#first time playing hl2 actually

[gorbongweedman]

half life 2 ep 1: now youre thinking with balls

[abysswatchers420]

how many of my followers were around during my supernatural phase? you remember that shit, the gif sets of dean and sam standing around? i think back on it and god it was so corny lmao i went thru and purged everything from my blog idk how many years ago. and now i like, i see gifsets of tv shit today and my kneejerk reaction is 'superwholock' and i gotta shut it down, remove posts. we dont do that here anymore

[bembwashere]

Guess who actually played and finished Half-Life 2 for the first time! Oh my god it was so good. I was planning to get through HL1 first but I think I got softlocked, I didn't wanna start a new save or go back and I get motion sick because of the damn camera. Also since HL2 was for free, I decided to do that instead <3 I haven't played the episodes yet but man. It's so good you guys should play it. I've purposefully avoided watching play-throughs and its worth it. Anyways, hope you like this little MS paint doodle dump.

[narklos]

Half-Lore #3: 66 HL Facts!

Make your 'counting to three' jokes in the tags please. Back with another instalment, this is one I've been looking forward to! 66 random facts spanning the entire Half-Life franchise (bc I couldn't fit 100 in one post due to numbered list character limits...) If you have any suggestions for other instalments of Half-Lore, please let me know.

Have a peep under the cut, and enjoy!

Gordon can speak, as confirmed in a series of letters that were included in HL1's box. They mention that L.M and him had a telephone call prior to Gordon's arrival.

Speaking of L.M, he was the original administrator for Black Mesa. L.M was the G-Man, though his full name is never revealed.

Barney and Breen were both meant to appear in Half-Life: Alyx, but were cut due to a hard reset on the game's development.

Gordon is apparently very clumsy. Eli jokes about it in a series of cut voicelines.

Prior to his appointment at Black Mesa, Gordon was stationed at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Russell's complaint about being told to apply a year later after his interview at Black Mesa is a real-life hiring process that Valve uses.

Marc Laidlaw mentioned that the baby photo in Gordon's locker is probably a nephew, making Gordon an uncle!

Bullsquids have a 'hungry' mode. If they find a dead headcrab, and they're in hungry mode, they'll eat it. Otherwise, they'll play a sniffing animation and walk away.

In HL2, you can bonk NPCs on the head during a cutscene to make them teleport. This is because the game thinks that the character is trapped by a physics prop, and will teleport them to the next segment in the cutscene to free them.

On Kleiner's clipboard during his first cutscene, what he's saying about the HEV suit is actually written on the paper word-for-word.

Barney has a girlfriend called Lauren, and a picture of her in his locker. The woman in question was a real-life girlfriend of one of the devs.

In one of the OP4 skyboxes, a dev has written the note "Hack hack hack all day long. Hack hack hack while I sing this song."

The mysterious artefact Alyx brings back to Black Mesa East is the head of a Cremator, which was a cut enemy.

HL2 was originally meant to take place in New York.

Headcrabs don't turn Gordon into a zombie because he apparently never lets them get close to his face.

Colette gets a kick out of violence.

Gordon was employee of the month when the Resonance Cascade happened.

A special rebel outpost along Route Kanal will start playing ambient windchimes if you hang around long enough.

Breen was meant to wear a pair of glasses, but Marc Laidlaw went against it, citing that they made Breen look 'vaguely homosexual'.

Russell was originally meant to be Laszlo, the finest mind of his generation. His computer's password is actually 'Laszlo' too!

There are props clipping through Russell's ceiling intentionally- objects will phase through each other during portal storms, the likes of which ravage City 17.

The Citadel wasn't built on Earth, per se- it was teleported in chunk by chunk like the world's biggest IKEA assembly.

G-Man cannot understand the Vort's language, and the Vorts use by-words when discussing him and the Advisors to avoid detection.

Combine Advisors cannot breathe Earth's atmosphere, hence the breathing apparatus they wear.

There was meant to be a fourth day of HL2's plot, but it was shortened to three. Players would have fought through a museum.

Eli lost his leg to a bullsquid when he was helping Kleiner into City 17.

Kleiner and Barney were meant to die in a bus crash in HL2's opening sequence. Marc Laidlaw wrote a short story discussing their deaths in rather graphic detail.

In Decay, there was a cut sequence where players witnessed Gordon getting killed if they didn't scare away the soldiers in time.

Despite 20 years having passed in reality, only around two weeks have passed for Gordon due to being in stasis.

For HLA, developers scanned in a $10,000 Nordstrom suit to use for G-Man's textures.

Level designer David Casali, who has worked on every single mainline HL game, was too tall for a lot of the levels in HLA's Vault sequence. This lead to a lot of upside-down sections being cut for accessibility.

G-Man was meant to be an unwilling prisoner in the Vault, as revealed in a storyboard in The Final Hours.

The Nihilanth is inspired by Gabe Newell's fears of fatherhood, as he'd just had his son at the time.

Nothing is native to Xen. Every alien animal present on Xen is running away from The Combine's invasion of their homeworlds.

During Opposing Force, players can find a gear and a valve inside of a cardboard box- a very clear nod to Gearbox and Valve!

Barney's model changes subtly from HL2 to Episode 1- he's shown more dishevelled, with his hair unkempt and a series of cuts on his cheeks.

G-Man's face is hidden in the Xenian crystal at Black Mesa East.

Alyx was found by the G-Man, sitting beside her dead mother and clutching her mother's wedding ring.

Child labour was meant to appear, with models and animations of the children working in Cremator factories made. This, understandably, were cut, and the lack of children explained away with the suppression field.

