I told myself that this week I wouldn’t do yet another mod that involved zombies, demons, or anything in the same vein…

Damnit.

In my defense however, it IS Halloween, so I guess one more mod featuring zombies would be keeping in the spirit of things. And hey, this one also features fabulously dressed cowboys. So juice up the truck, grab some ammo, load up the booze and let’s kill some zombies! Western style.

Shotgun Sunrise is – again – a survival modification for Half Life 2, but this particular mod really plays like no other I have found. Taking place on one map – an Old West style town that has been overrun by zombies, two teams of players must complete a set of objectives to successfully escape.

Upon first connecting to a server, you are given a small menu to choose your ‘class’ of cowboy, essentially just choosing which of three weapons you would prefer to use out of a Winchester rifle, a pump-action shotgun or a double barrel shotgun. This also determines what kind of fabulous clothing your cowboy will be wearing. They also get hats.

The two teams in the game are comprised of Survivors – players who are trapped in the town with only a six-shooter and a hatchet to defend themselves, and the Rescuers – players who have to drive their pick-up truck into town to rescue the survivors. Once Survivor players make it to a certain radius around the truck, they are switched to the Rescuer team and are given the weapon they chose at the beginning of the game. If a player on the Rescuer team dies they are moved back to the Survivor team. If a Survivor dies they have to wait a few second to respawn, and if all Survivors die during this time the game is over. I personally find this to be one of the biggest features of the mod that sets it apart from others that I have played. It is a Jailbreak-esque style of gameplay used in a very different setting.

The objectives you are required to complete are also outside of the norm from what you would expect from a survival based game – although quite frankly, they make complete sense and I don’t know why other games haven’t gone this way before. The objectives are based on a very simple premise – there are three things necessary in a zombie apocalypse. Plenty of ammunition, vast amounts of booze, and a vehicle to escape danger.

Once you have your fabulous, hat-wearing band of outlaws assembled, your first stop in the zombie-ridden town of Sunrise is the local gun store. Once you’re in there, head downstairs and you’ll find a precious crate stuffed with ammunition and Tommy Guns. However, since coming down the stars in this building causes them to collapse, you’re going to need to find another way out. A few sticks of dynamite later (and a few accidents discovering that they have a ridiculously short fuse time) to blow a hole into the wall hat lets you escape into the mines that run under the town – take a buddy with you by the way, as one of you is going to have to carry the crate whilst the other fends off the ravenous fast zombies that populate these caverns. The mines lead over to the far end of town, so have somebody run the truck over to the mine entrance so they can pick you up. Once the ammo crate is thrown onto the truck, the Rescuers can use the Tommy Guns to help fend off the shambling hordes of the undead.

Alright, now we’ve got some ammo, it’s time to find the booze! Drive the truck over to the distillery on the other side of town (then have a few more accidents with dynamite attempting to blow the doors open) and make your way into the Booze Vault where you will be greeted with a very extravagant display of a giant barrel of booze descending from the heavens (well, an elevator at the top of the room, but we can dream). Then it’s time to set up the keg to dispense the alcohol from the truck, which can be used to heal yourself if you need to.

Alright, now we have the booze, it’s time to blow town! Let’s ri-oh, wait. The truck is now so overloaded with guns and beer, that it doesn’t have enough power to get itself moving. Now it’s time to trek across town to the Shotgun Electrocombobulatory Power Facilitron to get a big-ass generator to hook up to the truck. Once this generator is hooked up to the truck with some hardcore do-it-yourself wiring, it’s ow time to blow town! Drive that truck through the town gates and park it in the back of the Last Train Out of Town and let’s get out of here! YEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!

The zombies in Shotgun Sunrise are fairly standard, slow-moving affair cut-and-pasted from Half Life 2, just minus the headcrabs and given Western-y cl0thing. The development team are working on new zombie abominations to add to the game, such as the F***ing Hardcore Evil Zombie Bull, the Zombie Plant, Zombie Spider, and Zombot (or Zombie Fruit F***er Prime). It’ll be interesting to how these work in future releases, as the lack of variation or challenge form the zombies can cause you to just end up ignoring them after a while.

The town of Shotgun is very well made, with some obviously good talent behind the mapping for this mod, with a lot of little nooks and crannies that look like special care and attention was put into creating them. It’s also huge, which is no easy task for creating a Source engine map and keeping things running smoothly. There are some missing textures in a few places, most noticeable of which is in the Booze Vault, which has garish reflective bright pink walls (the missing texture colour for Source engine games). I’m sure in near future releases this will be taken care of.

The real fun of this mod, however, is on my next point. The truck, which an absolute blast to drive around the town. Games of Shotgun Sunrise will almost always end up with players spending at the very least half an hour burning around the town, boosting up the sides of hills and trying to fly off of the makeshift ramps they can find around the city. It is also very important to sound the horn whilst doing this, a sort of ritual every time you manage to get the truck to take off. There is also a huge jump before getting to the train that in every game I’ve played, we at least spend ten minutes or so seeing what kind of crazy stunts we can pull off.

In its current state, Shotgun Sunrise isn’t any more than an hour or two of fun, but you’ll have an absolute blast during this time. The design direction for the mod is also worthy of applause, as Impromptu Games obviously have a great sense of humour, and their ideas for the mod are some of the most fresh and original I have seen in a while. It is also just possible that they also have epic dress sense.

I highly recommend giving Shotgun Sunrise a download, and grabbing a few friends to join you in a quick blast through the Old Western Zombie Apocalypse Town of Shotgun. Also don’t forget your fabulous clothing. You can grab the mod from the ModDB page here.

I understand that this was a fairly short article this week, but Borderlands managed to eat up almost all of my time. I also promise that next week, the mod will have nothing at all to do with zombies! I’m thinking something more… vehicular.

