Look, all of us need a 3rd installment in Valve’s iconic Half-Life collection. However the unhappy fact is, it’s virtually definitely by no means going to occur. As such, we’re caught with the primary two (in addition to the VR sport Alyx). However that’s a superb factor, as a result of Half-Life 1 and a couple of are exemplary first-person shooters. So liked is the collection, that followers proceed to tweak and mod Half-Life and Half-Life 2 to their very own ends.

Take Staff Vestige over on ModDB (through PCGamesN), which has taken the legendary sci-fi FPS and turned it right into a horror expertise. Referred to as “Disrepair,” this mod for Half-Life 2 sees the participant slip into the hazard go well with of a Mix employee who’s been despatched to analyze and {photograph} the radioactive anomalies which have cropped up across the Black Mesa facility.

What ensues is a brief however creepy expertise, not too dissimilar to the likes of Slender: The Eight Pages. The participant is tasked with photographing a number of items of artifacts across the contaminated constructing, whereas ominous sounds drill into their ears. It additionally has a slight SCP vibe about it, in that internet-urban-myth form of method. You may see YouTube person Farawaygaming diving into “Despair” above.

Take that, Ravenholm!

While you consider Half-Life, you in all probability don’t consider the phrase “horror.” Whereas the video games do have their extra unsettling moments (the Ravenholm part in HL2 springs to thoughts), it’s not a franchise recognized for scares.

That’s why this Half-Life 2 mod, and others prefer it, are so attention-grabbing. They take one thing that has a really distinctive aesthetic about it and switch it into one thing that’s pretty unsettling. With the tunnel vision-style lighting, black and white graphics, and the eerie tones of this darker facet of Black Mesa, Staff Vestige is only one of many causes folks preserve returning to the Half-Life video games in spite of everything these years.