I meant to post this two days ago but I didn’t finish and got caught up in some family matters that made me busy.
I remember it was six years ago, the summer right before the fifth grade. Video games were pretty big in my life but I was separating apart from our relationship. Every now and then I would play the usual round of Starcraft without paying any heed with only mass rushes. I would sit in front of my pal’s Playstation into round after round of Mortal Kombat Trilogy until one of us got fed up through the course and threw the controller at each other. The industry was full of mediocrity at the time, with an occasional quip and gimmick. “Innovations” were making characters’ breasts larger or moving the player into the bold step of being able to make a highly grainy and pixilated stripper “Shake it”. It seemed the shooter was dying after all every game manufactured was just a new maze full of monsters that rushed at you. It seemed I was ready to quit.
Suddenly something came along and changed my world. Ironically just about the same time that the fall semester started and my life began transforming into the drudging pit of despair that engulfed later parts of my years I had heard of a brand new FPS already being nominated for GOTY awards. But it was no real use by then for I had no time for games. I was too busy caught up in tedious tasks dealing with long division, trickery, a+b=nothing important and surviving this world full of bullies, assholes, idiots, numbnuts, retards, morons, motards, douchebags and bitches. Then when of all things watching a VHS of
Rush Hour of all things I finally saw it in Action, well actually I had seen Half-Life before yeeearsss before this in an insignificant spot on “Electronic Playground”, but I still remember this moment in my head. A group of quick-pasted together scenes conveying adrenaline in sight rushed past my eyes. A man was grabbed by this horrible 50 foot long tentacle and pulled through glass, a squad of marines dropped down from ropes then dropped a bomb into the sewer tunnel you were at and closed the airlock, a rocket was fired by the protagonist’s and though it went off mark, spiraled into it’s target and created a spectacular light show in the enemy Apache helicopter with the guide of a laser. My first reaction? “Whoa.”
My cousin and I downloaded the demo immediately which was a stand alone mission not seen anywhere in the released game. We were hooked. Sure a lot of the things done in Half-Life were done before but it mixed a lot of them in and did it well. The AI still freaks me out to this day with its intelligence, I remember it being the first shooter I played with opposing enemy factions that fought each other and containing allies that shot back if you screwed around. It had real story, real emotions, real team interactions which made it feel you didn’t feel like you were just in a maze but a real world and scripted sequences larger than life. I remember the first time I encountered a barnacle, I was about to walk right into it’s tongue before a green beret popped up in front of me as before he fired was dragged up from the ceiling as if a noose was wrapped around his neck and suffocated and dismembered by a horrible creature. I remember feeling really helpless watching through a window as a friend died or climbing up a ladder only to be greeted by a body right in your face. I was enraged at the conclusion after annihilating an alien army I was completely helpless because of some suit and had to either work for evil or die. I remember fondly losing my Half-Life virginity.
It didn’t just do a lot of things for us of course. It changed the gaming industry’s standard of a shooter itself and you can blame it for companies replicating the same formula over and over. It won game of the year award after game of the year award. Sure this boy had played video games before regularly but he wasn’t really
into it until this gem came along. Half-Life made me a gamer. From playing
Team Fortress Classic I regrettably learned to “leetspeak” fluently and spent day after day after school playing it. Soon it wasn’t just Team Fortress I was playing but
The Opera,
Front Line Force,
Neo TF and later Counter-Strike the #1 action game which almost single-handedly made me quit gaming. I delved into other shooters as well, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, the list goes on. Pretty soon two years have passed I was now in the 7th grade and it was still the number one game online. I now had friends who were no longer afraid of girls and had long enough attention spans to play this with. We had LAN parties and tournaments, the people I once taught the mechanics of a game were now beating me round after round. It was a great time.
I thought the phenomenon would be over in another year but the mod community stayed strong and kept dispensing modification after modification and update after update. Eventually it looked nearly nothing like the original product. Now voice communications were possible due to the efforts of Valve. After five years it was still the number one game. But by then I was in high school and I had too many things to worry about than some silly game. I was suffering from depression and couldn’t afford to keep up to date with my hobby. By now most of my friends in my environment have so many narcotics in their bloodstream they couldn’t last a round. And nothing on the market looked too interesting or innovative.
Then on the date of the 2003 Electronics Entertainment Expo, my cousin called me up and told me I have to come over right now. A reporter friend of his told him that footage of Half-Life 2 was being distributed over the internet. Half-Life 2? They’re making a sequel now? A grainy video of the original Half-Life G-Man popped out and was replaced by a man who could’ve been from real life. An announcer detailed that he had over 40 facial muscles built in him and lip synching is so good that deaf people reportedly understood speech by viewing intently in his lips. We watched wood break at the excact location where it was shot then barrels falling down after a beam was broke. We watched a trendy anti gravity gun sweep up a dead body and slam him into a table throwing him and the table’s contents into the photo-realistic-water. I thought Doom 3 looked good and then I saw this. We continued viewing as enemies were chopped to bits, when a radiator was ripped off a wall then used as a shield and shot onto a combine soldier. We watched as a bomb was thrown underneath a shed which fell down and crush the people under. We watched as a futuristic aircraft blew the power lines up and down trying to gun you down, flapping the skeletons of cars, pushing them towards you until it was finally shot down skidded and flew right into you. We watch a hundred foot tall H.G Wells inspired tripod-creature impale a man and throw kick him off. It had the most realistic physics I had ever seen outside of real life. You people were still talking about the overly dark and bump mapped visuals of Doom 3 when I was trying to shout out: “THERES BETTER!” If I could sum it up in a sentence “It was the prophesized game sent to God sent to rule the other games and judge the wicked.” The child inside me was born again. And I couldn’t believe it when they announced it was coming this fall not next this fall, only three or so months away!
But those months had passed and no Half-Life 2. It was estimated that it’ll be released by Christmas but it didn’t come. Later on it was reported that Valve had been hacked and work had been lost within it. The gaming community remained on their seats hectic. Gabe Newell issued a plea for the community to help track the hacker down and enlisted the help of the FBI. Rival game developers began making wild accusations after another release date citing that the footage was false and wasn’t possible, that Valve is tricking people into buying an incomplete and poor product. I wasn’t sure when it was to be released. By then I had looked to more “serious” causes about the future, and the community. I then got dragged into political causes advocating leftist policies, which were a terrible waste of time. When I wasn’t working the soup kitchen, or feeding the elderly, or sweeping up the streets my sister dragged me along to rally for her friend Matt Gonzalez who was running for mayor. We failed. She got me to fight for abortion rights. We failed. She got me to stand up to gay rights. We failed. My friend had me funding John Kerry. We failed. I began seeking something called “love”, limited my monthly comics to only
Gotham Central and
Y-The Last Man and began working more just to pay for upgrades needed for the betterment of the game. I played Natural Selection for a week straight to get back on track with my skills. We still waited, we patiently waited. Then they gave a date! No this time its for real! They weren’t kidding. November the 16th! It was going gold.
By now it’s already out and it’s already been nominated for awards but I’m scared to pick it up. I have my preorder ticket at Gamestop right in front of me but I’m not sure how this is going to affect me. When I was introduced to it I was 10 and now I’m 16 but I feel just the same thinking about it. I’m afraid it’s going to cut me off from other activities, such as school and school work, my job, friends, even sex unless it has to do with the sweet love I’m going to make with this game. If you think my absence from the DCMBs was bad wait until you see continues from here. The future of gaming his here and mine have ended.
Pick up the crowbar. GAME ON!
