I still go on Halo Reach CE and 3 on MCC and appreciate the graphics on those in 4k. For some reason the later games after CE "Besides 3 and Reach" all of a muddy blur and bland color pallet You can really see this in 2 and 4.
I believe it's mostly cause of the ambient sound effects. Also the low graphics trying to replicate reality without any style creates an uncanny valley effect.
That is a great point. Games today have endless amounts of resources to make things look perfect, but it seems to lack atmosphere. Creativity becomes back seat to realism.
@@BlazeBlueY3it's why modern films with 250 million $ budgets worth of CGI feel lamer and uglier than something made in the early 80s for less than $10m
Hey there, co-writer for Ghostware here! Thank you for the shoutout, the 120% increase in exposure this video generated will allow Mothership Loudspeakerz to stock up on mezze penne for the next three months.
There’s a great movie called „A Land Imagined” (2018), in which there’s a scene where the main protagonist is falling asleep while playing „Counter Strike” and, while being in spectator mode, he’s starting to nocliping through the map. This nocliping effect seeing on the monitor, added with great, hypnotizing music, created an eerie moment, as it looks like the protagonist is moving to another dimension.
I went back to Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Multiplayer last week (not ET). 20 years ago, this game had loads of players, clans, etc. Every server that is live today, is now only bots constantly playing the same levels in loops. Every time I entered a server, I'd ask "Is anyone out there?" - no response. It was like playing with ghosts.
oh man, definitely. There is something supremely surreal playing one of the beach invasion maps alone, where the looping background war noises and far-away explosions were SO loud and constant, but it was just you on a deserted beach, not another soul in sight. dod_omaha I remember had a really effective sense of distance compared to the other beach map with a far larger axis-side with dugout tunnels and bunkers (can't remember the name of it)
In the early days of CS (and multiplayer in general), the tension really felt like horror to me. Memories of crawling around de_prodigy with a TMP trying to get the drop on people, only to get scared shitless by a dude with balls of steel running at me with an AK. Had me kicking the desk and throwing the keyboard in the air :D
those vents from the CT side that dropped down into the main terrorist choke point hallway really sticks out to me as a memorable terrifying situation my buddies and I would always rush right to at the start of each round. You either felt like solid snake sneaking down behind encroaching terrorists, or you landed right in front of them with your thumb up your ass and their AK down your throat, dead in miliseconds
I always found several of the Tom Clancy multiplayer games "scarier" than most proper horror games tbh. R6, Ghost Recon, and especially Splinter Cell where death could be in any shadow. Knowing other people are in the dark is much more unnerving than scripted monsters and such that can't react beyond their programming. Not so much modern Ghost Recon, though. R6 Siege has had a lot of great moments, too, whether it's something like a Sledge suddenly coming through the wall behind you Jack Baker style, a good Caveira or Jackal hunting you, or the feeling of knowing a Glaz is on the other side of that smoke grenade that was just thrown in the doorway and you have nowhere to hide. Especially when you're the last one alive.
I remember being 9 and my older brother got me a burned copy of Half Life w/ CS from school. I had to wait til he was home to play them bc I was just too scared to make decisions. It was a big deal for me to finally muster up the courage to take on the Blast Pit chapter or log on to a cs_militia server by myself.
@@SlappaccinoGhost Recon was fuked, as the very first mob in the game is hiding under some bushes along your route and then backed up by a MG nest on the hill behind them. Right off the bat it makes you just assume they can be anywhere and wipe your whole team through the trees.
That cs_estate creepy lights was a real mystery. There was nothing in the map activating upstairs lights except the lever in the transformer. The thing is the lights are turned off by default and they stay like that even if you're not alone on the map, but only ONE team must present (you can add a dozen of bots in your team and till the opposite team will have no players the upstairs light will remain dark). The secret is the transformer switching the lights is actually func_door set to "Start open" in its properties. func_door has a little secret: it resets closes itself at every new round. When there's only one team (no mater how many players in the team) on the map the game doesn't count it as a round at all. What happens is: the upstairs lights are turned off, you start the map, there's no opposite team -> another player/bot joins as the opposite team -> the game actually starts the round -> the transformer lever (func_door) closes since it's a new round -> upstairs lights turn on.
If i recall correctly, original Counter Strike has some slight changes to first person fov and player height compared to Half-Life. It wasn't acknowledged well by mappers which results in it's weirdly warped perspective and sense of scale.
that makes a lot of sense because in this video I realized just how weird the perspective looks, like you're smaller than the environment while still not being "shorter" but the walls all look stretched
I guess GmanLives has never played No Players Online since that wasn't mentioned. That was the first game that did that whole, playing on a server alone concept and amped up the horror element. Good stuff.
