Cuánto importa cuándo jugamos algo, el tiempo, el lugar, el contexto, con quien lo hacemos. Probé Cry Of Fear a los 13 años, cuando el juego estaba en Beta. Todavía en esa época no estaba bien implementada la traducción a otros idiomas en el juego y como mi ingles estaba re crudo no entendía nada. Pero quise seguir jugando porque habré leído por ahí que es un juego parecido a Silent Hill. No me gustó para nada y lo desinstalé a la media hora.
Yo de chico tenía una afición especial a ese tipo de juegos. Iba a un parque recreativo y me lo imaginaba como un mapa de survival horror. Lo mismo cuando iba a visitar la casa de un familiar, con mi escuela, con mi barrio. Se me cruzaba mucho por la cabeza hacer un juego de terror con elementos familiares para mí.
El tiempo pasó, a los 17 años se me ocurrió intentar recrear Silent Hill 1 en otro motor. No hice nada.
En el punto más bajo de mi vida, un poco más recientemente, intenté empezar a tocar música y tampoco logré nada. Me sinceré conmigo mismo, yo quería hacer un juego de terror, era mi sueño de joven. Planifiqué y mapee algunos bocetos e ideas. El protagonista iba a ser alguien lesionado en silla de ruedas, y que toda la jugabilidad ronde alrededor de eso. Tampoco llegó a nada.
Hablar de estas cosas me da miedo, siento que llamo a que vuelvan a suceder.
Cry of Fear me hizo pensar mucho, tras sus cuestionables decisiones veo algo que me atrapa. Que me hace querer terminarlo. Siento que es el juego que yo habría hecho en otra vida.
Cry of Fear me hace viajar, con sus texturas realistas, con sus ambientes liminales (Puedo sentir que el diseñador recreó en el juego muchos escenarios reales), con sus referencias tan vulgares y explicitas, con esa onda de creepypasta y esa ternura de hacer un juego propio modeando Half-Life. Con las limitaciones que eso conlleva. Lo crudo y tosco que se siente todo, las hitboxes y cajas de colisión no tan pulidas, muros invisibles y pantallas de carga por doquier. Es una nobleza ¿Cómo no voy a sentir ternura al ver tanto esfuerzo y dedicación? Desde 2008 el equipo estuvo trabajando en un juego que para mí sería una idea esporádica, un venazo momentáneo que se esfuma a los pocos días. Y acá lo tenés, un juego que con todos sus fallos logra ser algo competente y que me retrae tanto a mi juventud.
Es difícil de no admirar, por cada mala decisión te pone una idea brillante. Tras el aburrido sistema de guardado te deja un inventario limitado a conciencia y que te obliga a dejar recursos importantes atrás. Tras el aburrido diseño de enemigos te deja un sistema de disparo con buen retroceso y que recargar supone perder todas las balas que quedaron en el cargador. Y así podría seguir (Aunque quiero recalcar una decisión muy hija de puta que es poner un slider de brillo falso. Me encantó esa).
Lo que me hizo tener ganas de escribirle a este juego, aparte de su estética postmoderna urbanista (que ya me llevaba un poco a esa fantasía de juego que tenía desde la juventud), fue su final. Se revela que el protagonista quedó lisiado tras un accidente y todo lo que ocurre es en realidad una historia que él mismo escribió en un libro. El final es el protagonista real, en silla de ruedas, teniendo que combatir a su "yo" del libro en una batalla desigual. Se imaginarán como me llegó eso.
Al final aunque en otro momento desinstalé el juego a la media hora, me pregunto qué hubiera pasado si lo hubiera terminado en ese momento. Seguro no me habría hecho pensar tanto, pero tal vez me habría avivado de muchas cosas, que yo no era tan original. Ni Silent Hill por lo que veo, porque las secciones tan horrendas de escapar en espacios irreales y terroríficos que tiene este juego, luego fueron usadas para Silent Hill Downpour.
Jugando esto de grande noto que cada vez cuesta más no ver las cuerdas que hilan todo, los scripts, los triggers de sonido, el respawn de enemigos. Pero es también porque crecí.
Terminar Cry of Fear me hace cerrar una etapa de mi vida, me hace ver cuanto crecí. Hace que el futuro cada vez se vea con más claridad. Me pone los pies en la tierra.

