Posted: 28-07-05 In: Reviews By: Munro2 |


How to hunt down an invisible man? That's the question that Hidden: Source revolves around. Assault rifles and shotguns are all well and good, but when the target is only visible by a slight predator-style ripple in the air, even the most hardened Special Forces troopers will have problems.


Somewhere deep within a corporate lab complex, a team of British scientists have succeeded in making a human being completely invisible. But driven insane by constant and painful experiments, tweaking, probing, genetic manipulation and brain-boiling drugs, the homicidal Subject 617 has escaped, killing his tormentors and fleeing the lab, armed only with a sharp knife and a bag full of pipe bombs. Now the I.R.I.S. corporate spooks are closing the net, determined to erase all evidence. Subject 617, otherwise known as The Hidden, must evade his would-be captors, hunting them down one by one.

 
A brilliant idea - and in practise, it provides a beautiful alternative to traditional deathmatch, Counter-Strike and large-scale battles. Playing as the I.R.I.S. team, armed with a sub-machinegun or pump-action shotgun, your mission is to hunt down the Hidden - randomly selected at the beginning of the match. Whoever manages to kill the Hidden becomes him next round; if Subject 617 manages to eliminate the entire team, he wins. A tight time limit means the Hidden can never stay still for long. Tension-fuelled gameplay ensues, as the soldiers must stick together and use teamwork, always on the lookout for the telltale shimmer in the air.


Roving the corridors and hallways, you'll feel the clench of fear in the pit of your stomach - an attack could come from anywhere at any time. This is the tensest thing on the Source engine, and at some points it literally made me jump - my 13-year old American comrade suddenly being thrown against the wall, his girlish screams echoing over voice comm., his blood spattering the bare concrete wall. Back-pedalling frantically, liberally spraying bullets and fear musk at the wobbly heat-haze thing coming towards you. And as 617, you view the world through a burning rose-tinted miasma. Your knife seems at first ineffective until you realise you can use the 'pig-sticker' move - a 3-second charge up culminating in a one-hit-kill-stab. Soon you'll be pre-emptively whacking the button, waiting, using the 'pounce' key to leap right into the face of your prey, just as the pig-sticker finishes charging, pushing a foot of cold steel between his eyes.

The character models aren't brilliant, but the mapping is exceptional - well-textured and well-designed, littered with objects for the unwary Hidden to bump into and alert I.R.I.S. to his presence. While it's possible to camp certain areas, there's always a way for the Hidden to sneak up behind you. A mix of large open areas and winding corridors keeps play varied and even when it does stagnate into a campathon, the time limit forces either the Hidden or I.R.I.S. to make a move eventually. Great touches like the steam vents on the train yard map that spew heat haze from the floor, looking exactly like the Hidden's effect, really enhance the experience. Also, kudos for the first decent level set entirely in a sewer I have ever seen.

  So far, so glowing; but now for the bad points. Hidden: Source is littered with bugs, from the voices of the dead being audible to still-living players (allowing spectators to tip I.R.I.S. off about the location of their quarry) to random crashes during loading. This latter problem is an enormous pain - 50% of the time, an obscure memory error will occur just as you think its finished loading, booting you out of the game and sometimes forcing you to reset. If this release is supposed to be less buggy than the last, then I'm glad I didn't ever play the original version. Oh yes, and doors close too quickly, damn it.

That said, the crawling glitches don't come anywhere near ruining the game: in fact, some of them are quite comical - once, as the Hidden, I found myself spawning at the I.R.I.S. start point and proceeded to go crazy with a knife, getting shot rather quickly in the process. Or the time when no Hidden was selected, causing the I.R.I.S. team to engage in a desperate mass suicide to end the round. Or the time when I discovered that spectators can spray their logos, pasting a large skull picture on a wall right in front of two marines (scared them to death).

Another huge problem is scarcity of servers - while playing for review, there were two - yes, two - servers in the world (plus one private one that required a password). Not only that, but at times these are criminally un-populated - and unfortunately, a Hidden game isn't fun unless there's at least five people. It's a real shame, considering how great this mod is and how much it deserves to be played. Luckily there is a way to solve this problem - yes, you guessed it. Get out there and play already.

In the end, despite the bugs, Hidden: Source is a mod everyone should play at least once. It's a brilliantly different idea that eschews action-orientated antics for stealth and tension-based gameplay. Frantic, predator-style action and tense corridor stalking occasionally let down by random crashes - but still well worth a download. Just don't blame me if you develop acute paranoia.