garry's mod

2025-09-27
With the proliferation of "realistic" physics in games like Half-Life 2, slapstick comedy had finally made its way to video-games. For me, watching enemies cartwheel and ragdoll and clip through environments for the first time was like seeing in color for the first time. This, this is what video games are all about: motherfuckers just clowning. With that framing, it's clear in retrospect why a weird barebones multiplayer Source engine sandbox would be one of the early hits on Steam. Whether it was crafting insane Rube Goldberg machines and ramshackle vehicles from Half-Life 2 branded trash, constructing killboxes and hellscapes to annihilate NPCS, or, really, just figuring out how to grief your friends, Garry's Mod had it all. The perfect digital playpen so we can all regress to playing like we're 6 years old again.

Mind you I played this when it was a mod in 2004 and then for a bit after the full release came out in '05. So it's especially funny to me that it has turned into an insular set of servers with off-putting shit going down that traumatizes kids. Like the hyperbolic time chamber from DBZ except for making kids grow up to be weird and anxious. God bless you, Garry Newman.

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Garry's Mod was truly revolutionary. Let's open up all the sandbox tools that HL2 devs made and turn it into a game. Basically it turned into craft and then, more importantly, trolling. Lot of fun times in here.