Where the Paranoia Fuel is made.
PARANOIA
, developed by PARANOIA Team and released on December 7, 2007, is a Russian Half-Life horror-themed total conversion Game Mod.
Aleksandr Kalashnikov, a Major of Spetsnaz, is sent with his elite Alpha unit to a seemingly mundane counter-terrorist assignment, unaware of the horrors sealed deep within the top secret underground facilities of the Udarnik industrial complex.
On April 9, 2015, Kunst-Produkt Laboratory released a sequel titled PARANOIA 2: Savior, which revealed what happened in the aftermath of the first mod.
PARANOIA provides examples of:
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PARANOIA
- Abandoned Laboratory: Before getting to KROT-3, you have to cut through the old KROT-1 lab which was quarantined after a virus turned everyone there into monsters. Unfortunately, you also has to go back there after it's revealed that a powerful entity beneath the laboratory is mind-controlling the clones and causing them to go berserk.
- Apocalyptic Log: The documents in the KROT-1 provide a lot sordid details to the unethical experiments with viruses and mutagens which had turned people into deranged and deformed creatures. The final log you find belongs to Polina's father, who recounts the events leading up to the outbreak while also describing how he loses his mind from the infection, praying for his daughter's safety and for someone else to end his suffering.
- Area 51: Udarnik is a Russian counterpart, a seemingly regular military production factory, housing top secret research labs of the Center of Extreme Medicine.
- Artificial Stupidity: The path-finding is all over the place, and the NPCs are prone to getting stuck in the walls or doors. Sometimes they're completely blind to your presence. Also your teammates will never try to keep their distance away from the monsters, forcing you to babysit them.
- Autobots, Rock Out!: Happens quite frequently, courtesy of the famous Russian heavy metal band, SLOT.
- Body Horror: To say that the mutants from KROT-1 are nasty to look at would be an understatement:
- One of the mutants has tumorous growths all over his back and neck, and his right hand has turned into a long, spear-like claw. He also has an extra left arm which is long enough to reach the floor.
- The spider mutant's entire lower body is replaced with long, insectoid legs which she uses for climbing. And yes, that thing is a she.
- The ceiling crawler/"potolochnik" is so thoroughly deformed it barely even resembles a human. It's a giant torso with two arms and a lengthy tentacle with a mouth where the head used to be.
- And last but not least, the Brain Tree, which is the Lovecraftian-esque mastermind of the mutants, is a shapeless thing that attached itself to the ceiling and sprouts its "roots" all over the room. It's actually an amalgamation of Polina's father and 3 other dead staff members, whose corpses have been molded a giant, amorphous mass of flash. And worse of all, if you take a closer look you'll the corpses are still moving...
- Brain Monster: The appropriately titled "Brain Tree" is an unholy abomination that controls the mutants and the clones with telepathy.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: While the clones are described as violent and unstable in the documents, they only attack the scientists after the Brain Tree telepathically hijacks their minds.
- Clone Angst: The clones at KROT-3 are not doing well, to say the least. The research logs frequently describe them dying from faulty operations or experiments. And those that do survive become highly unstable and hateful, in no small part due to how they're being created as killing machines with no conscience or restraint. They ultimately start a violent outbreak in the lab.
- Clone Army: The cloned test subjects of KROT-3 are described as "Spetsnaz of the future".
- Elaborate Underground Base: The KROT labs are situated in a place like this, hidden deep beneath the industrial complex away from the public eye.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Major Kalashnikov is from an elite Spetsnaz "Alpha" unit, so naturally he and his team get to sort out the mess at the Udarnik complex all by themselves.
- False Flag Operation: The Taliban terrorists who attack Udarnik have been hired and trained by an unknown spy agency to divert the Spetsnaz's attention so they can steal top secret research files from the laboratories. At the end of the mod, the agents themselves try to make off with the stolen data.
- Final Boss: The KA-50 gunship, which has been hijacked by agents, is the last enemy of the mod.
- Foreshadowing:
- One of the workers tells Spetsnaz that the terrorists are talking to someone on the radio in Englishnote . Then one of the surviving terrorists revealed that they've been contracted by a foreign intelligence agency to carry out a False Frag Operation for them.