Every Source engine has that liminal feeling because maps are seemingly abandoned but you can hear the ambience around you... cars passing by, birds chirping, kids playing but there's no one there.
I'd argue the fairly recent trend of associating empty vast spaces and buildings with existential dread is at least partially a result of how overpopulated most urban areas have become in the last 2 decades. The feeling of being alone in an apartment building is largely a rarity now and feels unnatural to most people. Having grown up in Eastern Europe during the 90s I actually feel quite at peace at abandoned factories or construction sites, reminds me of a calmer more uneventful part of my life. Sometimes we just need some time alone with our own thoughts, afford to spent time on nothing :)
@@Atrahasis7 True, but as with many fears the intensity can vary among cultures and individuals. Someone used to living in a large busy loud city is more prone to feeling lonely compared to someone living in a more rural area. As I was growing up there was an increase in construction sites as the population grew so it wasn't uncommon for me and my buddies hanging out around empty half built buildings. It wasn't so much a feeling of loneliness as it was more a feeling of being small.
That's an interesting observation on the fact that so many people live in dense population now - it hadn't crossed my mind, but in a world where constant stimulation from digital distraction is the norm, I can totally see how alien the concept of silence (or even just subtle ambience) could be. I also didn't get spooked in games like HL2 where many others have commented on it feeling like they a were being watched (lots of videos on RU-vid on this subject) which is quite a creepy concept. Half Life 2 for me had such a feeling of quiet isolation but as you mentioned, a calmness also, which played beautifully with the contrast of the combine dropping in on you leading to a full on fire fight. They totally nailed the atmosphere of total isolation on the road trip section in HL2 (Highway 17?)..
@@elone3997 Few games nail silence well, like Gman said the only one that is masterful in it is Thief. And that game inspired a lot of designers including valve and many others.
I love this take. Personally, finding myself in a big and empty place where it is usually crowded is an extraordinary feeling. It is both soothing and crushing; calm and creepy. And it is indeed a rare occurrence, which makes the experience even more precious.
Halo: Combat Evolved gave me these exact same feelings as a child in both its campaign and multiplayer. So many early games are masterclasses in unsettling atmosphere.
Can't believe you started off with de_survivor! As a kid, I would somehow spend hours alone by myself on a server just wandering around that map with headphones on. I distinctly remember simply running around and imagining scenarios in my head for why the player would be in this map. In one instance, I imagined the player was a truck driver who's vehicle broke down and they stumbled upon some top secret research lab. In another instance, I imagined we were the sole survivor of an airplane crash and were being hunted by a creature that escaped from the back of that truck. The visuals, the sound design, the general atmosphere of eeriness... it's so hard to explain what a seemingly pointless experience like that does to a young person's imagination and curiosity. I remember getting chills my first time loading that map up and turning the corner to see the crashed airplane and then hearing that wolf howl. Not to exaggerate but I have to believe that fucking around on de_survivor as a bored and impressionable child permanently altered something in my brain chemistry to where I not only am obsessed with all things horror-related now as an adult, but I find specifically snowy environments, in real life or in media, really unsettling and creepy. Especially because I live in Los Angeles, CA where it never snows unless you head up to the mountains, being in the snow was such a novel occasion for me that I couldn't help but associate it with the feelings I felt when I used to wander around that map. Man, what an absolute nostalgia trip...
Ngl I miss the childesh imagination, it really added the immersion and atmosphere to the maps, I also always wondered what is going on these maps and just imagining what might have had happened
I did the same thing as a kid, there's really something special about survivor, oilrig also had me feeling all kinds of things with the dripping water ambiance, the vast background on every direction feeling completely isolated and lost at sea
From the very beginning, I have always loved the first Half-Life for that reason. This sense of isolation, of vastness. The low-res textures repeating themselves, giving this liminal space feel. The silence, only broken by a few sounds here and there. The feeling of walking through usually crowded offices, now abandoned. It is both eerie and peaceful and struck me really hard back in 1998.
I feel like some of these older game engines manage to capture creepy feeling effortlessly because they always have visuals that look slightly off. I remember playing around in abandoned source engine games a while ago and I got the same creepy feeling.
4:15 those ice formations remind me of those crystal formations you find in the original Crysis when entering the alien super-structure... so I 100% agree
This was perfect. I love how you included estate. Back then Id join a game on italy and sometimes it'd be empty so id just explore while waiting for people to join. I loved that singing going on behind one of the doors. Gave me a comfortable feeling. And same with estate, id chill in that room with the fuzzy tv on and just sit there imagining being comfy in that bed at night. It made me feel quite sleepy
I'm so glad to finally hear someone saying that being alone in a server isn't scary, I've been hearing people say this for like 2 years now and it makes no sense to me
I always thought as_oilrig was supposed to have a special cutscene that plays after you manage to reach the helicopter but I guess it just works that way.
