Modding is quite a cool thing in games, isn’t it? You already have an original game, but with a few tweaks, you can turn it into something completely different. The modding community is insane, especially in games like GTA V and Skyrim. You know, before they outlawed modding for GTA and now mods are paid for in Skyrim…. But before that, it was great. Fallout is already a fun game on it’s own, but by turning all the Deathclaws into something like Macho Man Randy Savage, it really turns into a piece of art. But, what if you mod the game so much, you get something completely different, to where it’s its own game? That is what leads us to the mod for Half-Life, Cry of Fear.



Cry of Fear is a game from 2012 and a mod of Half-Life, and I don’t mean Half-Life 2. I mean the original one, with older textures and such. Yet Cry of Fear looks totally different. Aside from that one Half-Life poster near the start of the game, barely any Half-Life stuff is in this game. Every character, enemy, and environment is original. But we’ll get that later. The game follows main character, Simon, who, after being struck by a car, wakes up in a train, where he travels around the city, and must face off against horrifying creatures. Along the way, he comes across a psychotic and violent doctor in a gas mask who murders several people. Simon also meets Sophie…. I’ll discuss her later. Most of the story of Cry of Fear is told through flashbacks, discussing the car accident and Simon’s meetings with a doctor character. The game doesn’t really have that interesting story until the second half of the game. For now, it’s just “Get home and don’t die”. The enemies are the typical jump scares monsters, always popping out at you. Even at one point coming from under the bed, like a five year old’s idea of a monster. The monsters, at least some of them, do look creepy, I’ll give them that. Like the woman with the fetus bursting out of her stomach trying to stab you, or the chained up enemies that attack with their tongues and can break from their chains to beat you and become more faster. But other than that, they all just jump at you. And the enemies with guns are a real annoyance, because it just feels like a shootout rather than facing an unknown beast. I hate those ones so much. But what the game lacks in subtle enemy scares, it makes up for in the feeling of isolation.



Cry of Fear is a very lonely game. The character, Simon, is in fact, a lonely person. He doesn’t want to show it, but inside, he feels alone. And the isolated feeling this game gives off really shows it. You’re in a big city, but there isn’t a single person you meet, and those you do meet, being the Doctor and Sophie, are either crazy or… are Sophie (Again, I’ll get to her later). The entire city is just abandoned, leaving you to travel across the place on your own, and I do love that. It reminds me so much of Silent Hill, having a person be all alone to fend off against creatures of their own psyche. In fact, this game reminds me a lot of Silent Hill. Abandoned residents, few people in the area, monsters symbolic to the character. Oh, and pretty bad voice acting. The voice acting in Silent Hill 2 wasn’t great, but it definitely knew when to show emotion at times. In Cry of Fear… Wow. You can tell this was made by a few groups of people. The first half of the game's voice acting isn’t good, but it does get better, thankfully. It’s like they recorded on two occasions. And just like Silent Hill, Cry of Fear has a lot of memorable rooms. Silent Hill always had THOSE rooms. Rooms that were very special, and spooky. Cry of Fear also has it’s own share, like the room with pictures that suddenly goes black and with people suddenly popping up before disappearing. A room with a bunch of hands trying to kill you. And the hall that twists and turns as you jump across. That was a really neat room. But not all the rooms are wonderful. There’s this one part of the game where your phone dies. The phone, being your only source of light, and Cry of Fear, being a dark game, makes it a little difficult to see. So you need a flare. But the flare dies out. And there’s a lot of ladder climbing, and you can’t carry a flare with you, so you have to drop the flare. There are also enemies in these dark rooms, so you have to shoot them. But if you are low on bullets, you won’t be able to shoot, so you have to reload. But you can’t reload without dropping the flare. But you need the flare to see the enemies, but you need the bullets. So you have to decide if you want to drop the flare or not. Cry of Fear has more interesting and sometimes amazing rooms, but when it has bad ones, they are really bad.