If you haven't played this before - stop reading and just go play it, it costs 0 of your local currency, is available on the most widely distributed platform and doesn't need too powerful of a rig to run, it isn't terribly long either, what are you waiting for. And if you aren't yet convinced:

Cry of Fear is one of the best survival horror games I've ever played, and is bar none THE scariest one, and it's thanks to all the great decisions the developers made when working on this.

Like the choice of the engine! Cry of Fear is using GoldSrc, same as the first Half-Life game - convenient for the developers, as their previous project was a Half-Life conversion mod (Afraid of Monsters, also a survival horror game), but also adds to the game, as the quirks of that engine add to the oppressive atmosphere of the game.

And I'm in love with the atmosphere of this game. Some random town in Sweden, where every step is a different graffiti on the wall and you have to make way home through cramped rundown apartment complexes, empty subways and a shitty forest - all pretty familiar places, so it made me genuinely unnerved seeing them get creepypastad. Most notable to me is the entirety of the first apartment building you crawl into to save somebody that sent you an sms begging for help earlier. And that's where shit really hits the fan - the lights are turned off everywhere, the whole complex is completely barren save for random piles of stuff blocking your way, that one door blocked by a shitload of police tape and chains where you know nothing good is happening, and when you reach your destination - a flat, whose front door is totally drenched in blood - you immediately get a message: "Come in :)". And I just, stood there, paralyzed from fear, it's that effective. That apartment complex is also where you get a real taste of GoldSrc, namely the flashlight. It sucks. And that rocks. The flashlight of your phone only illuminates the area you're directly looking at, but it is the only thing saving you from complete darkness. And whenever your flash of light hits an enemy, they're illuminated in that very specific way that only adds to their creepiness.

And boy are the monsters here creepy. Distorted, twitchy, sometimes screaming and sometimes completely silent, and sometimes just bizarre, these goons are everywhere, and I absolutely adore them. One of them is guy strapped to a flying bed that spits blood, another is literally facebook and it hurts to look at, and one is a guy wearing a sack on it's head packing heat that shoots himself if you get too close. But the aspect I like them for the most is how they're all a real threat, and one you have to deal with yourself: they’re all EXTREMELY fast, unlike your run of the mill survival horror monster, meaning the bigger problem here are the enemies, and not the controls.

And you deal with them either in close-range or long-range combat, both being more robust than you'd think. Most of the foes here specialize in close combat, so resorting to a knife can be very dangerous, but oftentimes necessary. Thankfully, Simon is a nimble guy, and can dodge away from oncoming attacks, while still delivering blows if you time things right - pretty cool. As for your long-range options, you have a bunch of weapons at your disposal: pistols, shotgun, a hunting rifle, and even an AR. You'll have to be careful when you use these, though, as ammo leans in the scarce side of things. But a big layer of added depth comes from the dual-wielding system they've got going on. In Cry of Fear, you can dual-wield pretty much anything you can hold in one hand: pistols, mobile phone, police batons, needle shots - you name it, and that has it's major upsides and downsides. The upside is obvious - you can have the necessity of the flashlight in one hand with the raw firepower of the glock in the other, or you can have an answer for opponents both too close and too far by having both a gun and a knife out, or you can become a movie hero and pull out two guns at the same time. The downside is that you cannot ADS or reload at all, because, go figure, your other hand is occupied, and there's nothing worse than running dry while there are a bunch of monsters still trying to gnaw at your ankles - and that ROCKS. Reloading your gun is still a major problem even without a ketamine shot in your other hand, it takes a deliberately painfully long amount of time to do so, and if you decide to go for a tactical reload - you're giving up every bullet you had in your currently loaded mag, Simon isn't a keeper. But don't think you can turn yourself into a walking arsenal, as Simon can't fit much into his pants.

Inventory management in this game is pretty simple, but a perfect fit for a survival game. You get six slots - that's it. One of them is always taken by your phony, so you actually get five spaces to juggle your stuff in, which means you'll always have to give up something to carry an important item, or a weapon you really like. Thankfully, whatever you drop on the ground stays there - forever, so if you change your mind at any time, you can make your way back to that spot and pick that thing back up, or even use the ground as a storage - which is pretty neat.

