Garry’s Mod for Half-Life lets you custom-design your own videogames

A guest post from GeekTeen John Ceceri:

Garry’s Mod (GMod) is a program made by Garry Newman that allows you to manipulate the Half-Life and Source engine games. If you’ve ever searched “Half-Life” on YouTube, you probably have seen a
Garry’s mod video. And after getting it myself this week, I have to say it’s awesome!

GMod has many uses besides playing games. It has been used to create several fan-made games, popular videos and comics, and to create physics sandboxes. Its physics gun allows you to pose props and “ragdolls”
(killed characters). And the tool gun can do anything from constructing makeshift vehicles to make your characters make faces at each other. GMod’s tools have even been used to design a housing development!

Before getting it, I was using cheat codes in Portal to make crazy scenes. But that was very limited, since all I could do was spawn characters. When I first got GMod, all I did was download add-ons. (One pack I downloaded included several enemies from movies such as the Xenomorph, and the Cloverfield mini-monsters.) But within a few hours I was making scenes and building cars.

If you’re thinking of getting GMod, there are a few things to note:

• GMod does contain some gore and blood — not as much as Half-life, but there is some.

• It requires a Source engine game, which you can find here.
• Most of Source engine games are rated “M.” If you’re not comfortable letting your kid play them, I would recommend getting Portal, a non-violent puzzle game. But if you’re fine with the ratings, the Orange Box (which includes the Half-Life 2 series, Portal, and Team Fortress 2) is a very good choice, since you get a lot of content to use in GMod.

Garry’s Mod has been called one of the greatest fan-made games ever. And now that I’ve tried it, I agree!

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