"Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in!" With apologies to Francis Ford Coppola, that's exactly how I felt when I learned of the Insurgency (INS) mod for Half-Life 2. I've dedicated a lot of ink to the Valve shooter over the past few months and just when I decide to give it a well-earned rest and move on to other gaming experiences the Insurgency team releases its much-anticipated freeware total conversion HL2 mod. That got me clicking on my desktop Steam shortcut faster than you can say "gimme a weapon."

Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat (Half-Life 2)

Getting shot and killed twenty times in my initial twenty attempts provided my first clue that the Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat mod is a serious, take-no-prisoners combat simulator. I've never pretended to be a skilled FPS gamer -- certainly not in Fatal1ty's (or even his mouse polishers') league -- but I can usually squeeze off a frag or two before my personal death count reaches double digits. Hell, I'm not even sure that someone actually shot me all those times. When your number's up all you see is a flash of red and a quick fade to black so some of my early exits could just as easily have come from an RPG or frag grenade.


Therein lies the underlying appeal of INS, its uncompromising dedication to realism and authenticity. Originally conceived by Andrew "Argyll" Spearin back in 2002, this total conversion Half-Life 2 multiplayer mod simulates the gritty modern infantry combat that's currently raging in the streets of Baghdad. Teamwork and tactics aren't just buzzwords in the war-torn Persian Gulf, they're critical survival components and INS drives this home with every ill-conceived frontal attack you mount. Spearin had to leave partway into the mod's development phase but he wisely passed over the reins to Jeremy Blum (of Red Orchestra fame) and the project eventually started taking off. Although the INS team describes its current release as a beta, this mod is as polished as many of the "finals" I've seen in the past few years.

Set in modern-day Iraq, INS pits U.S. Marines against local guerrillas, insurgents and resistance fighters through the all-too familiar streets and kill-zones of Almaden, Baghdad, Haditha, Karkar, and Ramadi. A squad-based multiplayer-only mod, players must choose an allegiance (I tried playing with the Insurgents a couple of times but a nagging sense of complicity drove me back to the American side) and then pick their slot on an eight-person fire team. The Marine teams feature a Commander, Corpsman, two grenadiers, two support gunners, an engineer, and a marksman while the Insurgent squads comprise a Cell Leader, an RPG gunner, two riflemen, two sappers, one support gunner, and a sniper.