Cry of Fear

Cry of Fear is a horror Half Life mod from the same developers who brought you Afraid of Monsters, released on February 22nd, 2012.

The mod takes place in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, where something has gone horribly wrong. A depressed teenager named Simon gets hit by a car, and after a nightmare, he finds himself in an alleyway with no idea how he got there - and the only way out filled with abominations.

Its four-player co-op campaign follows four policemen stuck in Simon's nightmare, and it has a Gaiden Game in the form of Doctor's Story, where Simon's doctor vows to destroy the source of Simon's anguish.

Tropes used in Cry of Fear include:

The TMP is actually an MP 9. We incorrectly labelled it as such when the weapon was being modeled, and some gun-nerd got pissed off about it. So we kept it known as a TMP.

  • An Axe to Grind: The patients of the mental hospital all attack with axes. An axe is also a secret weapon the player can unlock.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: The hoodies and outfits. They can be found in levels or received for doing certain things, such as getting an Easter Egg or finishing certain endings.
  • Anthropic Principle
  • Attack Its Weak Point: The eye on Sawer's back.
  • Author Avatar: Simons appearance was based on the Mod leader Andreas, while In-universe The Simon you play as is a avatar of himself in the book he wrote.
  • Ax Crazy: All the enemies. Evil Simon, in ending 4 and Co-op.
  • Bag of Holding: As long as at least one of the six slots is free Simon can carry a stone tablet and a ladder.
  • Bedlam House: Mölnberg Mental Hospital outside Stockholm.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Almost everything written in the game world is in Swedish. Posters, products, newspapers. They are all either there to cheer someone up, or they are referring to depression and/or suicides.
  • Black Comedy: The joke ending. David Leatherhoff turns out to be the reason that Simon's legs are unusable... All while still looking blocky and using text with no voice to accompany him, with a slightly flanderized personality ("Sorry man. I'm fucking stoned.").
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: The same women who stab themselves in the throat with them have the third kind.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: In similar fashion to Sven Co-op, donating money to the team at their website gives you a weapon for use in-game, which is a Steyr TMP.
  • Bittersweet Ending: One of the endings: and the final one. Simon doesn't commit suicide, but in his psychosis, accidentally shoots the two police officers from the other endings. Dr. Purnell gets him out of jail and his therapy is helping him snap out of his insanity and depression, Sophie still visits him regularly, but she found someone else and he knows they'll forever be separated after what he did.
  • Black Bug Room
  • Black Eyes of Evil: The Citaloprams in the subway.
  • Blatant Item Placement
  • Bland-Name Product: Pasnonic, CBS, The Phone Touse and Shillips. Swedes will recognize their real life counterparts.
  • Block Puzzle: In the Gustav Dahl Park, with statues of animals.
  • Body Horror: The Twitchers from Afraid of Monsters are back and lovely as ever!
    • The Human Flower.
  • Bug Buzz: Throughout the forest.
  • Camera Perspective Switch: Happens in co-op when reviving another player.
  • Captain Ersatz: Sawrunner (not to be mistaken with the boss Sawer) brandishes a chainsaw, howls loudly when attacking, and wears a uncanny mask. He is just like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it does not make him any less terrifying.
  • Carry a Big Stick: A wooden branch is the emergency weapon Simon gets hold of when he enters the forest.
  • Chaos Architecture
  • Chainsaw Good: More like Chainsaw BAD. Chainsaws have a lot of use in this game, but only by enemies, not the player.
  • Climax Boss: After chasing The Doctor for much of the game, you finally fight him in a pistol duel at the end of the second-to-last area. Being a living human armed with a gun, his combat style is distinctly different from the abominations you've been fighting for the entirety of the game. After you beat him, the sun rises and the remainder of the game has a distinctly different tone to it (although you still have monsters to fight).
  • Combat Pragmatist: Simon finds a dead person's arm dangling through the ceiling and holding a gun. Result? Now Simon has a gun!
  • CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: A wholesome way of reviving dead players in Co-op.
  • Creator Provincialism: The mod is set in Sweden, where the two main developers live. 
  • Creepy Basement: Below the apartments.
  • Creepy Child
  • Damage Sponge Boss: Carcass, and Sawrunner in co-op and the custom campaigns.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Ironsights are activated by Mouse 3, while the right mouse button does a melee attack with the gun. Try to play Killing Floor or any other damn video game after you've beaten Cry of Fear.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: When Simon appears in co-op all colors of the gameworld shift to black, grey and white. In order to turn it normal, the players must defeat him.
  • Daylight Horror: The final chapter of the game, in Simon's hometown.
  • Did Not Get the Girl
  • Driven to Suicide: Suicide's a reoccurring theme. News papers tell of a higher depression rate, uplifting messages on the walls, and a lot encouraging suicides too. Some of Simon's demons commit suicide if they've taken too much damage, and some will psychically force Simon to commit suicide. A certain NPC commits suicide during the game also.
    • The game itself is Simon attempting to stave it off - nearly all the endings end with his suicide. Who he takes with him in death (or life) depends on the ending.
  • Drop the Hammer: A rather small sledgehammer, which nonetheless can be used to tear down brick walls and is very effective against enemies. Many enemies use ordinary hammers as weapons as well.
  • Don't Go in The Woods
  • Double Unlock: In-game the player can find a paper sheet which, after beating the game, reveals what to do to collect every unlockable available.
  • Down the Drain: The city sewers.
  • Dual-Wielding: An actual gameplay mechanic.
  • Dummied Out: A Smith And Wesson can be found in the game files.
  • Easter Egg: The Let's player PewDiePie was given a version of the mod, in which Stephano and Ruben could be found in a hard to reach room in the subway station of episode 5.

