"Not the perfect mod everybody makes it out to be"

There's no greater thrill than donning a trenchcoat and stylish sunglasses, brandishing a pair of handguns and flying through the air firing away at your opponent as bullets and shrapnel whizz all around you in a spectacular blur.

The Specialists is one of many mods available for Half-Life and is one that attempts to recreate the stylish gunfights of Hong Kong Blood Operas and Hollywood action movies. It seems that the Specialists can more or less be written off as a Matrix mod.

GRAPHICS:
Graphically, the Specialists is absolutely amazing. The great detailed textures go hand in hand with the exceptional models. The movement animations are smooth and nothing short of spectacular. Also implemented are destructible environments and bullet trails. Whenever slow motion is activated, you'll be able to see projectiles as they travel through the air, which is nothing short of breathtaking. Of course, all this eye-candy and flair comes at a cost. The system requirements for running the Specialists are much higher than for normal Half-Life.

SOUND:
In the aural department, the Specialists shines as well. Almost every weapon has a distinct and distinguishable sound and every gunshot has a loud punch to it. Some weapons do sound similar and the sound for suppressed weapons is really low; perhaps too low. There's not much more to say because aside from that there's not a lot to hear.

GAMEPLAY:
If you've asked anyone about the Specialists they will surely go on and on about the variety of cool stunts and actions that you can do during the game. First of all, the movement in the Specialists is quite different because it all stems from the game's Slot system. This inventory system controls how much you can hold and measures how much you weigh. If you weigh too much, you won't be able walljump. You won't be able to dive as far or do a high dive. Heck, if you're carrying a rifle you'll more or less be slowed down to a crawl. Your weight can be gauged by a bar in the crosshair. The more red the bar is, the heavier you are.

The stunt system is much more complex and rigorous than the stunt systems found in Action Half-Life and The Opera, the other two "action movie" mods. Not only does the weight system factor in, but so does the crosshair. Along with the weight bar there is a moving dot that gauges your diving. If you are looking up, the dot will move to the top of the crosshair, at which point if you are moving and press the stunt key, you will do a high dive. Unlike in AHL, where you must pull yourself up from a dive, you will automatically get up again if you hold down the stunt key during the dive. Aside from dives, players will get to perform such moves as flips, rolls, superjumps and the aforementioned walljumps.

The Specialists features possibly the largest arsenal in any game. The Specialists also comes with an unprecedented amount of customisation. Almost every gun can also be customised with lasersights, supressors, flashlights or scopes. There's a weapon for everybody, with a dizzying array of pistols, sub-machine guns and assault rifles. A lot of the weapons shoot incredibly fast and do ridiculous amounts of damage. Some are much more powerful than others, such as the Raging Bull or the AK47. While such large calibre guns possess a large amount of recoil, usually all that is needed to kill is one shot, which can completely negate the recoil system.

Another thing that I would find to be a fault would be the immense amount of ammunition every weapon can carry. There's no need to be conservative; you'll usually get a healthly amount of ammo for your gun. It's probably to make up for how ambiguous the default crosshair is without the lasersight addon. There's almost no point to using side-arms for nothing more than a backup weapon, especially on servers that have all weapons enabled. By using an assault rifle, or the over-powered .50 CAL sniper rifle a player can dominate a whole server. A plus side is, coupled with the complex stunt system, is the equally complex melee system. To go along with Kung Fu, you can wield throwing knives and a Katana.

The actual gameplay is more frantic than any game of Quake 3. Coupling fast player movement with quick and powerful weapons makes for a very hectic gaming experience. Aside from basic dives and flips, the stunts are more difficult to use in combat without a tedious and large amount of practise. The Specialists comes with two gameplay modes (Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch) and they're both fast-paced spamming affairs.

Maybe it's the Matrix fans that have flocked to this mod, but at any given time I would find a large amount of servers running the Lobby map. These would usually also be the servers that had more than a handful of players in it. The community really needs to do something about this; playing the same map over and over just because it's from your favourite movie or because you do really well in it sucks -- it really kills the replayablitiy of the mod.

FINAL SCORE: 7/10

PROS:
+ Varied and complex stunts
+ GR4PH1X!!!
+ Lots of guns

CONS:
- Too much ts_lobby
- Over-powered and spammy guns

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/05