UPDATE: It seems we’ve heard of the head of Impromptu Games, LaCabra before. Apparently he was the guy who had Gabe Newell fly out to Australialand to show him Left4Dead 2 and why the boycott was nothing but paranoid fear and silly doubts. Coincidentally, I completely agree that Left4Dead 2 is so vastly different from the original after playing the demo, they’re two very different games that pretty much run parallel to each other, but I digress. Just thought this was some interesting news worth sharing!

Sometimes the best mods are mods of mods that already exist… mods….

Do you like puzzle games? Do you like survival themed games? Do you love guns? Do you love crowbars? Do you love squashing your friends beneath giant stone blocks to the sound of Russian folk music? Then this particular map for the Half Life 2 mod Zombie Master, which is essentially a mod for Zombie Master itself may be just the bout of insanity you are looking for! Whilst today’s feature may be short and sweet, it’s completely worth the subject matter. Full write-up after the cut.

Zombie Master is a survival horror modification for Half Life 2, in which one player it designated the ‘Zombie Master’, and must spawn zombies in on objective based maps for a team of survivor players to deal with and hold out against until they reach the end of the map. In today’s feature, I will not be talking about any of this, except maybe the survivors. I’ll leave a full write up of Zombie Master for another time, but for now I am going to take some time to talk about a specific map for Zombie Master that changes the way the game plays significantly, and always provides absolutely hilarious results. That specific map is known as zm_actualtetris, or to my friends and I ‘Zombie Master Tetris’ (creative, I know), with the zombies that the Zombie Master usually spawns in being replaced by giant stone blocks in the shape of the famous puzzle bricks we all know and love.

For the survivor team, play begins on a small stone platform, looking out toward a transparent walkway that stretches off into the distance. A turn to the left reveals four crates containing pistols, ammunition and crowbars for you and your team mates. There is also a melon. Once you and your team have prepared for the arduous task ahead, you must venture out onto the walkway, and I strongly advise looking up, because it is very possible that a giant blue S-shaped block may be hurtling toward you at great speed.

For the Zombie Tetris Master, you will begin staring at a giant wall of glowing orbs with a vertical line of Tetris blocks floating next to them. Each of the orbs on this ‘wall’ are what you must click on in order to drop a block on the unsuspecting survivors below. Vertical orientation decides the style of block that will be dropped, and horizontal orientation determines where the block will drop from. All of the blocks are stackable, and follow pretty realistic physics (using the Havok physics that the Source engine is coded with). The blocks also pass through the transparent walkways that the survivors traverse to make it through the stage, so to catch survivors with clever physics based traps you will have to stack them to reach higher areas. Bear in mind however, that the left and right sides of the map are ‘safe’ areas for the survivor team, with invisible walls that stop the blocks from reaching those sides. Each of the blocks also uses a certain number of resources from a counter that sits in the bottom left corner of the screen. You resources regenerate over time, and you get a fair amount back for successfully ‘eliminating’ (read: crushing) a survivor player. Be careful not to waste resources, as you can really screw yourself over later on if you don’t keep an eye on it.

The blocks available are as follows (with their resource costs):

-Square block, teal in colour. (100 resource)

-Lightning block, green in colour. (at least that’s what ‘d call it! It looks like a lightning bolt… 100 resource)

-T-block, grey in colour. (150 resource)

-S-block, blue in colour. (150 resource)

-The stupidly long and painfully cheap L-block, hot pink in colour. (200 resource, but oh so worth it when you need widespread crushing death)

You have to be very tactical in your decisions of which blocks you should use. It may seem like a great idea to just start throwing L-blocks down, but they will eat through your resources very quickly. An often used tactic of mine (which is never met with a particularly joyful response), is to pile up a line of T-blocks on the opposite side of the stage form the survivors, and then use a square block or S-block to bring the whole tower toppling down across the stage. Very effective, and gives you some nice debris to build on later if necessary.

The objective for the survivor team is to simply make it to the top of the stage, and then to the very end of the last walkway. As you work your way along each floor, you will come to a wall at the end that you must climb to reach the next level. There are four levels in all, and it is not going to be easy with all of those blocks blocking your path and/or hurtling straight down toward you. Luckily, the weapons you picked up at the beginning of the stage can be used to destroy the blocks to help clear a path if something is blocking your way. However, this can be a very dangerous thing, as randomly smashing a block that just happens to be in your path without paying attention to what may be above it may cause a fatal landslide of puzzling death to come crashing down on you and your friends, although this is usually met with uproarious bouts of laughter. Blocks always take the same amount of damage from the weapons – four hits from a crowbar or eleven pistol bullets is enough to remove a single block. A great tactic (that is more than certain to annoy the hell out of the Tetris Master) is to have one survivor stay at the bottom level and remove blocks as they fall so they do not pile up too high, which can effectively make travel less hazardous, and only a single player is needed to reach the end for the survivors to win. However, the fact that the stage is more open gives the Tetris Master an easier time in just hitting the survivors straight on with a falling block. Survivors camping in the spawn are generally met with a nasty surprise, as another orb will appear at around a minute in just above the spawn area. Clicking this orb (which costs 250 resource) will basically fill the spawn area with pure pain, causing the players standing around here to take damage over time until they either finally leave, or die.

The most fun from Zombie Master Tetris comes from games that end up with giant walls with piled blocks of varying different shapes, and single players trapped in a small pocket of this physics based hell trying to decide what block is ‘safe’ to remove next (even though it is usually never safe). I have experienced some of the most entertaining moments in gaming in spectator mode for this mod, watching as a single player is being so very careful to inch his way forwards without causing a giant collapse of stone destruction, only to be smashed in the back by a block that had been jarred loose from hitting another block recently falling on top of it.