For the longest time I thought I was the only one feeling creeped out by the ambience of Source Engine maps/games. It's just unnerving how close to the ground the sound of footsteps are with the howling wind on the background without any music. When I watched No Country For Old Men, I thought to myself "The Coen Brothers must've loved Counter Strike because this quiet ambience is unsettling af"
I was thinking of maybe Cry of fear. as Afraid of Monster sort of getts anoying quickly in that the enviroment make zero sence (even for a horror game) its super dark all the time meaning you more or less need to run the flashlight on 24/7.
The thing about cs_estate is that you get to turn on/off the lights for each floor. I'm pretty sure later bots do turn them on, but the old ones, for which you had to make a map out of different types of waypoints, didn't.
I'm pretty sure the map maker nipper did that spooks level, he did a ton of other crazy atmospheric maps. I used to help beta test them in a gaming community we were both part of back in the day. Strongly recommend checking out his later maps if you get a chance he could do absolute wizardry with the godawful hammer editor
Atlantis, especially that lava room, is almost certainly a reference to the Adventure game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The climax of that game takes place in that lava room.
makes sense that spooks makes an appearance here, it was made by nipper after all. alot of his maps are incredibly unique, bizarre and occasionally downright creepy. i mean hell that's putting it lightly.
Maps designed for the zombie mods, aka ones with "zm" prefix, is where you'll find the best horror that cs 1.6 can offer. If you thought that silent hill map was already too much to swallow, imagine playing it with bunch of zombie players (or bots) hunting you down.
It's really cool how a game like Counter-Strike has such a good atmosphere on a lot of maps, considering that during a gunfight you wouldn't notice more than half of the time. I recently bought a perfect condition physical copy of the Half-Life Platinum Collection, including Counter-Strike 1.6. It's definitely one of my favorite games of all time.
Great video! I'd love to see you do this top with CS: Source. I never played the game back in its heyday but have had so many creepy experiences loading up empty CS:S maps in Gmod sandbox only to discover they take on a life of their own without other players around.
I've never played Counter Strike but watching this gives me a very specific feeling of nostalgia. I got the same thing when I played the Mirror's Edge games.
I started CS when I was around 8 years old where my older brother would teach me to play on 1.6 and when my brother's not around, I would just remove all the bots to just wander around the maps but little did I know I would get so creeped out. I think it's a similar concept to going to an empty mall or school during the holidays where you expect to see people but there aren't so it's just super eerie. You literally cannot get the same feelings with CS2. Only with 1.6 does it feel like someone's just watching you the whole time.
1:18 Bro, is that an Alex Jones reference? This is why server browsers are necessary. Matchmaking has been a net negative on multiplayer games in my eyes, not only mixing utterly incompatible playstyles into a blender but also putting the kibosh on creative community maps. Even as someone who utterly despises PvP, I adored the strange things you could find on TF2 servers, like those old idle achievement maps with easter eggs, in-jokes, and sometimes hidden boss battles and the like.
Halo 3 matchmaking was pretty amazing, then 343 decided to throw that all away for every game on MCC. Halo 3 set standards that no one else was capable of meeting, apparently. I also thought that the theater mode was going to appear in countless games after. Nope. So I don't blame you for hating it, it is so rarely done well in that it matches you with equally skilled players, developers nowadays just cram whatever random players together as quick as possible.
i dont know, for me walking in these empty maps fills me with somber nostalgia, spending so much time on them before when they were populated and now when they are empty just feels nostalgic and sad
Nice to see that de_survivor is on here. As a kid, I found the map pretty unsettling but also very interesting for some reason. I would load up the map and just explore it alone whenever I was bored. I remember thinking that the breaking bridge and the ice that would break when you walked over it was extremely cool.
Loved this, really enjoy these kinds of videos where you revisit weird/fun/interesting maps from a simpler time! I’ve seen other videos on this topic and I’ve found most of them pretty dry tbh but your commentary as always is both informative and so full of character it has me both hooked and cracking up the whole way through!
Off the top of my head: es_trinity is of course one of the maps ever made, as is de_foption with rare spawn kill trigger de_torn is one of the more atmospheric maps in a war-torn country, with actual environmental hazards like bombshells and stuff I won't call it creepy, but de_prodigy has one of the rare hurt triggers that will gib you to pieces (just like in half-life) if you jump out of the map from the railing I also remember the fight club map with knives only, it was unsettling as a kid because it was all dark, grungy, with blood spots everywhere, and the song from the movie played there at max volume.
