Half-life 2 influenced my childhood, and yesterday I bought the orange box to rekindle my love with the game. The physics puzzles made me sit and think about the state of first person shooters: where have all the pauses gone? I forgot that an at-the-time feature of Half-life 2 was it removing action from the game and inserting thought puzzles. For seven or eight minutes, I struggled to build a platform with barrels and plywood in order to climb onto a raised platform.
I celebrated my victory and continued to the next room where two guards promptly shot me in the face. How popular would COD be if, to advance, it forced players to build a crude ramp while fighting off armageddon?
- bill
