No Business Naming Things

I may have mentioned before that I don’t often finish games. My attention span is remarkably short so if a game fails to introduce anything new or interesting for a period of time I tend not to go back to it. In fact, if I had to put a number to it, I would say that I finish 1 out of every 10 games I play (and even that might be generous).

Last night I somehow managed to finish the 20+ hour beast that is Half Life 2. I’m not sure how I did it. For a shooter, the game is monstrous - if I played less than 20 hours I’d be surprised. What’s more, I’d actually seen the game play to the end before in a speed run so there weren’t exactly any new surprises for me as far as settings/plot were concerned. I loved it all the same. The game offered some of the best level design I’d ever experienced in a game (behind Resident Evil 4) and managed to mix the styles of play up often enough to make it feel that I was playing a bunch of different games. I think that’s perhaps how it kept my interest. Just as I was beginning to tire with a particular gameplay mechanic it would change things up and I’d be doing something different (be it driving boats/buggies/swarms of insects).

It wasn’t all positive, of course. The PS3 port of The Orange Box deserves all of criticism it received for slowdowns, jitters, and abominable load times. It’s a monstrous cock-up of a port if there ever was one. I’m looking forward to playing through Episodes 1 and 2 all the same.  The quality of the game itself has won it a great deal of leeway in my mind.