I haven't touched on the story at all so far, so let's change that. It's alright. The most interesting thing it does, I feel, are the two other major characters present: Sophie and Dr. Purnell. Or rather, SPOILERS I GUESS, the way they're portrayed in Simon's mind vs the way they are in real life. Dr. Purnell here is a mysterious weirdo psychopath that kills people and gets in your way sometimes, but knowing that this whole game essentially takes place in Simon's thoughts - that isn't the real Purnell, that's the image of him Simon perceives. Same with Sophie: she's shown to be interested in Simon and having a normal conversation with him etc etc, which is later juxtaposed with what actually happened in reality: Simon, on his knees crying and sobbing and shitting, in the most pathetic way telling her how much he loves her, while she's trying her hardest to leave. So Purnell is a maniac because Simon sees him that way for what he feels like not helping him at all, and Sophie's that way because he still has strong feelings for her, even though he got hard dumped. And, I don't know, this specific topic, of how you perceive people and how people perceive you compared to what things really are, is something I think a lot about, and that’s at least one topic the game brought up. Outside of that? Oomfie’s gotta hit up a therapist.

There were a lot of cool setpieces I didn’t talk about, like the school and the maintenance area in the subway, so go see them for yourselves, it’s totally worth it. It even has side modes a la Resident Evil, including a co-op mode. This game raw.

I'm probably one of the few people who was around for the hype building up to Cry of Fear's release in the Half-Life modding scene back in the late 2000s/early 2010s, particularly a group of dedicated fans ofAndreas Ronnberg and James Marchant's previous mod Afraid of Monsters: Director's Cut. Cry of Fear exists as a sort of swan song for that entire subculture and remains as the most impressive achievement of the GoldSource engine even to this day.

I remember counting down the days to its release in middle school and pissing off my brother by downloading it while he was playing World of Warcraft, thus making him lag quite badly during raids. I remember how the original release had to be delayed by a single day because donators on the forums were given the release link earlier and promptly leaked it, thus crashing the servers. I remember being hesitant to torrent the mod because I equated torrenting with piracy, which was illegal and therefore scary.

But little about the game itself stands out to me in hindsight, especially not compared to the way that Afraid of Monsters permanently imprinted itself onto my psyche and continues to be a subtle influence on my tastes. It's a far better game in almost every front and bested anything that came before or after on the GoldSource engine, but looking back on it now I didn't find the experience to be nearly as gripping. I think in this way the comparatively high production values and slick, clean production comes across as a little flavorless and lacks personality when compared to the endearing charm of its spiritual predecessor's MS Paint graphics and bootleg MP3 soundtrack.

To quote a friend who I haven't spoken to in over a decade, whom I met playing on the Afraid of Monsters Sven Co-Op server and bonded with over a shared love of Afraid of Monsters and horror gaming: "It just isn't AoM."

Loved this game, every grim, black, defeating second of it.

Lots of games in the last 10 years have dealt with mental health and trauma, due to its accelerating focus in the zeitgeist. On this, I believe if you've experienced and dealt with any abnormal mental health, then you are fully entitled to express it and yourself in whichever way you want in your creative works. That being said, I'm completely okay with games being optimistic and a bit brighter about this kind of stuff, but games like Cry of Fear that are a lot farther away from the light are also completely valid. The way that this game deals with topics such as depression, suicide, self-harm, trauma, and psychosis, can sometimes be pretty heavy and brutal, even silly to an insensitive eye. But I'm not gonna forget it anytime soon, and I loved how well-baked it was into the gameplay, mechanics, and enemies. Simon is a really well-written and empathetically embedded protagonist, and while the rest of the game's story and writing doesn't stack up to this, and his voice acting is nothing Oscar-worthy, I'm glad he was there to guide us through his own journey. The cold, dark descent eventually brings itself to probably one of the most indescribably reinvigorating and effective moments I have ever experienced in a video game to this day, remotely followed with the ending I received which did feel unrealistic, but ultimately satisfying and earned.

