Half-Life 2 Thoughts

City 17, setting of much of the game.

As I've written about before, I'm catching up on one of the most iconic video game series ever made, the Half-Life games.  Today, I finished up what is arguably the greatest video game ever made, Half-Life 2.  I'm only ten years behind on this one, and so much has already been said about this game, I'm not sure what more I can add.  I'll give it a shot though.

This game took me a month to play through, but honestly, I went through most of it in less than a week.  It was incredibly addicting and very fun to play through.  The only reason it took this long is because I took a self-imposed break from computer gaming to work on other things.  I'm not sure if I would consider this the greatest game ever made, nor is it my favorite game (Ocarina of Time and Portal 2, respectively, if you're curious) but this game is certainly up there.  Thankfully, this game is much, much easier than the original Half-Life, and it also has an easy setting.  Yes, I used the easy setting.  Sure, I could have played on a harder difficulty and easily beaten the game.  But that would have meant playing in a way that I don't really like.  I like brazenly walking into rooms filled with enemies, walking up to some poor saps face and shooting him with a shotgun.  It's a very straightforward approach, and perhaps hard to believe considering that my favorite game is essentially a puzzle game, but that's how I do things.  That's what makes gaming fun for me, and I'm glad this game could accommodate that playstyle.  The original couldn't, which is why it took me so long to get through.

This game has received all sorts of awards and praise, so I don't feel like saying anything about that is necessary.  Unlike the first game, this one doesn't feel dated at all, the graphics may not be up to 2014 standards, but they still look good.  I was worried about this game even working on my not-very-powerful laptop, but it worked just fine, which I was very happy about.  I've written extensively on Team Fortress 2, which of course utilizes the same engine as Half-Life 2, but that game is newer and has gotten much, much bigger in the seven years since its release, so it doesn't work nearly as well as Half-Life 2 does.  I won't pretend like it's got the world's greatest storyline, because it doesn't.  Video games seldom do.  But it's told in an effective manner, and the lack of cutscenes is always nice.  So, Half-Life 2, not my favorite game, but it's still really, really good.

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How I Met Your Mother Finale Thoughts

So, after nine years, How I Met Your Mother (that's gonna get real annoying to type) is finally over.  I have to admit, I haven't been watching it for that long.  Actually, it hasn't even been much more than a year.  I think it was over Christmas break in 2012 that I first watched it, my family had gotten into it recently and when I came home for break, I watched some of it too.  I liked what I saw, but I was several years behind.  Luckily, Netflix is a thing, and they had all the seasons that had been completed up to that point.  So, I watched the entire series in the stretch of about 2 or 3 months.  That is the style nowadays, binge watching.  It is a really good show, one of my favorites.  So, that brings us back to tonight, and the finale.

Aaaand...I'm actually not sure what I think about it.  I mean, it was good in a lot of ways, but everything moved so fast.  There was so much to get through to get the characters from where they were to where they needed to be at the end.  And the whole building up the meeting with the Mother and then just having her die off six years before 2030 was really kind of mean.  I could see it coming, and it allowed the story to tie itself together, but it was not nice.  All in all, I liked the finale, but I think it just tried to bite off too much in too short a time. 

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