VIRB

Paranoia is one of those unusual mods that seems to just spring up out of nowhere. While some mod teams for Half Life 2 delight in posting render after render, the old-faithful HL1 developers take decidedly longer but potentially release something worthy of even Valve itself. Paranoia, developed by a group in Russia, takes the Half Life GoldSrc engine and gives it a full makeover. The results are impressive.

Either enemies will go down easily or you will if you forget to don your helmet.

The first thing you notice about Paranoia is its size. Weighing in at over half a gig this is almost as big as some full games, the reason being that it is pretty much is a new game. It doesn't use any of the standard HL textures so for once you won't be wandering down another corridor wondering if there is only one building supplier for all secret laboratories. There are a host of new enemies, some of them straight out of an 80s horror film and the overall atmosphere is one of tense fear. Ammunition is often low, although I never actually ran out of bullets, but when your back is against a wall waiting for an elevator to arrive while squeezing off your last clip at an advancing wall of gas mask wearing zombies you'd be forgiven for thinking it is game over.

And that's something Paranoia does very well. It felt more like a mix between FEAR and STALKER than any Half Life game, despite its use of the undead. In fact, some of the tunnel levels, with their revamped bump mappings, reminded me so much of STALKER it was unnerving for a game eight years old. Only on the outdoor sections do you see the limitations of such an old engine.

The addition of a helmet to protect your head was very clever, adding to the claustrophobic feeling when you pulled it down. Try fighting without it and you'll be on the ground watching the world fade to grey in seconds, but with it you lose all sense of peripheral vision, trapped in a small box, listening to your breath echo as you fire at the approaching enemy.

There is a lot that's done very well in Paranoia. The translations from Russian to English are very nearly error-free, a rarity in foreign mods nowadays. The level design can be repetitive but it's varied and detailed enough to not matter too much. Two main points however conspire to ruin the entire thing.

An underground explosion drops you right into the heart of the abandoned labs. Lucky you.

The first are your enemies themselves. Zombies and all of the mutant creatures you meet later on are realistic enough, often taking a fair bit of damage before falling, but your human opponents are wholly unrealistic. Hit detection can feel way off at times, unloading an entire clip into a guys head only to have him shoot you once to end your crusade. If the accuracy were improved it would make the game much more enjoyable.

The second point is the ending. Having saved the base, fought off enemy insurgents and escaped to the surface you're treated to one last helicopter battle which feels like it's over before it's even begun. After the claustrophobic battles below you would expect a bit more use of the above ground space.

However, for all its faults Paranoia is still a brilliant mod. When you initially head underground you don't meet anyone for the longest time, leading to an increasingly heightened sense of tension. The use of HL2 animations with certain characters shows the lengths the developers have gone to to update the game and overall it reeks of a John Carpenter inspired atmosphere.

This is one mod you should definitely play in the dark with the speakers up loud. As usual, find out more about this mod on PlanetPhillip.

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