G-Man's crow friend is nicknamed 'Crowley'.

During the tactical map section of Surface Tension, you don't have to use the drone strike to destroy the doors leading to the next level- you can actually break it with a fully-charged Tau Cannon shot.

Typing 'haiku' in the game's console will generate a random haiku for you.

Imprisoning the G-Man in HLA was referred to as putting 'God in a Box' by developers.

HL2 on PC and HL2 on Xbox 360 sound wildly different! Due to advanced sound chips, developers were able to push the audio of HL2 to be more immersive and sound more realistic than on PC.

Grigori's shotgun is called Annabelle.

A model of Eli naked exists. This was meant to be used in the section we see him in the Combine pods.

An illustration of G-Man holding a gun to his head can be found on the back of a sign in HLA.

Similarly, in the Index HLA home environment, his eyes are used as part of an advertisement for 'vision enhancement'.

You can find a minifigure of the Scout in HLA.

The textures for some of HLA's cans actually use a recoloured metal effect from HL1's orange poster.

Grigori has cut crosses into the backs of his hands.

Inside G-Man's briefcase is pencils, ID, paper, and a gun.

The shadowy woman in HLA is called Hahn/The Contractor, and according to Erik Wolpaw, they 'have plans' for her.

A cut enemy called Mr. Friendly was meant to literally SA the player and knock Gordon's glasses off, blurring the screen. Apparently, the idea was to play on a gamer's subconscious (or conscious...) homophobia and make them freak out. This enemy was actually designed by a teenager, and was predictably scrapped.

Early advertisements for HL1 featured babies and children with lambdas replacing their eyes.

HL1 is intended to be an allegory for fighting your own inner hopelessness.

Valve's offices have a wall built to resemble the moving walls of the Citadel.

G-Man has had a total of 11 different models throughout HL's history.

Breaking the army crates in the Dreamcast port of HL1 will reveal copies of Sonic Adventure inside.

Gordon is from Seattle, Washington.

HL2 was delayed a lot during its development. At the time, many swore never to buy from Valve again due to their broken promises.

HL2's E3 demonstrations were staged.

Colette was employed by G-Man, but Gina died.

During a Reddit AMA, a dev responded that we shouldn't keep making Gordon feel bad about his outdated hairstyle choices, when asked about where his ponytail went.

A metrocop's hideaway can be found in the level after the zoo in HLA. Due to the amount of conspiracy theory paraphanelia, the room is theorised to be Barney's.

The act of covering your mouth to stop the fumes of Xenian flora from affecting you in HLA was implemented after playtesters instictively covered their mouths when sprayed.

Thanks for reading to the bottom! Here's some top notch BREENWAVE for you.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 2

Propaganda Under Cut

Alyx Vance

She genuinely gets so much hate from fans who like to ship Gordon and Barney because she's Gordon's canon love interest and it's tragic because she's such an interesting character.

I LOVE HER SM but she's so often mistreated and shoved under the rug by not only ppl mischaracterizing her due to being a woman of color but also to shove her to the side for freehoun (gordon freeman/barney calhoun) bc she "gets in the way" of freehoun by being canonically into gordon ........ i need her to stay safe in my arms

Literally gordon freemans canon love interest, and she loves gordon so much. I love her and i love their relationship even if gordon is a bit of a blank slate character. Anyway Freemance (Alyx/Gordon) is way less popular than Freehoun (Gordon/Barney). Barney is some guy who appeared in half life 1 but didnt even have a name. He appears at like the beginning and end of hl2. He is a side character. And yet for some fucking reason people always push alyx out of the way to ship gordon with this random white guy (Should mention at this point that alyx is a black woman). Alyx and her relationship with Gordon have WAY more development than anything about Barney (did BARNEY get a whole game dedicated to him?). And yet. I literally saw a freehoun shipper try to say that freemance is pedophilia and freehoun should be alyx's "dads." The reasoning for this being that hl2 takes place 20 years after hl1, and gordon, at 27, was put into stasis for those 20 years. When he comes out Alyx is 24 and Barney is in his 40s. The argument is that gordon actually did age those 20 years even though he was fucking suspended in time. They even claimed that "gordon probably babysitted alyx at some point" which there is absolutely no evidence for - meeting Alyx in hl2 is pretty heavily implied to be Gordon's first time meeting her. But like functionally Gordon is 3 years older than Alyx and 20 years younger than barney!!! He did not have any fucking life experience while he was in time prison!!! It's an absolutely insane reach to try and justify why you are sidelining a black woman!!!!!! Basically I love alyx I love freemance and I do not trust freehoun shippers because there is some kind of racism and misogyny happening there to make them sideline Alyx for a random white guy

Suzi Q

This article is incomplete; you can help by expanding it

All she's literally ever done is have a few cute exchanges with Joseph and be a sweetheart in the short time we get to see her following her minor introduction, clearly cementing some sort of playful attraction between the two and without fail she's consistently bombarded with extreme mischaracterization to make her seem vapid and cruel (and occasionally homophobic but like in a Completely Oblivious Dumb Blonde way), that she's nothing more than a gold digger who wanted to marry rich, that Joseph only married her because "he lost his actual soulmate and had to settle for her", and that it was HER fault that Joseph cheated on her decades into their marriage. Frankly, everyone who makes jokes at Suzi Q's expense regarding the cheating scandal aren't as funny as they think they are!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Literally all she’s ever done is be adorable and marry the hero and people either dismiss her completely or demonize her. She’s often ignored or made to play wing woman for the hero/sidekick ship OR she’s a horrible gold digger who only wants the hero for his money and/or she was only ever just a consolation prize for him when he couldn’t be with his sidekick. She also gets blamed for her husband having an affair. People like to say that she wasn’t good enough for him and could never replace his sidekick and that clearly he never REALLY loved her and it’s her fault for never measuring up. Her husband’s infidelity aside, she stayed married to that man for at least 60 years and canonically says she always believes in him and trusts him to save the day and yet people wanna say she doesn’t care about him. Or call her stupid for never imagining that her husband would cheat on her. The victim blaming gets really gross.

