Half Life 2: Better than sex, more addictive than crack*

Before I came to Norwich I spent about 4 months at home in my teenage bedroom while writing my abstracts and going down to Dublin each Friday to pass them over in a plain brown envelope to John of Counago & Spaves fame. It was a good short-term arrangement. I saved up a bit of money by avoiding the rents of Dublin for a while before embarking on my current academic folly, could read as many Model Rail Roader, The Humanist and Ebony articles as I liked. The only problem was running an office from a wee bedroom. One of the ways I maintained my sanity* was by engrossing myself in the crowbar-swishing scary as hell first person shooter Half-Life. Who can forget a game in which the climax is jumping from ledge to ledge trying to drop grenades into the open brain of a giant floating foetus thing that keeps chanting and blasting you with stuff that sends you into another dimension.

Anyway, in another example of the greatness of the auld blogs, a regular-reader and secret first person shooter aficionado ‘JR’ read my recent mention of waiting until I had enough to purchase Half-Life 2 and lent me his copy. For about a week I did little else besides preparing for class, teaching, eating and playing Half-Life 2. It is one of the greatest looking and playable games for the xbox. The real-life physics are amazing, the gravity gun is a lot of fun to use and the characters are extremely believable. It is hard to describe the happiness of getting a crow bar thrown at me with the words ‘here, I think you forgot this in Black Mesa’. Like a lacklustre Hollywood action movie that is great for its duration but makes no sense, however, Half-Life 2 does have a bit of a story lack, but it does leave a fair bit to the imagination and leaves you waiting for Half-Life 3, maybe that's the intention so I can all read stuff like this in the meantime. In any event any Half-Lifers who are reading this can raise a glass in a sort of virtual toast and say feck you, you fucking G-Man.

*Not that I would know about either of these things.
**The jury may be still out on whether I did.