Simon: Stephano? What the fuck, Pewdiepie?

  • Emo Teen: Simon. He's got very good reasons! The self-cutting he does is plot relevant...
  • Emotionless Girl: Sophie.
  • Enfant Terrible: Most of the children found in the apartment, and they were apparently all victims to the pedophile.
  • Escape From the Crazy Place: Simon is trying to get away from Stockholm back home.
  • Eye Scream: The weakness of the first boss is a giant eye on his back, that Simon must either punch, stab and cut with the switchblade or shoot.
  • Everything Fades
  • Epilogue Letter: Every ending but one in single player.
  • Fade to White: When starting a new game from the main menu. In game, after a mindscrew at the end of the second chapter.
  • Fetus Terrible: The babies who burst from the wombs of their pregnant mothers and attack the player with knives.
  • Fingerless Gloves
  • Flunky Boss: Simon sitting in the wheelchair
  • Foreboding Architecture
  • Footprints of Muck
  • Foreshadowing: A LOT of the game has Simon using - or losing - his legs.
    • A letter talks about the book tormenting Simon before the story talks about it for real - but it's in Latin.
  • Gaiden Game: Doctor's Story, where Anti-Villain Dr. Purnell enters Simon's nightmare, equipped only with a night-vision-enabled gas mask and his trusty revolver. It's rather similar to the 4th Survivor in that there's a heavy focus on evading enemies, as supplies and health are extremely limited.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: A rare (antivillainous) version: Dr. Purnell in Doctor's Story uses one, and it has night-vision.
  • Get on the Boat: There is a boat that Simon uses to cross a lake.
  • Ghost City: Stockholm.
  • Giant Mook: the Tallers.
  • Give Me Your Inventory Item: In a later part of the game, the Doctor wants a gun from Simon in exchange for a key. He gives you the key, but shoots you in the shoulder, permanently cutting your health bar.
  • Guide Dang It: The park puzzle.
  • Half the Man He Used To Be: The first boss can kill Simon by sawing him in half.
  • Hellevator: In the beginning the pedophile rendered the apartments elevator unusable for everyone without a access code. The children had to bear it and take the stairs, where he would wait and pull them into his apartment. When Simon finally finds the code and take the elevator, it goes down. Deep in the earth it stops, forcing Simon to take the stairs even deeper.
  • Harder Than Hard: Nightmare difficulty.
  • I'll Kill You!: Simon shouts this at Doctor Purnel near the end of the game. A literal Curb Stomp Battle ensues.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The pedophile killer.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: What happens to Simon if he walks too close to the organic, growing abomination that sprouted in the middle of Ronald Street.
  • Impromptu Tracheotomy: The women with their limbs replaced with huge metallic spikes commit suicide by stabbing themselves in the throat once they've taken enough damage.
  • Immune to Bullets: Mace
  • Insurmountable Waist High Fence
  • Invisible Wall: Almost everywhere. Together with the inventory system, the game could be described as a first person Resident Evil.
  • Jump Scare: A lot of them.
  • Knife Nut: Simon's switchblade is very useful for most of the game. It can be dropped for a better weapon or more inventory space, however.
  • Laughing Mad: The note that foreshadows the plot tells of Simon doing this.
  • Let's Get Dangerous: The Doctor's Story. Simon's psychologist is trying to help him to get better through therapy using a variety of means, ultimately getting him to write the book in which Simon concentrates all his personal demons. Seeing this has backfired in a huge way he pulls out the nontraditional approach of dawning a gas-mask, grabbing a revolver, and slogging his way through Simon's diseased mind in an attempt to destroy the source of the problem personally.