[cosmoknightchaos]

Actually wait hang on. Spoilers for the finale.

Three friends. Benry (or possibly Gman, though I'm leaning towards the former), Gnome, and the girl. The girl who we will meet soon, presumably in whatever the new series is. Who I think is the shadow we see in the hallway before the theatre.

The hollows and the echoes. Not really sure what the hollows is referring to, but Peppa and the girl can hear the echoes. They're beautiful. "Don't tell me you can't hear it" as opposed to asking Gordon if he can hear it, it's like she expects him to be able to. "The song they sing at the edges of the mind"--Maybe something to do with the AIs? The characters being on the edge of their minds, the edge of their understanding. She expects Gordon to hear it because he's the only real one there, he more than anyone should be able to understand these AIs becoming sentient. He should be able to hear the songs.

But perhaps it's better he doesn't. Perhaps it's better that he doesn't understand the horror of realizing everything you've ever known is fake, of waking up and being faced with a world controlled by someone else for their amusement and you are but a mindless pawn in this little game.

"Lest you end up like her." Her, the third friend. Who, I'm inclined to think, is--or, was--a player, like Gordon. Who got too involved and got fucked over by Peppa or the gnome, now reduced to nothing but a shadow in the game. It's a shame, really.

"The white woods call for you" The white woods is probably a reference to the White Forest, a late-game area in Hl2 Ep2. Coincidentally, it's also the location the player has to take Gnome Chompski to get the gnome run achievement in Hl2 Ep2. This forest is specifically made of pine trees (according to images of it on the wiki), a mix of dead and alive. The forest we see after the monologue matches this.

Dulcet tones almost directly means Sweet Voice. Backs up that Benry is the first friend. Furthermore, could also mean that the echoes in the hollows is the Sweet Voice, and whatever befell the third friend had something to do with Benry. It's better that Gordon can't hear it because of the events of Hlvrai, and Gordon would really like for Benry to not be back. The tones are specifically calling out Gordon's name--If it is the sweet voice, maybe it's Benry trying to get Gordon's attention.

IT IS TIME FOR US FOUR. FOUR OF THEM. Gordon, the gnome, and Peppa are all obvious, but that's only three. The fourth is the audience. It's shown again and again that the chat has a presence in Hlage, through the gnome calling out chat members and banning folks when he takes over the stream. The gnome knows, Peppa knows. The audience is watching.

Never forget. The repeating theme of the episode.

The woods, the seeds, the girl, the key. Once again, the White Forest. I don't know what's up with the seeds. Maybe metaphorically, like the seeds of imagination. Don't forget the creations you've made. The girl is the third friend who we'll meet eventually, and the key. I have absolutely no clue what the key is.

"How will you fare, Gordon, when the sea of mud comes for us all?" Also a bit clueless on this one. My first thought is like a mudslide, dirt and destruction. But it sounded familiar.

"[Where we'd play] in the mud? We were playing in the mud, all the time." Benry MENTIONS playing in the mud with Gordon during the opening part of Xen. And what will Peppa do when the sea of mud comes? Splish, splash, splosh. She will play in the mud.

And then slam cut into the movie disappearing and showing a forest full of pine trees. The White Forest.

[eeveekitti]

pspspsp. can you pitch the basic plot of entropy: zero to me in the way you would if you were trying to convince someone to play it

anon do you know what youve done /silly

[here's just the game descriptions for those who don't want to see 200+ words about a half life mod]

do YOU like half-life 2?? and optionally the HL1 expansion opposing force?? have YOU ever wondered what it's like to play as the combine?? well that's the entire pitch of this free-to-play HL2 [EP2 apparently, didn't know that] mod!

in entropy : zero, you play a combine metrocop, stranded in the unheard of city 10 almost a year before the events of HL2. your job? surviving the harsh cold, and taking down an entire rebel base!

fighting your way through the rebel outposts and working your way into becoming more and more of a threat is the fun of the first installment in the entropy series.

entropy : zero 2 is a much more character-driven game, and what attracts most people to the series, following a much more talkative and very interesting iteration of our protagonist.

this time, you pick up the story after the events of HL2, hunting down well-known resistance member judith mossman in the north. there's actually so little i can say on entropy 2, so much of it is character-focused, but i promise you it's super super good!!!

and a personal funfact: ez2 is my favorite game ever as of current [even above rain world!! and i'm a rain world blog!!] and has my favorite character ever in it!

so i highly encourage everyone who owns hl2 play these mods please please please [<- desperate for a tumblr fandom to exist] and if it sweetens the deal for you-- i'm like 90% sure they're making a third installment!!

[cannibalisticdespair]

Hey, how's it going? If you don't mind answering, how's the system constructed? Who's in there? If you do mind answering, what's your favourite colour?

It’s myself (Krys, she/her), Junko (Junko fictive, she/her), Zaedel (my twin since we formed at the same time for bad prolonged trauma reasons, he/him), Cherry (he/she and don’t consistently use one, bigender little who takes after the original host in some ways but is a more idealized version, mentally 8-10), and Val (she/her, oldest one here, grew up with the original host but Zaedel and I only became aware of her much later on because historically she existed for “we need to be a vicious feral beast to match the energy of the family screaming matches and whatnot” reasons, but has been rehabilitating you could say).

