Night Terror

Last night we were playing on the original Left 4 Dead, on a quite awesome custom campaign called Night Terror.  This is a six-part campaign created by NIPPER and DrBoo, available here on l4dmaps.com.

We played this campaign a while back, and it was the haunted mansion map which stuck in my mind the most, with it’s originality and fantastic voice work by the narrator.

The door closed in a small circular room closed once we were all inside, and the ceiling started moving upwards..  The narrator informed us that there were no windows and no doors, and that we could try and find a way out, or take his way out.. mind tricks being played as the ceiling was replaced for a few seconds by a different ceiling with a hanging man, though you need to be looking straight up to see him.

My favourite bit though, was the ghost ride along the path once outside.
Somebody has to get off to open the gates, and then again to restart the buggy, but then it’s a nice ride through the haunted graveyard 🙂

The next bit of the nightmare is straight out of the Mines of Moria, and very clever too.  The book lying on the edge of the well is the trigger for the next event, with some more fantastic voice work.  After you’ve done reading, the bucket tips into the well and summons a horde led by a tank!

This part is fairly hectic, and so far we’ve lost somebody each time.  Following this, things don’t get any easier with a huge room full of zombies, and another door which doesn’t open until after two waves.

Endless stairs.. Just as well Coach isn’t in this team, or he’d be complaining 😉

We had a silly number of smokers on the stairs last night, who just kept picking survivors off.  Such easy targets, with no walls to hide behind..

I also loved the Jungle map, which contains some sneaky traps, but overall feels a lot easier than the Moria section.  A friend was rather too amused by me getting squished by one trap which caught me completely unaware, coming down from the ceiling.  We all laughed when the bot was squished by a rolling spiked cylinder a little further on though!

The finale is started off by an alarm clock in a strange, destroyed bedroom.  Personally my alarm clock starts my nightmare, rather than ending it – I don’t like getting out of bed in the morning 😉
Another amusing touch comes with the ending.. the survivors rescue themselves, rather than being picked up by helicopter or boat.. by running into what looks like a glowing portal to a laser disco!

Left 4 Dead 2 Maps

Also been trying out a few custom maps for Left 4 Dead 2.. with some maps being more successful than others.

Big Brother 2 is a fairly decent survival map with a little bonus for those of us who find the gnome amusing..  if you take the gnome to the diary room and drop him in the chair, a hatch opens above the kitchen counter and drops a nice pile of gnomes 🙂

Another that we found particularly nice looking was The Island.
After playing through a few times, we decided to have a little fun with the numerous gas cans laying around.

Tempting, no?  Well, we thought so.. especially once we were standing in amongst it all!

Fire, lovely fire 🙂

Mods again..

As if I don’t have enough new games to play, I’ve been fiddling around with some more mods.

Finally finished Korsakovia, though that was more on sheer stubborn determination and a bit of curiosity, rather than because I loved the game.

Later levels required me to climb up platforms made of various junk from previous levels, coming apart more and more as, I guess, it’s trying to show you that Christopher’s reality has.

Oh, and more televisions to find and smash, more black clouds to avoid, and more of the strange story being revealed by Christopher and Dr Grayson’s dialogue.  Remember this one is designed to screw with your head?  The ending does that even more, as you [spoiler]die in a fire and reload your save only to find you’re actually meant to die[/spoiler] because it’s the end, and sit back and listen to the last bit of Christopher’s story.

A friend recently asked if I would recommend this game to others..  I certainly wouldn’t push somebody to it, but if you’ve not already been put off then there’s no harm in trying it.  It’s perfectly safe. 😉

The second mod for this week is a Half Life 2 mod called SMOD.  This is pretty much the regular game plus a slew of additions such as being able to kick enemies and throw the crowbar.  I’ve not played through a lot of this yet, but already it’s shaping up to be a slightly tricker game than the original, though this might be because I’m trying to kick everybody instead of firing from a safe distance.

Mods

For a long time, I wanted to create my own games.  Lacking the skills of a game developer, and to some extent the time and patience to figure it all out, I turned my attention to map making and level design, as the really hard work has already been done.  There are also plenty of tutorials around the web, taking even more of the pain out of it.  So far, I’ve not devoted the time required to create anything I’d want to show beyond my closest friends though..

Others though, have the time and patience (and the skill!), and there are some great works out there.  I’ve been recommended a few HL2 mods over the last week or so: Awakening, MINERVA: Metastasis, and Dear Esther – and the latest in the list, Korsakovia, is downloading now.

Awakening was described to me as a good game with awful voice acting.  You play as Adrian Shepard, from Opposing Forces, somewhere between Half Life and Half Life 2 in the timeline.
It starts off with a rather long trailer – Combine troops attacking some kind of facility – which pans around the fighting then inside the base, and eventually comes to rest where you wake up from stasis..  Simple enough game – shoot them all!  It’s quite a short game too – I completed it in about an hour.  The level design was great, and battles seemed to be well balanced, although I found myself seriously low on ammo for quite some time..  but yeah.. the voice acting was somewhat amusing.. 🙂

MINERVA: Metastasis really stuck in my mind as the best of the three mods, although all three were quite different from each other.
You begin the game strapped to the underside of a stolen Combine helicopter, being shipped into an island to spy for Minerva.  She communicates with you only via radio messages which appear as text – no dodgy voice acting here, although the language is strangely poetic and could put some off.   Exploring the island, and finding out exactly what the Combine are up to, requires plenty of shooting and some puzzle solving.

The map design here is very open, and although there’s really only one way to go to further the story, you’ll return to the same places a few times during exploration.   I was also quite impressed with the quality of the graphics – at least on a par with the official game itself.

Dear Esther is a strange sort of interactive ghost story, rather than a game.  Had I come across this myself, without recommendation, I might not have paid it much attention – especially as it started off so slowly, and you’re confined to a very slow walk – but that wouldn’t have done it justice.

The game begins with a portion of a letter being read out, to “Esther”, as you look on a deserted building.  Exploring the island triggers other portions of letters, or rambling thoughts, which only seem to become more rambling, more confused as you get deeper into the island, and markings on the walls only add to the atmosphere.

I discussed this with a friend afterwards, comparing notes on our understanding of what happened – an accident on a motorway, drink driving, the loss of a loved one, self-imposed isolation.. mixed with long lost shepherds, stolen bibles, monks and syphillis – all ramblings of a man delirious with a broken leg who somehow feels he deserves his fate..

Having looked around the internet for this one, I find that parts of the script are actually randomised, so if someone else were to play through this, they might have a slightly different interpretation.  Dear Esther made me feel rather sad, stirring up memories of my own, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

I also mentioned I was downloading Korsakovia..
This is another mod from The Chinese Room, the team who created Dear Esther.  This game – experience? – is not meant to be enjoyable.. the whole intent was to explore what happens when you push boundaries and subvert what people expect from a game – with flashing lights, disturbing sounds, and the oh-so-creepy tagline:

“The paramedics report that they were unable to find his eyes. We think he may have eaten them.“