Dear Mr. Gabe Newell,

I had the pleasure of finally playing and finishing Half-Life 2 recently. This is a game that came out in 2004, although of course it has received a bit of an update in the form of your excellent Orange Box product for Xbox 360. As you well know, Half-Life 2 is one of the highest-rated games of all time. I was eager to experience the full product, particularly since Orange Box ships with the semi-sequel “Episodes One and Two” that continue the storyline.

People say lots and lots of nice things about these games, and practically all of it is deserved.

The reason I never played the original Half-Life was because I tend to use Macintosh computers, and despite the completion of the Mac port of Half-Life, you decided in your infinite wisdom to cancel the project, rather than have to provide any kind of Mac support. I figured at the time, it was probably a vendetta against me personally; I must have spilled coffee on you in an elevator or something. Eventually, I experienced the first fifteen minutes of Half-Life in vainglorious form on the original PlayStation, which consisted of the now-famous Tram Ride To Underground Sciency Place Where Something Goes Horribly Horribly Wrong.

So needless to say I had a tenuous grip on the backstory, going into Half-Life 2. How bad could it be, right?

Well. I have now completed HL2 and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. No. Idea.

Never once in the entire game does anyone explain, or even really hint at, the peculiar state the world seems to be in, where Gordon has been, or what happened to those other aliens at the Black Mesa lab. You begin the game on a train (I sense a theme) and enter what seems to be a militarized city. Gas-masked soliders are everywhere shuttling people around. I came around the corner and saw a goddammed alien sweeping the floor. So I’m thinking, ok, we have alien janitors now. See, my years of videgame playing have granted me keen adaptive powers. I just roll with it. But then some college professor starts orating at me from large video screens and it’s pretty much a Rorschach after that.

Everyone is happy to see Gordon! I don’t know who the fuck they are. But I have to hurry, and it’s crucially important to the resistance that I undertake a long journey with lots of people shooting at me. Oh, and as it turns out the gasmasked soldiers are aliens too. They speak english though and look like humans with masks. And there are headcrabs and zombies. And a fanboat, and lots of physics experiments along the way, and flying robots, and walking robots, and more people who are extremely happy to see me but equally unhelpful as to any other information, and more aliens whom I tried to shoot until they insisted on conversing with me, and do you see a theme here?

I kept waiting for some answers. Like: Hey, there was this Guy who woke me up at the beginning of the game, Alyx can you tell me about him? Or you? Or your dad? (Of course, Gordon Freeman is goddammed mute, so there will be no asking. It’s more immersive for the player that way, you see: you pull faces and yell at the screen at home, and in the game, Gordon is silently inscrutable. It makes perfect sense.)

There are no answers. There are only more questions. Why are there large obelisk-type objects repeatedly pounding the earth for no reason? Why are there so much radiation all over the place? Why is it that I can carry a zero-point energy field manipulator, capable of altering gravity itself, and yet I cannot find a flashlight that lasts longer than twenty seconds on a charge? And hey, when I look down, where are my legs?

It’s very confusing.

I love the designs that your company has produced: everything has a very distinct “alien apartheid” thing going on, the music was pretty rad, and I have to admit I did enjoy commanding a bug army to overrun an enemy base. I just wish I knew why I was doing these things. By the end of the game, I just yielded myself to the vision – either something would finally offer a clue, or the meds would wear off. No such luck.

So in the future, despite my lowly status as a mere Internet Denizen and your godly status as Creator of Crazy-Popular Games, I would humbly suggest that you maybe put some time into an Episode Zero project, which would consist of a long tram ride through the entire Half-Life setting, coupled with a narrated tourguide explanation of everything. After finishing the game I looked up the storyline on Wikipedia, and as it turns out, no one really knows what is happening.

Despite my bewilderment, I look forward to continued instalments of Half-Life 2. Not for the story, mind you. The game has delved well into Twin Peaks territory – something that is quite good, despite high weirdity. It is like taking peyote. I don’t know what’s going to specifically happen, and I’ll probably throw up at the beginning, but odds are it’ll be fun anyways.

Cordial Postscript,
Nerfgun

p.s. You really ought to stop whining about the PS3, as it makes you sound like a petulant child. Man up and get some SPE coders, bitch.

Nice Half-Life mod of Toronto; “City 7″.

Dead 360 #1: 6 weeks
Dead 360 #2: 5 days

Of course this is a refurb again (sorry; the literature that accompanied my becoffined console informs me in a rather authoritative manner that is a Microsoft Certified Replacement Xbox 360 Console™©®, which as you can see is no mere refurb). There were some brief oaths uttered while setting it up; I thought this one might be D.O.A. as well, but it was just the finicky HDD connector causing trouble.

I’m thinking of doing a multi-part blog on a game I’ve never played properly: Half-Life 2. I know, I know. Shameful. I never got around to it. I had always just assumed I would be in prison at this point, and was saving HL2 for my “go-to” game. Curious to see how it holds up now years later, to someone who is playing it for the first time. Also, in particular I’d like to see how they handle story, since I did play Half-Life but honestly I barely remember it other than the initial tram sequence and something about aliens and crowbars. (It’s just a little too late to review the game. I hear it did well despite my lack of timely kudos.)

Anyways, if the 360 stays alive for a little while I can actually use my copy of The Orange Box for something other than bookshelf decoration.

(Also – it cannot be said enough. I can’t believe how loud the 360 is. I exclusively play it with headphones now. Screw the 65nm chips, I’ll buy the fucking Silent Edition if they ever manage that.)

It’s the highest-rated 360 game on that site now, edging out BioShock by 1 point.