Headspace-wise, I just look how I look with maximum effort. Zaedel meanwhile has our dad’s olive skin tone (lifelong outdoor loving and working Sicilian man), stubble to a short beard, long black hair, and black molting angel wings. And usually a leather jacket. Junko’s mostly canon, just the clothing tends to be more early 2010s emo girl. Fishnet tops and a bra or shirt where the sleeves and neck are cut out and the back is sliced up, ripped skinny jeans, docs or converse, a black/red/danganronpa blood pink color scheme.

Cherry is an androgynous, pale, heavily freckled boygirl with long brown hair and brown eyes, usually a black tanktop, shorts, and flip flops. And Val looks like a cross between the HL2 rotting corpse with the real corpse face and Samara from The Ring if she was actually depicted as a waterlogged corpse that’s been sitting there for a week or two (we had unrestricted internet access starting in the 2000s, we have quite the frame of reference).

Zaedel and I formed in tandem with the death of the original host. Originally, he held all the trauma memories from before we formed and I had near-total amnesia. He also spent a few years trying to get me to kill ourselves because he couldn’t take control of the body over it. LSD changed us and our dynamic, and also caused a slowly rising amount of access to the memories for me.

Val we didn’t really realize was a headmate until more recently because of her purely utilitarian fronting and lack of communication, but once we started talking it became clear she was the first one to form. The original host was extremely timid and shy and nervous, which didn’t really work for the environment we grew up in. So Val was the fighter.

Cherry and Junko both broke off of me. Cherry started out as my littlespace, but more and more life stress and stuff eventually snapped him off entirely and made her his own thing.

Junko meanwhile is a mix of causal factors. One, writing hundreds of thousands of words of fic in the 2010s with my method. Which is “I just place these semi-independent thoughtforms of characters in a situation with a little bit of scripting and prose-journal what happens”. Two, strengthening that with constant listening to a playlist build around her for years. Three, more LSD, which led to our first direct conversation enabled by a poster of her (the Egirl Junko art by JunkoEXE). Four, yet more psychological trauma. What finally led to her permanently emerging was me accidentally getting triggered and restoring my earliest CSA trauma memories, which broke me pretty bad. Like… I thought it began way later than that. She took on pieces that broke off of me when that happened and it finished her.

Name-wise, I stole mine from an emo girl I knew in high school. Zaedel thought up his after a few years with a mix of “it needs to have the right mouthfeel and also needs to end in -el”. Cherry got hers from a friend of ours. Junko is Junko, that’s just her name. And Val is short for Valerie and is a nerdy joke about her being our “evil side”. It’s a feminine name play on “Valeyard”.

And also, my favorite color is purple. Junko’s is anything in the red/magenta/pink spectrum. Zaedel is black. Cherry really likes green and blue. Val is the sorts of purples you get from bruising and discoloration on a corpse.

[quaddmgd]

the older i get the more unsettling half-life 2 becomes to actually play. and i don't mean the obvious totalitarian/surveillance state/overwhelming alien force stuff

it's about the vibes, the architecture, the ominous OST and creepy sounds used throughout the game. or the lighting, especially during late afternoons, and the textures that go along with it.

tbh i will always prefer hl1 to its sequel and although i can talk about the lore added in hl2 with great fascination, at times it's just... unpleasant to experience to a point of not being enjoyable. i'm sure it was partially intended, but there's just something inside the game that makes me feel like an unreasonably freaked out cat. dunno if that makes any sense.

we beat it with my s/o today and it was their first time playing it. after a few hours into the game they said it looks and feels very russian and it stuck with me lol. i can think of a few russian/ukrainian mid-2000s fpp games with similar lighting, very detailed textures and models while retaining quite simple level geometry - almost like trying to be too realistic for their technology.

i do realize that i'm starting to babble, but i had to try and form my thoughts into a cohesive post. i guess what i meant is...

the older i get the harder it gets to enjoy half-life 2... and the easier it gets to appreciate it

at least that's how i feel now

[the-friendliest-freak]

Okay. This is a topic I’m extremely normal about (lying).

Loneliness is a theme in all of the TSP games, but it actually evolves throughout each of them.

The first game, the Half-Life 2 mod, is by far the loneliest of them all. There’s just Stanley, The Narrator, Mariella and The Curator. The halls are cramped, narrow, and dimly lit.

The HL2 Mod is a house that’s no longer a home, musty and claustrophobic. It’s more isolation than loneliness.

The second, the TSP demo, is less so. There’s evidence that people were here - papers on the floor, a spilled mug, etc. . But the loneliness is less suffocating because The Narrator is constantly trying to show you these cool new gameplay mechanics (in my mind he’s trying to distract himself from the fact that everyone has gone missing) and is taking you through so many different locations and giving you so many things to do.

The Demo is when you were a kid on a school trip to a museum or expo, and you got separated from the group.

The 2013 HD Remaster is a soft, looming loneliness - the documents left strewn about, the mugs left on desks, computers left open; people were here not too long ago. You get a couple phone calls from your wife, too. In this game, we have Stanley, The Narrator, Mariella, The Curator, Stanley’s Wife, the second Stanley and the Line™️ - there’s also evidence that 432 is still up and about, as a box labelled for them disappears after you leave the phone room in the Not Stanley Ending. Far more populated, yes, but only limited to certain endings and paths you can take.

