The next mod review:

Garry's Mod (or Gmod) is the most popular mod for Source and with good reason too. It has been around since the dawn of the Source engine on Half-Life 2 (it is now in its 10th version) and is so good it is now being sold on Valve Software's Steam download market for the small price of $10.00.

Gmod is incredibly hard to describe. The best word for it, however, is sandbox. Now if you know what that means it might be a little clearer...if not then this could get tricky. A sandbox is a game in which you can do practically anything, and I say practically as this is usually the case but for this it IS anything. In Gmod many things are possible, using the nicely open custom maps made for the mod you can do these main things: Build, Pose and Play - all of which are in real-time.

Building: The biggest feature of Gmod is the building. By spawning any object from any Source game you own, be it Half-Life 2, Counter Strike: Source or Day of Defeat: Source, you can move it around using a form of the much loved gravity gun (a HL2 weapon that can pick up small objects to use in puzzles or defeating the enemy) that can pick up, rotate and move any object in multiple ways. With the so-called, Physics Gun, you can also freeze things in mid-air and then unfreeze them later when you are ready. The most useful tool, however, is the tool gun...makes sense really. The tool gun has many many functions that can all be found on a ingame menu. Some examples of tool gun settings, or stools: the constrait tools (of which there are many) which fuse two props and/or ragdolls together and the build tools which add things to existing props at a click of the mouse. Almost every stool has changable qualities, for example, the "wheel" tool (which adds a wheel to any prop that you point and click at) has many things to change: the shape of the wheel; the power of the wheel; the grip of the wheel etc etc. With these tools you can make drivable planes, cars and boats aswell as working catapults and other weapons. Or just make buildings and scenery that you can then use to "pose" things in (see below).

Posing: No this isn't about supermodels (darn). Posing is used mainly for taking screenshots with the nifty Gmod camera. Posing is usually the process of spawning a ragdoll of a character and then using the physics gun to puch, pull and twist the ragdoll into a position ready for a screeshot. It is fairly difficult to get it right but when you can do it well you can make exiting screens of Day of Defeat battles, Counter Strike encounters, epic Half-Life scenes or...just prat about and put people into stupid positions. Alswell as simply changing the position of ragdolls you can take full advantage of the Source Engine's amasing face poser. This stool allows you to use hundreds of variables (in the same technology Pixar use to animate their characters) to create the perfect expression for your characters. Aswell as playing with characters, making screnery such as a detailed office block using props from Source games could also be considered posing. See my "Revenge" video and "Nazi Rally" screenshots for examples of posing.

Playing: Playing, as I have chosen to call it, is less widely used than the other aspects of Gmod but is fun never-the-less. By loading up a multiplayer map from Counter Strike or Day of Defeat, then turning off the AI and then placing AI is a interesting order around the map you can make small levels for yourself to play in singleplayer. Then return to the start point you have chosen, turn the AI back on (save the game if you want to) and hey presto, a little level for you to play through.

Online play is a very interesting aspect of Gmod. Although it isn't entirely neccasary for posing and building (although it is a great source of inspiration and ideas) it can be very fun on the sort of "mini-mods" people have created and run off their server. With a short download time during the loading time you can play new and interesting games every day. Some very popular sever-mods include "Stalker" in which one team consists of a semi-invisble super human and the other teams consists of special forces units sent to kill the super human, and "Zombie Survival" (yeah, I know it's not a very good name) where a few humans must hold out against hordes of zombies and a few player-controlled zombies - like a cheap version of Left4Dead.

To conclude, Garry's Mod 10 has one of the biggest life spans of any game, let alone mod, ever and with the constant suppply of crazy stuff to play with from garrysmod.org and facepunch studios (from which you can download thousands of custom content files such as new weapons, new enemies, new maps and new props and ragdolls to play with) it seems I will always have an endless supply of Gmod material to have fun with.

Marks...

Quality: 9.7

Originality: 9.9

Gameplay: 9.0

Sound: 8.0

Design: 8.9

Overall: 9.4

One bored Sunday afternoon I started playing with some ragdolls I downloaded for GMOD and lo' and behold this new video/comic entitled "Revenge (a story of...revenge)" was born. Check it out!