Despite that hot mess, at least, when you don’t have flares, the inventory is a neat idea. It’s like they took the inventory idea from the 2008 Alone in the Dark, and put it a better game. You can only carry six items, and are very limited. You have to decide on what item you don’t want. You want the syringe to heal yourself, or you want this gun to defend yourself? You need to decide. Sure, you could go back and get it after you use a key item, but there will be points when you have to sacrifice some items. Just be careful, as the inventory screen is not a pause screen. If you are in the presence of enemies, take care of them before you check your inventory, or they will kill you. On the subject of great things, the music. The music is probably one of my favorite things of this game. All of the music is original and created just for this game. And, once again comparing this game to Silent Hill, they all sound very Silent Hill. It even has that Silent Hill like acoustic guitar. You all know the one. The best one. I even listen to his music on frequent occasions they’re so good. Not the best, but they certainly are worthy of listening to.



I’m going to be spoiling the game from here on out, so, if you haven’t played Cry of Fear and want to, it’s best you leave the article here. You have been warned.

Okay, I’ve put it off long enough. Sophie’s character isn’t that interesting. Or good. At least in the first appearance. She comes in around the fourth… I think it was… chapter, and, being a friend to Simon, they have a conversation… And then she kills herself. Sorry to go back to Silent Hill again, I know I talk about it a lot, but… Compare Sophie’s character to Angela. (Also, spoilers for Silent Hill 2). Angela was a character we knew everything about. We knew why she was suffering, and we even knew what the world looked like through her eyes. It was very depressing, and her suicide made it that more impactful. With Sophie… We get introduced to her right away, we don’t know why she is suffering the way she is at this point, and she immediately kills herself right off the bat. Maybe I’m just spoiled on Silent Hill 2 (And yes, that is it), but I just couldn’t get invested in her character… Oh, and the boss fight right after with Carcass… Ugh. Everywhere I go, it seems that Carcass is the monster that makes Cry of Fear, like Nemesis or Pyramid Head… Why? I know that those who like Cry of Fear may get mad when I say this, but… Carcass is stupid. He’s just a fleshy guy on a chair. That’s not scary, that’s silly. And those gargling noises he makes aren’t much better. In fact, most of the bosses look stupid. The first one looks okay, but the chainsaw just makes it look like it’s trying too hard. And the once with the mace is just stupid looking. I know they all have their own meanings, and I guess I can’t criticize them for that. I mean, Abstract Daddy was just a door, so I guess I won’t criticize them… I mean the first two bosses. I will always tell people that Carcass is stupid looking.



But, Carcass is good for one thing… It manages to make the ending interesting. You can choose to fight Carcass or run away. And at another point, the crazy doctor will ask you for a gun. You can choose to give him one or not. These choices will impact the ending of the game. In the ending, it shows us that Simon was actually left in a wheelchair after the accident. Because of this, everyone seemed to leave him, and he felt alone because of it. He felt depressed and even thought of the world as a waste. Depending on your choices, Simon would end up killing Sophie, his doctor, or both. If you do kill Carcass and give the Doctor the gun, Simon will show to have been writing in a book, given to him by his doctor to help his depression. And at this point, Simon must face himself… Literally. He must kill his darker self. I could look at this as something so stupid and awful, but really, I love the symbolism behind it. And having to fight an enemy while confined from a wheelchair is amazing. It could be seen as slow, but I love it. And it lets you take in the creepy scenery. After this, Simon will accidently kill two police officers coming in, and will be confined to an asylum for the rest of his life. Instead of hating life, he instead accepts himself, and, with the help of his doctor, manages to do better, and even accepts Sophie moving on. It’s quite a mature and realistic ending. Is it a happy ending, by no means, but a very realistic one. I really do love it.



Cry of Fear is not perfect, gameplay wise, or story wise. It has some good ideas, and while some of them manage to work out, others… Not so much. But when they work, by god they work. The story may be slow, but it really manages to pick up at points. The enemies may not be the most interesting, but can really mean a lot if you look at them from other points. The gameplay may not be too amazing, I mean the platforming sucks and there’s a lot of backtracking, but the setting, the music, and the isolation is all incredible. It may not be seen by many to be a stand alone game, thus keeping it from any awards, but I think that Cry of Fear manages to be one of the more interesting horror games out there. If you want to give this game a try, I say, go for it. And who knows, maybe I’ll review some of the other games this modding team did one day. Take care.