{"id":2658,"date":"2013-03-25T17:53:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T17:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2658"},"modified":"2013-03-25T17:53:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T17:53:19","slug":"my-top-100-5-half-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2658","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #5 – Half-Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1998<\/a>

1998 – Valve (PC, PlayStation 2)<\/p><\/div>\n

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In Grades 10 and 11, I was so obsessed with all things Star Wars<\/em> that everthing else that happened in those years seems like a blur.\u00a0 I don’t remember the NASCAR races all that well, which, if you know me, I’m sure you know is a big deal.\u00a0 I honestly don’t remember any games that I played those years either, other than Ocarina of Time<\/em>, but they were probably\u00a0mostly Star Wars<\/em> games.<\/p>\n

I had gotten my friend Ken to burn me a pirated copy of The Phantom Menace<\/em>, and I\u00a0watched that so many times that I actually had the entire first half of dialogue from\u00a0the movie memorized, word for word.\u00a0 In between “important” note-takings in Grade 11 History class, I even wrote it all down in my notebook.<\/p>\n

Obi-Wan:\u00a0 I have a bad feeling about this…<\/em>
\nQui-Gon:\u00a0 I don’t sense anything.<\/em>
\nObi-Wan:\u00a0 It’s not about the mission, Master.\u00a0 It’s something elsewhere, elusive…<\/em>
\nQui-Gon:\u00a0 Don’t center on your anxieties, Obi-Wan.\u00a0 Keep your concentration, here and\u00a0now, where it belongs.<\/em>
\nObi-Wan:\u00a0 But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future.<\/em>
\nQui-Gon:\u00a0 But not at the expense of the moment.\u00a0 Be mindful of the living Force, young Padawan.<\/em><\/p>\n

By the end of the semester, I had everything\u00a0until\u00a0the pod racing scene written up.<\/p>\n

Yes folks, it was that bad.\u00a0 I wish it weren’t the truth, knowing now that the dialogue in that movie was in fact quite\u00a0dreadful…\u00a0 but it is 100% true.\u00a0 I didn’t look up that dialogue I wrote just above, so evidently, it’s still all fresh in my mind.<\/p>\n

Crazy.<\/p>\n

It was in\u00a0this same\u00a0History class that my friend John mentioned that he had\u00a0started playing this amazing little game called Half-Life<\/em>.\u00a0 I had heard about it on\u00a0GameSpot TV<\/em>, a show with Adam Sessler\u00a0on ZDTV that eventually became the popular\u00a0X-Play<\/em> show on G4.\u00a0\u00a0I assumed it was something along the lines of Quake<\/em> or Unreal Tournament,<\/em>\u00a0and as was the case with other PC games, I didn’t have much interest in seeing what Half-Life<\/em> was all about.<\/p>\n

John had a copy of the game burnt\u00a0on a CD (which was pretty damn amazing, at the time), and he lent it to me.\u00a0\u00a0He wasn’t that much of a gamer, but I figured I’d give this one a shot.\u00a0 I had just gotten a new 3DFX video card, so why not let it stretch its legs a bit?<\/p>\n

This was the first time I ever played with the ol’ keyboard and mouse combo, and the controls felt great.\u00a0 The Black Mesa research facility had texture and depth, and felt a heck of a lot more realistic than what I had seen before.\u00a0 NPC’s were talking to me, and although I had seen this sort of thing on console games before, interactions with\u00a0Half-Life<\/em> characters just seemed more genuine.<\/p>\n

Things had changed quite a bit since\u00a0Doom<\/em>, that much was certain.<\/p>\n

The narrative was much deeper, and you could associate with Gordon Freeman a heck of a lot more than…\u00a0 DoomGuy, was it?\u00a0\u00a0Even though Doom<\/em> blew my mind for putting\u00a0me in the shoes of an angry dude carrying a gun, needing to kill everything in sight,\u00a0Half-Life<\/em> made\u00a0me\u00a0experience something completely different.<\/p>\n

I mean, the first part of the game has you showing up for work, and doing Gordon’s job.\u00a0 That was friggin’ brilliant!\u00a0 It connected you to the story, and made you feel as though you were as much a part of the journey as Freeman himself was.<\/p>\n

From the moment you step off that hover train at the beginning, you’re sent through this amazing inter-connected\u00a0space that sends you to every corner of Black Mesa.\u00a0 While the weapons\u00a0all looked and worked pretty damn\u00a0awesomely (not to mention how great they sounded), you needed more than just firepower to get past certain situations.\u00a0 There was always some kind of obstacle for you to overcome using your noggin, rather than brute force.\u00a0 I appreciated that, for sure.<\/p>\n

Even though I’ve said time and time again that PC games are just not for me, Half-Life<\/em> is\u00a0one of those games that I need to re-play on PC again, some day.\u00a0 Sure, the PlayStation 2 version was quite nice, but I’ll never forget the awesomeness that was Half-Life<\/em> for PC, and how it got me off that Star Wars<\/em> kick.<\/p>\n

I needed that…\u00a0 thanks, John.<\/p>\n

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