PS. Don't ask about the bad textures on the tree(s) and the bad video quality as I cannot explain it...

My first mod review:

SMOD Tactical is a singleplayer mod of a much loved mod in the Half-Life community. The original mod is SMOD, or Super-Mod, which adds many new enemies and crazy weapons into the HL worlds aswell as ironsights for all of the guns.

SMOD: Tactical builds on this and adds in almost every weapon from the Counter-Strike series with custom models and skins that add in fancy features to each of the guns such as LAMs (laser aiming modules), red dote sights and other special forces ****equipment. It also adds a new Dx90c effect onto the iron-sights that adds a sort of depth-of-field to the view where the gun is sharp and what is immedietly to your front but everything else is blurd out slightly. The NPC in the game have been replaced with modern day counterparts instead of futuristic soldiers and the AI has been heightened - they are much more accurate and you will probably die in around 2 to 5 shots. Also, leaning has been added to make it less easy to get hit.

One of the best features of Tactical, however, is the custom weapon feature. Using the online help guide found on the sight you can make your own custom weapons by altering lines of code outside of the game and then using it in game (which I have done numorous times now) - you can even download custom skins and models from sites such as fpsbanana.com and use them in game too.

So, a great singleplayer mod...ah...but it does have bad loading times to rival that of Battlefield 2 or even Red Orchestra.

Marks...

Quality: 9.0

Originality: 7.6

Gameplay: 8.5

Sound: 9.5

Design: 8.8

Overall: 8.7

The newer a game the easier it is it seems. Have you ever noticed how you can complete almost any game now in 2-3 days (excluding online only games and RPG's of course)? Where-as go back and play one of your old favourites from 10 or more years ago and you'll probably notice that it is harder and longer (or mabye hardness makes it longer) than any game now...obviously don't go back to far and play Sonic the Hedgehog or something because you can complete that in an afternoon - it's still harder than anything now though! An example of this is how I've just started to play the original Half Life again and on easy mode it is harder than Half Life 2 on hard mode.

Anyways, in other news I'm going to start reviewing and mods I download in blogs, I will mark them on; how well made the textures and models are - in other words the graphics but relative not to the game but how well the mod-team have made it; the ideas behind the mod; how the ideas work - the gameplay; the design of the mod; and the custom made soundeffects and/or voice acting used in the mod. So, stay tuned for mod reviews. 

Ah yes, and as promised, here is my review of The Ship.

And a bonus! My review for the original Half-Life.

As promised, here are some images of FakeFactory's hi-res Half-Life 2 texture pack. I've also uploaded a new trailer for the upcoming mod Insurgency - Modern Infantry combat (note, this is not the official trailer but is a trailer made by me) and as a bonus I've uploaded some images I made on GMOD of a Nazi rally - and no, this isn't some sort of pro-Nazi, anti-semitic message so don't even begin to complain about how evil and wrong it is, it is merely a historically correct group of posed ragdolls which I made and took screenshots of.

Anyway: enjoy!

I've Lot's to talk about now: 

Firstly, I've been eagerly following this mod for some time now and at last there is an official trailer AND a release date!

 The mod I speak of is Insurgency - Modern Infantry Combat which is a complete conversion that takes place in current day Iraq in NATO vs Insurgent forces. The game was founded and directed by a member of the Canadian army (no Canada jokes please!) and as such is based heavily around realism. He thought up the idea for the game in 2002 and now, hopefully by June 07 the mod will be released. For some reason, however, he had to leave the mod team but luckily he passed the torch on to the original director of the Red Orchestra mod for the Unreal 2 Engine (the original mod, not the retail game from Steam) so many features found in RO will be in this mod such as motion blur when being fired at, firing and when near explosions. Also, there will be weapon sway, iron-sights and the sniper scope ****used in RO (where the sniper rifle is a little away from the eye, therefore you can see a little of the "un-scoped" world around the edges of the screen.

This mod should be one the best around - strangely it looks as well made as any of the retail Source mods such as Counter Strike and Day of Defeat.

