games: late to the party

My non-gaming readers are invited to skip over this whole update
So, I (finally) got around to playing Half Life 2.
You'd think I would have been all over the sequel to one of only three PC games I've actually finished (the list: Half Life, Baldur's Gate, Doom II).

But I held off for two reasons- antipathy for Valve's bullshit Steam distribution system/Big Brother apparatus and computing horsepower, or lack thereof. Valve has always extended the corporate hand of friendship to older systems (the original Half Life was considered something of a resource hog in its day but ran on my first hand-me-down computer, a Pentium II sporting 64 megs of RAM and a Diamond Monster video card that needed a daughter card and a pass-through cable to handle 2d...not smoothly or with any great aplomb, but run it did), but my gaming tastes and needs have been refined by time.

My emphatic younger self, amok with poorly channeled sexuality and hormones, would doubtless have played the game regardless of the bloody minded graphic sacrifices demanded by the cold, souless gods of computation.
In contrast, the civilized, cultured, and yes, evolved Bax of today happily waits for the steady drip-drip-drip of supply side computer economics to trickle down a system capable of running the game in all its splendor, however many years it takes to accumulate in the rocky pool of his living room.

So much for the setup...how is the game?

At the midway point I'm happy to report the game experience is nearly perfect.
Meaning it's as much like a prettier, higher tech extension of the original Half Life as any gamer has a right to expect. They didn't fuck with things that worked, they just prettied things up and used the technological advancements to deepen immersion, not to change the base experience.

Involving and entertaining as it was, the primary reason I finished the original is because it was easy. I'm not one of those gamers who don't think they're getting their money's worth unless a game makes them spend 3 days trying to beat a tough boss, or decipher some obtuse puzzle. That kind of shit makes me look for an alternate fun diversion, like having my teeth cleaned or helping the in-laws clean out their garage.

I'm not a console gamer. I grew up in arcades where games were usually open-ended and the enjoyment was in arbitrary feats like topping your own high score, not in "beating" it. The console gamer mentality is masochistic- they're not enjoying themselves unless the game is inflicting some level of psychic pain, and unfortunately this is the audience most PC game makers try to appeal to.

Half Life was great because aside from the last boss fight it was never really that hard. All of its challenges could be solved after a few deaths by any reasonably adept gamer, and then you were on to the next. Same with the sequel.

My only gripe, and it's fairly minor, is that the game does follow a pretty narrow path, as well as Valve disguises it Which is fine, really- I prefer a narrowly defined, highly polished game experience to a more open game delivering rougher pleasures. If I want wide open vistas of possibility, I'll leave the house....in a game, I like to know what I'm supposed to do next.

But I'd appreciate just a little more explorability. And who knows, I might get it....I'm only halfway done.

So, a few years behind the curve I heartily recommend HL2 for aging, easily discouraged gamers such as myself.