Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D.

Last updated
Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D.
Half life caged steam.jpg
Developer(s) Future Games Select
Publisher(s) Future Games Select
Director(s) Cayle George
Producer(s) Cayle George
Composer(s) Garrett "Lazerhawk" Hays
Engine GoldSrc
Platform(s)
ReleaseSeptember 21, 2017
Genre(s) First-person shooter
Mode(s) Singleplayer

Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D. (also stylized as Half-Life: Caged) is a game modification of Half-Life by Cayle George and Future Games Select released on September 21, 2017. [1] [2] Made using the GoldSrc engine, the mod includes a single-player campaign in which the player must escape from a closely guarded prison. [3]

Contents

The mod was released on Microsoft Windows via Steam [4] and was made available on OS X and Linux in December 2017. [5] [6] [7] [8]

Development

The mod was made by Cayle George, an ex-Valve employee who previously worked on Team Fortress 2 and Portal 2. [9] [10] On August 17, Future Games Select released a trailer of the mod, [11] with George announcing the release of the mod on the forum The Whole Half Life on September 1. [12] The music was made by Garrett "Lazerhawk" Hays, a synthwave producer. [13]

Gameplay

The gameplay is similar to the gameplay of the Half-Life series, taking weapons from Half-Life 2 . Instead of a crowbar, the player is given a plunger. [14] The enemies only include guards and has a runtime of half an hour to an hour. [15]

Plot

The game begins with the player in a cell with other prisoners inside the Correctional & Automatic Guardhouse Electronic Detention. The player has to get out of the cell and escape by using the pressure of the pipe to blow it up, leading into a sewer. [14] The player then makes their way throughout the facility while evading or killing the guards, climaxing at a battle at the docks of the prison to get to a speedboat. [16]

Critical reception

The mod received positive reception from critics and fans. [17] Metrocop.net praised the game for its clever design and atmosphere. [18] Kotaku praised the game for its shooting, calling it a "remarkable mod with great gunfights." [16] The Daily SPUF criticized the difficulty of the game, saying that the normal difficulty was unbalanced with the limited ammo and health, as well as the weapons doing little damage to the enemies while praising its use of the GoldSrc engine to create the setting and recommended it to players. [19] Alice O'Connor of Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised the game's visuals and atmosphere while criticizing the weapons and their lack of damage. [20]

The mod was made a Classic of the Month on the Run Think Shoot Live blog in June 2020, [1] and was the Editor's Choice for Mod DB's Mod of The Year 2017. [21]

Related Research Articles

<i>Counter-Strike</i> (video game) 2000 first-person shooter video game

Counter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was initially developed and released as a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe in 1999, before Le and Cliffe were hired and the game's intellectual property acquired. Counter-Strike was released by Valve for Microsoft Windows in November 2000, and is the first installment in the Counter-Strike series. Several remakes and ports were released on Xbox, as well as OS X and Linux.

<i>Team Fortress Classic</i> 1999 video game

Team Fortress Classic is a first-person shooter game developed by Valve and published by Sierra Studios. It was originally released in April 1999 for Windows, and is based on Team Fortress, a mod for the 1996 game Quake. The game puts two teams against each other in online multiplayer matches; each member plays as one of nine classes, each with different skills. The scenarios include capture the flag, territorial control, and escorting a "VIP" player.

Video game modding is the process of alteration by players or fans of one or more aspects of a video game, such as how it looks or behaves, and is a sub-discipline of general modding. Mods may range from small changes and tweaks to complete overhauls, and can extend the replay value and interest of the game.

<i>Day of Defeat</i> 2003 video game

Day of Defeat is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game set in the European theatre of World War II on the Western front. Originally a modification of the 1998 game Half-Life, the rights of the modification were purchased by Valve and released as a full retail title in 2003.

<i>Half-Life 2</i> 2004 video game

Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original Half-Life (1998), Half-Life 2 combines shooting, puzzles and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. The player controls Gordon Freeman, who joins a resistance to liberate Earth from the alien Combine empire.

Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the releases of Half-Life: Source, Counter-Strike: Source, and Half-Life 2. It is most well-known for its usage by Valve, but the engine has been used both by small teams and individuals to create modifications of Valve games, and other studios creating distinct games, notably Troika Games title Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Valve continued to create incremental updates to the Source engine after its 2004 release, most of which coincided with games created by Valve. In the late 2010s, Valve created the Source 2 engine to replace Source, with it publicly debuting alongside Half-Life: Alyx. The Source engine is most well-known for its advancements in physics, AI, and graphics.

<i>Counter-Strike: Source</i> 2004 video game

Counter-Strike: Source is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve and Turtle Rock Studios. Released in October 2004 for Windows, it is a remake of Counter-Strike (2000) using the Source game engine. As in the original, Counter-Strike: Source pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won either by completing an objective or by eliminating all members of the enemy team. The game was initially bundled with all retail and digital copies of Half-Life 2, before being released standalone.

<i>Team Fortress 2</i> 2007 video game

Team Fortress 2 is a 2007 multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 Team Fortress mod for Quake and its 1999 remake, Team Fortress Classic. The game was released in October 2007 as part of The Orange Box for Windows and the Xbox 360, and ported to the PlayStation 3 in December 2007. It was released as a standalone game for Windows in April 2008, and updated to support Mac OS X in June 2010 and Linux in February 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's digital retailer Steam, with Electronic Arts managing retail and console editions.

<i>Half-Life</i> (series) Video game series

Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter (FPS) games created by Valve. The games combine shooting combat, puzzles and storytelling.

