Garry's Mod (2004)

I remember back before I had a PC, or even knew what steam was, I had a friend who owned Gmod, and I loved going to that friend's house just so we could play Gmod together. We would spend hours in gm_construct, looking for secrets, playing with silly mods and nextbots, and making our own shitty machinimas. Then, eventually, I got my own PC, and Gmod was the first game I ever bought, where I would do the same stuff, for hours and hours at a time..

5/5. A game that had a massive impact on the internet and a lot of peoples lives.

In the beginning, I never understood Gary’s Mod or why it existed. This was a time that the memes spawned and many freaks of nature were created here and thrown all over the internet.

When I finally decided to give it a go, it was still as weird and silly as I imagined, but a lot of fun. It is just one big sandbox in which you can spawn different mobs and objects and interact with them in any way you want. You can position mobs somewhere, freeze them in place and drop a million crates on it for example. You can think of something really weird in your head, and make it happen in Gary’s Mod.

Graphicly, this game has recycled assets from Valve and its games. It looks fine and the texture quality is fair. What makes Gary’s Mod shine is the physics and ragdoll of objects and characters.

This is a game/piece of software that was made for modding and fan base content. The amount of stuff you can add, tweak and modify is infinite. This makes Gary’s Mod even more ridiculous than it already is.

You can also play various created maps and game modes in which you can actually play Counter Strike clones and engage in online combat. The possibilities are endless with this game and that is the whole charm of it.

There is some controversy of course. When you give players total freedom of creating stuff and uploading it to Steam, you can get some vile creations, extremists sh!t like Nazi symbols or sexual violence. These creations and servers are blacklisted however by the developers, showing that they care.

Although really fun and creative, Gary’s Mod is one of those games in which there is no endgame, end goal or completion. It goes on forever and is only over when you make it over. This is fine, but for me, I get bored really quickly and I get my only satisfaction from the game modes and created maps to play.

In the end, I think Gary’s Mod is a hilarious program that offers endless creativity and possibilities, and I think it is worth trying out.

What is Kenopsia?

Kenopsia is an eerie atmosphere of a place once inhabited by people but now deserted and utterly silent for example a lost place. If you've played single player before, you may have often felt insecure and watched, this is because of the kenopsia effect.

This is also why games like Half-Life, Portal and definitely Cry Of Fear have such a "creepy atmosphere".

Most of the games that have the Kenopsia effect are made with the Source engine and that's amazing and I hope more games will have that atmosphere in the future.