If you missed it over the holidays, this noir Half-Life 2 mod turns you into a hardboiled detective
December 05, 2025 | By **A. Sinclair**
Hear me out. Let's say instead of violent nerd Gordon Freeman wasting alien invaders in City 17, Half-Life 2 was actually about a gritty hardboiled detective fighting corruption in Prohibition-era Chicago. That's the concept behind The Burton Equation, a Half-Life 2 mod you may have missed because it came out on Steam between Christmas and New Year's.
Don't worry, though: Burton does just as much shooting as Gordon Freeman does, only he gets to use a weapon even cooler than the gravity gun: the drum-fed Thompson submachine gun, otherwise known as the Tommy gun. You haven't lived until you've stood in the headlights of a Model T and chewed up a handful of Metro cops with a Tommy gun.
So, what are the Combine doing in Chicago in the 1920s? Don't worry about the finer details of the plot, okay? A crime boss named Fabreen is running the city, and his Combine Metro cops act more like a gang than interdimensional invaders, strolling around the city in fedoras and trench coats. Detective Zachary Burton (that's you) has had enough of Fabreen's corruption, and after a visit from a mysterious dame, decides to do something about it.
Burton's plan is not all that complicated: Half-Life 2 is a shooter, after all, so Burton just starts shooting. In lovely black and white, accompanied by Burton's gritty narration, you make your way through the gloom [[link]] and rain of gangland Chicago, icing every Combine you see.
But Half-Life 2 isn't just a shooter, it's a [[link]] sci-fi shooter, and there's a few subtle bits of sci-fi woven into Burton's hardboiled, lead-filled quest for justice. Such as, well, time travel. Fabreen is one slippery gangster, [[link]] and once you've back him into a corner he starts jumping through time, leading Burton on a merry chase through the trenches of World War 2, the neon-soaked streets of 1980s Miami, and eventually into Gordon Freeman's future where the actual Combine invasion of Earth is under way.
(Image credit: Valve, David 'Kralich' Driver-Gomm)
Is it the most logical alternative history I've encountered in games? No. It's not the most ridiculous by a longshot, though, either, and like I said, you get to pick up a Tommy gun and mow down Civil Protection while listening to a detective growl narration. You can untangle The Burton Equation on Steam.
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