  • Lock and Key Puzzle
  • Locked Door
  • Malevolent Architecture
  • Malevolent Masked Man: Quite a lot of enemies appear to be wearing them.
  • The Maze: And there's a chainsaw-wielding psychopath in it. Have fun!
    • One maze during a Nightmare Sequence late in the game features omnipresent, invincible hanging monsters that can kill you instantly.
  • Mental Story
  • Mind Screw
  • Monster Clown: Sawrunner.
  • More Dakka: Averted. All the automatic weapons in the game fire in semi-automatic or bursts.
  • Multiple Endings: Seven in total. The four main endings, the ending of Doctor Mode, the Co-op ending, and the joke ending.
    • What determines the ending you get depends on what you do during certain events in the game. If you skip Carcass by jumping into the window, Simon kills Sophie in the ending. If you refuse to give The Doctor the gun, Simon Kills Doctor Purnell in the ending. Both overlap, and only if you do neither does Simon resist killing himself. If you play the game again after getting the latter ending, and you find the Weird package and drop it in the mail box, you get the joke ending.
    • The joke ending has Simon "following the red" again; at the end, it's revealed that the car that hit Simon in the intro was driven by none other than David Leatherhoff, who is stoned off his gourd. Simon is very understandably upset.
  • Musical Spoiler: When calm music starts playing, you can relax. However, if this is suddenly playing, start running.
  • The Musketeer: It is possible to hold a pistol and a melee weapon at the same time, but most players avoid it due to lack of a reliable light source at hand, hence this trope.
  • Nightmare Face: The last Jump Scare in the prologue.
  • Nightmare Sequence: The entire game.
  • No Name Given: The Police Officers in Co-op.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Simon does this to His wheelchair bound self in all the bad endings.
  • Notice This: Every item that can be picked up glows red when the player is near.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Once again the prologue, early parts of the forest, and the Long dark hallway beneath the roped off apartment. Quite tense walking through there with your phone out as you hear the voices discussing the condition of a therapy patient. Always waiting for something to start chasing you, but nothing scary actually happens. at least until you open the door at the end.
  • Off with His Head: The Doctor is seen decapitating a man with a saw. Earlier, a killing is seen recorded on a tape in which the murderer used a pair of gardening shears.
  • One Bullet Clips: Averted; reloading is handled realistically. When you reload a pistol, you lose any bullets still left in the magazine. If you reload compulsively without realizing this, you can quickly render the game unwinnable by wasting all your ammo. The shotgun, in contrast, is realistically topped off one shell at a time.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird
  • Point of No Return: The final chapters.
  • Post End Game Content: To collect and use all unlockables, you must beat the game at least once.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: This is how the Drowned[1] kills you if you go to close to it with a gun equipped.
  • Puzzle Boss: Mace. There is water on the floor, so one must activate all the electric switches in the room to shock him until he dies.
  • Retraux: David Leatherhoff still talks in text and looks exactly as he did in Afraid of Monsters.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Played with. Dr. Purnell uses one in Doctor's Story, and it's plenty powerful and accurate, but it fires and reloads slowly and has very little ammo. The accuracy also hinders it, ironically - some enemies move too fast and won't be hit if you take too long aiming.
