City 17 is simply a very good Custom Map all-around.

It’s set in City 17 during the Rebel uprising in Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and takes you from the underground area, through the parking garage and the hospital, and finally ends at the train station (just like in the original game).

The overall difficulty of City 17 is kept reasonable due to the generosity of supplies provided throughout. The difficulty was also lowered as a result of us not getting a single Tank spawn until Chapter 4, which could be variable.

Most of the campaign consists of flat and linear urban areas, with City 17 not deviating much from its source material, which was originally made by Valve. This helps to keep the campaign grounded, intuitive, straight-forward, and easy to navigate and play, just like a vanilla campaign.

The only major difference between City 17 and its source material, is that all elements of the Combine and the Rebels have been scrubbed from it, notably including the Citadel, APCs, the Combine themselves, Kleiner’s broadcasts, the Rebels, Dog, and the Headcrabs.

City 17 is also missing most of Half-Life 2: Episode 1’s sounds, ambience, and music (except for one HL2 Episode 1 track playing during the hospital segment, which was cool).

Chapter 1 of City 17 starts out surprisingly difficult, notably due to there being lots of Alarm Cars and Wandering Witches placed in a dark area just before the Safe Room.

The hardest part of the whole campaign is easily the Hard Gauntlet in the collapsed parking garage (which is fitting, as I remember this being one of the hardest parts in the original game), placed right at the start of Chapter 2. The difficulty of this Hard Gauntlet is high despite its short length, due to the high volume of Commons, rapid respawning Specials, the presence of a Wandering Witch, and the scripted spawning of multiple Smokers at once; likely meant to represent Barnacles (these can notably pull you off the concrete beams and instantly ensnare you). After this, the rest of City 17 is pretty easy.

The Chapter 2 Crescendo in the dark area (one of the spookiest parts in Half-Life 2: Episode 1 itself), was no problem if you hold in a decent spot.

City 17’s Finale is an easy Defend-Tank-Defend-Double Tank at the Episode 1 train station platform.

There’s plenty of good places to hold (just watch out for the holes in the ceiling placed above some spots), the Tanks can be shredded using the mounted gun in the center (since they always spawn at the far side of the train station platform), and there’s lots of good places to loop the Tank(s).

There’s also some ‘cheese spots’ you can stand in during this Finale, behind the metal panel barrier on the upper left catwalk, relative to the mounted gun. Commons and most other Infected will struggle to reach you if you stand in these cheese spots.

I was a bit surprised that the map designer didn’t opt to make this Finale a Scavenge, since that would more closely resemble the civilian escort finale aspect of HL2:E1. But the Defend-style worked well enough to mimic the final Strider battles in the station itself, I suppose.

Overall, City 17 is a solid map that is simply a good experience all around. It plays similarly to a vanilla map in terms of difficulty and pacing, making it well worth a try.


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