(Also, to answer your question, it’s confirmed in a Reddit AMA: that’s another Stanley, but he considers you to be the “other Stanley”.)

The 2013 HD Remaster is arriving at an event several hours too late.

TSPUD, when I first played it, blew me away, and continues to do so, because unlike the previous games…it’s so alive.

You walk into the Memory Zone for the first time, and there’s birds. Fucking birds! Real animals! Do you have any idea how much that shocked me? In the Elevator Ending, there’s a rat on one of the chairs.

The reviews in the Skip Button Ending, Settings Person greeting you every time you boot up the game, the Bucket Tape Ending, the man that follows you, the second Stanley, the notes you get from your loved ones in the elevator ending (from Stanley’s wife, from his coworkers, you even get a drawing made by Stanley’s child!), the voice that promotes TSPUD in the New Content Ending, the child variant of the previous one, the voice that sings the Good Job, You Made It To The Bottom Of The Mind Control Facility, Well Done song, the chanting behind the mural in the Bucket Museum Ending, the cars zooming by in the release trailer…

It’s full of life!

It’s just beyond a wall, or a door. But it’s there. And whoever’s just beyond that wall loves you.

TSPUD is when you fall asleep at a party as a child, and you’re carried to your bedroom, and you can hear the muffled sounds of the party continuing on downstairs. It’s still there.

It’s just beyond that door.

thing about the stanley parable

the game is determined not to show you another living creature. you never see the narrator’s face. he laughs at you when you see that your wife is a lifeless mannequin. the crowds in the 3 ending are faceless. ‘mariella’ is an unmoving character model in an ending that you can’t interact with. all your friends are inanimate objects that the narrator is determined to personify.

it creates an amazing feeling of loneliness. my goal, when playing this game, became not to find the ‘true’ ending or break the game, but to find someone living, someone real, someone that isnt a bucket that the narrator speaks for to make this world less lonely.

the only time you do see someone else, a moving person, then, is the rare occasion in which you can see someone walking past one of the office windows. and it’s just stanley’s character model, and you don’t get to interact with them. you get to watch them disappear.

this did not quell my loneliness. it gave me UTTER FEAR. what does this mean? are timelines converging? does this represent the endless cycle, the ‘we’ve been here before’ of it all? does the narrator have another stanley? or, more likely, is it something that he, or the game’s creators, threw in to taunt us? you want someone to talk to, here’s a glimpse, and it’ll only give you more questions. there is no comfort, there is no closure. only a glimpse of something. it is unattainable and it is terrifying. stanley is alone. stanley is alone.

[anosci]

Media Thread 2024

im making a list of media ive watched/played/etc this year with brief thoughts. its going to be far less featured than my music list, but still a bit long.

list below the cut

January

1/ Portal Revolution (2024) i went in expecting a very polished set of portal 2 styled test chambers. i was NOT expecting a story that captured my imagination very good experience

2/ The Ancient Magus' Bride (2017) every review i saw for this said it's bad. huh??. sure it's not perfect but i quite enjoyed it. a bit soft, a bit atmospheric, a bit girly. amazing job actually drawing me into a british fantasy setting.

3/ Violet Evergarden (2018) at worst, it feels a bit like its on rails, maybe eager to lose focus. but overall i rather enjoyed the story of the most traumatized girl in the world slowly learn to be human. idk if its "65th best anime ever" good, but… a lovely ride!

February

4/ Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) i heard this was somewhere between nfsmw 2005 (which i love) and burnout paradise (which i just Couldn't get into). i heard correctly. i fell in love with this. with the semi-open world. the daynight cycle and weather. and with drifting somehow! (but mostly weaving through traffic.) captivated. also worth mentioning: the cop mode was an interesting variation in gameplay. not my fav, but good.

March

5/ Titanfall 2 (2016) finally playing this and.. yeah I see why ppl were comparing it to HL2. I'm more "nodding along with this assessment" than feeling it, tho… idk. it's good but it doesn't resonate with me. the movement, though! that slaps! is this… schmoovement?

6/ Need for Speed: Heat (2019)

this was hard to get into, specifically because the pacing was just kinda... wack(?) for me anyway. plus a lot of other small little spots of friction. but it was never enough to turn me away (mw2012, burnout paradise)

by the end of the "storyline" races, i found myself having a good time. maybe a mixed bag, but well worth the 3 dollars or w/e it was.

April

May

7/ Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018)

a damn good bait and switch. i feel the focus got a bit wobbly in the middle, but i found myself enjoying the overarching exploration of Puberty Syndrome nonetheless. i do not like tsundere but this was played honestly enough that i evaded cringing. the show is an interesting web of relationships centered around a bit of a straight shooter. i think it worked nicely, though i fear it wasn't focused enough to truly stick with me. i cant help but imagine a heavily trimmed version with just the first and final arc. that would've blown some socks.

8/ Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl (2019)

yeah the show was good enough that i watched the movie immediately after. (im not as interested in the 2nd movie tho.) i feel like i chugged a pint of stupid juice before watching this but i still followed the key plot points i think. is madoka genre? there's something satisfying about this explanation of the loose anime thread, though i think this might've worked better as The Anime (RE: trimming etc). a bit of kudos for giving some weight to "it was all just a dream"

9/ Kaguya-sama: Love is War (2019) this show is at its best when it's needlessly dramatic and convoluted. sometimes, it's brilliant. but, sadly, it also wants to stay in the episodic high school romcom genre, complete with serious pining. maybe that part's ok but it's surely not for me. i do not trust this to stay fresh for 3(?????) seasons.

