Be a remarkably bad cop in remarkably good Half-Life 2 mod Entropy: Zero 2

Outrageously ambitious Half-Life 2 megamod Entropy: Zero 2 is out, letting you experience a campaign in the boots of the Combine bad guys. You're the Bad Cop, protagonist and alien overlord collaborator, and your job is to tail Gordon Freeman through Nova Prospekt prison before taking a journey to track down resistance fighter Dr. Judith Mossman in a snowy northern facility.

If you're a Half-Life 2 player I'm sure you know how that goes. Either way, you'll play through a shockingly detailed campaign, fully voiced, fully choreographed, that takes something like 7-10 hours to beat. Frankly, it's on the quality of many games we considered big to mid-budget 20-some years ago.

Oh, and there's Portal shenanigans afoot and an Aperture science facility involved. You get a turret buddy. Naturally, the Portal turret buddy is named Wilson, because everyone who watched Tom Hanks in Castaway has had that indelible concept scratched upon their brain.

Entropy: Zero 2's most impressive aspect is definitely its overhauls and new additions to the tried-and-true Half-Life 2 combat formula. There are new enemies, weapons, and effects. There's a grenade that sends everything caught in it to Xen and spits out weird Xen monsters in exchange. You can command teams of Combine, deploy manhack drones, and generally act like a person who sold their entire species out for some alien overlord perks.

Entropy: Zero 2 is a sequel, technically, to Breadman's solo mod Entropy: Zero, one of the best-received and better HL2 mods of all time. This one's on a whole other scale compared to that first one, with a bigger team and a much bigger scope. I mean they made it so you could drive those APCs from Half-Life 2. I love it.

You can find Entropy: Zero 2 on Steam, and you can find Bad Cop origin story Entropy : Zero on Steam as well.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
A noir Chicago with Combine metro cops from Half-Life 2
If you missed it over the holidays, this noir Half-Life 2 mod turns you into a hardboiled detective in Prohibition-era Chicago
The starting chamber in Portal, but the floor is covered in lava.
Portal Randomized mixes up Valve's beloved puzzler by turning the floor into lava and filling chambers with a deadly neurotoxin
Screenshots from Half-Life 2 RTX, showing the various new effects delivered by full ray tracing and enhanced assets.
I just played Half-Life 2 RTX, a fully ray-traced overhaul of the original, and its meaty headcrabs have me hankering for more
Screenshots from Half-Life 2 RTX, showing the various new effects delivered by full ray tracing and enhanced assets.
The Half-Life 2 RTX demo is out now and well worth a go… if your graphics card can take it
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine is Crusader Kings for speculative sci-fi nerds, flipping the script on the cult AI War series
quake champions classic gordon freeman mod
Gordon Freeman joins a retro pandimensional deathmatch in crossover mod Quake Champions Classic
Latest in FPS
Team Fortress Spy being shocked
An FPS studio pulled its game from Steam after it got caught linking to malware disguised as a demo, but the dev insists it was actually the victim of a labyrinthine conspiracy
Neighbors Suburban Warfare screenshot a child aims a slingshot at a man from across a cul-de-sac.
A beta of backyard FPS Neighbors: Suburban Warfare is out now, and the balance discussion is hysterical: nerf trash can lids and children
Fragpunk
Somebody finally figured out casual Counter-Strike
Image for
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s getting a new roguelite wave defense mode that sounds a whole lot like a souped-up take on Killing Floor
Destiny 2: Season of Plunder promo image.
'We made one big mistake': Destiny 2 developer reveals how a small team dedicated to player retention led to a 20 hour server outage and character rollback
Bears in Space
I downloaded this bear-obsessed comedy FPS to kill time before Doom: The Dark Ages and discovered the most underrated shooter on Steam
Latest in News
Team Fortress Spy being shocked
An FPS studio pulled its game from Steam after it got caught linking to malware disguised as a demo, but the dev insists it was actually the victim of a labyrinthine conspiracy
Neighbors Suburban Warfare screenshot a child aims a slingshot at a man from across a cul-de-sac.
A beta of backyard FPS Neighbors: Suburban Warfare is out now, and the balance discussion is hysterical: nerf trash can lids and children
Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer still - woman in the front seat of a car, looking out the back window while holding a wad of cash
The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst
Screenshot from Wreckfest 2
Wreckfest 2 has hit early access for your car-obliterating combat racing enjoyment
Alma, the handler from Monster Hunter Wilds, closes her eyes and looks a little disappointed.
Monster Hunter director joined an online hunt, carted first: 'I feel bad about that'
Image for
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s getting a new roguelite wave defense mode that sounds a whole lot like a souped-up take on Killing Floor