<i>Sven Co-op</i> 1999 video game

Sven Co-op is a co-op variation of the 1998 first-person shooter Half-Life. The game, initially released as a mod in January 1999, and created by Daniel "Sven Viking" Fearon, enables players to play together on online servers to complete levels, many of which are based on the Half-Life universe but include other genres. In addition to the cooperative gameplay, Sven Co-op includes improvements from the original Half-Life, including improved artificial intelligence for both enemy and allied non-player characters.

<i>Garrys Mod</i> 2006 video game

Garry's Mod is a 2006 sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve. The base game mode of Garry's Mod has no set objectives and provides the player with a world in which to freely manipulate objects. Other game modes, notably Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt, are created by other developers as mods and are installed separately, by means such as the Steam Workshop. Garry's Mod was created by Garry Newman as a mod for Valve's Source game engine and released in December 2004, before being expanded into a standalone release that was published by Valve in November 2006. Ports of the original Windows version for Mac OS X and Linux followed in September 2010 and June 2013, respectively. As of September 2021, Garry's Mod has sold more than 20 million copies. A successor, Sandbox, has been in development since 2015.

<i>Jailbreak: Source</i> 2007 video game

Jailbreak: Source is a multiplayer team-based first-person action video game, developed as a total conversion modification on the Valve's proprietary Source engine. The game was in beta development stages before it was abandoned, with its first public release on the 14th of February 2007. 0.2 followed a week later as a patch. The third major public version was released two months later on April 21, 2007. The next release was made available just over a year later, on May 3, 2008 with the latest version (0.6) being released on 15 January 2010.

<i>Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat</i> 2007 video game

Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat is a total conversion mod for Valve's Source engine. Released in 2007, it's a multiplayer tactical shooter, focused on a realistic experience, compared to other titles in that period. The game is primarily set in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a war between the United States Marine Corps, and a group of rebel insurgents.

<i>Black Mesa</i> (video game) 2020 video game

Black Mesa is a 2020 first-person shooter game developed and published by Crowbar Collective. It is a third-party remake of Half-Life (1998) made in the Source game engine. Originally published as a free mod in September 2012, Black Mesa was approved for commercial release by Valve, the developers of Half-Life. The first commercial version was published as an early-access release in May 2015, followed by a full release in March 2020 for Linux and Windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GoldSrc</span> Video game engine

GoldSrc, sometimes called the Half-LifeEngine, is a proprietary game engine developed by Valve. At its core, GoldSrc is a heavily modified version of id Software's Quake engine. It made its debut in 1998 with Half-Life and powered future games developed by or with oversight from Valve, including Half-Life's expansions, Day of Defeat and games in the Counter-Strike series.

Counter-Strike (CS) is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror while counter-terrorists try to prevent it. The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, Counter-Strike. It was initially released as a modification ("mod") for Half-Life that was designed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe before the rights to the mod's intellectual property were acquired by Valve, the developers of Half-Life, who then turned Counter-Strike into a retail product released in 2000.

<i>Research and Development</i> (mod) 2009 Half-Life mod and puzzle game

Research and Development is a free mod for the first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Developed by Matt Bortolino and released on July 17, 2009, it is a non-violent first-person puzzle video game, and has been compared to Portal. It received critical praise for its unique gameplay and high development quality.

References

  1. 1 2 "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D." Run Think Shoot Live.
  2. Brown, Fraser (September 24, 2017). "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D. is a free mod from a Valve alumnus". PC Gamer .
  3. "Pakene vankilasta Valven entisen työntekijän kehittämässä Half-Life: Caged -modissa". Muropaketti. September 23, 2017.
  4. Hegevall, Peter (September 25, 2017). "Half-Life: Caged disponible maintenant sur Steam". Gamereactor (in French).
  5. "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D." IDGB.
  6. Dawe, Liam (September 22, 2017). "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D. from former Valve worker should hopefully come to Linux". GamingOnLinux.
  7. "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D. - LINUX and OSX Launch!". Steam . December 22, 2017.
  8. "El mod 'Half-Life :Caged' ya ha sido lanzado para Linux". LinuxAdictos (in Spanish). 27 December 2017.
  9. Donnell, Peter (2017). "Half-Life C.A.G.E.D. Mod from Ex Valve Employee". eTeknix.
  10. Bär, Philipp (September 3, 2017). "Half-Life C.A.G.E.D. Mod von Ex Valve Mitarbeiter" (in German).
  11. "Half Life: Caged je mod od bývalého dizajnéra z Valve". Sector (in Polish). September 24, 2017.
  12. Cayle George (as "Dallas") (September 1, 2017). "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D." The Whole Half-Life.
  13. Madejski, Darek (September 23, 2017). "Były pracownik Valve wydaje za darmo Half-Life: Caged". PlanetaGracza.
  14. 1 2 "HALF-LIFE CAGED". PC Gamer . November 14, 2019 via PressReader.
  15. Tarason, Dominic (September 23, 2017). "An ex-Valve developer drags us back to the 90s for a prison break in free mod Half-Life: Caged". PCGamesN .
  16. 1 2 Alexandra, Heather (September 27, 2017). "Ex-Valve Employee's New Mod Is Some Of The Best Half-Life Ever". Kotaku .
  17. Źródło, Góral (September 23, 2017). "Half-Life - ukazał się mod Half-Life: Caged, stworzony przez byłego pracownika Valve". Gry Online .
  18. Mythos (September 29, 2017). "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D. Review". Metrocop. Archived from the original on July 1, 2021.
  19. SilverWolf (December 11, 2017). "Half-Life: C.A.G.E.D." The Daily SPUF.
  20. O'Connor, Alice (September 22, 2017). "Ex-Valve chap launches Half-Life mod C.A.G.E.D." Rock, Paper, Shotgun .
  21. "Editors Choice - Mod of the Year 2017". Mod DB . December 22, 2017.