June

10/ Dungeon Meshi (2024) i have the opposite of a soft spot for high fantasy stuff. hate it. this reeks of it. and yet, whenever im watching it, i am FULLY drawn into the world with a sense of wonder and anticipation. there were so many characters and all of them were delightful. my only real complaints were that, especially towards the end, the pacing was wack. feels like they chopped it to bits for the anime... and for what? a つづく? man... ill probably actually grab the manga.

July

11/ Hitoribocchi no OO Seikatsu (2019) it's cute before it's anything else. i was drawn in by a very relatable protagonist that literally has a panic attack first episode, but… that didn't last. I got 3 episodes in before deciding that the show isn't for me. the person that this show is for, though, i think is in for a treat. nako is alright.

12/ Ride Your Wave (2019)

very…. summer. maybe a little too bright for me (not literally but. vibe. ily.) i somehow missed the "supernatural" tag and wasn't sure how grounded to be, which was fun lol everything is connected in a satisfying way, but something didn't quite click for me. not sure what it was. or wasn't. i'd still call it a good watch

13/ Weathering with You (2019)

I saw a review of this that went as follows: "discout kimi no na wa". that's… almost right, but really reductive. it didn't hit as hard for me, but carried an atmosphere all of its own. i think its biggest weakness was deploying the damsel in distress trope for the climax. absolutely throwing away a lot of character development... second weakness was not leaning into the supernatural angle, but I also think that's 100% a matter of taste. I think the two could have been solved in one stone, but meh... aside from that: vibes were off the charts, and the art direction wall to wall great. every frame a painting etc

August

14/ Mother 3 (2006)

for the first time since November 2008 (apparently), I decided to revisit Mother 3.... via Lauren the Flute's Let's Play. I remember way back then that I thought M3 was a little weaker than EB for me. Revisiting it has solidified that opinion for me: It's super strong at some parts and really weak at others, to my taste at least. For the most part, everything I remembered as "my fav bits" from 16 years ago are my favorite bits today. To comment on Lauren's playthrough specifically: at glance, she seemed to be the most emotionally invested. and. yeah! It wasn't the best stream setup, but it was the most resonant. another LP of hers may appear here lol

September

October

15/ Beastars (2019)

Furry anime? "Yes", but the nontherian kind. Zootopia ass. This immediately had me suspicious from episode 1. But then, I kept trying to see if I was wrong. and the show kept delivering some fascinating symbols! the hype was back! and then it threw all of that away. "you were reading it backwards the whole time dumbass". augh. if I hadn't done that, I think it'd be an ok watch. what kills me is that some of the plot threads here would make an INCREDIBLE anime. but they withered away from a lack of focus as some really annoying threads were added instead. also the icky biological essentialism. what a terrible aftertaste. :(

props for having (half of) a really good sex scene though i guess? I was kinda impressed.

16/ Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! (2020)

what a delightful nod to not just the art of animation, but the practice of it. the shitty parts. the deadlines. the overworking. said with reverance!

each of the characters were interesting foils for each other, though to varying degrees. Kanamori became my favorite. she took the role of manager, a role thats somewhat antagonistic usually. yet in here she looked like a badass mob boss, fighting for the creatives, brandishing huge clever strength.

lovely show!

November

17/ BNA (2020)

it is ASTOUNDING how much more I enjoyed this than Beastars. I can't help but make the comparison since they're kind of companion shows: 2020 furry anime. but. god damn.

treating beastmen (furries) as a separate class, like humans with "superpowers", did wonders for the plot.

I think both BNA and Beastars tried to show a rigid system of thinking and say "it doesn't have to be this way. tear down the barriers.", but BNA actually pulled it off. the bad guy became a Big Bad obsessed with racial (species-ial?) purity, whos downfall was literally in mixing blood.

what im saying is BNA is the pro-choice + antifa version of Beastars.

watching this was fun because it was well structured. i picked up plot elements from their foreshadowing. fun! animation great. idk. all around good time, even if i dont think itll stick with me. fun watch!

18/ Haibane Renmei (2002)

I had an itch to revisit this again. it's a flawed masterpiece. and the flaws are all petty things. budgetary stuff. i wish the soundtrack were longer and the shots larger and the folly higher quality. as-is it feels like peering through a foggy window into a beautiful garden.

but MAN it's a good damn garden.

the finale is a bit too "hardcore action" than it needs to be but every other aspect is just. a delight.

i realized this time that my initial reaction to the show was probably heavily influenced by these surface level complaints. "i wish the soundtrack were less orchestral" i probably said at the time. but now i think it should've been more. i can't imagine it veering too far away from what it has. mushishi has its sound and haibane has this sound. iykyk

19/ Charge!! Cromartie High School (The Movie) (2005)

the live action adaptation of the manga, on kenny lauderdale's rec. it's very...... low budget and 2005-core. but despite that, it does a great job at being CLEAR with its delivery of jokes and information. clear hilights for me: the hijacker scene (until the ***ism) and the "getting the team back together by walking towards the camera" scene. also the drugs scene lmao.

there were quite a few jokes and gags that misfired or just didnt work at all, but that might be to-be-expected for a film like this. a fun watch as a fan of the source material, but only just.

