Hunt Down the Freeman

USMC Sergeant Mitchell Shephard (Mick Lauer), brother of Adrian Shephard, is sent to Black Mesa as part of HECU to cover up the recent resonance cascade and quell the resulting alien invasion. Following some heavy combat, Shephard is attacked and severely injured by a crowbar-wielding man in an orange suit, whom he believes to be Gordon Freeman. Mitchell dies from his wounds in a hospital, but is brought back to life by the G-Man after promising to kill Freeman. Waking up, Mitchell finds the hospital overrun by zombies and a worldwide alien invasion ongoing. He meets fellow Black Ops member Adam (Vincent Cyr) and other military forces fighting the alien onslaught on the streets of Albuquerque. Later learning that Earth has surrendered to the invaders, Shephard and other soldiers flee New Mexico and eventually sail away from the coast of California, reorganizing into a private army on a series offshore platforms.

Three years later, Shephard travels to Europe and discovers a factory full of child slaves which he rescues and brings to his outpost. Seventeen years after that, Shephard, instructed by the G-Man, travels to City 17 to kill Gordon Freeman. Together with Adam, Shephard joins forces with the Combine and participates in several events also depicted in Half-Life 2, but then comes into discord with Adam and his other allies due to everyone's conflicting agreements with the G-Man. He confronts the G-Man about this, who then reveals that he was never on Shephard's side and that the man who attacked him in Black Mesa was not Freeman but actually Adam. The Combine then turns on Shephard and tries to kill him, but he escapes and returns to the offshore base. Finding that Adam has assumed control of his army, Shephard kills him. He then commands his forces to sail for the Borealis research vessel stranded in the Arctic.

The game was initially pitched for crowdfunding through Indiegogo, however the crowdfunding campaign raised only $12 out of the crowdfunding goal of $100,000.[1] Development commenced despite this, and a demo of the game was released in 2016 to a negative reception.[3]

As development continued, Royal Rudius Entertainment attained an infamous reputation among the Half-Life modding scene for using YouTube personalities as voice actors and various allegations of intellectual property theft.[3]

Hunt Down the Freeman was released in February 2018 to a poor critical reception. Rock Paper Shotgun expressed that the game's ideas "seem nice on paper but are executed poorly", citing several haphazard gameplay functions and storyline moments.[5] PC Gamer described the experience akin to "an unfinished mod project with rudimentary level design", stating that they doubted even planned bug fixes "would make up for the general quality of the FPS levels I played", although they were impressed by the quality and tone of its initial cutscenes.[1]

The game was overwhelmingly panned by its playerbase, with hundreds of negative reviews and critical Let's Play videos across YouTube, including continued accusations of copyright infringement.[1][2][3]

The game's developers denied these allegations, claiming that all assets were used with permission. However, they admitted that the game had numerous technical issues, attributing them to an incomplete build being released to the public by accident.[2][3] They also suggested in another statement that its release was intentionally rushed to counter the already negative reputation the game had received from the community.[5]

One of the developers claimed that they and several other employees were not adequately paid for their work, with some receiving substantially less money and others receiving nothing at all. They further described the whole development process as poorly coordinated and "kind of a clusterfuck".[4]

• Official website (archived)
• Store page