ADACA Is A Must For Half-Life Fans
Being a Half-Life fan is a lot like going through the five stages of grief on a loop. It starts with denial - there’s no way it’s over. Half-Life: Alyx isn’t it! We will see Gordon again. Then comes anger. Where’s 3? Scrambling to internet forums to voice frustration at a cliffhanger left lingering for over a decade, now stuck with a new ending. And bargaining - we make our own games and our own indies inspired by it. Black Mesa and Codename: Loop continues its world while Industria and now ADACA take its lessons to make new ones. That’s where we are, and I plan to stay here for as long as possible before I reluctantly hit acceptance again and finally say - definitely for the last time - “It is what it is, the next game will come when it comes… if it comes.”
We’re bargaining with ourselves, desperate to cling to the magic of Half-Life that is being drip-fed to us through a leaky faucet. ADACA thankfully helped with the drought. It takes a lot from Half-Life to make its own dystopia - Combine and Metrocops are swapped out for police, headcrab zombies and other body horror creations are brought to life with malfunctioning cyborgs and robots, and the resistance is the resistance. It’s got all the familiar elements including, most importantly, the floaty movement and fast-paced gunplay.
RELATED: Industria Is The Modern Half-Life I've Been Craving
There’s even a segment that reminded me of an early Half-Life 2 level where you’re on the run after leaving Kleiner's lab. You hop on the top of a train to reach a ladder before a Combine force wall smacks you in the face. Only here, the train carries you across a bridge past some rundown abandoned houses where the police have stationed themselves to pick off rebels. You can stay
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