Cool Half-Life 2 Mod: Barista 4…
I’ve always been a fan of surreal, self-contained and bizarre game ideas – everything from the Malkavians of Vampire: Bloodlines, to the ending of Half-Life 1. It’s no surprise that I’ve always been a fan of Brendon Chung either then, who’s link resides in my blogroll on the right.
Brendon first caught my eye with Barista 2, which is a standalone semi-game of his. I say semi-game, because Brendon rarely seems to ever finish a project completely and that’s actually what I like most about his mods; each one is a fragmentary, half-insight into something strangely compelling. Sometimes the games play with different themes or ideas – the singleweapon mechanic in Bugstompers, or the random map creation in The Veldt. Other times they just offer something uniquely beautiful, like with the empty caverns of Barista 2 and the fragments of plot left unresolvedly sitting around.
The Barista series is one of my favourite little distractions and each one is a small game seperate from the others that offers something weirdly broken. Barista 1 is a cool ZDoom mod. Barista 2 is a stand-alone game with a talking skull and dogs playing poker. Barista 3 is an insight into the life of a mechanic, made in Doom 3. And now Barista 4 is out.
It’s clear that the last two Barista games are made as Brendon plays with a new idea. Barista 3 is all about creating detail environments and UI’s. Barista 4 meanwhile is all about playing with the lip-sync and virtual actor tech in Half-Life 2, which Brendon has done by creating a three-staged…thing. The first part is an audition. The second part is shooting gallery. I don’t know what the third part is except that I like it and it’s about Pulp Fiction.
That’s the best way to sum up Brendon’s work I think: We don’t know what it is, but we like it.
You can download Barista 4 here, peruse the rest of Brendon’s work here and download some cool HTML games he has made here. When the games take ten minutes and can be downloaded and installed in less than that then there’s no excuse not to let yourself be bewildered by them.
Also, I’ve been watching Dexter recently.
Joe, Out.
