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“MINERVA: Metastasis” Finally Polished Up, Re-Metastasized And Re-Released For Free Via Steamworks

Modding & Development Half-Life

The year was 2005 (you know it’s gotten bad when even 2005 has a quaint and nostalgic ring to it), and the first episode of a little Half-Life 2 mod series charmingly titled MINERVA: Metastasis was released. Metastasis itself only represented the first chapter in a planned MINERVA trilogy (the next chapter, Out of Time, never materialized, though creator Adam Foster isn’t afraid to hint at a possible return in the future), and it was a sequel to Foster’s earlier Half-Life 1 release, Someplace Else. Through exceptional level design, an intriguing narrative and remarkably well-paced gameplay, MINERVA was universally acclaimed and praised not just within the Half-Life community, but all around the greater gaming world.

The Metastasis “trilogy within a trilogy” concluded with the release of the last two episodes in October of 2007, and a year later, Foster began working at Valve, on a strange little game we used to call Half-Life 2: Episode Three. Since then, he’s done significant design work on Portal 2 (and god knows what that means about the aforementioned title), and presumably neglected little old MINERVA, which like many other HL2 mods, did not survive Valve’s May 2010 update for Mac support. Neglected, that is… until now!

“MINERVA: Metastasis” Finally Polished Up, Re-Metastasized And Re-Released For Free Via Steamworks

A long-teased “director’s cut” of Metastasis with polished up visuals, improved puzzles and tweaked level design has finally been released on Steam as a free mod for Half-Life 2: Episode One, as heralded by an official post on Adam Foster’s blog. The changes seem to have been made with care and discretion, so for the most part, this is the same old classic MINERVA, but with a fine layer of polish (so fine that you might not notice it, which isn’t actually a bad thing), and finally back in working order on the modern Source engine with certain fancy new effects.

Here is the game/mod/ludic entity’s Steam Store page. Apparently, you don’t need HL2: Episode One installed to play it, but you do need to actually own it on Steam. In addition, Metastasis’ full soundtrack has finally been made available for your listening pleasure.

So if you’ve never tried Metastasis before, this is your chance to play one of the finest single-player experiences Half-Life modding can offer (quite literally Valve-quality). But even if you’ve already played it many moons ago, then another playthrough might just be enough to keep the Half-Life drought at bay!

14 Comments

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRwyJnTM9oQ

  2. Thought you guys would want to check this out; Marc Laidlaw has been writing Dr. Breen fanfiction on twitter, through the view that he escaped the citadel in an advisor host body:

    https://twitter.com/BreenGrub

    (He’s stated it’s not an ARG or anything, so don’t get your hopes up, but yeah.)

  3. Great article as always, I’m also glad this mod was fixed, I remember in 2010 I tryed to make Minerva work on HL2: Lost coast, and it worked! there were some bugs that I had to fix like the HDR sky and in the last part of the game the gunship destroyed a small bridge and that crashed the game so I had to remove that, but that was it, I also found out interesting stuff doing that, like for example that the Zombine code is already present in HL2:LC, also other bits like the fast Zombies humping to the HL2 Buggy, mechanic that was later used in EP2.

  4. Thank you for keeping this up. It must be frustrating not having anything to say at all. It’s really sad how little by little the fan run sites are dying with the relevance of Episode 3 or whatever they call it nowadays. I actually didn’t realize how long it had been since the last article until I saw this appear on my google reader.

  5. Great to see another article from you, Vic! It’s been a while

    I finished Minerva: Metastasis a couple months ago, and it absolutely blew me away, in a way I hadn’t felt since I completed Half-Life 2 and Episode Two for the first time. I’d honestly go so far to say that MINERVA was superior to Episode One. Things are only going to get better, since Adam Foster was hired by Valve. It’s awesome to see that Valve are supporting their modding community and even incorporating talented modders into their dev team.

    It’s nice that they are releasing this on Steam, may just download it and give it another play through.

  6. Well overdue to another play through.

  7. Great to see you back Vic.

  8. Hopefully this paves the way for a direct-to-Steam release for Out of Time or Chronoclasm or whatever it was supposed to be called, wonder if that’s gonna come out as a H-L3 mod or something.

  9. wow, i’m just surprised to see a post.

  10. OMG A BLOG POST =D

  11. A new article? Hoowah!?

  12. So if EP1 files aren’t needed, why the hell is the game required to be purchased???

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