Garry’s Mod is a game which was conceived as a mod to the Source engine. In the game, we can freely combine different elements of other games that are based on this engine. The game, or to be more precise, the tool is a sandbox. It doesn’t set goals or provide tasks. What counts is fun. The idea for the game was born in 2004 when Garry Newman from Facepunch Studios decided to reveal it to the world. The mod, which he created has received numerous prizes, including the prestigious Mod of the Year award from PC Gamer.
How to Download Garry’s Mod
In order to start downloading Garry’s Mod click on the Download button at the end of this review.
What Is It?
We’d be hard-pressed to call Garry’s Mod a game. It’s more of a toy in the hands of a slightly bored creative player. In order to reap the benefits, it’s enough to have any game based on the Source engine installed. Then we receive access to all the contents of the game. We can disassemble it into pieces and then modify at will to our heart’s content. To help ourselves in the process we can use hundreds of scripts, add-ons and additional mods created by the community of the players, for example, Garry’s Mod Prop Hunt (Hide’n’Seek).
Garry’s Mod has no storyline per se. What the game will be like is entirely up to us, its creators. We can do anything we want. If we fancy throwing World War II soldiers into the Star Wars universe, we can do it. We are limited only by our imagination.
One can’t really be talking much about the game mechanics as what it will be like is also totally dependent on the players who design it from scratch. The soldiers can play paintball and space marines can lay sieges at the walls of medieval castles. We can modify any aspect of the gameplay, the facial expressions of the characters and the world’s physics.
Garry’s Mod’s Physics
And since we’re talking about physics, it’s worth to mention, that the party responsible for its simulation is Havok. It means that just like in the Half-Life series the physical model is accurate and simulates the real laws of physics. Thus all the explosions look particularly spectacular and the physics allows for a lot of freedom in the creation of logical puzzles.
As far as the graphics are concerned Garry’s Mod and the Source engine are a bit behind the standards of today. However, this is not a huge problem and it certainly does not ruin the game experience. The character animations or the textures of the in-game objects still look quite fresh. Despite their age also the models of vehicles or weapons don’t look bad at all. Especially if we take into account that Half-Life 2 was released in 2014!
If you ever dreamt of transporting the characters from the series of doctor Freeman’s adventures into the world of, say, Counter-Strike, Garry’s Mod is the game for you. Few things give you such thrills like mixing your favorite games does.
