All the latest hot mods, brought to you by the mad modder himself, Ashton Mills. This month: a tasty Half Life 2 mod, and a STALKER: Clear Sky mod.
Flesh takes the FPS game that is Half Life 2 and, well, removes the FPS. Instead you're given a horror adventure flick that relies on wit instead of twitch. In fact, there is no combat - the encountering of enemies is survived by avoiding, sneaking, or otherwise running away. But in a manly fashion, of course.
And it's a nice change. By making combat not an option, your brain instantly switches to survival mode and all the logic systems that enable you to think, instead of shoot, your way out of a situation.
Indeed, it's so fixed in its story telling style that there's no vertical movement, and there's no strafing. The mouse plane is locked horizontal. This takes a little getting used to at first, but it strengthens the fact that this isn't an FPS. This is a creepy interactive horror story, and the lack of a movement plane will be the last thing on your mind as the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.
The atmosphere is very well done; right from the outset you're plunged into a foggy night, driving along the road in the dark. Encountering a crashed car, you investigate and find no one alive, but movement in the nearby forest catches your eye. Entering the forest you find a large sign that reads "PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT". Why, whatever could they be hiding? Your curiosity may be your undoing, but it's the only way forward.
Soon after you learn to turn your torch off lest you attract the attention of some fairly zombie-like inhabitants, and a scrawled note attached to a wall tells of a much more ominous presence...
While the Half Life 2 engine is starting to show its age these days, it's refreshing to find a mod that isn't based around shooting things. Play with the lights off, headphones on, and a few spare pairs of pants nearby. You'll need them.
The release of Metro 2033 brings the genre and game world of STALKER back to the fore, and so it's fitting to take a look at the recently released version 1.1.1 of Stalker Clear Sky Complete, an overhaul designed to take a great game and make it greaterer (let me have this word Dave!).
While primarily Clear Sky Complete focuses on new visual fidelity in the form of new textures (landscape, weapons, mutants and humans), skyboxes, lighting effects and distant scenery (which, according to the homepage, includes real shots from the artist's tour to Russia), it also makes a number of other improvements to the game.
Sound has been enhanced to flesh out the atmosphere with quality ambient source files (which you notice right away while walking among the marshes), with the addition of night and day ambience. Weapons, naturally, have also received improved effects as well.
Add to this much improved UI changes, a range of bugfixes including common quest errors (which can be fixed individually by other mods, but are a welcome integration here), and a number of excellent tweaks like proper ironsights for weapons and the ability to trade weapons with NPCs and you have yourself a comprehensive overhaul that greatly improves Clear Sky above and beyond what GSC Game World original released.
However, don't expect it to do wonders for the engine though - turning on full detail and using DX10, even on a relatively beefy GTX 280 SLI system, the frames come a'dropping. It's possible the increased texture memory use doesn't help either.
Clear Sky Complete is so polished it even changes the main screen graphic and music theme. If you're looking for a single installable mod that improves the most important aspects of the game, this is for you.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012