AestheticGamer1In the fourth installment of our Fan-Made Horror series, we’re going to tackle an episodic mod for Half-Life 2 known as, ‘Underhell’. Underhell is an action-horror mod for the source engine of Half-Life 2, it currently as a whole is still in development though as of the time of writing the first episode, “Prologue,” has been released. I sate it as an action-survival game as opposed to “Survival-Action” since this game does what a lot of those games fail to do, be downright chilling. There are definitely action moments, fighting a terrorist group that has taken over a hospital, but there is much more to this mod than meets the eye.
You take the role of Jake Hawkfield, a special weapons and tactics operative who has recently gotten married and moved in his beloved wife’s house. However, his happy life soon falls apart as the mysterious death of his wife (with all signs pointing to suicide) strikes poor old Jake. Alone in the world and feeling the affects of death and loss, only his best friend and boss, Frank, is there to really give him any sort of support. As another day rolls in and more lives fall into danger based on a terrorist attack, Jake joins his squad to infiltrate the hospital facility and rescue the hostages. He will soon realize there is much more to this case than a hostage situation…
While not all of the answers or all this game has to offer is out on display right now, only the first episode has been released as more episodes will continue to release periodically, the quality of this mod is amazing. It could very well be mistaken for it’s very own game. The quality stretches out to good voice acting, original music compositions, original areas, lighting affects, and much more over the course of this title. The enemy AI at times feels a bit weak, having moments of stupidity and running into walls, and there are some bugs, but this still stands as a quality mod.
You may have very well noticed I have not been mentioning anything about the horror aspect in the game, which is contradicting of a site dedicated to horror gaming. The game features something which is called “Autoscare”. Autoscare is a term used for a game that features randomized scares for the player, meaning that each playthrough will have different things happen. I won’t be spoiling any of the scares for anybody here, but I give my biggest recommendations to explore a bit. There are lots of hidden areas in the game as well as secrets. Also I suggest you fall asleep when it becomes night in the game… It leads to a pretty interesting dream sequence. The truth of the matter is, in the Prologue at least, you could play the whole thing and wonder why nothing scary happened. Besides the randomized scares, almost all the fear takes place off the main path. The game has a lot of secrets, for example you could go through the whole game and not once enter your house, which is stocked full of mystery and switches gameplay over from a shooter to something more akin to an adventure game. When you start the game, you’ll either start in a helicopter ride or waking up on the sofa of your living room couch. The helicopter ride will get you right into the action, but if you get the house it has a ton of secrets… But which one you start off with is randomized.
Highly recommended for anyone who has a game using the Source Engine to play this on, and just as recommended you take the time to discover the chilling horror that does exist inside this title. Definitely something to keep your eyes on to see how this episodic mod comes into development. You can also check out Nightmare House 2 if you want your fill of horror mod Source engine goodness.
To download the Mod, click here and follow the instructions.
