Yes, the "hungry" is in quotation marks, for some reason.

i.e. They Hunger, episode 2

I will tell you up front that I never intended on finishing this without cheats, and I didn't. Some people love that whole "being afraid" thing. I don't. I really wasn't even all that eager to play this, but I heard that Gooseman made a new weapon for this game, and that's what really interested me in playing. So I turned Godmode on, and went in.

First, I will say that this is indeed a very VERY good mod. Great maps, and I SUPPOSE I CAN IMAGINE THE CHALLANGE WOULD'VE BEEN GOOD. The storyline is fun, and there's a nice bit of tongue-in-cheek stuff sprinkled around. And that new Gooseman "weapon" (it's just a fucking gun) does look really awesome. Although I thought the normal models were good enough, I wish you got more ammo for Gooseman's gun. Using that thing, with the professional detail, skinning, modelling, and sound effects, made me feel all elite, mowing down zombies like an insane zombie killer FROM HECK.

One of the things that really scared me OUT of playing the game was the mention of super-fast running zombie attack dogs. I imagined some incredibly deformed bloody gnashing dog from hell running at you faster than you could blink. But actually, they're just houndeyes with a melee attack. But I didn't want to take the chance at first, really, because of them. Who knows when what other people call "a good scare!" would trigger a brain anurysm (hrwehgoiaog4) I didn't know about, before I even got to find the fucking Gooseman weapon! The original Half-Life was scary enough, but in a really fun way. This mod is 100% rotting wood corridors, broken glass, blocked doors, long rambling passageways that I never went down, moaning zombies (and other mysterious creatures), and lots and lots and lots... AND LOTS!!!!!!!!!!!! of pitch black passages, tunnels, vents, halls, buildings and labs. I kept leaving my flashlight on until it burned out and had to regenerate. And then I'd just turn it on again and leave it.

Without Godmode on, there really is a whole lot more at stake. You don't get armor, but there are quite a few med kits sprinkled around the world, and you actually get a healthy assortment of sniper rifle ammo, along with the rest of the usual ammo. But I know that I would've had to quickload at least fifty times playing this, just to finish it. With Godmode on, I could just run right through it. I guess among the scares, I really didn't want to get lost in all the rambling. I remember that's one of the things I seriously didn't like from the first episode: going somewhere, and not having a clue why. The really bad part is that that feeling is doubled in this episode, where I'm just walking through the sewers, and up some place to another place, and I know that I'm finding lots of clues as to what happened, but no one ever really tells me where to go, or why I'm supposed to be going somewhere.

Another tough thing, for me I guess, was the fact that I used noclip to just go through a door that I couldn't get into. There was a glass opening that I busted through, and I got a few chairs and stuff to try to jump through it, but I tried about 50 times, and it never worked. I couldn't find a key or anything, and shooting didn't work, so I just noclipped through it, listened to one of the recorders inside, and then walked back out and found a scientist waiting for me. I'm still wondering what I had to do to get through there. God knows that map makers always add some impossible "mystery" puzzle like that, which really really sucks. Sometimes you have to just shoot the fucking thing, which really sucks because then you have to try that with EVERY puzzle. And then sometimes there's some tiny barely visible ramp, and all these other damn things. I guess it's better than some "get the keycard" puzzle. I just don't have the patience. How do I know that your map pack or mod isn't going to just get even more boring after I figure out this puzzle?

Well, for They Hunger, at least it doesn't get too boring. Too many times, though, I wandered into an area, finding some plot point, and then wondering if I was even supposed to be here yet. But that happens a lot, mainly because I always find some passageway that I just don't take, and then keep going to see what's at the end, only to find an important "no way back" plotpoint.

And then after the skeletons came, I was stuck inside the asylum, wondering "okay, where now?" And with no answer, either. So I kept wandering until eventually I found the end of the game. Thank God. Now I can go back to my fucking life. Anyway, some good zombie blasting action, and the final building was really cool with the escape theme, and there's some good plotting and the weapons are really cool (my favorite, aside from that machine pistol, would be the shovel). The bad parts were me being too clueless and scared to really be enthusiastic enough to want to figure out all this crap.

Review by:
John Cable

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