Hot Mods 20/03: Hot Horror

20 Mar 2009 at 11:41:01 by Spanner Spencer

Horror is a powerful and polarising genre, whether we’re talking about games, movies, books or mods.

A lot of people look down on it as the uncouth, idiot cousin of well-told drama, and turn a nauseated nose up at the gore and cheap scares of horror entertainment. And in many ways, they’re right – it’s a genre that’s often employed as a cop out, and a way to feed a captive audience without having to put too much effort into a development.

Horror’s rife with poor production values, tacky cliché and a profiteering effortlessness.

But it’s also one of the most powerful entertainment tools ever invented, when it’s used properly. A horror game, movie, or book forces the audience to participate in its events. A thriller or a romance struggles desperately to achieve the kind of audience engagement that horror can summon up with a walk down a quiet, dark corridor, or a sly glance in a mirror by an unsuspecting victim, and modders have been using its blood-soaked charms to grab gamers by the thumbs and terrify them into submission for a long time.

Unrestrained by non-commerciality, horror mods are one of the most liberated and uninhibited mediums the genre could ever want, so this week IncGamers' Hot Mods is turning off the lights and splitting up to explore the dark, dank, foreboding graveyard of horror mods.

Let’s see who gets picked off first...

Killing Floor

http://www.killingfloor.freedomsnet.net/


What will we actually do when the zombie holocaust happens? According to most films and games, we’ll already know just enough about the undead outbreak to go on some heroic mission to save humanity.

But let’s be honest. All our efforts will simply go on immediate survival, and that’s precisely the premise this Unreal Tournament 2004 total conversion adopts. In Killing Floor, the world is suitably overrun with the living dead, and your task is to avoid being eaten.

No hunting around in underground laboratories for an anti-virus, no trying to escape from a walled in city before the nuclear strike comes, and no looking for some kind of Typhoid Mary zombie whose quick death will cure the world.

Thousands upon thousands of flesh eaters chase you down, and other than a good supply of weaponry, Killing Floor is all about testing your wits to their elastic limit. Holing up in a building is a decent tactic, but when the next tidal wave of zombies hits, any survivors who stay still will quickly find themselves cornered.

It’s an intensive and exhausting experience, battling through a co-op multiplayer like this, with no rest, and plenty of wicked. The onslaught of enemies is, in itself, an outstanding feature of Killing Floor, counterbalanced by the survivalist ingenuity you’ll find yourself exhibiting when the teeth are gnashing at your heels.

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