20/ Arcane S2 (2024)

holy shit this is drop dead gorgeous 110% of the time. every frame a god damn painting.

the plot felt like A LOT of threads that weave in and out of each other. just when everything feels like it's starting to resolve nicely, a thread you forgot about barges in and undoes everything. rinse and repeat. it's fun actually.

very underwhelmed with the ending but w/e. a nice watch

December

21/

[alolanroy]

2023 Media Thread Pt4

Lethal Company: There's not a lot of criticism I can throw at this game that doesn't bounce off as part of the intended experience. I do think that while the quick and cheap deaths make for good comedic value, I think it downplays the terror if you just die without having any clue what happened in the early game. But other than that, it nails the vision even if it isn't for me. Mad respect 7/10

Gundam Evolution Last Shooting: I already missed this game a few weeks after it shuttered. By the final season, the balance was just right and in the final days the group I was playing with started to 'click' with some of the units. I for one, was a monster at the Kampher, racking up insane kill streaks. It's a shame it couldn't have been in this state at launch. Another game killed by its live service model. The final hurrah of lost potential. 7/10

Lego Fortnite: Have you played and early-access survival crafting game before? Good, you can skip this. It sure is one of these. It has a lot of rough edges since it's running inside the framework of another game that doesn't mesh particularly well with it. Plus, fiddling with graphics settings requires relaunch so I couldn't tweak it to look good either. I think what kind of ruins the experience was the rigidity of the progression, which while heavily gated behind too many menus, isn't signposted well. 4/10

Half-Life Deathmatch (25th-anniversary update): What an event! I wouldn't necessarily say I had 'fun', perhaps because the social element has been atrophied by decades of modern multiplayer practices, but I had a blast. We found a server filled with quake weapons with no time limit so it was a high-killstreak, low TTK chaotic mess for like 20 minutes one round. 6/10

Plagiarism and You(Tube): Hbomb's career-ending adventures continue. 7/10

Half-Life Uplink: A neat little bite of HL2. Not a lot of meat on these bones, but it really is impressive how hard they pushed 'realism' in the environmental interaction withing the confines of the engine. 7/10

Into the Radius: Interesting worldbuilding and an ace solitary vibe. It took a bit for the cumbersome resource management to 'click' but the vibes are there. However, I do feel like quicker access to more diverse weapons might have helped hook me more. My strongest experience was doing one of the first missions at night and it went full horror in a way I hadn't experienced yet.

Lego Masters S4: On the positive side, the hosts are finally coming into their own and the challenges felt much more fresh in a way that actually engaged with their medium. However both me and my partner felt the hand of the producers in ways that made us actually angry. Certain teams were straight-up bad. Duckbricks deserved it 100 tho. 7/10

Skyrim - Clockwork: An interesting framing device for an interesting player home. I think it repeated the pitfall of making the open areas too big to be fun to comb over, but the story beats were effective. 6.5/10

Tintin: This is about as good an 3dcg animated Tintin could be. it didn't tickle my fancy but it was gorgeous and had some real inventive sequences. Since they don't really make adventure movies like this anymore, I think it called to mind the treasure-hunting antics of a Lupin movie. objective 8/10 but for me a 7/10

The Boy and the Heron: I don't blame anyone for having trouble following the narrative, since this type of semi-linear magical realism nonsense is a genre I have familiarity with. I remind them that these things work on an emotional axis that Marvel has taught people to ignore. Shoutout to all the Ghibli fans shocked to see their Ghibli movie isn't like those interpolated cooking compilations and cozy Totoro slippers. 9/10

Dragnet (1987): This sure is a late 80's buddy cop action comedy. I wonder if these fellas end up having a future in show buisness or high-quality vodka beverages? It got one good laugh out of me. 5/10

Babylon 5: The Road Home: Honestly, props to MJS and all the returning actors because for a decades-removed continuation, this feels like it didn't miss a beat. I imagine the casting director was sweating bullets trying to recast G'kar though. How can you? 8/10

Pokemon Concierge: Short, sweet, and to the point. I was agape at the technical proficiency of the stop motion, enough that I didn't notice the plot at all. 6/10

Ronin Mecha 2: Defenders of Space: This was made by the 3rd die-hard Autobot Inferno fan for the other two. It lacks that gonzo factor of the rest of the series so far and was pretty skippable. We did pop off when 'Pheonix King' actually turned into a fire truck though. -3/10

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2: At times like these, I regret watching bad movies selected by a spinning wheel. How did this get made? This feels like a tv pilot that got a theatrical release. Theres a Nazi getting beat up by babies???? -5/10

Revenge of the Ninja: Solid ninja movie. A bit meandering but it had the right amount of gadgetry and stunts to keep the crowd's energy up. Shoutout ninja grandma. 6/10

Votoms: the Pailsen Files: At its best, it is alright. At its worst, it is kind of embarrassing. The initial foray into poorly integrated cg mechs is badly integrated that it makes the digital animation look right out of the early digipaint era at times. The OP and ED are sauceless. 5/10

[shierhedg]

OMG, I love them and this love!

I don't understand why so many people hate them. Throughout my time playing HL2, they've only helped me, especially when I was scared X) At least they actually do their job. They shoot at the enemies, even if they're dumb sometimes.

IMHO, it sounds cruel, but I like the fact that they follow Gordon's orders without question. They'll go through fire and water at his first word, and that's convenient. When I was little, I'd just send them to fight the enemies themselves, and I'd go after them, haha

A love letter to your faithful companion NPCs

[sleepii-moth]

"after i played hl2-" and "freemance isnt forced" are two very conflicting statements that are ultimately hilarious

[kyanitedragon]

Some canon reminders and ideas for HLVRAI it's-a-game universe:

Dr. Coomer questioning if Gordon was the player's real name ("I'm assuming that's your real name. You wouldn't lie to us, would you?")

Sure, post-canon as of the PayDay stream everyone knows that they're in a game now, but do they realize what that means for Gordon? How much of "Gordon" was the actual player and how much was Wayne just roleplaying as Half Life's Gordon Freeman?

