10 Essential FPS Levels Every Fan Must Play

Ravenholm is not a friendly place. It’s dark. Corpses, or what’s left of them, lie strewn everywhere. The streets are choked with zombies, from the series’ signature shamblers to the howling, deeply unsettling Fast Zombies to a bit lumbering nightmare fuel I won’t spoil. Headcrabs lurk behind every corner, every piece of furniture. This is a town that does not like the living.

Worse, ammunition is scarce, so going in guns blazing is not an option. Instead, in order to survive you are forced to turn to the Gravity Gun, to use any projectile you can find – saw blades, meat hooks, even bricks – as a weapon, not an easy thing to do with zombies closing from all sides.

And this is where Ravenholm shines. You have to think, to plan ahead, all while being harassed by the undead and battling nerves already buckling under the weight of a nightmarish environment that is as much a malevolent force as it is a town. It is quintessentially Half-Life, precision puzzle-solving set in beautifully atmospheric arenas, but no puzzles are as intense, and the arenas as deadly, as in Ravenholm.