn’t finish the game because of car related control eatingness.
Skofo

Interesting game! It’s always neat to see puzzle levels/mods. I do not think that it is wrong to put mods here. Why should only games whose engines were made completely from scratch deserve merit and attention?

I wish more polish was put into th egame, though. There are tons of things that could have been easily fixed with more play testing.

The issue that stood out the most for me was the weird things that happened if you figured out a particular puzzle but you didn’t do it The Right Way. If you decide to get past the electric water by carefully jumping on the machines instead of setting down boxes to jump on ahead of time, the game kills you randomly. If you get past the first sentries by knocking them down with your gravity gun through the fence instead of walking past them with bullet-proof glass, the game kills you.

The game also decides to kill you seemingly randomly after you fail some puzzles but the cause of failure isn’t death, which initially confused me because I thought it was a weird bug, not the game telling me that I failed. At the part where you have to get the toxic zombie to kill the other zombies, if you go through the opening to the zombies yourself while they’re still alive, the door closes behind you. If you stand by the door for five seconds, you die instantly. I assumed that the moving machinery somehow strangely clipped through the door or something. It turns out that you’re not supposed to leave through the opening until later. My question is: why automatically close the door after the player goes out? If it is important that the player doesn’t go out, why allow him to do so in the first place?

Aside from the very numerous polish issues, this game was pretty neat.
Hypersapien

Demonic Lawn Gnome FTW!
MisterX

I’m not through, yet, but I haven’t run into a single problem. The car controls just fine, I had a crosshair from the beginning and each death was logical.
I enjoyed it a lot so far, it’s been designed very creatively and it’s highly varied. Thanks for posting this here, I would’ve missed it otherwise. While I do know about many new HL2 mods, I pass up on most ones which don’t use custom content, as they usually feature rather generic battles as already seen in Half-Life 2, anyway. Thankfully, R&D is vastly different, and it’s very good.
Luke

A tour de force. I enjoyed every second.

That is all.
QXD-me

I’ve had this downloaded on my computer for weeks now (I think, it seems like that anyway) but still haven’t played it yet.
Chicken

Thouroughly enjoyed this game, thankyou for pointing it out to us :D. As someone above said, my only qualm with the game is when it kills you for figuring your own way to do things, in addition the the ones mentioned above, just after the turrets that you can’t knock over with the gravity gun, when you have to start up the platform on the tracks, I first thought that you have to use the conveniently placed boxes next to it to reach the lever, but as soon as you jump on one, it breaks and you die. I thought that it was a glitch and tried a couple more times, to no avail. It was ony in frustration that I launched a barrel at it, to have it start up.

Apart from that, excellent mod. :).
Yan

One of the very few games ever that have gotten me to raise my hands in triumph and shout YES. Naturally every single time Mr Whirly was flying through explosions in slow motion.