Review: Human Error Episode 1 (Half-Life 2: Ep2)

I set today aside to play through BioShock 2. Then my review copy failed to arrive (bloody post), and I found myself with nothing to do. Fortunately, the first episode of Half-Life 2: Ep2 mod Human Error has just been released. Human Error’s the first mod of two by the developers, telling new short stories in Half-Life’s universe. Read on to find out what I think of the first release.

Human Error has the best introduction I’ve seen in a mod. Haunting piano twinkles as the screen fades in; you’re in a car, a girl – perhaps in her early 20s, presumably your girlfriend – dancing playfully outside. You get out. She talks to you. You take pictures of her. It’s authentic and magical and properly beautiful, in the way those moments are.

It signals something a bit different from what you’d expect of a mod set in Half-Life’s own universe. As an opening, on the HL2 mod scale, it’s more Radiator than Minerva. But it’s that absolute top end of the scale you’re thinking of. It’s of an impressively high quality, in terms of the craftsmanship.

Quickly, it finds away to lump you into a full-on combat situation, leaving its introduction mysterious and unexplained, loose ends flailing all over the floor. This works, too: there’s never a feeling that it isn’t going to return to this girl. It does, several times. She’s your back-story. It’s worth not mentioning her any more, as her appearances are by far the strongest moments of the mod.

And that’s a shame, because those little snapshots demonstrate such tremendous potential. Other parts of Human Error do, as well. The new models, animation and effects are all strong. Battles are tense and arenas are frequently attractive. The script is sometimes really good. There’s even some excellent voice acting.

But there’s also some tedious sections, and some of the levels are awfully signposted. The script is sometimes terrible. So is some of the voice acting.

(And, er, some of the facial animation.)

It feels like two completely separate pieces, by developers of radically different quality, with diametrically opposed outlooks on what sort of mod they wanted to make. Set your mod up with an introduction like that one, and it’s going to be judged to that quality bar, held up to that level of artistry. And it just fails to maintain that. Those glimmers of brilliance come back from time to time, and they’re never anything short of marvellous. It’s funny, on the day I was expecting to be playing BioShock 2, but BioShock is the game this reminds me of at its most creative. But when it’s not quite there… well, it’s not quite there.

Take the script. When it’s smart, it’s really smart. When it’s trying to be funny, it’s sometimes funny, but more often feels totally out of place. The ending goes for the old heart-string tug, but follows up with a “comedy” song over the credits. Some of the action, too, feels incongruous. It jumps from standard Half-Life 2 fare, to decent vehicular combat, to clever but repetitive puzzle-solving, and back round again – but it clunks together rather than flowing seamlessly.

And sections that could have been successful linger around for too long. Controlling Manhacks is fun at first – you play, for the most part, as a member of the Combine-controlled Metro Police – but after the fourth or fifth identical puzzle involving them, it’s tiresome. The squad-based combat later on is at first livened up, but then ultimately destroyed, by constant quips between characters that never turn out to be as interesting as you’d hoped. I found myself persevering mainly because I knew the mod would eventually do something really interesting again. And it does, on a good few occasions, but it’s never quite enough to save what sits in between.

None of it’s really bad. This has been largely negative, but it’s often leaps and bounds above a majority of single-player HL2 stuff available. But… well, that introduction again. It sets a bar, then limbos under it instead of vaulting over the top.

You do get a decent few hours for your troubles, and the ending – while a cliffhanger, since it’s part one of two – is satisfying. But you get the impression it could have been trimmed, and tightened, and revised. It wasn’t, so you’re left with specks of genius in a largely disappointing mod. The biggest tragedy of all is that the disappointment arrives because you realise just how brilliant it almost was – and you get the impression the developers didn’t realise that.

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