I set myself a goal of finishing a level a night. It's a pretty lofty goal considering there are levels of Half-Life that I've never seen and some that I will clearly struggle with. If I'm ever going to finish the game, however, I've got to set goals for myself. Tonight I worked all the way through Anomalous Materials. My struggles tonight were not knowing where to go, I seemed to remember things pretty quickly. I knew several tricky areas, such as one where the bridge collapses and you have to climb the pipes and move through the grate at the top of the room. I also got through the hanging boxes where you have to make careful jumps with relative ease. My struggle tonight was simply movement. Re-learning movement with my left hand on WASD has been harder than I thought it would be. Simple things like getting through a door were hard because I couldn't get my strafing + mouse movement going at the same time. I fell off a few ladders simply because I was having movement troubles.

I'm considering running through the training level a few times before the next time I play, just to get the movement down. Who knows? Maybe next try it won't be so hard.








Next stop: Office Complex

So ... maybe it'll take more than the first time I start the game again to remember how to play. First struggle of the night was getting comfortable moving around again. Second struggle was remembering the "action" key (E). It literally took me a good 10 minutes of pushing buttons on my keyboard to remember that it was the (E) key in order to talk to folks and access the hazard suit. I found the test chamber just fine, but started making my way back up and was zapped and died without ever finding the crowbar. I seriously can't remember where you pick it up. I know I can go back and re-read my own posts, but I thought I would remember it all. Oh well, I'm not giving up. A lot more playing where tonight left off.

I'm re-starting the game again soon. I know many folks will tell me just to skip over Half-Life 1 altogether, but for some reason I just feel like I have to see this game to the end. I've taken enough time off from it, that I feel like I can look at it from a fresh perspective. I will struggle getting used to keyboard + mouse again after so much time on the X-Box 360, but I think it will come back to me.




I'm excited about it again. Crazy huh? More updates, more frequently, I promise.

So, after spending a better part of the last month or so playing Call of Duty: World at War on the X-Box 360, I have in the last couple of weeks ventured into another console FPS game. On a recent trip to Seattle, at a shackmeet, an awesome shacker who happens to work for a gaming developer gave me an awesome gift.



I got a free copy of Left 4 Dead. At first I was nervous about playing it, as I always am with new games. I'm not one that easily figures things out by myself and require a good bit of assistance. Luckily, a good friend who has L4D on PC agreed to rent the game on 360 and walk me through it. So far I am loving it. We played through "No Mercy" and "Dead Air" together with bots as the other two characters. This helped in learning my feel of the controls, the weapons, the health packs & pills, and each of the boss characters. I familiarized myself with boomers, hunters, smokers, tanks, and witches, and quickly learned how to recognize sounds to know what was coming up next. He taught me how to know when to heal myself, how not to attract the hordes, and to not go off by myself and stick to the "team" aspect of the game.

Last night I was able to play "Blood Harvest" with four live players and that was a completely awesome experience. Although I had a little trouble not standing around watching when action was happening (i.e. when a witch was going bizerk on Francis) I felt like I contributed a lot to the flow of the game. It's been great to experience teamwork and the goal of getting to the finale of each level with everyone intact.

I received a great compliment on my experience with this game and motivation to keep expanding my FPS horizons. In fact, I was told that this might improve my Half-Life experience, when and if I ever decide to pick the game back up again. If only they made a version for the X-Box 360 :(

If anyone who likes FPS games has not tried Left 4 Dead, from this novice I strongly suggest playing through with a friend. It truly is a remarkable game.

Hello all - I know I've been absent from this blog for a while, but it's because I really haven't been playing half-life. Still waiting for that desire to pick it back up again. That doesn't mean that I haven't been gaming. I have recently discovered FPS on the X-Box 360 and the wonderful game Call of Duty: World at War.



I dabbled a little bit with COD:4 a few months back but never got into it because my ineptness got me frustrated and I stopped. But my first experience with COD:5 involved the team deathmatch part of the game and this was amazingly fun to me. I still don't have the controls down completely yet, and my kill to death ratio is ridiculously skewed, but I'm having a lot of fun. I'm not getting motion sickness like I did when I started half-life, and I'm actually enjoying the game.

I still have a lot of the same troubles as I did with half-life. Mostly, I've been so concerned with movement that I have trouble aiming and shooting. This is why I die so much. I can be right in front of somebody, and I'll be killed before I can even get a shot off. The best I can hope for at this point is to sneak up behind somebody and kill them before they notice me. Or I just happen to get lucky and find somebody that's out of ammo.

Regardless of how bad I'm doing, I do like playing this game and will probably be playing it for a while. The "team" aspect of this game really has drawn me in because I can just run around and have fun without worrying so much about my own individual performance. Whether we win or lose a round, I'm getting better each and everytime I get to play it.

If you enjoy FPS, and like playing on a console, this is definitely a game to try.