As far as problems go with zm_actualtetris, there can be one or two annoying bugs that crop up from time to time. The physics every so often tend to misbehave and a block might land and stop perfectly stable at an impossible angle (like a square block standing on a corner), although it doesn’t happen all that much. Sometimes when survivors are picking up weapons at the beginning, it can be possible to ‘accidentally’ pick up two crowbars, which can be an issue with a lot of players and one person ends up without one. There are also never enough pistol bullets to go around for everybody.

Graphically, the map really isn’t all that great. The textures used for the walkways and walls is the mattress texture from Half Life 2, although the blocks are textures exactly as you would expect giant stone Tetris blocks to be textured. And could it hurt to just put ladders on these climbable mattress walls? There isn’t really much to complain about however, the visuals are completely simple just to keep the game as simple as it needs to be. People running away from giant falling Tetris blocks doesn’t need normal mapping or high polygon models. The music really gets you in the mood to play some Tetris, but the famous theme can get grating after a while.

In all, whilst Zombie Master Tetris may not be the kind of game you would play for weeks at a time, it can be great amounts of fun to grab a few friends and play for a night ever so often. It is pretty much the only way I myself even play Zombie Master at all these days, as I find this alone the best thing about the entire mod (which is why I chose this to talk about specifically). The group I play with will spend a night or two once every couple of months just playing zm_actualtetris (usually to Aevan’s dismay, as I will be laughing and yelling fairly loud), and it has become one of staple games for the whole group. So go grab the mod and the map and give it a try!

Again, you can grab Zombie Master here, and zm_actualtetris4 here (thanks to DraconicDon for quickly hosting the map on FileFront for me at such short notice, the old FileFront link for it was broken).

Also, once I get home this evening I’ll have another gameplay video for you folks to watch, but I don’t have access to those at work, sadly.

Why aren’t there more games where you play as the Predator?

Sure, there is the fantastic Aliens vs Predator games, and possibly a few other random games where you play as The Predator in some fashion, but I want to know why there are zero to none which just feature you as a single, invisible hunter, stalking your prey and then mercilessly offing them. It gives you a great feeling of superiority, knowing that they can just tell you’re nearby, ready to strike at any moment, but they never see that final moment coming. I’m sure many people feel the same about this, but there is even a surprising lack of mods that utilise this idea, and an even greater lack of them that do it well. The hilariously fun Half Life 2 mod, The Hidden: Source, is one such shining example of a mod that does it remarkably well. Full write-up after the cut.

There’s a small group of people I play PC games with. It’s what we do all the time, play games. I get home, get on Ventrilo and we decide what we’re going to do for the next few hours. Quite often, Aevan will jump on too. Be it Left4Dead, Team Fortress 2, Saints Row 2, Sacred, D&D Online, etc. etc. We play everything.  There isn’t much I do online that doesn’t involve this group, and we usually end up sticking to a couple games for about only a week or two before moving on to something else. However, one game we have gone back to time and time again is The Hidden.

The Hidden is a fairly simple concept. Two teams, the IRIS – a crack military squad trained in hunting down and intercepting escaped test subjects from Infinitum Research, and The Hidden – said escaped test subject from said research institute. The major difference between this and most team based game types however, is that the Hidden team is comprised of only one player, as opposed to the IRIS team which supports up to eight. Rounds are played out in standard team deathmatch fashion, with the team that eliminates the other declared the victor. This may sound like a completely unfair advantage in favour of IRIS, but you first need to know exactly what the Hidden is…

The official story for the mod on the website talks of genetic experiments through DNA manipulation on human test subjects in order to create the ‘perfect covert military agent’, most notably in the area of ‘Biologic Light Refraction’ – a process that could potentially render a human subject almost completely invisible. Along with their previous testing in increasing reflex time, improving strength and stamina et cetera, this makes for one deadly individual indeed. However, due to a ‘gross miscalculation’, something went horribly wrong and the most recent subject – codenamed ‘Subject 617′ – was left with severe synaptic trauma (massive headaches) and managed to escape from the facility, killing anyone in his way. The IRIS (Infinitum Research Interception Squad) team have now been dispatched to find Subject 617 and bring him in by any means necessary.

So, this leaves us with a person who is faster and stronger than the average human, has the ability to pounce large distances and can ‘cling’ to walls (though he cannot climb them), has the ability to see the ‘auras’ of nearby living beings, and is almost completely invisible. Light is refracted around 617′s body, so it is possible to barely make out a distortion effect around him, but he’s pretty damn hard to see. And now that we have his abilities covered, what tools does he have at his disposal for taking down his pursuers?

The Hidden has a total of two weapons he can use against the IRIS team – a knife and three grenades. Whilst this may not seem like much, these weapons are surprisingly effective. With the knife, 617 has two attacks. Primary fire is a simple slash that does a decent amount of damage (and also heals you slightly whenever you hit an IRIS player), and the secondary fire is a very satisfying instant kill attack known as the ‘pigstick’.  Now again, this could sound a little unfair or ‘broken’ – an invisible character being able to instantly kill other players – but one thing you need to know is this move has a little over a second for preparation once you use it. 617 pulls the knife back with both hands and plunges it forwards – which if it makes contact causes the body of the IRIS agent to explode in a shower of gore – and also makes a fairly loud growling sound, alerting anybody nearby to your presence. So unless you’re absolutely sure you can make a killing blow without being filled with lead the instant you attempt it, it is not always the best decision. It can be absolutely hilarious/terrifying if you are an IRIS player looking at a team mate, only to watch them explode sideways out of nowhere as a result of this attack. Although the explosions can be fairly amusing and effective with the pigstick, this does bring with it one major drawback. Subject 617 can use his primary knife attack to heal himself when it hits, as I have stated before, but this can also be used on the body of a dead opponent a few times to get a few small heals after they have died. While incredibly useful, this can only be used on bodies that are still intact, rendering exploded corpses useless. You can also carry bodies around and nail them to walls and ceilings using a combination of the pounce and pigstick, providing a hanging meal for the Hidden and a terrifying warning to the IRIS. Subject 617 can also pick up physics objects strewn throughout maps and launch them at opponents, making for a quick ranged attack that does a little damage.