- Before entering KROT-1 you hear your teammate describing everything he sees in there before getting killed. Soon enough you get there yourself and his reports turn out to be true. You can also hear some weird ghostly voices interfering with your radio. Eventually you find out that these are no random noises - it is a telepathic signal produced by a Brain Monster hidden deep beneath KROT-1.
- When you reach KROT-3, Polina mentions that Major Kalashnikov is at the risk of getting infected by the mutagen so she has to examine him. In the sequel, Kalashnikov gets infected and only survives thanks to an antidote developed by Polina.
- For Science!: The Center of Extreme Medicine is a recipe for a disaster. Their excessively unscrupulous experiments are so unethical and dangerous they make Black Mesa and Aperture Science look tame in comparison. It's little wonder that their test subjects, be they mutants or clones, went berserk after what was done to them.
- Gratuitous English: Foreign agents are the only characters with English dialogue.
- Hell Is That Noise: The mod has a fair share of spooky sounds, but the spookiest ones are the ghostly, highly distorted screams caused by the Brain Tree's telepathic influence.
- Hostage Situation: The initial premise is that Taliban terrorists have attacked the Udarnik complex and taken hostages, and your team is sent to rescue them.
- Justified Tutorial: The first chapter takes place in an army base, where the Major has recently recovered from a wound and needs to bring himself up to speed with new equipment and armor, as well as practice shooting heading out into the field.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The crawling mutants have 4 arms, and there are also ones with 3 arms.
- Nothing Is Scarier: You can expect as much from a mod titled PARANOIA. There are quite a few sections where you can go on for quite a while without combat, but these sections can be very terrifying because you never know exactly when all hell is going to break loose.
- Before your very first firefight with the terrorists, you have wonder around the dark, dingy basement with a Heartbeat Soundtrack building up the tension. Then all of a sudden, you hear gunfire and action music kicks in.
- When you traverse into the Abandoned Laboratory for the first time, there is a lot of build-up before you confront any of its infected inhabitants. Another team member, code-named "Dirizhor" (Conductor), gets to the lab before you and describes all the creepy stuff he sees: red emergency lighting, dead bodies, something banging on the doors like crazy, and these strange, static-y voices. Then you get to listen to him getting butchered by the mutants before you enter the laboratory and witness everything yourself. You get to stroll around this horrifying set-piece for a good few minutes, listening to all the metallic banging, alarm sirens and static voices before encountering the monsters.
- "Psycho" Strings: A soundtrack like this is heard playing when you are tasked to go back to KROT-1 to destroy the source of the signal.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The mutants from KROT-1 have been locked off for over 20 years until terrorists accidentally release them by planting bombs in the facilities. Then, when they break out, it is up to you to put a stop to them.
- Super-Soldier: The purpose of the KROT labs is to create powerful soldiers for the government. Unfortunately, they always end up backfiring and causing mayhem.
- Unique Enemy: A grand total of one spider mutant and ceiling crawler each are fought throughout the mod.
PARANOIA 2: Saviour
- Abandoned Hospital: The game starts In Medias Res in a hospital after the Major gets infected with the virus. Then you flash back to KROT base shortly after the first game.
- Adapted Out: Most mutants encountered in the first installment were replaced with regular zombies, some of which use guns.
- All There in the Manual: A lot of experiments that never get mentioned in the game appear in the documents from the archive room; namely the Shagohod, life support machine that lets you detach one's head and then keep it alive, artificial regenerative skin, and even a Brain in a Jar that dubbed itself "Cerebrum."
- Cliffhanger: The story does not get a proper conclusion; instead, it is implied that Moscow suffered a zombie outbreak, and the last thing the player hears is an SOS message on the radio.
- Downer Ending: It can quite disappointing after all the effort you put into making sure the virus from KROT-1 doesn't spread anywhere, that despite all that Moscow suffers an outbreak and there is no proper resolution to the story.
- Escort Mission: After rescuing Polina, you will to drag her around till the very end. Fortunately, her AI is decent enough so that she doesn't stupidly get herself killed.
- Giant Mook: The boss fight in KROT-2B is a large mutant which takes a lot of bullets to put down.
- Mêlée à Trois: Clones and zombies will fight with each other as well as the player.
- Trash the Set: The KROT labs get blown up for good by the Spetsnaz, and the game ends on a cliffhanger in Moscow.
