Garry's Mod: Five of the Best

10 Comments

Stepping out of the singleplayer game of Garry's Mod and into the multiplayer realm is not for the faint of heart.
Why? Because the variety of gamemodes running on GMod servers is frankly daunting. This could easily have been a top 50, including Tic-Tac-Toe, Zombie Survival, Stalker, Dark RP, Violence Evolving... all spun together from shaky physics and the programming language Lua. We've reluctantly whittled it down to the choices below.

Happily, Garry's coding genius has made a game where all you need to play an entirely new gamemode is to join a server running one. GMod will update with the necessary files and you can play. So, enjoy the modes we've selected, but we also suggest you just randomly click around the server browser and see what comes up.

Prop Hunt
A telephone is zig-zagging through the corridors, fleeing the increasingly deranged attacks of the two Combine hunters chasing after it. Welcome to Prop Hunt. Two teams play on a Counter-Strike map, one as the hunters and the other as the props. As a hunter your role is simple: you must hunt down the props and destroy them.

As a prop you must take on the appearance of a loose object lying around the level, such as a crate or a tin can. How? By looking at it and pressing E. You should then attempt to blend in with the other scenery, but there's more fun to be had by legging it when caught: the sight of a runaway barrel being chased by a guard is hilarious.

Nox Assault: Defend The Core
Joining the Noxious server is like dropping into a kids' party on another planet. Ugly, glowing structures, people wearing traffic cones as hats, chaos. Pick either the red or blue team and protect your core - the spinning, flashing canister at your base - while assaulting the enemy's. There are innumerable classes to choose from, including the traditional stuff like Warrior and Mage. There's also Leeroy Jenkins.

Gmod Stranded
What if the guys in Lost had GMod? You're in a multiplayer fight for survival. You must forage (look at the ground and press E) for supplies. It's a lot of work, but a good run will see you making your own little island enclave as Zombies and Alyxes run around building their own. The survival aspect makes life interesting: people can and do help each other, but there are some misanthropes who'll get as far away from everyone else and build cages to keep the world at bay.

Freeze Tag
One player is 'it' and everyone else plays one of a horde of fleeing Kleiners. Any assault 'it' makes will freeze you, but your fellow fleeing Kleiners can scientifically unfreeze you again by whacking you around with a crowbar. A good 'it' will be able to protect his frozen victims for the allotted time in order to convert them to his own side, but more often than not the inherent power of being able to freeze everyone will see the freezer just flail wildly. Remember, people: tactics!

Spacebuild
Did you ever want to be an astronaut? Spacebuild's maps are little planets with moons you can actually get to. To do so you'll need to build some kind of craft to ferry you across the gulf of space, which is what Garry's Mod was built for. It's here that the panels and thrusters come together to finally make something useful, and with Spacebuild's additional tweaks of chairs and black holes this intriguing gamemode becomes an addictive hobby.

Craig Pearson