The game being run on the GoldSrc engine (released in fucking 1998) is its own can of worms to be opened. The game doesn't stand very well compared to the graphics of other games from 2013 but considering it's on a game engine that's just about as old as me, the graphics and art style are super impressive. I don't wanna know what kind of ancient ritual magic the two main devs had to perform to get this game looking and playing the way it does. That being said, GoldSrc obviously does prove somewhat-routine limitations for the game. There's an innumerable amount of doors and load-zones that wouldn't have to be there had the game been running on Source, which was already out for nearly a decade when the game was officially released. Some of the mechanics can also feel a little wonky and the balancing of combat can be off sometimes, but if GoldSrc was necessary for giving the game the vibe it has, then so be it. The pitch-black streets of Sweden feel wholly empty as these nightmarish low-poly monsters are deadset on your demise. It managed to jump the gun on retro graphics-clad horror games that are all the rage over the past couple of years. In this way, Cry of Fear could represent the far-stretched end of this era of old fifth-gen horror games.

Loved most of the mechanics it had to offer, and as I mentioned earlier, how they get to reflect the game's themes. Some of the choices for enemy design in this game are stuff that I'd expect in triple-A games, let alone what was found in a FREE game, although this doesn't save it from sometimes unfair encounters and enemies. The idea of save points as opposed to automatic checkpoints or freedom to save was very well appreciated, lending a lot of tension to the game's progression from level to level.

Both the sound design and soundtrack for this game were incredible. At every turn, there is no one, and the absence is perfectly audible, with the sounds of wind, flora, and continuing automation effortlessly imposing this forlorn and isolated feeling upon you. The game's title is pretty self-explanatory on the sound design of enemies, with several of the monsters disturbingly wailing as they come for you, and their memorable sounds serving well as mechanics. As for the soundtrack, it's an excellent example of simple yet effective, guided forth in terror with humming pads and dissonant drums, but used wonderfully for moments of calm and rest, with beautiful guitar tones and piano notes reverberating throughout the empty streets. Thank god that the OST is on Spotify so I can jam it whenever I find myself in a predicament walking the dark streets of NFLD.

Sometimes the vibe can feel a bit derivative. I wasn't right out of the woods yet with "Half-Life mods that borrow their style and atmosphere from other games" having just completed the putrid Hunt Down The Freeman being in love with MGS (was my primary reasoning for finally getting to this game, as I wanted a bout with an actually acclaimed Half-Life mod). In this way, Cry of Fear has an affinity for both the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series (a bit more the former than the latter) and picks elements to help cement its setting and atmosphere. Considering this, the game could be set in a Swedish Silent Hill if Konami decided to buy out Team Psykskallar, but this never fully detracts from the mostly unique tone and atmosphere Cry of Fear sets.

Looking forward to WuPac trying this game out and seeing what he thinks, as he's a lot more experienced in the area of mental health. You better, also, since it's free.

what this game lacks in particularly great writing or depth it makes up in spades with very clear and obvious passion, while I was an infant while this was being made I can still clearly tell the effort and love put into this. Genuinely great at building a strong foreboding atmosphere, interesting mechanics that add to its surprisingly strong tension and does some interesting things with some of its scares. Certified Soul™.

Also, it includes my favorite running thing in horror games: Background set design including ads that make no fucking sense. https://i.imgur.com/wIEzqoT.jpg

I think on an absolute technical level, Cry of Fear still feels monumental. The fact that this is a mod of the original Half-Life is absolutely mindboggling even now, even if the game's ambition definitely shows how much they have to push that engine with bugginess and crashes definitely being a hurdle to overcome. I think its easy to excuse those shortcomings though, this game is a technical marvel, helped by the fact that its a solid game ontop of that.

I know a lot of people are in love with this game's narrative, which I respect, I am an Omori fan, I am not in the wheelhouse of downplaying the impact a game had on them lol. I will say for me personally, the writing of this is competent, but never got past the immaturities that I sort of associate the early 2010s with. In some aspects, that is part of its appeal, and I think when it veers into the straight self-hatred horror, it does work a lot more than when its trying to have some deeper meaning to it. Not that I don't respect what it is attempting to do, and the soundtrack really does some good heavy lifting to not make those moments feel important, even if I never quite got there.