  • Roar Before Beating: Sawrunner loves doing it.
  • Room Full of Crazy: In the pedophile's apartment, there is a room with photos of his various victims all over the walls.
  • Run or Die: Sawrunner is the dangerous madman Simon must flee from during a chase sequence, and one swipe of his chainsaw kills you instantly. Killing Sawrunner is possible, but it requires wasting All ammo and cherry tapping with melee whacks. It is not worth running around without ammunition, and He´ll just come back again.
  • Save Game Limits: In a possible reference to Silent Hill and the early Resident Evil games, the player can only save with tape recorders found scattered around the environment. On Nightmare difficulty, the player must find cassette tapes to be able to save.
  • Scenery Gorn
  • Screaming Woman: The hanging women in the Forest. They double as both an environmental hazard and a Jump Scare.
  • Self-Harm: Simon has several gashes on his left wrist, which he had apparently cut prior to the game's start. They are visible when he injects himself with morphine.
  • Serial Killer: A pedophile who murdered kids.
  • Sinister Subway
  • Sitting on the Roof: Simon and Sophie do it when they meet.
  • Skippable Boss: Carcass. But if you do, Simon kills Sophie in the ending.
  • Sprint Meter: Simon can only run for a few seconds. The player can also use stamina from the same meter to increase the accuracy with the hunting rifle.
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl
  • Suicide Attack: The babies with their exploding heads will run up to Simon and explode.
  • Surreal Horror
  • Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Before encountering the first boss, the player will stumble upon at least three magazines for the Glock, if he checks the floors.
  • Teleporting Keycard Squad
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted by Doctor Purnell.
  • Torture Cellar: The basement of the apartments, where a murderer (possibly the aforementioned pedophile) killed his victims.
  • Tragic Monster: Evil Simon in ending 4 is implied, through his clothing and equipment, to be the same Simon that was the Player Character for the entire game. The real Simon is required to kill him.
    • All endings but the "good" one: Simon, in his wrath, kills either his girlfriend, his doctor, or both, and then himself.
  • Unlockable Content: Several items such as Purnell's Gasmask, David's Axe, The camera from the intro and outfits, are all available to collect after at least one playthough.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The near-entirety of the game centers around and takes place within Simon's book as a personification of himself, making you wonder what inspired the events inside or otherwise aside from the obvious causes, like his insanity and being able to walk in it. Whatever caused them is never explained, instead left open to interpretation by those who play. This is probably intentional.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: The enemies attack Simon with hammers, knifes, scissors, chainsaws, a mace and axes: all of which cannot be gained during gameplay. Of all of them, only the axe is available during a second playthrough.
    • The glocks that the only enemies with guns use however...
  • "Wake-Up Call" Boss: The first boss, Sawer. His attacks are all one-hit kills, so it's a good idea to practice your dodging skills.
  • Waking Up Elsewhere: Simon gets hit by a car, and then wakes up in an alley.
  • White Mask of Doom: Some of the more insane enemies wear paper masks, resembling those once worn by Plague Doctors in real life during the bubonic plague. The somewhat less insane Doctor encountered wears a gasmask, which is more gray.
  • Your Head Asplode: The suicidal babies.
  1. ↑ (the slow moving monster with the Fetus Terrible inside it)
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.