Mod Showcase: The Hidden
Welcome to another episode of Mod Showcase! Brickinator’s back and this time we’ll be taking a look at The Hidden, a custom game mode that makes stalking people socially acceptable.
The Hidden is inspired by a Source mod of the same name. It uses arena mode as a base and can be played on the usual arena maps. One team has one player who gets to be the titillating titular character and the other have to kill him. And wear his skin. The Hidden is forced to play as the Spy, but he has some very exciting abilities. Not only is he immune to afterburn and bleeding, but he also has a ton of health. He can take immense poundings, just like your mum.
Nevertheless, the key to playing as the Hidden is to be covert and sneaky. You’ve only got your knife, so forget about disguising or shooting. Although you do have a lot of health, if loads of enemies catch on to where you are they can gun you down. You’ll end up hiding in the corners like a hobo who’s stolen a packet of crisps. I enjoy shadily assassinating more than I enjoy smacking stuff with wrenches, eating sandviches, throwing piss or any of that other bullshit TF2 forces you to do when they’re not letting you assassinate anonymous strangers with a knife, which is what God wants videogames to do. It’s why He invented them. Fortunately, The Hidden makes it very easy for you.
The Hidden gets an impressive leaping ability too. With the click of the mouse, he flings himself into the air like a bar of soap in the bath of a arthritis sufferer. You can use this ability to slip behind people and stab them with your knife, or just to escape when your face catches too many bullets. Not only that but you’re also cloaked at all times apart from when attacking or leaping. You can watch your prey waddling about, totally unaware of you. I find it strangely moving. You see, as I stare into their happy smiling faces, I know they’re just blissfully unaware of the crushing despair that awaits them as I descend like a spider ready to eat a fly. The swiping of the knife, the blood-curdling screams and the sheer unrelenting horror of it all.
You can even use a super-scary ‘boo’ attack that causes all of the enemies in small radius to fill their underwear and shriek in terror, making them easy targets for sodomy by kitchen utensil. You have to wait a while for it to recharge though, so don’t waste it. Give it a few years, actually.
Lastly, the Hidden gets the delight of seeing his enemies through walls with the weird coloured outline thing like you’ve stumbled into the world’s worst rave. You get to stalk your enemy by tracking their movements, only to stop at a wall and realise they’re on a totally different part of the map and you’re an idiot and this is why you spend your free time writing articles for a video game fansite. There’s also a lovely blueish-green overlay over the Hidden’s screen in case you’re the kind of person who enjoys seeing what they’re doing. We won’t have any of that, thank you very much. Sight is a crutch for people who can’t assassinate blind-folded, you filthy scrub.
The game ends when either the Hidden kills the entire enemy team or he is torn to ribbons by a volley of minigun bullets because he bumped into a Heavy in a corridor and awkwardly prodded him in the face with a butter knife. One of my favourite things about the mod is that, even if the Hidden wins, the game kills him upon winning as if he’s being struck with the sudden realisation of all the people he’s murdered and can’t endure the grief. Serves him right for stalking people.