History VideoGame / HuntDownTheFreeman

* AntiFrustrationFeature: After much complaining from the player base, the Humvee EscortMission in the first act was updated so that the vehicle barricade at the end of the drive can be moved. The player can now dismount from the vehicle they're driving in and wheel the Humvees away from the road, as the army truck will most definitely fail to break through on its own.

** When the G-Man promised Mitchell "authority, power, and time", he ''really'' wasn't kidding, especially about the first part. To this end, he made sure that anyone in Mitchell's posse who outranked him will get bumped off shortly after their introduction, so that in due time, he will be the one in charge by virtue of being the highest-ranking member of the group.

* KnifeNut: Another melee weapon in your arsenal. Notable for being '''much''' more effective than a pistol in the opening levels: a typical Headcrab Zombie goes down in 1-2 slashes to the head with it, yet requires nearly a full pistol magazine to go down.

** Mitchell's plan to get to Boris after the second time skip is needlessly complex. Apparently, rather than being diplomatic about it and possibly trying to reason with Civil Protection officers, he decides to get there himself, getting too much unwanted attention by having a soldier of his blow himself up and getting captured. He still gets escorted to Boris, but it's pure dumb luck he wasn't executed on the spot due to resisting arrest.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: This game is one for the entire ''Half-Life'' franchise, touting features highly uncharacteristic of the series so far such as cutscenes, a voiced protagonist, LeParkour, and iron sights aiming to name a few.
** Perhaps the most distinct change of style from traditional ''Half-Life'' to ''Hunt Down the Freeman'' is how mundane the gameplay is. To put it into perspective, the second generation of ''Half-Life''[[note]]Half-Life 2 and its Episodes[[/note]] which this game tries to be part of boasts an impressive physics system which, when combined with the Gravity Gun, helps to greatly enhance the play experience. Hunt Down the Freeman, meanwhile, is a straight-up shooter with very little use of said physics system while having little to no puzzles, something every ''Half-Life'' game in the past had. It also lacks the more unique and futuristic equipment of prior titles in favor of a wide array of real-life weapons, with the most it could offer is the Overwatch Pulse rifle, which is just a generic bullet hose.

* LeParkour: Mitchell can climb and shimmy along ledges, climb up pipes, and roll upon landing to slightly negate fall damage, provided that he holsters his weapon first.

** Headcrabs that are independent of zombified hosts exclusively appear during a sequence where Mitchell is bombarded with several dozen Headcrab Canisters at once. Otherwise, they're only encountered when they detach from dead zombies.

* FingerlessGloves: This appears to be the standard-issue in Mitchell's army.

* UniqueEnemy: The Barnacle seen in the hospital in Act 1 is the only one in the entire game.

* {{Foreshadowing}}
** When Gordon attacks Mitchell, [[spoiler: he's wearing a helmet, even though the official ''Half-Life'' games never have him wear one. This seemingly OutOfCharacterMoment is in fact the biggest hint that Mitchell's attacker is not actually Gordon.]]
** [[spoiler:The fact that Mitchell's run-in with "Gordon" took place in a completely foreign and unrecognizable part of Black Mesa not visited in any iteration of ''Half-Life'' should have been a giant giveaway that the former was an impostor.]]

* GoodScarsEvilScars: Mitchell got some pretty nasty scars after having his face beaten in with a crowbar. Whether or not he's on the side of good or evil is up for interpretation.

* UnusableEnemyEquipment: The Resistance's arsenal is completely off-limits to Mitchell. While it ''is'' possible to acquire one of their [=MP7=]-esque submachine guns or a [=SPAS-12=] through glitches, they have their fair share of bugs due to not being intended playable weapons.

* VocalDissonance: Barring the Combine troops and Civil Protection who reuse dialogue from ''Half-Life 2'', all of the masked characters in the game speak clearly without being muffled by the balaclavas they wear.

** EvilVersusEvil: Mitchell's own view of the Seven Hour War, as he explains it to Combine collaborationist Boris:
---> '''Mitchell''': Think about it. Wasn't the main reason we were trying to go to space for decades for the resources? If we had the power to enslave them, wouldn't we? No? We enslave our own kind. Couldn't care less about an alien race. That's just nature playing out its own game. It's always been between predator and prey. That's the balance. This time, the tables are turned. They got to us before we got to them. Pulling our resources, draining the oceans, enslaving humans.

* BaldOfAwesome: Downplayed, as while Mitchell shaves off some of his locks to give himself a buzz cut following the timeskip, it's not so much awesome as [[BaldOfEvil evil]] if you remember what he has done.

* BlasphemousBoast

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment
--> '''Nick''': There's no more army, no more military.

* ShoutOut: So many to ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'' that Mitchell can be seen as an {{Expy}} for Venom Snake himself. Base on a ship in the middle of the sea, a motley crew of soldiers, facial scars, children who grew up to become your own soldiers and are overly-devoted to you and your cause...now Mitchell just need an eyepatch and shrapnel lodged in his head to be called Big Mitch.

** For some unspoken reason, Royal Rudius Entertainment decided to completely alter the looks of the HECU in this game from their official depictions. Partly due to this reason, it is actually quite hard to buy into the fact that [[spoiler:Adrian Shephard is the marine Mitchell sees when he dies in the last level]], despite the reveal trailer already spoiling this twist rotten. To make matters more confusing, the HECU design in the 2016 demo of the game was more or less in line with that of the original, due to that build simply reusing ''VideoGame/BlackMesa''[='=]s assets and some samples taken from ''VideoGame/GarrysMod'', before the developers switched to this style.