As seen in the PayDay stream, Benrey somehow knows that Gordon's real name is Wayne. ("You Wayned it!")

Also in the PayDay stream, Benrey made his own let's play of HL2 and tried to show it to Wayne, even if it was entirely unintelligible

In Act 1, a few times the ai questions when Gordon talks to chat

And Tommy asks a few times when Gordon is talking about the media shares

A scene like this, where a real person talks to the player irl, but the ai can overhear them

Loosing his hand might have been a game-only thing, but Wayne was actually having a panic attack during that part of the stream

I've seen a lot of people make jokes about the ai realizing that the player felt no actual pain from the betrayal scene. Now imagine that, only for them to be then hit with the information that yes, the player might not have felt physical pain, but they were having a panic attack. They were still struggling and having a hard time during that scene and the resulting gameplay, even if it wasn't directly because of the military attack.

The player getting distracted by irl things. In Wayne's first Half Life: Alyx stream (his actual playthough, not his gnome run) at one point he stepped on wires that snapped, and at another he saw a shadow and thought it was a person. Both times, the chat as well as Baaulp who was in a discord call with him were very concerned for his safety. (He was perfectly fine both times btw, if you haven't seen the streams)

And at the end of Act 3's stream, Wayne went to physically lie down to "go to bed" in-game, but ended up smacking his head on his dresser. In the behind the scenes, you can hear his friends being concerned and then exasperated.

On these last 4 notes, imagine the horror of that from an ai's perspective, especially if its played up for fanworks for some hurt/comfort. Your friend who is a physical and real person is in emotional distress, or possibly even physical danger. You only have the audio of what's going on, you cannot actually see the real world. You can try to comfort the player but, being a video game character, your comfort can only go so far. But on the player's side, its literally the thought and attempt that counts.

[pokeshadow]

Controversial hot take for the HLVRAI fandom.

I actually don’t want half life 2

Yes really. This is something I’ve been thinking about for like a year now, but I just don’t want to see the gang in half life 2. Here’s my two main reasons. First, the magic of HLVRAI was the fact that half life 1 was a bare bones playset. The game just gives you a set of characters, a super basic plot, then just let you loose. Hell for half the game you don’t even have a big bad guy to go kill or giant plot to go solve, you were JUST Gordon Freeman trying to get out of Black Mesa alive. Eventually the scientests rope you into the whole “hey we kinda fucked up playing with aliens can you go fix it for us please?” thing, but for the most part there’s barely even any dialog or story other than you just trying to find an exit. It was precisly because the game was so barebones that Wayne and the gang could take that playset and make something new with it. They had the room to make up a new story, to just sit down and talk, create entierly new characters and backstories for anything they wanted, and it never broke the flow of the original game. That’s something you just can’t really do in Half Life 2. HL2 has a very strict plot without really any wiggle room to change things. Even when there’s some downtime, there’s always this feeling that you can’t really just stop and relax because people are depending on you. People are talking to you constantly, with set plots you can’t really change and their own lives that are set in stone. Hell even the playspace itself is a lot narrower than the wide open hallways of HL1, the science team would be so squeezed together and right in gordon’s/the cameras face because there’s just no room. Plus, unless Alex, Eli and Kleiner are all played by real people as well, how do you deal with the fact that the real NPC’s are totally ignoring the science team trying to talk to them? Unless they literally build their own version of HL2 from the ground up in Gmod just to cater to their hyper spesific needs, it just wouldn’t work. Plus the story of half life 2 kinda ends on an unfinished cliff hanger. Where do they go with that if they’re following the plot 1 to 1? Second reason, and probably the dumber reason... I don’t want these characters to get hurt again. I love the implication of the ending of HLVRAI that they really did save the world. They went through so much traumatizing shit, but they won. They got to have their pizza party, and then they can start new lives outside of black mesa. Gordon can be with his son again and start streaming Kane and Lynch 2 on justin.tv. Coomer can start his own little boxing career. Bubby can experience the outside world for the first time. Tommy and his dad can finlly reconnect and learn how to be a real family at last, with Sunkist in tow. But with HL2 that would all go away. The world would literally end, and they’d be flung into a far worse sitution than the black mesa incident. Mr Coolatta / Gman might be able to grab them all and put them in stasis for the years between HL1 and 2′s plot so they’re not in any danger, but still. Again, I totally acknowledge how dumb this is, but I don’t want these characters to go though all that. I just want them to be happy.

Which is why I much prefer the idea from the Pay Day 2 stream and Coomer’s final monologue. Take the science team and have new adventures with them in other games and the like. For those who like the in game hlvrai lore, this wouldn’t really touch it much so the characters just get to live their own lives people can make stories about. For the in stream lore it just means Gordon fufils Coomer’s wish of having their data saved and taken with him, so Gordon never forgets his weird ai friends and can have new adventures with them like robbing a bank in PD2. Irl lore, it just means we can keep seeing the characters we love so much, and the RTVS crew aren’t under the enormous pressure of having to somehow top HLVRAI by doing HL2. Lets be honest, there’s a pretty big expectations for HL2VRAI to be something bigger and better than the first, and no matter how fantastic they make a heoretical HL2VRAI, there would always be people dissapointed. Of course there’s also the opposite side of the coin that people would ALSO be dissapointed if the crew came out and said they’ll never do Half Life 2, but as long as we still get to see the characters in SOMETHING again I feel that dissapointment would be lessened a tone. Idk, rambly thoughts, but I just see so many people talking about wanting a HL2VRAI and just wanted to say my thoughts.