Garry’s Mod: The surprisingly intricate Sandbox of stupidity

Hey! Just in case you’re here for the important stuff or if you’re just trying to figure out if you should by the game or not, here’s the summary of the game. But if you’d like a more in depth analysis to really make sure you should by it, please, read the full review below!

Community: 50/50, sometimes very cursed/toxic.

Graphics: 2004 Windows XP

Playtime: Literally infinite

Stability: A Lot of (funny) bugs, but very few of which are game breaking.

Things to do: ALL THE THINGS

Things to Avoid: Toxic Servers

Good: Infinite creative potential and playtime

Bad: Very little updates from devs.

Now, time for the actual review!

Garry’s mod is a classic sandbox game developed by Facepunch studios and released as a standalone game in 2004. It was originally a mod (Surprise, Surprise) for Half life 2, a FPS released by Valve in the same year. To most people, Garry’s mod seems to be nothing more than a giggle toy capable of housing 5-6 hours of single player laughs. But as a person with 1,449 hours in the game, I can tell you that’s far from the case (and yes, I’m fully aware that I have no life). Upon close inspection and with a few hours of belligerent tinkering and welding, you’ll find that Garry’s mod is merely a vessel for near infinite creative potential. Which, as I will explain in this article, can be a good and bad thing.

Now there are alot of areas to cover in this tinkertoy riddled sandbox game so for now let me just tell you the premise of the game, in case you’ve never heard of it before. Upon entering the game you’ll be greeted by your standard main menu, if you’ve been a gamer for longer than 10 minutes you’ll most likely know how to navigate it normally. I personally recommend spending your first few hours in Garry’s mod in single player just so you can get a feel for what the game is like. If you’re anything like me you’ll spend a majority of your time in single player simply tinkering with about a billion stupid ideas. Initially your only 2 map choices are “Construct” and “Flatgrass”. Either one is a good option and both have their pros. I personally enjoy Construct as it has a more detailed map with plenty of rooms I can use to subject NPCs to various stupid ideas.

Once you’re fully loaded into whatever map you chose, you’ll notice a distinct lack of direction. The game simply tells you to “Press Q to open your Spawn menu” your spawn menu is where you keep all your bits and pieces you’ll eventually use for something that’s probably gonna break horribly and either glitch out and kill you or crash your game. You’ll also see on the right hand of your spawn menu is a list of tools for your tool gun. The ones you’ll probably use most are “Weld” “Rope” and “Thruster”. Just spend a few minutes messing around with everything you can in the menu and you’ll eventually be able to build something cohesive.

(Or if you’re like me, you’ll end up spending an hour or so spawning armies of NPCs to see if you can fight them all off). And really, that’s all you need to know about the basics. That’s what’s wonderful about Garry’s mod. You get plopped into an environment, given a box of tools and junk, and the rest is entirely up to you. The creative potential is limitless, and this combined with the glitchy 2004 physics engine, you’re bound to have some hilarious mishaps along the way. Whether you’re a bootleg engineer making fun contraptions, or a ragdoll poser making your own scenes and stories, Garry’s mod at it’s core is capable of thousands of hours of entertainment just in single player alone.

(The Toilet Chariot, created by me. Upon later testing it immediately slammed into me at full speed and crushed all my bones. Killing me instantly.)

(this article is approved by tf2 Heavy.)

The community

The thing that keeps players interested in Garry’s mod is that it’s extremely moddable. You can make just about anything with some external softwares and import it into your game, or if you have absolutely no !@%&ing clue how to do that (like me), you can just visit the steam workshop and download to your heart's content. There are millions of people constantly creating near infinite amounts of mods and add-ons and publishing them to the workshop. When it comes to creativity, this community knows no bounds. You can have as many mods as you want at any given time (With the small price of eternal loading times depending on the size of your file). You can have mods for things like cooler guns, extra tools for building and posing, or extra models and reskins for player vanity. However, when you have millions of players creating millions of mods each day, you’re bound to see some stuff that’s exceptionally cursed. Especially when you play multiplayer. Multiplayer is the biggest, most mixed bag of stuff you’ll ever see. Some servers are incredibly fun, chill, and genuinely enjoyable to play. And others, you may join and play for a few hours and be forced to completely review every single one of your life choices to figure out how you ended up watching Naruto in a room full of vaping my little pony characters. There are indeed some exceptionally cursed things to see in the multiplayer servers of Garry’s mod. But in my opinion it’s part of the magic. You can see all these weird and obscure things sometimes, and yeah they might be weird but most of the time they’re always quite funny too.

(The average day at Swamp Cinema, the most cursed server in Garry’s mod.)

There’s thousands of different servers in Garry’s mod, each with their own unique community. And with such an immense amount of gamemodes and servers, you’re bound to find a place that suits you. Looking for simple chaotic fun? Try one of the Sandbox servers where you can build, kill, and chill! Looking for a grippingly addictive murder mystery? Try out a Trouble in Terrorist town, it’s the game that inspired “Among us”! Looking to take the role of a City Person, Fantasy Wizard, War Soldier, or Apocalypse Survivor? Try out a Roleplay server, there’s dozens of different types, so you can always be in the world you wanna be in!

The Final Verdict

There’s always something to create, and there’s always something different to experience in Garry’s mod which makes it a game worth spending thousands of hours on. With the endless creative possibilities and ridiculous shenanigans to do along with the Millions of servers and game modes to play. Garry’s mod is truly a game within a game, within a game, within a game!

Even though the developers rarely give any attention to the game, you can always look to the community workshop for new content. So even after 16 years after it’s initial release, Garry’s mod is still an outstanding 9/10. If you're looking to buy for yourself or as a gift, I wholeheartedly recommend Garry's mod. It's sure to keep you entertained for hundreds if not thousands of hours.

(My total playtime of Garry’s Mod over the 4 years I’ve owned it. This screenshot was taken the day I published this review)