Half Life. First time I played it was many years ago now, but it was simply the best gaming experience I’d ever had or have had since. The levels, story, everything was just brilliant. Recently I’ve been going through my old back catalogue of steam games, replaying all the old classics like blue shift, opposing force etc etc. However, once that was done I was at a loss, I wanted another single player mod (very rare now, they all seem to be multiplayer). I wanted a new and fresh storyline, I wanted to have that feeling again I did when I played the original. Then I remembered Minerva, my current favourite single player mod for Half Life 2. However it wasn’t this that sparked my memory, it was the fact that it had a predecessor for HL1 that I had never tried. So I downloaded Someplace Else and fired it up.

Let me start of by saying, this game is weird. The messages that sporadically pop up are highly cryptic yet add a sense of mystery to the whole shebang and the mapping is simply excellent, especially considering the mod is many years old now. The puzzles are hard, that is the first thing I have to point out. Forget your usual block and button pushing (although that is what you do here) the sheer scope of what you are doing actually means something. Push a button in doom, it opens a door further down, big whoop. Here you are slowly figuring out the mystery and finding a way home with every turn of the little tri-pronged buttons.

And that is what the best thing about this mod is, you don’t feel like you’re following a path laid down by some teenager who just wanted to learn a few Hammer skills. You feel like you’re following a novelists best piece of work, you feel as if the world into which you are peeking is a living, breathing, alien place and the only semblance of sanity comes in the form of a helper who never reveals themselves and yet you must trust implicitly.

Now, back to our reality, this game is hard. I’m not talking your usual difficult, this is back to the wall, guns blazing hard. Unless you play it smart (grenades are most certainly your friends here). Also as you finish you are left with just as many questions as you begin with, none of which have been answered in Minerva yet either. This makes me wonder if this is turning out to be like Lost, a new plot twist every week, but no sense of any clues coming any time soon.

Overall, Someplace Else does not feel like your usual run-of-the-mill modification. Perhaps the best way to understand just what makes this game so different is to simply play it. Oh, and the ending credits are a nice touch. My rating: 95%.