My Favorite Video Game

I haven't played an especially large amount of video games, but the ones I do play are almost always among the best.  There's one though, that stands far above all the others.  I've played games where the fates of entire worlds are placed in my hands, but my favorite game features absolutely none of those incredibly high stakes.  Sure, there's a story, and an exciting conclusion, but nowhere near the level of some of my other favorites.  At the end of the day, it's basically just a puzzle game.

Portal 2 is my favorite video game.  There's no violence, no killing, there's a gun, but it fires portals (shocking), and it solves puzzles.  I just recently starting playing the game again because I have a computer that can actually handle the graphics.  It's been a few years, so my recollection of the puzzles is hazy at best.  It's almost like I'm playing the game for the first time again.  I get to laugh at the absolutely hilarious dialogue once more, no small feat for a video game to pull off.  Humor's a difficult thing to pull off, but Portal does it almost perfectly.  The gameplay is smooth and the game looks good too.  I've never been one for hyper-realism in my video games, it's why I'm so partial to Team Fortress 2, and why I've been going pretty hard at Borderlands 2 the past couple months (I'm sure I'll have something to say about that game, just not now).  There's no cartoony aspects to Portal, but the scale of everything in the game is just so vast, it can't possibly be real.

I don't think many people would deny that Portal 2 is a great game, but I don't imagine many would call it their favorite.  What does it for me?  Simple.  When I first played the game, I played with a couple friends watching, and that experience made everything so much better.  The game is great, but the interactive aspect of that first playthrough made a great game so much better.  I've heard the same thing from other people who've played the game, playing it with other people around made it better.  The game might not look all that interesting on the surface, but trust me, it's probably the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Thoughts on Half-Life 2 Episodes

Well, that's it then.  I've played all the main Half-Life games, and now I, just like millions of other
people, get to wait for a game that may never even come.  I really hope that we do get a Half-Life 3, just to complete the story, because there's nothing worse than an unresolved plot, and Episode 2  concludes with a big plot twist.

I enjoyed the Episodes, but I did not like them as much as the full game.  I wanted to consider Episode 1 and 2 as a full, standalone game, but I couldn't do that.  That's too bad, because it would have helped the immersion factor immensely.  You progress through Episode 1 so fast it never has a chance to really suck you into the world.  I got through it in less than four hours, which is about the same amount of time I took to play the original Portal game.  That still managed to be immersive though, because it was very minimalistic, where as Episode 1 is not.  Just as you start to get invested in the game, it's over.

Episode 2 is a bit better, because it's longer.  At just under 6 hours, it is more of a very condensed
game than the first episode.  It has a definite beginning, middle, and end.  Unfortunately, the ending of Episode 2 is basically, "Insert sequel here," as a major character dies and the situation goes from bad to "Oh crap."  Episode 2 was released in 2007.  It is no 2014, and as far as we know, we are no closer to that sequel now then we were seven years ago.  I feel sorry for the people who played Episode 2 back when it was released and have been waiting all this time.  It wouldn't be so bad if the Half-Life games weren't some of the most critically acclaimed video games ever.  But they are, and now, I have to wait for Half-Life 3, just like everyone else.

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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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Half-Life Thoughts

Yes, you're reading that title correctly.  Half-Life may have been released in the 90's, but I've only just finished it.  Not ten minutes ago, I was taking on the final boss, and dying many, many times.  Gamers back then must have either been really good or really masochistic, cause I thought the game was very difficult.  That's probably what I'll take away from the experience, the sheer frustration and difficulty of the game.

I know Half-Life doesn't even compare to some of the more infamous hard games, but I thought it was very difficult.  It's not very forgiving, there are a bunch of difficult puzzles, the movement is inconsistent, and I couldn't figure out how to turn mouse acceleration off, which meant that every time I tried to swing my crosshair at something behind me, I always went way too far.  It made precise aiming very difficult as well.  I guess that's part of the fun of an old-school game, they're often unforgiving, but I could only enjoy it for so long.  I mean, I started this game last summer, it took me eight months to finish.  I would play for a few hours, get incredibly frustrated, then put the game down for a couple months.

Now, I don't think it was a bad game.  The enemies were difficult, and you have to think your way through them.  I just think that Half-Life is a game which really shows its age.  I think it's still worth playing, because it does set up Half-Life 2, arguably the best game ever made.  Again, I haven't played it, and when I do, I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about that too.  Hopefully it doesn't take the better part of a year.

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