The grenades also come with an element of strategy to them. Whilst a single grenade for the most part will not outright kill an opponent at full health, it will deal a very large amount of damage, leaving them with just enough life left to take one or two regular knife slashes. Grenades are also extremely effective for groups due to the obvious explosion radius this weapon produces – one particular moment recently when I was playing, the IRIS team were goofing around, standing on top of each other to form a ‘totem pole’. One grenade toss later I had scattered all of them and left all but one with next to no health left, resulting with a bout of laughter from all involved. The fact that you only have three grenades also means you have to be very careful with how you use them – using a grenade for a single IRIS member is usually considered an absolute waste when you could save it for a time when everybody is grouped together (which happens more often than you would think). The grenades also have a shell shock effect to them, causing player vision to blur and have their sound replaced by a high pitched inner-ear style ringing for a few seconds. This time can be used to take one or two out before they regain their senses.

I mentioned before that Subject 617 can cling to walls and ceilings, which is probably the absolute most useful ability in your arsenal as the Hidden. Almost every map is designed to put this ability to excellent use, with plenty of rafters, high ceilings and walls to hide on, waiting for your unsuspecting prey to walk beneath you. It is extremely satisfying to drop down behind a player that has no idea where you are and take them out in a single strike, leaving you to pounce back to the place you were hiding in. Quite often, IRIS players never think to look right above them in these situations and the surviving members will lunge into a paranoid bout of spraying gunfire in all directions around them hoping to catch you.

The last ability that Subject 617 has in his arsenal is the ‘Aura View’. With a press of a key, the Hiddens view switches to a negative colour effect for the area around him, and at first glance does not appear to be very useful at all (it in fact makes it much more difficult to see anything). However, the useful part of this ability is that it will show you the location of human players in the map, even if they are a few rooms away up to a certain amount of walls between you. This view also shows what state their health is currently in – dark green being full health, with colours changing progressively to dark red which means they are dangerously close to death. Coupled with the hiding ability from the pounce maneuver, this is extremely useful in planning out your attacks against your would-be captors. It is a tremendous amount of fun to play as the hidden, if a little daunting at first with all of this new movement available, and the sheer power available to you with the attacks you have coupled with the invisibility gives you a great feeling like you could take on the entire world. Though whilst subject 617 may be powerful and stealthy, he is also extremely fragile. A well placed shotgun blast to the head can take out the Hidden instantly for the most part, and he really can’t take that much damage form other weapons. Play the hunt right, however, and you can easily gain full control over your foes, manipulating them to your will until you have each one on their own and within your grasp.

It is also ridiculously fun to use the speech menu when playing to taunt IRIS players. The Hidden can say phrases such as “I’m heeeeere!” or whisper “Look up…” to add the feeling that the hunter is just playing with his prey before causing it to explode from a well placed stab to the back of the head.

So, it’s a blast to play as the Hidden, but what about the boring old marines? Not to worry, the team behind The Hidden: Source have done a fine job in making team IRIS fun and interesting to play. Whenever you join a server, instead of being assigned a faceless random character model to play as, you are given a list of IRIS members to choose from – each with their own names and back stories (I always pick Jamar Swope, if anybody was wondering). You then get to pick one of the two classes available out of assault (more weapons to choose from) or support specialist (can give other team members ammo and can carry more support items), and finally choose your weapon loadout – one primary weapon, a pistol and a support item.

The weapons available for IRIS for the most part are your standard shooter fare of assault rifle, sub machinegun, shotgun, pistols. However, there are some fun little additions for the rest of the equipment available. One of the most notable is a gun known as the ‘Less-Than-Lethal Launcher’ or ‘Very-Extravagant-Name for a Tranquiliser’. The gun does not do much damage right off the bat, at at first glance only appears to fire green paintballs, but if one of these paintballs makes contact, things turn into pure hell for Subject 617. His vision becomes blurred (even more so for every successive time you manage to peg him with one of these), and his health starts to deteriorate until the blur effects wear off. It also makes a very distinctive ‘pewff’ sound (not to be confused with pew-pew) every time it is fired, and believe me that sound will instill eternal hell bound fear into any Hidden player.

Aside from picking your weapon loadout, you are also able to pick one item from a list of additional equipment. The items are as follows;

-A flashlight, which obviously will illuminate dark areas, but for the most part is fairly useless.

-Night Vision Goggles, which enhance light in dark areas so you can see much more clearly. Much more useful than the flashlight.

-A laser aiming module which can be used on any weapon, so you can actually see where you will shoot (there is no crosshair). It also is pretty good at showing you if the Hidden is in front of you.

-A shot of adrenaline which makes you run crazy fast for about 30 seconds, your vision is blurred when you do this, but it can really get you out of a pinch at the most intense of moments.

-’Sonic Trip Alarms’, which look kind of like a laser trip mine, although they are supposed to show the Hidden on your radar if he passes through the beam.

