Yesterday I finished a very cool Half Life 2 mod known as Nightmare House 2. I don't have much experience with the Half Life modding community, in fact, what few mods I have played usually suck gratuitous amounts of ass so when it comes to this kind of thing I'm not really expecting very much
Anyway, Nightmare House 2 is, as you probably would have guessed, the sequel to Nightmare House. I had a go trying to get the original Nightmare House to work but every time I booted the game it would load up the Counter Strike Source menu and then crash instantly. That said, the developers have very kindly put the original Nightmare House into Nightmare House 2 as a prequel chapter known as prologue.
Basically, the game is a first person shooter set in a house (NM1) and a hospital (NM2) and there's no real goal aside from get from one end of the level to the next. What this game is very good at doing though is generating jump scares without coming off as annoying. In terms of atmosphere, the game is OK but it doesn't hold a candle to big name horror titles, but then again, its a Source mod so what do you expect, right? What the game is very good at though, is bombarding you with jump scares that keep you on edge at all times. The scares are very well done, very well thought out and expertly placed.
This game succeeds at the jump scare mechanic where other more recent horror games like Dead Space ultimately failed. In Dead Space, when one of the alien things would get up and run at you after pretending to be dead it was met more with a "sigh" and a swift shot to the limbs rather than the "WHOA!" reaction which I think they were aiming for.
The game also has its fair share of "Jesus Christ what the fuck is going on?" moments and the level design is really well done. The game is also voice acted and the voice acting is actually pretty good, to me it really sounded like a group of decent VA's did this game. To its detriment, maybe, the game is pretty short, but then again its a free mod you can play as long as you own a copy of Half Life 2: Episode 2 so I don't think anyone will begrudge the game for its length
Either way, this is easily worth checking out. I'd love to see these guys create a horror game with a bigger budget, they have some very good ideas.
You can download the game here: http://nh2.wecreatestuff.com/
