Condemned is a single player, single map "mod". It comes with a modified HD pack of models/guns/HUD and plenty of custom sounds.
The mod takes place in the Half-Life 1.5 lineage - That is it happens directly after the Nihilanth is killed and ths portal storms begin to effect places outside Black Mesa, but before the Combine appear. Your character, as well as every person who was not at Black Mesa are still unaware of any alien invasion.
It will focus primarily on the horror aspect of things. Almost all of the lights are either completely off or flickering (I use several flickering patterns to avoid seizures, the end effect is pretty neat) violently. Expect to be snuck up on many times, and keep an ear out for those strange noises you can hear over the background sounds of leaking pipes, broken machines, sparking electronics, and decrepitness.
Story
"This morning we received an emergency transmission from a chemical processing plant in southern Colorado. We quickly arrived on the scene at 12:45pm this afternoon and took down reports from the surviving scientists:
At approximately 10:30am this morning, the power began to fluctuate wildly, quickly destroying most of the electronic equiptment explosively, and causing most of the lights to instantly burn-out and the others to fall victim to the spiking power. The few survivors are those who were working near the surface lift when this happened. Strange blinding flashes emminated down the long dark corridors, and horrific sounds echoed through the steel cavern as the last survivors activated the exit lift to the surface (Which, fortunately for them is one of the few parts in the facility which doesn't contain electronics). Various explosions of unknown origin are presumed to have caused cave-ins, and large scale damage throughout the facility, presumably killing anybody who didn't make it out.
Although strange electric fluctuations are still occuring in the facility, seismic activity from whatever happened has stopped. We are sending you in to survey the damage. Your suit has a flashlight for finding your way around (Although the power fluctuations should mean some lights will be flickering away down there).
There is a large electromagnet somewhere in the facility that if activated could balance out the large electric fluctuations. We need you to activate this so we can do a full scale search for any survivors. Remember that your suit is also metal, so you will have to dispose of it before you turn the electromagnet on. It will also conduct electricity, so be sure to avoid whatever caused those bright flashes.
Oh, and try to bring back something alive... With how few people made it out, we're expecting to find a hell of a lot of bodies down there."
You nod to your superior, don your suit, and activate the surface lift. As it begins to drop, you quickly catch your last glimpse of sunlight before decending into the darkness....
NOTES:
- I assume most people are not running the computer they had when they bought Half-Life, so if you still even look at r speeds (why?) your head might explode as they will be over 2000 as much as possible. Its truely amazing how wonderful Half-Life looks when pushed to its limits. Its hard to capture any detail in screenshots as much of the map is dark or has flickering lights. The screenshots up right now are very early and are pretty much the shell of rooms and halls. that I hope to have when I'm done.
Looking for some regular (Soon) and CRITICAL playtesters!!
Updates:
01.04.2007:
Heh, I just played Afraid of Monsters for the first time. Scared me s**tless a few times. I'm hoping to make mine do the same so I'm now starting to work on one of the things I've been overlooking just a little too much - Ambience. Constant bass, constant rumbling, constant sounds trickling away in the background. Weird noises.
