Garry's Mod

When Half Life 2 came out in 2004, its physics engine was nothing less than revolutionary. Objects in the world acted realistically when dropped, thrown or blasted away, instead of being moved in a scripted manner. The same year saw the release of Garry's Mod, which lets you play around with the Source engine from Half Life 2. It places numerous resources at your disposal and it lets you do whatever you want.

Installing Garry's Mod on a Windows PC is not difficult and it doesn't take long, but you need to meet some requirements. First, you need to have the Steam client installed and you will also need Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Counter-Strike: Source installed on your computer, if you don't want to run into any problems.

There is a lot to say about what you can do in Garry's Mod. You can start simple and see how everything works in a virtual environment. This includes inserting all sorts of objects, vehicles, NPCs (non-player character), weapons and much more. You can move objects, stack them, build structures and see how they behave when you apply physical forces, like explosions.

If you have played Half Life 2, then Garry's Mod's looks and controls will seem more than familiar. When you begin, you will find yourself with a modified version of the iconic gravity gun from Half Life 2. You can use it to spawn resources and move them. Furthermore, you can equip other tools to manipulate the resources in other ways and you can even equip weapons and have fun.

Of course, Garry's Mod is not limited to fooling around with physics. It has been used over the years to create all sorts of neat stuff, from comics to games. Garry's Mod is also not limited to Half Life resources. You can find characters, vehicles and other resources from many other franchises as well, created and published by a large community.

When playing with Garry's Mod, imagination is the only limit when it comes to what you can do.