Source Engine Cinema
Posted in HL2 Deathmatch News, Half Life 1: Deathmatch Classic News, Half Life 2: Deathmatch Classic News, Team Fortress 2 News, Uncategorized
You’ve seen some sweet sights on your Source server - a fully-charged medic dropping to your headshot, the blind side of a terrorist on Bomb Site B, the UDamage when you’ve got a full rocket clip - but some people take it to the next level. The “Somebody who isn’t actually playing would watch it, repeatedly” level, even though watching someone else play is usually the most frustrating thing outside a Chinese finger trap at the urinal.
1. Combine Nation
Pretty much the only good thing about reality TV is the parodies - and what’s a better parody of real life than video gaming? We’ll tell you what: video gaming with the Metrocops of City 17 as they deal with barnacles, insurance fraud, and their own idiotic members.
Combine Nation gets bonus points for resisting all the obvious gags - there’s no silent Gordon Freeman, no “From the nameless grunt’s point of view” killings by the player, there isn’t even a gravity gun. They do include the “What happens if a Metrocop sneezes” bit, but it’s thrown in as an aside - not a single joke forming the focus of an excruciating five minute scene, as with so many fan-made creations. Take time off from your HL2: DM server to go see.
2. Ignis Solus
It also features somebody actually winning on 2Fort, and we think that’s an amazing enough to deserve mention all by itself.
3. Maintenance Man
The story of an unlikely hero thrown into circumstances far beyond him, struggling against impossible odds (and heavily armed enemies) to save his world. Who cares if he’s a bad guy? Maintenance Man is about a gravity-gun-equipped janitor out to clean up Gordon Freeman’s mess, and since Gordon blew off the entire Dark Energy Reactor assembly and fatally destabilised the Citadel core, that’s a “mess” on par with the Death Star explosion. Yes, he’s the guy who has to fix the results of Half Life 2.
Maintenance Man features incredibly skilled camerawork - they manage realistically gritty camera shakes, despite using virtual cameras on virtual actors. These guys make something so pretend look so real they could probably sell you unicorn insurance. They’ve also got perfect timing (the weak point of all wannabe Source server directors) adding wonderful little moments of humor and character in the midst of a serious story.
4. Freeman’s Mind
You may have noticed that all three of the above were made by Lit Fuse Films. We’re not going to lie to you: that’s because Lit Fuse are simply the best outside of Valve, and any list of the best Source machinima will always just be “Lit Fuse + a couple others”. If they don’t get hired to do some serious (and well paid) production then there is no justice in this world. Now, on to the “couple of others”.
If Lit Fuse are the cinema, Freeman’s Mind is the stand-up. It’s at the opposite end of the technical spectrum - it’s just the someone talking while playing Half Life with the HUD off, and if watching that sounds like the seventh circle of Hell it’s because you haven’t heard him. Gordon Freeman’s muteness is the most overplayed joke in gaming history, slightly less original than Seinfeld asking “So what’s up with airline food?”, but Ross Scott gives a genius reason: he’s an idiot. A brilliant, ridiculous, idiot who’s massively entertaining for everyone but downright hilarious for those who’ve played through Black Mesa’s “unique” architecture. If you’ve ever even heard of crowbars, go check it out.
5. Escape From City 17
Ultimately, and we do truly mean “ultimately” because it ends everything you ever thought you knew about the genre, there’s Escape From City 17. Which is quite frankly unbelievable, as in the-first-cowboys-to-see-a-motor-car-, witnessing the start of a new technological era ,-unbelievable. Merging the Source SDK, Half Life 2 sound effects and real actors in a way that would make major production companies jealous, its insane quality propelled it to the top of the internet so fast it made Zero Punctuation look like a livejournal. Released one day, an official Steam update announcement the next - and that’s about as high as you can go, Valve-wise, short of owning a crowbar and joining the BLU team.
The makers, the awesomely talented Purchase Brothers, claim that the whole thing cost about $500 - and if that’s within even a factor of a thousand of being true, you’re watching the next generation of film right here. The first episode alone kicks the hell out of most of the starting series, online or off, and they’re just getting started. It remains to be seen whether the headcrabs will be the undoing of their limited budget (zombies are harder to recreate than metrocops), but they deserve every click and comment the community can give them.