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Thursday 6 March, 2008
Gameplay Continued:
For my second round of Gameplay, I decided to join a server with a new player-mod for Garry's Mod called Zombie Survival. This meant that the entire game was changed around to look like a zombie survival game where one person was a zombie, and the rest of the players on the server were humans with guns. The zombie had the advantage of being able to see at night, where humans only had flashlights. If you were killed by a zombie, you became one and were free to wreak havoc on the rest of the humans. After playing on both sides it turned out to be one of the most entertaining video-gaming session I've had since the discovery of Counter-Strike.
It was really fun for a variety of reasons. For one, it was entertaining to play a different game-mode using the same exact game, basically re-skinned to be another game entirely, but still retaining some of the qualities of the original.
Garry's Mod in general is just so much fun because of the freedom it gives the players. The physics sandbox is interesting just to imagine all the programming and work that went into showing a simple box (that I flung) flying through the air. The challenge of also trying to construct something using this game with its defined rules is also very appealing, and once built, the sheer childish joy in your heart is well worth the work.
Design:
As it turns out, Garry's Mod was created with a directory structure which makes it easy for players to make add-ons for the game, as there are many other insanely fun game modes to play in Garry's Mod such as SpaceBuild, and Roleplay.
Essentially by playing Garry's Mod you essentially have many different, yet linked games at your disposal. This very much open-source approach at this game is a big plus for it, as with many fun things to try in Garry's Mod, it's playability and value go up.
The tool system, although complex, is comprehensive and enables the player to perform a wide variety of functions on a large database of objects. Once the player has "gotten the hang" of the tool system, Garry's Mod turns into an adult version of the Lego Box, except better.
The use of simplicity in creating the game actually makes it far more interesting than many other games out there, because it (as it states in the advertisement of it) really is a sandbox that enables players to create their own games, yet gives them defined rules to play within, all while making it look sexy with Half-Life 2 graphics.
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