These items are interesting and diverse enough to match anybody’s play style. For instance I love carrying the night vision goggles with me for the most part as I seem to be able to notice the hidden much easier whilst using them, whereas other people have a harder time when they are active. Most of the other guys I play with use the Laser Aiming Module top help them spot where the Hidden is when he move into their sights. I also tend to use the Sonic Trip Alarms for unintended uses, after you place them they become solid objects in the game world, so I use them as makeshift platforms to climb up to vantage points to camp and watch for Subject 617. More often than not it just gets me killed faster…

Teamplay is also a huge factor in this game, as you constantly have to be watching each others backs to make sure the Hidden doesn’t sneak up and catch one of you unawares. For the most part, it is always better to stay in groups as a single player on their own is an extremely easy target. You do need to be careful not to group up too close together though, as it most often fatal for most of the team if you are clustered together in what my group refers to as ‘Grenade Formation’. The team communication is well done, with in game voice chat, character speech binds and standard text chat all offered, and this can also add to the atmosphere of the game. If a player is killed off by the Hidden, they can no longer communicate with the rest of the IRIS members at all, so calls to see if a player is still alive after hearing something horrible will be met with radio silence and the gripping fear that you may now be all alone.

The maps in the hidden are a wonderful mix of executive buildings, rooftops, creepy underground laboratories, trainyards and even a derelict mansion. All of these maps have wonderful places for the Hidden to climb around and hide out to stalk his prey, and most of them just ooze atmosphere to provide some frightening settings for the human players. The map work is very well done, with a great combination of well done architecture and physics objects strewn throughout the maps, which reminds me that you should be on the lookout for the Xbox that is hidden in every stage. Nothing is more terrifying than turning the corner of a hallway and seeing a giant last generation Microsoft console flying toward your head.

With all this great fun in The Hidden: Source, I do have to bring up a couple of glaring issues I have with the mod. The most frustrating of which has become known in the group I play with as ‘Black Screen’. Usually after playing for a map or two, after the transition to the next level some sort of graphical hiccup will occur, and at any moment in gameplay where motion blur is supposed to be rendered (shell shock from a grenade, the effects of adrenaline or from the Less-Than-Lethal Launcher), the screen will just turn completely black. This has happened to me on all three of the systems I have played The Hidden: Source on, and it happens to everybody else I know that plays the game. It can really ruin the experience when you get hit by a grenade explosion, only to be completely and utterly blind for the next few seconds and have no idea where you are moving or aiming. It can be even worse for the Hidden, after getting hit with the tranquiliser and having his location completely exposed without knowing where to escape to. This can really ruin a game, and required closing and re-opening the game to fix it. I have also managed to fix it simply by starting to record a video in Xfire, but for those who don’t use Xfire this doesn’t really help. The other problem I have is that they haven’t freaking updated this mod in two years. The creator, Ging apparently has been working on the new version this entire time, but due to team members dropping out or other issues, not much progress has been made. It’s more of a selfish concern but I would like to see much more out of this mod.

In all, The Hidden: Source is a fantastically well done mod, and an absolutely hilarious time with a group of friends, and whilst the issues that it has can be extremely frustrating I do highly recommend the game – especially for play at a LAN party or with a group of friends you play a lot of games with online. I really wouldn’t know about the public experience, and I have never tried it on a public server, but I assume it would still be a great time with strangers!

And once again, for making it through my Holy Crap Wall of Text (Trademarked by Aevan), here’s a video of a typical Hidden round. Bear in mind Xfire’s encoder ruined my audio synch again by the end, and I get killed WITH A FREAKING PISTOL, but you do get to see the totem scattering I mentioned, and an Xbox!

What would you do for a million dollars?

That’s a pretty hard question for me to answer, and I’m fairly sure I’m not allowed to go into the details of the kind of things I would do here. HEGI and his small group, however, have decided to make a kick-ass survival horror mod for Unreal Tournament 3 for Epic Games’ Make Something Unreal Contest. Full write-up after the cut.

Make Something Unreal was started in collaboration with Epic Games and nVidia back in 2004. It offered aspiring designers a chance to win a grand prize of $1,000,000, a high performance PC and a commercial license for the Unreal Tech engine. In the past, this has actually given birth to two fantastic mod-to-retail games, those being Red Orchestra and Killing Floor respectively (and ironically both of those were by Tripwire Interactive). It also causes crazed modders to put out some of the highest quality and incredibly entertaining, interesting and unique mods you’re likely to find, and it is always worth browsing through the contest submissions for each phase to find something truly awesome.

This year, I have discovered a little gem known as The Haunted, a mod which in the most base sense could be classified as ‘co-operative survival horror’ with a larger focus on the survival aspect as opposed to the horror. Gameplay is actually very reminiscent of the later Resident Evil games, using an ‘over the shoulder’ third person perspective with which you have to hold down the right mouse button to go into an aiming mode before you can shoot. In the latest update, powerful instant-kill melee attacks have been added to the game, further increasing the new Resident Evil feel. The Haunted contains four different modes of play – Survival, Hunt, Battle and Demonizer – the former of which tend to play considerably different from the latter two, whilst still being exactly the same game.

Survival plays like a bizarre hybrid of Resident Evil 4, Killing Floor and Left4Dead. Up to four players are charged with the task of defending against hordes of demons which are spawned by an AI similar to the Director from Left4Dead, starting off with simple ‘Wendigo’ demons that just run straight for you in an attempt to scratch at you, and zombies that will leap for you once they get within a certain range. As time progresses the monsters get considerably more varied and difficult, ranging from smaller demons that throw scythes at you from a distance, to hulking brutes with clubs that can shake the ground and stun you, to demonic assassins with flaming claws that have the ability to charge forwards and instantly behead you with a well placed attack. There are also some oddball designs designed to take down camping players, such as spiky balls that roll full-speed at players and explode when shot, or swarms of hellish bats that aim for players who try to camp in high places. Each of the demons in the game also has an alternate ‘Special Attack’ mode they can go into, which can cause for some very intense moments when this happens, such as when the Iron Jack – a large man with a bear trap for a mouth the spews fire – causes his own head to explode and then begins to spew fire and molten rock out of the spot where his head used to be. It’s a real sight to see this happen, but you’d better start running fast to get out of this guy’s way.

