Dystopia and Eternal Silence Steamworked

Hot off the Steamworks oven, Dystopia and Eternal Silence, two grade A Half-Life 2 modifications.

Dystopia is a cyberpunk-themed, team- and class-based modification that has its techno-augmented players combating and completing various objectives both in and out of cyberspace. To jack yourself up to cyberspace, hop to steam://install/17580

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Eternal Silence is a large-scale science fiction space combat modification that focuses on dogfights between smaller ships and assaults on larger motherships that result in human-sized FPS shoot-outs on decks and hangars. To get your flight on, consider steam://install/17550ngm_nebular13

Obviously, both projects stand out in the current modification landscape, not only because of their sci-fi –based setting and extremely polished look and feel, but also because both teams pride in dual-layered (cyberspace/real world and space/decks, respectively) game design, and as an indirect result have also somewhat struggled to find an audience large enough to sustain the core game mechanics to their fullest.

Both teams have also suffered some severe setbacks down the line – Eternal Silence being released with less-than-stellar (no pun intended) net code and a backlash after an IGF “Best Multiplayer Mod” nomiation in 2007 and Dystopia failing to meet its over-hyped expectations in its demo version. Let us hope both games will finally find their well-deserved player base thru Steamworks!

Check out a gallery for both games after the jump and stay tuned for more discussion on the positives and negatives of the Steamworks platform for modifications.

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