A new mod for Half-Life: Alyx by modder cj_beans introduces a sandbox-style map where you can play as Gordon Freeman and spawn various items, weapons and enemies. That also means you can fight Jeff as Gordon, using your trusty crowbar… kind of.
Since the release of Half-Life: Alyx last month, the modding community has been increasingly active with mods and custom maps. One of the most fleshed out mods we’ve seen is the wave shooter mod XenThug that works like a brand new horde mode. There’s been some other cool ones as well, like this Wolfenstein 3D mod.
Now, a new release called the “Gordon mod” places you in a sandbox map as Gordon Freeman, where you can press buttons to spawn items, weapons and enemies. There’s a few rooms to explore as well, but the real fun is spawning cool combos of items and messing around.
As you can see in the video embedded above, I immediately spawned Gordon’s iconic crowbar. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work as a melee weapon – if you try to use it against an enemy, it will just fall out of your hands and do no damage. Alyx itself had no melee combat so this isn’t too surprising.
That being said, it’s still fun to play pretend. After spawning a G-Man ragdoll and taking out some revenge on his floppy body, the next logical step was to play with the now iconic creature ‘Jeff’ from Chapter 7.
Given there’s no way to kill Jeff in the actual game (besides an optional trash compactor interaction), I still couldn’t do much here either. But I couldn’t resist carrying a bucket of grenades around lobbing them at him. Of course, I also had to try take him on as Gordon using the crowbar. I knew it wouldn’t end well, but I had to try.
While the mod isn’t super substantial, it’s a fun way to spend a couple of minutes messing around with various enemy and weapon combos. It’s even more impressive given that official mod support from Valve, which was promised during Alyx’s announcement, hasn’t been implemented yet. All of these maps are built using a custom, modified version of Hammer – an official updated version of the tool, with support for Alyx and VR, is still expected from Valve at some point.
If you want to try out the Gordon mod by cj_beans, you’ll have to know where to download custom maps and how to use them. You can read more about that here.
Update: Gordon Mod is now available to download from the Steam Workshop.