When setting up Survival games, the host player chooses a certain amount of rounds to play through – which increase slightly in difficulty with each round if players manage to survive the previous one, the amount of time between rounds, and the starting difficulty for the game. By default, a game lasts three rounds with 15 minutes per round, which seems to be the most entertaining setup I have found so far. I usually knock the difficulty up a couple of notches and by about 12 minutes in it usually comes to the make-or-break point, where survival or failure is really decided. Something you should know about this game, however, is that death is not final, but players do not respawn instantly either. When a player dies, a large floating rock known as the ‘Soulstone’ appears at a random spot on the map. Players who are still alive have to find this stone and destroy it – either with a melee attack or one of the many weapons in the game. Once the stone is destroyed, that player will return to the game. If you are playing on your own, you also needn’t worry – once your health falls below half and as long as you are the only player in the game, a stone will appear that will restore you to full health when destroyed.

Hunt mode plays pretty much identical to survival, but with rounds being finished after reaching a certain score to make things a more competitive style survival game with players aiming for the largest number of kills. However, players still need to work together to make sure they can actually make it to the end of a round.

Battle mode is where things really get interesting. This game type supports up to eight players – up to four players play as the survivors and, as an interesting twist,  up to four players play the role that the AI would play in standard survival, gaining the ability to spawn in the various demons that chase down the human team. All of the monsters that appear in survival are available to spawn by the demon team, but they cost a number of resource points depending on the power and abilities of each individual demon. The resource points are shared between the players on the demon team (although the amount of resource does increase exponentially to accommodate the number of players), and the points are regained either over time, or they are also increased with successful attacks against the human players. Rounds this way are played in much the same way as survival, either with the survivor team succeeding by lasting  until time runs out, or the demon team winning by eliminating the other team. This mode reminded me a lot of the popular ‘Zombie Master’ mod for Half Life 2, in which a team is pitted against one player designated the Zombie Master, who spawns in zombies at certain points throughout maps in order to take down the survivors. The main difference with The Haunted however, is that demons can be summoned anywhere, with a certain ‘safe’ radius around human players where they cannot be spawned. Another really interesting part of battle mode is the ability spawn in as whatever demon a player chooses. The player controlled monsters have no extra abilities or large advantage over the AI controlled, but it can be a lot of fun to play as the demons yourself, and a human controlled player is always more effective than a bot. It’s also much more gratifying to get the killing blow on a survivor yourself versus just watching your minions do it for you, and I believe you gain more resources for scoring a kill this way, though don’t hold me to that.

Demonizer mode is by far the most interesting, and in some ways the most entertaining mode in The Haunted. The game starts out in much the same way as survival, with four players trying to survive against the demonic legions coming after them. The twist in this mode, is that as each human player dies they do not return to the game as a survivor. The AI hands control over to this player and they are moved to the demon team, where they then try to take out the surviving players in the same style as with battle mode. Play continues until either time runs out, or all of the players have been ‘Demonized’.

With all of this demon hunting going on, I’m sure you’re wondering exactly how you get to go about killing these foul hellish aberrations, and The Haunted goes for a very unique approach  in terms of weaponry that is available. All players start out with four weapons, a knife, pistol, shotgun and a sub-machine gun. You only start out with ammunition for the pistol (and the knife, obviously), but one of the first demons a player kills will drop an ammunition crate to give ammo for the shotgun and SMG. Item drops are unique to each player also, so there is no fighting over who is allowed to grab the ammo! Once this first crate drops, another will not drop again until one of your weapons is out of ammunition, and event hen it usually only take about one to three kills for another to appear.
As players kill demons, a bar in the upper right corner of the screen with a picture of crossed swords next to it will start to fill up, and once this bar fulls, the next monster you kill will drop a green crate with the same sword icon painted on the side. Pick this up, and whichever weapon you are currently using will be upgraded to something more powerful, and the bar in the corner of the screen will reset and start to fill once more. Each weapon has four different upgrade levels, and HEGI really came up with some very interesting ideas for the weapon upgrades. The weapon upgrades are as follows, along with an experience multiplier toward your next upgrade that you are awarded for using each;

Handguns:

-The first upgrade to the basic semi-automatic pistol is a 3-round burst automatic pistol called the Cerberus. A little more useful than the basic pistol, dispatching enemies a little faster, but each single bullet isn’t any more powerful than the standard pistol. +10% XP

-The next pistol upgrade is a tasty one indeed – your bog standard, run-of-the-mill, always awesome .357 Magnum Revolver, named the Vendetta. This baby will almost always score a kill with a headshot on around 80% of the demons chasing you, and usually takes out the remaining fifth of the population with a second shot. +10% XP

-The fourth level for handguns is  a .50 Magnum called the Jericho. This baby tears through almost anything with a faster rate of fire, higher clip size and slightly lower damage than the Vendetta. It also sets things on fire. Fire is good. +10% XP

Shotguns:

-Level two for shotguns awards you with a sawn-off double barrel shotgun, that whilst having a terrible amount of ammo and only two shots before each reload, his gun is incredibly powerful and hits in a very wide area in front of you. Really good crowd control, great damage, but make sure you’re ready to run the hell away when you need to reload. Normal XP gain.

-The next step for the shotguns is the Auto Shotgun. This little street sweeper eats through almost anything fairly easily, blowing weaker enemies away in all directions and provides decent stopping power for the big guys. One of my staple weapons, always reliable. Normal XP gain.

-The fourth and final shotgun is a real beast called The Arsonator. This howitzer of an automatic shotgun spews lethal burning incendiary rounds charged with the very fires of Hades (okay, I may be exaggerating here, but this thing is freaking cool). Sets everything on fire. Kills everything very quickly. Possible to set yourself on fire if you’re not careful. Normal XP gain.