What this game is, however, is scary. It is very jumpscarey which is going to turn off some people. But its a decade after release now. This game geniunely made me scared to go through certain sections of game through great sound design and really great jerky animations courtesy of the engine its running off of. I was tense just about every step of the way, and the game's jankiness and excellent visual design really made this game a true nightmare to go through. Never before has Sweden looked so grimy and truly heinous to slog through.

While I wouldn't call Cry of Fear a masterpiece, I would call it a great horror game, in a weird timespace where the genre was starting to find its footing again, but wasn't quite refined to where it is now. Cry of Fear is messy in parts, but its that way because its an ambitious daring game that went all the way, and mostly delivered. Absolutely worth a revisit now that the Let's Play era has died down and we can appreciate what a piece of work it is.

Played on Linux

Hard to describe game... it's a masterpiece. And flawed to the bone. The atmosphere fills me with existential dread, despite the old engine, the game drew me in it's depressive world like nothing else.

It feels like the kind of thing that couldn't be made by a AAA studio. It's a genuine personal artpiece coming from the depths of a few developer's minds. It feels genuine like nothing else in it's dread and terror.

Gameplay is sometimes a bit weak. Some puzzles poorly communicated. But that's about it. I don't know if it deserves all the stars, or just 4 or 3.5. It deserves all of them at the same time. It's one of a kind.

You can tell that so much heart and soul went into making this game. Every aspect of Cry of Fear work together so well to create a game with an amazing atmosphere. From the spooky sound effects and music to the disturbing enemies you encounter. They all help create a truly terrifying experience.

The middle of the game did get a bit annoying with the backtracking and focusing too much on trying to being a shooter. Other than that, if you are a fan of survival horror games you need to give this a go.

Um dos melhores mods de half life, sério você tem que jogar isso se ainda não jogou.

As mudanças desse mod pro jogo original são infinitas, o jogo é de terror e a jogabilidade parece que saiu de um mod de hl2 e não de um mod de hl1, mas adivinha, ele é um mod de hl1, só isso já faz esse jogo ser bom, mas ainda não acabamos, tenho que falar muita mais coisa desse jogo pra conseguir compensar o tempo que fiquei sumido do site sem fazer reviews, então vamos lá, por onde eu começo ?, já sei pelo terror, afinal essa é a base do jogo.

O terror é realmente assustador nesse jogo, mas o que dificulta zerar é o quão dificil é esse jogo, inimigos que te matam com hit kill , cura extremamente limitada e save que não é automatico.

O jogo não é de todo bom, tem muitos erros, coisa que a gente releva ao jogar pelo fato de ser um mod feito por poucas pessoas, mas eu acho que esse jogo tem seu charme de mod de hl dos anos 2000, por isso achei uma boa ideia voltar a escrever com uma review dele, afinal esse jogo merece uma review bem feita sobre ele, coisa que essa review não é. 4 estrelas.

I'm writing this directly after I finished the game for the first time today. This game is Perfect. In my case, there's absolutely nothing I can say to put this game in negative light. I've played huge amount of horror games in my life, and this is the best one yet. Even changing the game engine to a new generation one instead of Gold Source would make it a downgrade, and not an upgrade. The Atmosphere of this game, The Story, The Looks, The Monster design, The Soundtrack, there's nothing, absolutely nothing that could've been done better. This one will stick with me for months and months to come, before I even begin to stop thinking about the great aspects of this game. It's completely free so it's definitely a must play not only for horror genre fans, but also for any genre player in general. It truly does horror genre the way it should be done and is quite the definition of it. You will not only be tormented by fear, but also by emotions and your body giving up from shaking during the gameplay, there's not many games that can replicate the feeling this game gives away completely for free. Do yourself a favor and just play it.