Playing cs_crackhouse on a DM server can be scary if you think about it. You're engaged in an endless battle against Ts(or CTs) with no real goal or end in sight, and dying over and over again without any memory of what happened before. Really a special kind of limbo
Man, I used to explore maps in 1.6 by myself all the time and it was really relaxing, it's cool that De_Survivor was shown because I remember exploring that map exactly. Also not a creepy map but there was a custom Christmas themed map that had a little cafe playing Let It Snow that I used to love to relax and walk around in. I need to find that Christmas map again. I swear these old maps have a soul.
So about the Atlantis map. Those are audio stingers directly from Tomb Raider and the reference to Thiefs Lost City is probably also intentional because it was made by Eidos… and which also had a Lost City (of Vilcamba) Map#2.
Man, I was a little too young to have gotten on the Counter-Strike train. My only core experiences with the original were playing with bots on the dead console version of the game and then playing the Condition Zero version of the game. My main introduction to the franchise was Counter-Strike: Source
OILRIG! That was the TITS back then! I’m glad someone else remembers it. I remember writing a fanfic based on this map and good LORD did I use the suspense from the final stretch to nail the ending, as the protagonist wasn’t able to make it alive due to a fatal gun wound to his chest, but managing to snag one final lucky shot to the terrorist, allowing the VIP to escape. His death may have been horrifying, but the victory was well earned. God I hope I can rewrite it someday.
de_survivor is great. Populate a server with bots, all on the counter terrorist side, you and a buddy or two join terrorists, set the bots to knives only, boom, you have spooky zombie time.
Gman, truly a man of culture. I'm glad to see someone appreciate the aesthetic of these maps and the engine. As well, the sounds are so nostalgic and give me shots of serotonin. Whether is ambience or footsteps. As I kid I used to spend quite a few hours just roaming around half life and cs. I played cs prior to steam and there were a lot of maps that weren't implemented in 1.6. Honesty a lot of the less popular maps had the more interesting elements and lay outs. I love the 3 first maps, estate, survivor and oil rig. I also loved militia and back alleys AND Vegas was amazing.
god take me back to 1.5 man, literally thousands of hours in net cafes and at home. In NZ there was such a strong 1.5 scene that lasted long after 1.6 came out
Wandering in an empty map alone in Counter-Strike, or other multiplayer games like Quake is something most of us can relate to. When you hop in your favorite server, but it's too early in the morning for anyone to be online, you wander through the server's maplist, sometimes another player joins in, you guys enjoy yourselves in the map, messing around.
When i was younger i downloaded a lot of maps for Counter-Strike and wanted to play against bots but for many of the maps it was not possible so all I did was walk through the empty maps and destroy everything that was destructible (windows, boxes)
I am so happy you are making this video. I've put the same amount of hours into the game as you have and I always felt the same way about the maps as you describe here. Some of the maps are really unsettling, when you're alone on them.
Ah man, CS was....you had to be there man, I remember having to walk home in the rain because of the epic LAN parties we used to have. We both getting up there Gman.
3:08 I remember I sometime would call in sick early in the morning by faking it to my mum. After she had gone to the office, I would log onto counter strike and explored all the (mostly) empty community server. It was the loneliest but most tranquil back when I was little.
Survivor was my favorite, theres also a secret room in the town u can break its wall to get there i think, its the building that faces the passage to bomb site plane. Not the cave tunnel the further one.
I would love to see you do more map exploration vids like this for valve games. I like that style of content, and it would be cool to see your experiences with maps like that on Gmod or HL1
i remember back in the day being unsettled by the boxes in the mayan map. just the imagine of how contorted they person was on it, made me think that they would stuff people into those boxes. which now, sounds silly. but back then, I always tried to avoid it thinking about it when I was playing it.
17:21 You know what they say "The classics never really go away" LOL. (coughs) Gamebanana has a lot of Counter-Strike maps. I wonder who started one of the most popular genres for these maps. In my opinion the Rats maps are one of the most popular. Where everything is huge and you are small. It's funny for Red Faction Deathmatch the name is changed from Rats Maps to Micro Maps.
I hope you do some videos on the Hondo maps from Action Half Life and Scientist Hunt. Those Hondo maps were super weird and creepy and some really fucked up secrets.
Now, imagine playing this maps in zombie mods! The feeling when you ear the scream of Nemesis... I remember my younger me, with a lot of goosebumps and fear 😂
I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one enjoying playing alone against bots. Firing up de_militia with me against 16 bots, trying to rescue the hostages while listening to new The Prodigy LP was better single-player experience than most modern shooters.