I can't wait and I just hope it doesn't flop!

On lighter news, I have bought the ship for only $15. I've mainly got it just to keep me entertained throughout the holidays as I need something a bit more light hearted to switch between when I'm not playing Red Orchestra (which I find difficult to just pick up and play due to it's no bull-s**t gameplay and long loading times).

Also, I've downloaded a high-res texture pack for HL2 and GMOD for free courtesy of FakeFactory studios. The graphics make the game seem so new and fresh with exeptional textures for all of the character models (including those very small characters) and for many of the props dotted around the levels.

So, well done for reading the whole of this incredibly long blog. Thanks!

PS> Wait! There's more! Watch this space for a review of The Ship, the upload of the offical Insurgency trailer and screenshots of the high-res texture pack. Now, that's it, really. You can go now.

I should proabably withdraw some of my comments from my previous blog. There are too many people who exploit the map, krauts coming on to the beach, too many snipers, too little mg's etc etc. But anyways, there are more important things to talk about.

Yey! I have Red Orchestra now and it is as good (and as hard) as I expected it to be. See my review for more details but here are some of the more important comments:

The game has a very dark and gritty atmosphere which I like alot, the game's maps also add to the atmosphere as they are all war torn field and cities. One of my favourite things is the soundeffects which can be heard all around the map. The tank battles are very difficult to get used to (especially with a bunch of noobs as your crew) and the infantry combat is surprisingly fast paced and intense - I thought it would be more methodical and careful.

Anyways, this is a rushed blog by my standards so read the review if you want to find out more (albiet with better English too).

The review.

I've now found the best Day of Defeat map ever. It's called Strand and is a very immersive beach map that resembles such landings as Omaha Beach, Operation Husky and Operation Torch. The map in my DoD images are a sort of beta version of this map although I think Strand may have been made by a different person building on the work of the eariler map in my images.

Anyways, the map starts, as to be expected, with the US on the beach and the Jerries in a series of trench networks and bunkers. The Krauts have to defend a radio mast, two 88mm Flak guns and one huge bunker mounted artillary gun. To get off the beach the US first have to place explosives on one, or both, of two spots in the barbed wire to break through that and then on two points on the bunkers. Once they've done that they need to destroy the targets in a sort of Counter-Strike bomb planting and bomb disposal sort of way.

There is one clever edge however, each of the three guns fire on the beach with the main gun doing massive damage. So the quicker you take out the guns, the less casualties you take. There are also small mortars at key points that can be mounted by both teams to use against the other.

It all makes for a great experience and luckily, as is not the case with most community-created maps, there are two 24/7 servers playing the map! Hazaah!

Now all this talk of the map has made me want to play it so goodbye for now...

I've just started to post images on Gamespot now but they seem to take forever to upload! Now this is understandable of the video uploads but they're only pictures...how long can it take? It's nice to see, however, that Gamespot now has a little of everything, a little of MySpace, a little of Youtube and now a little of Photobucket. How grand!

As for my images, so far I've only uploaded Day of Defeat images that have been made on Gmod. Gmod is a mod that allow you to play with anything in the source engine in real time. What I have done here is spawn lifeless ragdolls and then, in real time, manipulated their position and "pose" them in stances to make interesting screen shots. You can also do crazy things on Gmod such as, for one example, making a working car out of a bathtub, some wheels and a motor, making a catapult out of a pillar, some wheels, a big dumpster, some elastic and a winch or two! Anything is possibly and it was definetly worth the $10.00 I payed for it!

I plan to upload some Wings Over Europe images I've taken soon as I have plenty of them and mabye some Rainbow Six: Raven Shield images as I have plenty of those I've taken from a year back.

Just looking around the site and...what? Runescape on Gamespot?

Runescape; the poor mans' answer to World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. How the f*c* can a flash game be listed on Gamespot! It's a bunch o crappy 5 polygon men walking around a flat, lifeless, textureless world clicking on stuff to kill! This is disgusting, I don't care how popular this s**t is, it's just some flash game a bunch of incredibly sad, worthless, homo-sapiens made one day.