Or, in other words, I finished Half-life today.

I was actually kind of surprised that there WAS a Big Boss Fight to wrap up the game.   I’d gotten quite used to the idea that Big Stompy Aliens weren’t for you to kill, they were there for you to run away from / burn up with rocket engines / blow up with air strikes.  Circle-strafing around a Big Nasty while peppering it with rockets seemed unlikely.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple, or anything, but it was still a little more hands-on than I expected.

The game, well, I’m sure I don’t have anything new to say about it, so I’ll offer the following non-insightful comments:

1) Yeah, well, it looks a little dated now, the water in particular, but compared to other games of the time it’s pretty shiny.

2) The Marine AI was vexing and annoying in all the best ways.  (“Yay! I found some cover! Oh, crap, they threw some grenades into my nice, safe cover”)

3) Xan’s jumping sections aren’t half as painful as I’d been led to believe.  I am forced to conclude that one of the fundamental differences between console-centric gamers and PC-centric gamers is that console-centric gamers are more used to trying the same fiddly jumping bit 20 times over until they get lucky — or in other words, more used to being abused by sadistic level design.  I can see them being brutal if you’re not abusing quicksave constantly, though.

After the …let’s be polite and call it “ambiguous”… ending, I was glad that I had the Xbox port of Half-life 2 around so I could see how that one starts.  I don’t have the energy to jump directly into the sequel, but now at least I know who this Alyx person is that everyone raves about when they’re trying to come up with examples of realistic women in games.

My wife and I also finished up Baldur’s Gate : Dark Alliance this weekend – this winter break has been terribly productive in getting through the backlog.  Unfortunately, classes start today, so much less game time in my near future. 😦