Garry's Mod

When it comes to the world of Half Life mods, it's always the same old. Sci-fi mods. Zombie engines. That kinda boring stuff that really ends up making the whole concept boring. By the time Half Life 2 rolled around, everyone was absolutely sick of modifications that tried to make the game "Hardcore" or "Action Oriented". We wanted something new. And, surprise surprise, out of absolutely nowhere comes a guy named Garry and his mod. And all was happy in the world.

Garry's Mod is a modification that takes the wildly popular Half Life 2 engine and allows you to do ANYTHING YOU WANT with it. Program your own weapons. Create your own maps in the game. Just generally have fun. This is great, because while Half Life 2 spared no expense at showing off it's ability, it still really limited you. You could run Gordon Freeman and chuck things around with the gravity gun, but you couldn't sit back and really PLAY- and that's what a lot of gamers lamented. Well, Garry's Mod fixes this, giving you access to every single ability in the game, plus more, to make or break your fantasy with the Half Life 2 engine.



Garry's Mod primarily relies on the multiplayer aspect of Half Life 2. Get a bunch of friends together in a level and wreack hell on the level. Of course, the game basically wants to throw you in a somewhat-empty level (Such as gm_construct, made purely to mess around in) and lets you play. Create NPCs. Create boxes, barrels, walls, towers, vehicles, weapons- you want it, it appears. This is fun in and of itself, because it means that you can essentially build onto the level, and turn "gm_construct", a grassland with walls, into "TERROR ZONE NUMBER 69", a huge base with multiple levels and huge amounts of weaponry protecting you from spawned Combine Elites with "FREAKING SHOTGUNS".

That's not all. Using the physics engine as a base, you can modify what you have or create. You can weld, tie, accelerate, you name it. With that in mind, a logical (Though very stupid) application is to weld two cars together and drive them around. Or, you could add floating skis to the bottom of said car and try to drive on water. Even better, tie a boat to the back of said car and hit the gas and turn it to one hell of a ride for those in the boat. Everything reacts realistically to the weight, meaning actually putting one car on TOP of another will end up forcing the wheels up into the chassy and, inevitably, meaning you're not going anywhere. That alone is fascinating, because it means you actually have to think with gravity and physics rules, and not just expect some sort of odd glitch to help.



Garry's Mod is also home to many user made mods, such as "Build" maps. These maps make you race to create a bridge, ladder, or fort out of boxes, and reach certain points (or kill the other team). Some mods, like Melon Racer, expect you to guide a fast moving melon through Half Life levels without bursting it by going too fast and hitting something. Some mods have you as a pidgeon pooping on humans. The possibilities are endless and hilarious, meaning that even one server can have hundreds of different games that don't get boring, ala many Counter Strike servers. The games are hilarious, difficult, and require a variety of skills beyond your ability to shoot (Though it helps in the Soccer minigame...) and generally, you will be laughing as you play this game, single player or not.

The only flaws in Garry's Mod tend to be you. For some reason, you will usually run across a server with a tard who decides to spawn hundreds of NPCs and activate them, crashing the server. The new Garry's Mod 9.0 fixes this for the most part (And running a server on my Alienware PC meant there were no crashes), but it still is possible. Of course, this also means the inevitable: LAG. You absolutely are forced to play this game in the lowest graphical settings, no matter what. Unfortunately, that's just how the game works. Otherwise, you can expect some sort of crippling lag setting to turn your PC into a one-frame-per-hour pain in the ass. On the aforesaid Alienware, I could easily do the high graphics settings when it came to original Half Life levels, but there was no dice for me when it came to our reviewer Taylor spawning hundreds of Combine Elites in my field of view.

There's also a bonus to Garry's Mod many people do not think of- the wonderful ability to play Multiplayer Half Life 2. This alone makes this game worthwhile, but do note that this will end up making your load times unbearable. If you're willing to put up with 10 minutes of load time (no kidding, here) for 5 minutes of gameplay, you will love the multiplayer Half Life 2, because there's nothing better than taking on the harder parts with a buddy noclipping and saving you time. But for those on slow computers or just no patience, it definately isn't your kind of setup for multiplay. Too bad, maybe this will be fixed in the future.



At the end of the day, Garry's Mod is essentially the only mod for Half Life 2 out there worth getting and this point. Not only does it sport some of the best capabilities of any mod EVER, but the unique "Sandbox" aspect of the game really turns what is (So far) the best shooter of this decade into the absolute must-have game for PC, period. If VALVe was smart, they would just go ahead and package Garry's Mod with Half Life 2, because it would save many gamers time- this is the #1 reason to get Half Life 2, and there is no doubt it will continue to be. If you have Half Life 2, get this now. If you don't have it, get Half Life 2 now, and THEN get this.

5 star(s) out of 5

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