* RandomEventsPlot: The second half of the plot suffers from this. After Mitchell assaults Black Mesa East, he decides to go to Ravenholm, an antlion cave, and Nova Prospekt for no discernable reason. He then somehow gets captured offscreen by the Resistance and is brought to their place.

* SuperDrowningSkills: One segment of the docks level has Mitchell doing some platform-jumping across a few ships, where the water hurts him somehow. It even hurts him when he stands on a platform only a few inches above the water due to a possible programming error. Note that this is the only body of water that actively causes damage.

* InvisibleWall: Two particularly egregious examples occur in quick succession.

** Once Mitchell reaches the City 17 train station, he meets up with one of his followers and gives him the signal to go through the customs checkpoint in order to [[SuicideAttack blow himself up]] as a distraction. As you follow him through the queue, any attempt to move backwards will be thwarted by a continuously advancing invisible barrier.

''Hunt Down the Freeman'' is an infamous, commercially-released ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' FanGame. It was released on Steam on February 23, 2018, after a few years of development by Royal Rudius Entertainment -- a core team of 5 people with up to 50 others assisting them throughout development, led by Berkan "Frank" Denizyaran. It became controversial even before release, due to allegations of using bots to get through then-active Steam Greenlight, [[https://steamcommunity.com/app/723390/discussions/0/1692662484246530833/ suspected use of stolen or store-bought assets,]] a rather [[AudienceAlienatingPremise alienating plot,]] and the practice of using Website/YouTube personalities for most of the game's voice acting.

** The fact Mitchell knows who Gordon is right off the bat. While the HEV suit is, out of universe, [[IconicOutfit undeniably]] Gordon's, ''Half-Life'' itself established that more than one HEV suit exists, and Gordon was not famous in any capacity, except maybe among the members of the Resistance who survived Black Mesa, until ''Half-Life 2''. He also is never shown to learn Gordon's name before he is brutally beaten. While it is feasible he could have realized this during the TimeSkip, the game itself accidentally calls attention to this inconsistency [[spoiler:when it's revealed Adam was disguised as Gordon when he was beaten, confirming that multiple suits exist, and yet Gordon is still singled out as the only person who could have beaten Mitchell before then.]]

* BadassBeard: After the second time-skip, Mitchell has a beard that's fairly similar to Gordon's.

* NeverBringAKnifeToAGunfight: Played with throughout the course of the game. Mitchell's melee weapons actually deal far more damage per hit compared to a fair amount of his firearms, or even those of his enemies for that matter, making them quite effective at cutting down beefier enemies that gunfire struggle with. The main problem is getting there, however, as most of the time enemies will gang up on the player and shower them with gunfire, leaving them with little room to actually swing their weapon.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Mitchell turning off the claymore minefield removes the only thing preventing the zombies and later Combine troops from overwhelming the National Guards' holdout.
** Not that it would be of much help, as the ''entire field'' is set up to blow up in one go for even a single target wandering in, meaning that after one enemy combatant clears it out, everything else behind it can just walk through unchecked.

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Mitchell accuses Adam of killing his own comrades, only for Adam to point out that he too was just following orders, much like how the HECU marines were following the orders to slaughter innocent Black Mesa personnel.

** The fact Mitchell knows who Gordon is right off the bat. While the HEV suit is, out of universe, [[IconicOutfit undeniably]] Gordon's, ''Half-Life'' itself established that more than one HEV suit exists, and Gordon was not famous in any capacity until ''Half-Life 2''. He also is never shown to learn Gordon's name before he is brutally beaten. While it is feasible he could have realized this during the TimeSkip, the game itself accidentally calls attention to this inconsistency [[spoiler:when it's revealed Adam was disguised as Gordon when he was beaten, confirming that multiple suits exist, and yet Gordon is still singled out as the only person who could have beaten Mitchell before then.]]

** Mitchell, for whatever reason, knows what Borealis is and immediately orders his entire crew to head there in the ending. Even if the Combine or the Resistance [[ContinuitySnarl knew about the ship at the time]], at no point in the game is it even implied that Mitchell learned about its existence.
* PlotlineDeath: No matter how well the player handles the train defense section, Colonel Cue along with most of his men still ''somehow'' manage to all die by the time Mitchell and co. reach Nevada.

** Act 2 saw Mitchell having to trundle through the vast frozen tundra of Alaska, where he is periodically attacked by blue-coloured Antlions popping out from the snow in between having to evade Combine snipers. This is despite the fact that Antlions are based on real-life ants who prefer hot climates.

* UnwinnableByMistake: Adam as an AI teammate is ''very'' fragile and ''very'' aggressive. Should you hit a checkpoint or quicksave right as he dies, the game will reload with him missing and soft lock, forcing you to revert to an older save to progress. And that's not getting into how the game has a notable habit of not registering game saves at all, and at times bricking them entirely if it does.

* NotSoDifferent: Mitchell accuses Adam of killing his own comrades, only for Adam to point out that he too was just following orders, much like how the HECU marines were following the orders to slaughter innocent Black Mesa personnel.

* DummiedOut: There are entire fully-scripted sections of the game that were gutted from the final build, along with a slew of unimplemented weapons seen in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNeWacw6jM0 this video]], giving a glimpse into WhatCouldHaveBeen.