I discovered this game, like many, as a recommendation from fellow Silent Hill fans. After trawling through the likes of, say, The Evil Within and Outlast, I found Cry of Fear to scratch that itch in places that few games have reached.
The SH similarities are there: the Yamaoka-esque sound design warps, loops and distorts to starkly unsettling effect; the gameplay pushes for exploration and puzzle solving and the design is just as grungy and unhinged. I should add that the jerky monsters that pop out have also induced some pants-shitting terror.
Born as a Half Life 2 mod, the game, aided by it’s reputation, found a life of its own on Steam where it is currently free to play on PC. With the jagged, PS2 aesthetic and the mother-game's eerily familiar textures, the horror of Cry of Fear is the game itself, embodying that cursed, uncertified quality of SCP or Sad Satan.
Without spoiling the typically, albeit enjoyable amnesia plot, some of the most horrific moments are quite simply the little pieces of notes detailing child abduction, murder and other occurring crimes, occasionally reminiscent of Thomas Ligotti’s short stories.
It really has everything I could ask for from a horror game, impressive considering my stubborn nostalgia for the halcyon days of Silent Hill 2. But I can’t recommend it enough to fans of the entire horror genre, it’s so much more than a throwback.

this is game 7/71 of my backlog!

i finally beat this, damn, feels weird
cry of fear is kind of insane in the fact that, it exists, a beautifully made horror game, in the goldsource engine, made by like what 8 people? for free??

this game is good, very good. For the engine? beautiful, masterful use of it's limitations and even goes a little beyond at times, i'll never forget the lake near the end or the maze of arms

the game is mean, but it's a good attitude for a horror game to have, it shouldn't just be spooky, it needs to be threatening "i don't WANT to leave my heals behind to take this key, but... i don't have a choice" giving players the illusion of choice is a great design decision in a horror game because it leads to more anxiety

if anything i wish the game was a little more selective with it's enemy placements, but overall it wasn't that bad at all

the story is also... well, i'm not gonna get into details but, it is something close to me, i'll probably have to go through something similar to what simon goes through eventually so, it's good to have a clear view of how i should approach it, stories matter a lot to me and this is a good story.

this game deserves a remake, from the ground up, fixing the little issues that it currently has like lack of customizable resolutions, and whatnot

overall a masterpiece and an amazing showing of what a small passionate team can put out, this was better than a lot of other things i've played, very spooky.

The game starts out with a warning that this game can make you "suicidal" superimposed over artwork of someone who just killed themselves with a shotgun. Stay classy, devs.
Despite the game's early excursion into 4chan-tier bad taste, I have actually wanted to play this game for a while. I'm not easily scares by anything in horror games other than jump scares, and a game that looks like it's about shooting rejected members of Slipknot seems right up my alley. Unfortunately, I cannot get past the intro sequence in this game, specifically the part where you are supposed to go through the window. I have tries this multiple times on separate occasions. The last time I tried to play the game, it did not want to cooperate with my new monitor and had this weird effect where it looked like a ghostly afterimage was superimposed over everything on the screen. Spooky, but frustrating enough that I couldn't handle playing it anymore. I still have plenty of Resident Evils, Silent Hills, and Fatal Frames to get to, so I feel confident laying this one to rest.

...Kinda like silent hill (I know comparisons are annoying, but the inspiration is evident)
The scenarios are uncomfortable, weird and make you feel ALONE, which is very good because I think it does it in a unique way.

The gameplay is pretty entertaining, it reminded me of when I played half life for the first time, the monster designs are grotesque and KINDA creative
The fear factor seems pretty good to me, everything jumps in your face and you go AAAA but it has moments where the tension and paranoia fucked me, and it's not like the first thing is necessarily bad.

I also like to give props becase is the GOLDSRC game that exploited the engine the most, It was able to make a scary game that is not a map with 100 half-life zombies.

BUT, because unfortunately there has to be a but

I like the story, it's definitely interesting, and Simon is a silly and quite iconic character in the world of horror games, despite having a simple design is now very recognizable, but I think you have to be careful when approaching such topics like the ones the game deals with.
I understand that it was early internet and it was a more edgy-era, the first quote of the game it's sum GREEN DAY SHI, and I also suppose that the developers tried to make it look serious.. but it didn't work out for ke

It's something subjective and to someone it may seem approached good, but it sometimes took me out of the immersion and left me thinking that there were obviously more mature ways of talking abt depression and suicide
I think that when it comes to gameplay it works perfectly i was reading notes like that Ratatouille guy, but when i saw cinematics i was doing the thousand yard stare

Fuck parkour