Poke646 is a Half-Life gamemod. The Half-Life gamemod.
Thirteen months after the Black Mesa incident, the research facility has been shut down. The nation never got to know anything about the experiments there, and the governement created a organisation specificly to handle "Alien Related Topics". The name of that organisation is Poke646.
Unfortunately aliens are invading Nation City with portals, and Damien Reeves is the only Poke646 member who didn´t evacuate, due to an accident. Guided by a man named Dr. Sebastian Fuller through Poke646's radio transmitter, he must turn on 4 generators in the city to stop the portals from coming.
Five years after the mods release, Poke646: Vendetta was created, which takes place right where the predecessor left off.
This game mod takes place in same universe as Half-Life, therefore same tropes apply. Poke646 provides examples of:
- Actionized Sequel: Vendetta has a lower emphasis on navigation and puzzles, and makes use of an assault rifle with a grenade launcher in place of the civilian nail guns from the first game. The robot you fight at the end is an exact copy of the one from the first game, but here you beat it down with your weapons instead of navigating around it to shut down its power source.
- Abnormal Ammo: The Xen Squasher is an alien that must be fed with candy in order to shoot gooey projectiles.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Below Nation City, in which it is possible to get lost.
- Apocalyptic Log: Through notes and tablets.
- Art Evolution: The first game has models made with resemblance to the original Half-Life's models. Come Vendetta, and the scientist models are remade in the HD pack's image. The game also defaults the alien models to their HD counterparts (in the first game it's determined if the base game has the HD models enabled or not). The soldiers remain the same, however.
- Bag of Spilling: Between Poke646 and Poke646 Vendetta. Or rather, once Reeves enters Xen at the climax of the first game.
- Bland-Name Product: Poke646`s own vending machines are full of them. You can guess what a bottle of Poke is.
- Downer Ending: In the first game Reeves is revealed to be an Unwitting Pawn to Dr. Fuller, betrayed and left stranded on Xen after blowing up the receiver supposed to destroy Xen. However...
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In Vendetta Reeves, being a skilled technician, uses the remains of said receiver and other technology brought to Xen, to build a teleporter, get back to Earth, fight his way through the rampage in Nation City and stop the crazy scientists from nuking it. Then he gets commended for his actions and gets a promotion.
- Edible Ammunition: The Xen Squashers candy, again.
- Emergency Weapon: Damien's melee weapon is a heater pipe, and he uses the Poke646's nailguns as weapons.
- Evil All Along: Sebastian Fuller and his cohorts were actually intent on nuking Xen to cover up their tracks. In Vendetta they also try nuking Nation City as well to do the same.
- Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Throughout the mod, the closest thing to a automatic gun you find is a nail gun fed by drum magazines. In Poke646: Vendetta you finally get to pick up the assault rifles carried by the soldiers.
- Faceless Goons: Some of the soldiers doing the cleanup.
- Flunky Boss: The Robot at the end of Vendetta.
- Gangsta Style: You can do this with the nail pistol, which lowers the accuracy and heightens the fire rate. But because the weapon in question looks like a big blue drill, it does not look cool.
- Hope Spot: The man sent to find you with a armored tank... he doesn't last long.
- Immune to Bullets: The Giant robot guardians made by Poke646.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Averted. You can double jump over them with the shotgun, all the way to the edge of the map.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Dr. Fuller and his co-consirators were fully willing to commit planetary scale genocide by activating nuclear detonaters that were planted on Xen. In Vendetta, Damien kills them all by blowing them up with the bombs that were planted by a defected security guard.
- Made of Explodium: Get some safe distance if you plan on turning on the microwave.
- Mythology Gag: A book is found aboard the space station called,"How i Survived Black Mesa" written by Barney Calhoun.
- Nail 'Em: Nailguns are one of the weapons available to you. They can also be used Gangsta Style.
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Nintendo Hard: The lack of armor and scarcity of ammo means that your resourcefulness is put to the test. - Pipe Pain: A gas pipe is picked up and used as the mod's melee weapon. Incorporates a unique (for the time) mechanic where, if used too many times in a row, will cause you to weaken and tire from exhaustion.
- Recoil Boost: Done by firing the shotgun at the ground while in the air, making a useful double jump.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: The ending of Vendetta reveals that Fuller and his men were actually a part of a conspiracy within Poke646 and leadership are actually glad they're gone.
- The Reveal: The generators are meant to destroy Xen, and the Xen creatures aren't normally hostile. It's all a conspiracy pulled by a Renegade Splinter Faction led by Dr. Fuller.
- Shout-Out:
- Two of the offices in one of the buildings belong to a L. Lane and a C. Kent.
- The name of the organization itself comes from a Commodore 64 BASIC command that changes the color of subsequently-typed characters (e.g. POKE 646,1 would make them white). It's one of the first POKE commands most Commodore users learn.
- Two Shots from Behind the Bar: Yes. Behind the bar is a nice shotgun you can pick up, and conveniently aliens teleport in.
- Unwitting Pawn: In the finale it is revealed that Reeves was just a pawn for Dr. Fuller who intended him to commence the nuking of Xen when the original task force failed to accomplish it.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Sebastian keeps contact with Damien by the use of radios placed around the city.