Full-Auto:

-First up for the automatic upgrades is the Commando Rifle. Completely standard military assault rifle. It does decent damage, is pretty damn accurate and dispatches most demons fairly effectively. It’s just not all that interesting. Normal XP gain.

-Next we have the Heavy Assault Rifle. This is a pretty powerful heavy automatic gun that mows down groups nicely, has a pretty big clip size and makes nice loud bangs. Again, not all that interesting, but it is nice to feel like you’re firing off something really powerful. Normal XP gain.

-Last but not least for the automatics is the Machinegun. This baby comes with a few hundred rounds of slugs that tear through enormous groups of demons with remarkable results. This puppy doesn’t need to reload at all and will general turn everything it goes through into meaty chunks. Incredibly powerful, fantastic crowd control and just an all-round crowd pleaser. It may not be as fun and interesting as say, the Arsonator, but my, is it effective. Normal XP gain.

And finally, containing the most entertaining weapons of all, the Melee:

-The second level of the basic knife is a chainsaw, and everybody loves a good chainsaw! It is very satisfying to just hold this out and chew through the weaker demons of the game, but it is far too dangerous to risk using this on the more difficult enemies at such close range. +25% XP

-The third melee level is probably my absolute favourite weapon in The Haunted, The Witch Hammer. This horrible, gruesome, wretched weapons is a sight to behold. A whirling mess of blades that chew through enemies, spinning them around the end of the weapon and throwing limbs and gore in all directions. This weapon is obscenely powerful and an absolute sight to behold, but you do still have to be careful about getting in close range when using it. +25% XP

-The final level for melee upgrades is a weapon called the Glaive. Very reminiscent of the focal point weapon of last years incredible failure DarkSector (a game I hardbor a special resentment for, as I was very excited for it), just without the post launch aiming. The Glaive is an oddity in the sense that it isn’t technically a melee weapon – you have to throw it to use it, and it goes a decent mid-range distance. The powerful part of this weapon however, is the fact it will instantly behead and kill any demon you throw it at, and then continue to slaughter anything that it catches on its return path. However, you are incredibly vulnerable to attacks whilst it’s in the air, unless you can get a couple of melee kicks in to push monsters back. I’m not the biggest fan of the Glaive myself, preferring the ridiculously evil Witch Hammer for my close quarters ruination. -50% XP

-Also worthy of note is that the basic knife actually gives +75% XP per kill. This is extremely useful early on, as the knife can behead the weaker enemies in one slice if you’re good enough.

On top of the wonderful cast of characters available as weapon upgrades, there are also a few more weapons hidden throughout the available maps in secret areas. Aside from your typical grenade launcher, flamethrower and sniper rifle – which do pretty much exactly what you would expect them to, there is a fun little addition called the Nitrogen Thrower. This device launches slugs of what I can only expect is liquid nitrogen, instantly freezing anything it hits which can be then easily broken with a well placed bullet or melee attack, which brings me to the next point of note…

In the more recent updates to The Haunted, HEGI and his team have added standard hand-to-hand melee attacks into the game. A quick tap of the melee key and you character will perform a roundhouse kick that will knock enemies back. Combining this keypress with different directions will yield different attacks which all do little damage but are helpful in getting you out of trouble at short notice. However, if you hold the key down for a few seconds an indicator at the bottom of the screen will start flashing until it turns white. After it has changed this colour, release the key in combination with a direction to pull off one of the game’s many impressive instant-kill melee finishing moves. One of these attacks will always kill any monster it connects with, but it will almost always only kill one, and knock others in the area back. These moves are very entertaining to pull off and awesome to watch other players performing them. They really make you feel badass whilst trying to hold off the hordes. The Haunted also gives you the ability to roll out of danger, with a quick double tap of a direction causing your character to tuck and roll, negating any damage. You can also reload whilst rolling, which the creators heavily encourage.

Another great piece of the action is the environmental hazards that exist in each of the three maps available with the game. In the map ‘Stronghold’ – a map themed around a great ancient castle, either the AI or human players on the demon team can trigger a dense fog to fall over the map, obstructing the view of the survivors and allowing them to only see a few feet in front of them. In the map ‘Forsaken Canyon’ – a map that looks strikingly similar to some of the later windy canyon areas from Resident Evil 4, a lightning storm can be called upon which causes extremely powerful lightning bolts to strike the map at semi-regular intervals. These bolts tend to completely decimate whatever they hit, so run for cover! On ‘Forgotten Temple’ – a map based on a dark temple, the entire map turns a deep burning orange/red colour and powerful meteorites fall from the sky causing massive damage and fires all over the map. Again, FIND COVER.

Graphically, this mod is really head and shoulders above almost any other I’ve seen. A great amount of detail has been put into every aspect of this mod. It appears as though almost nothing from the original UT3 stock artwork remains, with all new models, textures, effects, music and sounds. Everything exudes a very professional quality, although I am not a big fan of the new loading screen animation HEGI has used in the latest version. It looks very out of place and gaudy in comparison to the old loading screens that showed an image of the next map, or a picture of one of the demons. Things look even better in version 2.5 – the latest version of the mod, with texture detail increasing a great amount and a number of old issues being fixed or removed. The architecture in the new map – Forgotten Temple is especially wonderful, depicting an ancient and horrific keep with many gargoyles and demonic artifacts placed throughout the level.

A number of new balancing changes have also been made with the latest version of The Haunted, such as better weapon and damage balancing, and also some resource and gameplay tweaks to make the game more enjoyable overall when playing on the demon team.

