Momentum Mod has drastically changed the game when it comes to accessibility of gamemodes within the source engine. As its name implies, momentum is solely focused around the movement types within the source engine – Half-Life 2’s accelerated hopping, Team Fortress 2’s rocket jumping, CS:GO’s surfing – but what does this all mean?
At its core, Momentum Mod seeks to unite players of all different gamemode types under one easily accessible Source mod.
One of the biggest benefits of playing Momentum mod over joining a server in a gamemode’s respective game is the creatable lobbies. These lobbies can be made public or private, and provide no ping to anyone that connects. Offline speedrunning that mirrors a peer-to-peer gaming experience with no latency whatsoever, allowing people from near and far to play together without problems. It’s such a groundbreaking thing to be able to play with someone from New Zealand (for example) and not having to worry about playing at 300ping when you join their game; something that was much needed and incredibly well implemented.
There’s a vast library of different maps that you can select from each game mode, with filters to determine what mode you want to play with information on the map creator, tier listing (from 1-6 for TF2 maps and 1-10 for everything else), your PB if you have one and the world record time. The UI is so simple and easily to navigate which is great for people who want to get into source movement but haven’t been able to find a good alleyway until now. Maps are added every-so-often meaning you’ll never run out of maps to play and with a campaign mode soon to come out to help teach the fundamentals, movement in source games has never felt so expansive and do appreciated by its community.
Each tier of every type of map will have something for everyone – so if you’re not good enough for a Tier 4 rocket jump map for example, there’ll be a range of different maps in the Tier 3 category that’ll help you refine your skills to be able to eventually do Tier 4 maps. Being able to soar up the ranks in any of these modes takes a lot of time and practise, learning how the source engine works and using it to your advantage.
Every time you run a map, whether that may be finishing a map for the first time, setting a personal best or holding a world record on a map; you’ll get two types of XP. One is for levelling up and the other is cosmetic XP which will allow you to buy cosmetic items for your player* (*as of writing, this has not been implemented yet) which can currently be customised with different trail colours and different shapes and colours.
Customisation is big in Momentum Mod: You can change the colour of hitmarkers; crosshairs, show zones (then change their colour), show specific statistics about zones and checkpoints as you pass them, show vertical and horizontal velocity of the player, create savestates to practice specific parts of a map, change the viewmodels for stickybomb/rocket launchers to their original Team Fortress 2 counterparts, disable sound for shooting, landing, and projectiles in air – there is an incredible amount of freedom that you’re given and it’s free to do whatever you want with.
While in a map, you can press tab to see a list of different times split into different categories – local, global and near you. Local being your own times and runs, global being the top 10 and near you showcases times above and below your own. If you right click a time, you’ll get the choice to view the player profile or view a replay of the time, which is incredibly useful if you want to know how to get just that little bit faster to gain an edge against others.
Not everything has to be competitive though, these lobbies allow you to play with anyone and racing with friends or grinding for better times is only one of the things you can do. If you want, you can just chill out and casually play without a timer and chat away, or discuss different strategies you may find in other maps. Lobbies aren’t exclusive to one map, meaning that you can play separate maps from each other and still talk to together, like a built-in IRC.
A love letter to the movement abilities possible within the Source engine, Momentum Mod has shaped up to be the magnum opus of the movement community in the source engine and with features that graciously bring runners together like never before, it’s a surprise nothing of this magnitude wasn’t made sooner, but now that it’s here – it’s a sight to behold, and one of the most needed refreshments for fans of source movement to try their hand at things they would have never tried out in any other circumstance.
Hitbox Hell 