Back in City 17
In honor of its 20th birthday, Half Life 2 got a major overhaul last week. It’s mostly updates to the console version, I gather – so not much of interest to me – but they have put developers commentary on the main game. That’s the speech bubble up there.
I love developers commentary – especially from Valve. It’s clear that they take playtesting with utmost seriousness, which is why they make infinitely replayable games. It’s fun to hear how they agonized over the smallest maps. The tell you at the outset you can’t be killed while listening to commentary.
They lie.
I thought it was such a shame I couldn’t play games here in the library with my ten year old computer. And then it struck me – this is a twenty year old game! It runs just fine on my funky old laptop. There has to be a world of ancient games in my Steam backlog that I can play while I wait for the AAA studios to get collective their heads out of their collective butts.
p.s. Did you know the voice of the Combine Overwatch AI is Ellen McClain – who played GLaDOS seven years later? I honestly didn’t recognize her. Her husband is the voice of most of the male NPCs in Half Life 2. He’s a fan of the game and says playing it is a weird experience.
November 27, 2024 — 7:45 pm
Comments: 5