In all, The Haunted is what I see as an incredibly well done, polished, professional grade modification to Unreal Tournament 3. A total conversion in the most complete sense possible. Absolutely nothing but the menu structure from UT3 remains. Sure, you still shoot guns and make things explode, but many games that aren’t UT3 allow you to do that out there today. I used to have some gripes with The haunted in previous versions, but those have essentially been taken care of. As a mod, I really have nothing bad to say about this game, except maybe that there is a great lack of available maps (a third was added at the release of version 2.5). HEGI and his team have done an incredible job, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us by the next phase of Make Something Unreal.

If you have UT3 at all, if you enjoy the regular game or not, I highly recommend grabbing The Haunted form their ModDB page here. I really can’t stress it enough, this mod is truly something else, and it needs a strong community to back it. I really wouldn’t be surprised if HEGI makes it all the way to the grand prize with this one. Keep up the good work, guys!

And now, for you exceptional people who Survived this wall of text, I give you a little video I made of the Witch Hammer in action. Be warned, the audio may be a little off sync due to Xfire’s new broken encoder…

I love horror games.

Let me rephrase that, I love well written, tripped out psychological holy crap what the hell did I just see out of the corner of my eye WHAT WAS THAT SOUND horror games. The kind that make you afraid to be in dark places alone for at least a week after playing them. Silent Hill 2 and 3 did this to me, the phenomenal Penumbra series did this to me, and for a time at least, Korsakovia did this to me. Full write-up after the cut.

Korsakovia is a new mod for Half Life 2 by UK group The Chinese Room, makers of the cult hit Dear Esther. Set in the fragmented mind of a man named Christopher, who is suffering from Korsakoff’s Syndrome – a disease with which patients are unable to develop new memories and also suffer from severe amnesia. Patients are also known to invent new memories to ‘fill in the gaps’ for memories they have lost. The prologue for the game mentions that he was found in his apartment by paramedics after a failed suicide attempt with severe burns on his hands. It is also mentioned that the paramedics were unable to find his eyes, and that they believe he may have eaten them.

The premise for this story is a fantastic concept and one that I think would usually be extremely hard to pull off, but this is the area Korakovia truly excels. The script, voice acting and art direction used here are all top-notch, making for a very immersive story wrapped up in a truly frightening atmosphere.

Christopher’s journey in Korsokovia sees him wandering the fragmented pathways of his mind, through the hallways of the psychiatric ward he is staying in, the apartment complex that used to be his home, and a warehouse which he refers to as ‘the place where they make the pieces’, all leading up to a truly spectacular finale that is an incredible sight to behold. During this time, Christopher is also pursued by dark entities he refers to as ‘The Collectors’, clouds of dark mist that appear to be set on hunting him down in his own mind.  All the while you are exploring this broken world, conversations between Christopher and Dr. Christine Grayson – a consultant neurologist attending to him – are played back in segments broken up by static, with some really mind-ruining dialogue later on in the game. They seem innocent enough at first, typical doctor-patient exchanges, yet later on they spiral into twisted confabulation which makes you question what the truth behind this distorted tale.

Myself, I’m still unsure what of the events in Korsakovia ever actually happened, or if the entire thing was just another memory Christpoher invented to fill in his dark, lonely existence. Multiple times throughout the game, references are also made to ‘The End of the World’, in past, present and future tense. My own interpretation of this is a cataclysmic event that erased Christopher’s memories, the time his mind was fragmented, and the inevitable conclusion that it is all going to start over again.

Another area Korsakovia succeeds in is atmosphere. Everything from the lighting, level design and incredible sound work come together to portray a psotively chilling experience. The game is also easily one of the most psychologically terrifying and twisted games I have ever played, with some situations what literally had me yelling out loud, trying to run to safety, and some areas that generally had me twisting my face in abstract horror over new revelations or bizarre locations. Only a few games have succeeded in giving me chills like this, and many other games have tried and failed miserably by trying to make the player jump with cheap ‘tension scares’. The single biggest thing that increased the level of atmosphere to insane porportions, however, was that not once during Korsakovia did I ever feel like everything is going to be okay. Quite the opposite, in fact. This game carries a heavy level of forboding through its entirity.

Unfortunately, despite Korsakovia’s great strength in terms of setting and atmosphere, it is not without major flaws. It would have been nice if The Chinese Room took a leaf from their own book with Dear Esther, and did not try and add a combat element to this game. Whilst The Collectors were terrifying enough at first – the first one I came across literally had me running up and down hallways screaming trying to escape its wrath – later on in the game they just become a frustrating chore to either avoid or beat into nonexistence with a crowbar. Two friends and myself also encountered an extremely annoying bug later on in the game where some of the clouds would not be rendered, so we’d be getting attacked by unseen enemies whilst trying to get through the game’s few platforming segments.

Another major issue I had with the game was a lack of direction at a couple of points, the worst being in the large warehouse at the beginning of the second chapter, where I honestly could not figure out where to go. A friend and I actually ended up stacking boxes to get on top of a caged walkway and walked over the top, dropping into a little opening at the end. As it turns out, there is an almost completely unnoticeable ladder hidden in the corner of the enormous room. The two chapters before the epilogue also contained the same ‘puzzle’ that was more than a chore to complete, and ended up being more of a hindrance causing players to spend far too long in one chapter than a fun way to progress the plot.

Although Korsakovia was – in my personal opinion – a  masterpiece in storytelling and design, despite its strengths I cannot give a strong recommendation much more than to just give it a try. However, if you believe you can muscle through Korsakovia’s annoyances, you will be pleasantly surprised with what it has to offer beyond the gameplay. Also bear in mind that The Chinese Room are not finished with their work on the mod, so hopefully they’ll get the kinks worked out and make it a more enjoyable experience further down the road.

Korsakovia can be found in its ModDB page here, or you can head to The Chinese Room’s homepage here.

TMIF is a new weekly feature where I will talk about a new mod every Friday. Stop back next week for a Haunting experience!