Cry of fear is, without a shadow of doubt, one of, if not, my favorite game of all time, it is an absolute rollercoaster of emotions that can hardly be put into words, and, after hundreds of hours of playing this game, I can say; it is completely worth it.

The game itself is old, being released in 2011 after 4 years in the making starting in 2008, it runs on a modified version of the 1996 GoldSrc engine which Half-Life1 (from now on HL1) and all its sequels used up to the making of Half-Life 2. It is, undeniably, heavily flawed and will crash a lot unless you know how to mediate the problem. However, I stand to believe that its positives outweigh the negatives in almost every aspect, and, aside from this, it is important to acknowledge one important fact; the game wasn’t made by a professional team, but rather, a small one of about a dozen primary developers and auxiliaries, Team Psykskallar, headed by Andreas Rönnberg, known as Rumpel & James Marchant, known as Minuit.

One of the first things that stick out to most people who do any sort of research on the game, is that it does not look anything like HL1, and as stated above, this is because the engine they were working on used a different renderer, one from a different HL1 mod called Paranoia, to add to the game’s immersion and gameplay, a load of things were also made from scratch, such as the ladder animation, inventory management system, the textures, &c, &c. But the game didn’t always look so good, lots of models, and most notably Simon’s, went through multiple reworks before becoming what we know today. There is lots to appreciate about Cry of Fear (from now on COF) when it comes to visuals, effects & mapping. The game takes place on the cold, dark, streets of Stockholm and a lot of effort was put into making this be as immersive as it can get. The mapping was done by experienced people, with the maps being very well put together & optimized, with some parts of the game made after real-life places, things like textures & sounds are also taken from the actual city of Stockholm through photographs & recordings. All of these, in turn, create realistic atmospheres & places which feel completely normal.

All that I’ve just stated above, coupled with the game’s incredible soundtrack, work perfectly together in an almost disturbing harmony. The soundtrack, just like the mapping, was made by someone experienced, that someone being Rumpel, someone who had been making music even outside of COF, and this shows. The soundtrack features about a hundred songs which go perfectly with the atmosphere which the game radiates. Some of the best, and this is agreed on by many, are Dark, Brandon, Dark City & Boat.

As stated in the first paragraph, the game does have it’s negatives, and this is not only limited to the way it runs, but to some things more than that. And of those, is undeniably, the early voice acting. As I’ve noted previously, the game was made by a small team, and not all of these people were fully trained in what they were doing, and one of these people, was Simon’s (the game’s protagonist) voice actor Stig Sydtangen, known as DragonNOR, however, it does get better over time. In the 4 years the game was in development, Stig gained more and more experience in his field, and in his own words, “it makes for good character development”.

The game isn’t very long, and usually does not take more than 2 hours if you know what you’re doing, with most people taking about 7 on a first playthrough, however, there are reasons to keep playing. The game has a high amount of replayability, this refers to unlockables which you can get throughout the game, such as hoodies, weapons and other similar items, custom campaigns, multiplayer co-op maps, a whole modding community for the game, &c &c.

I don’t even have enough energy to start talking about the story, but keep the following mind; it is very complicated, very good, and does get very very emotional.

Cry of Fear is a game worth every minute you spend on it, and if you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to play it.

All my best regards go out with Team Psyksallar,
Farewell.