Research and development: a single-player Half Life 2 mod (2009)

Useful hints are peppered across the game

This high-quality user-submitted single-player Half-Life 2 campaign is a ton of fun. It is reminiscent of Portal with its puzzle-based scenario that eschews firearms for conflict resolution, letting you instead use a wide range of alternate tools and solutions to resolve its many challenges, such as guiding a creature remotely through a maze using pheromone pods, using electricity or microwave ovens to kill enemies and guiding an energy ray through a maze of rotating mirrors. Of course, you get to make heavy use of the gravity gun in many ingenious ways. The many references to the A-team also adds much to the charm of this scrappy game.

Mister Whirly and me

Dum-de-dum. Building my very own Mr Whirly!

Most memorable of all is Mister Whirly, a makeshift contraption that uses an awkward combination of fans to move around, much like some kind of wheeled hovercraft. Building Mr Whirly from spare parts was the most fun I’ve had in this game, allowing us to build a strong emotional link with this peculiar vehicle. Because of its name and geeky decorations, this crazy-ass car could actually be considered the main character of the game (as your own character is never seen or heard). Mister Whirly is such a cool invention that it is already developing its own fan base, much like Portal’s Companion Cube, another famous inanimate game character that nonetheless managed to develop more personality than the main characters of most games.

A fly in my soup

This excellent mod has apparently been created single-handedly by a mysterious and very reclusive game designer known as Marcello Bortolino over a period of six month. That he managed to accomplish so much in such a high level of quality is quite an achievement. However, at the time of this writing, a significant bug remain that causes Mr Whirly to still be under your control when you step out (thus preventing you from moving around on your own). Unresolved, this bug can grind the game to a frustrating halt. Until a bug fix is applied, you can follow the following instructions as a workaround:

Can I access the console from here?

Exit Mr Whirly (type the "action" key, usually "e").
Activate the developer console (usually by hitting " " - see the Steam Support Wiki for more information on how to activate the console.)
Type ent_fire ui deactivate into the console and hit enter. This releases control of the vehicle.
Exit the console (hit escape).

Now, if you own Half Life 2: Episode 2 for PC, then go ahead and download this gem already!