Horror Game: Cry of Fear

Checked the forum search. Didn't find any mention of Cry of Fear, which was kind of weird to me.

Short version: If you're itching for a scary game to occupy your time while the next Amnesia game "A Machine for Pigs" is still in the works, I doubt you'll be disappointed by the experience Team Psykskallar offers. Links below.

First off, you need the STEAM version of Half-Life 1 to play it. Other than that, the game is free. There are donator options, but they're mostly out of generosity on your part because they have to patch in the rewards and the patches are unpredictable. On the plus side, the game itself isn't altered in a meaningful way if you DO donate, but like people say, if you want to support or deny something for realsies then vote with your wallet. The donator stuff gives you special forums access, and some other goodies. Not super-special.

The co-op is super janky, like System Shock 2 co-op in a way, and I recommend playing with 2 to 3 players, not 4. For one, the game is scarier with fewer people and also the game doesn't scale resources for player count anyways. For me, the game has been somewhat crashy, but the number of save points is generous enough that I've only lost 5 minutes of progress at most when it has happened. This may pose a problem for people who may want to do things like S-Rank on Nightmare, however.

With all the negative stuff on the table, let me tell you that this game is very frightening. It does, like any horror game, contain its fair share of cheap jump scares. The atmosphere of the game will have you questioning the nature of the game's world at times, and in the possible sense of security, make you nervously question when surreality will take hold again. The game does audio well, the monster design is strange. The story? .. It's.. weird. It's unnatural. It definitely isn't spoonfeeding you, which in my opinion is always a plus. Some things just aren't meant to be spelled out.

The combat. First person. You can dual wield one-handed weapons with your mobile phone, which has an oddly powerful flashlight on it, but.. y'know.. Trying to hand the player familiar objects in a land of complete terror. The perk is you can see, the downside is that you can't reload a firearm with both hands occupied. Combat can be avoided at times and there are melee options as well.

WHERE CAN I FIND THE GAME ANYWAY?!

http://www.cry-of-fear.com/

http://www.moddb.com/mods/cry-of-fear/downloads/cry-of-fear-version-10

They've also made another mod called Afraid of Monsters I've yet to try out.

I'll check this out, thanks!

What irritates me though is why aren't more mods like these available on steam (I mean basically the mods for Valve's own games)? is it because they're janky and sort of unfinished?

I remember all the awesome mods for HL1 that never came out. The one Resident Evil one was pretty large in scope and it never came out as well as several others.

@DeF:It's hard to say and everything I say in reply is pure speculation. Part of me assumes that they've long since moved on from the HL 1 engine and are looking for people that they, Valve, can possibly hire on as developers. I'm not sure if their wave of mod support is still riding high or not. They used to package a lot of their HL 1-related discs with popular mods at the time that were optional installs, recalling HL1: Blue Shift's bonus material.. I think most of Valve's focus is on TF2's community items and Source engine support..? I honestly don't know! CoF is, as far as I can tell and read, a total conversion, so it uses almost no art/sound properties from HL1.

It would be great, though, if they could go back and get someone to act as a mod curator to steer people toward interesting finds and list them as part of the product descriptions for all the titles that support those mods... or just open up some kind of collaboration with the mod databases out there.

@Sammo21 said:

I remember all the awesome mods for HL1 that never came out. The one Resident Evil one was pretty large in scope and it never came out as well as several others.

I fondly remember playing They Hunger ...that was kinda awesome, especially since I just came off the N64 with its happy quirky platformers and then you buy a PC game that is like nothing I had ever played before AND there is something you can download that turns your game into a totally different one. Amazing!

@seannao: yea, better mod curation (or any new mods for the HL1 engine OR Source engine) would be great.

I'm bumping this because there was some talk about horror on today's Bombcast and I just found out about this game. I played 20 minutes so far but I can recommend it. Its pretty cool, and all you need is HL1. Check this out.

HL1 mods in 2012 though. Weird. It actually looks decent, considering.

Anyway, I'm off to play some more. Anyone who hasn't should too.

This mod is pretty cool, thanks.