Let's Breakdown: Half-Life 2 [part 4 - Highway 17]

Vroom Vroom (it’s a car this time)

The main menu continues to keep you drawn in.

                Ah, Highway 17, my (personal) favourite chapter of the game because of its atmosphere and general ‘feel’, and that’s not taking into account the more enjoyable, open gameplay and numerous moments. In a sense it’s the game’s first chapter in which you are truly isolated, save for brief interactions with other Resistance members at the start and a little way in, otherwise it’s just you, your (well, Alyx’s) scout car, the antlions and a whole lot of combine. The coastline is long, barren and littered with antlion-repelling devices, which are essentially tall devices that constantly strike the earth, releasing tremors that repel the antlions. The coastline is also littered with Resistance bases be they abandoned or taken over, abandoned (or now infested) houses of citizens who lived along the coast and various temporary Combine bases

I just watched... Spirited Away

Strike three, for Miyazaki.

Late Post, originally written a while ago. 

                What is with this world and the number three? Why is the number three used as a number to define, decide and contain so many things? Trilogies are the most common format, forming a mass equivalent to forty-two blue whales if you try to somehow calculate the masses of forms of media. What is this fixation with the number three?

                Perhaps the easiest assumption to make is that it is smallest number with a ‘central’ value, since it is the smallest odd number which lets it form a ‘typical’ arc of Introduction – Build up – Climax that is usually how so many stories enjoy progressing, as it is the most basic and the easiest to digest format, and one that is rather ‘self-serving’ in many ways.

I just played... Shovel Knight

Let’s platform like it’s 1987.

                Nostalgia is an interesting thing and it’s the kind of thing we humans assume a lot of wrong things about. Is nostalgia a good thing? Is nostalgia a bad thing? Do we love something old because of the tertiary memories that accompany it? Do we love something because it harks back to things you truly liked? Do we love something because it harks back to things that aren’t done anymore? Nostalgia is a tricky little bugger, one that can often be responsible for the unnecessary clouding of our judgement and be responsible for the full blown love or hate for something.

Let's Breakdown: Half-Life 2 [part 3 - We don't go to Ravenholm]

To go where people don’t go anymore.

                We don’t go to Ravenholm

Atmosphere is one of the most important and one of the most underestimated parts of a game. A great atmosphere can do a LOT for a game – improve its gameplay, make it more memorable, give it a greater sense of identity and so on. I’ve spoken about the game’s excellent atmosphere and Ravenholm shows us one of the game’s other elements, the variety in atmosphere which is consistent yet changes things up rather often.

I just played... Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Half dreary, half lively.

                Franchises have one thing common to all of them: they are all gripping in the darkness of a milking abyss, gasping for a breath of fresh air, a breath that is unlikely to ever arrive as taking a whiff of a fresh batch of air is something those on the higher chairs will generally not want to risk stepping down for. It’s no surprise that most franchise products have a tendency to develop a sense of staleness, sterility and all-round dullness – all owing to an adamant desire to not think out of the box.

Let's Breakdown: Half-Life 2 [part 2 - Water Hazard and Black Mesa East]

Vroom Vroom

                Water Hazard

                                Water Hazard starts with an example of a staple feature of the Half-Life series - little 'moments' in the game that the player can interact with, moments that are somewhat picturesque and set themselves up from a bit of a distance. In this case the 'moment' is the brief encounter with the abandoned (err... infested) Resistance station in the little house just a little out of the way.

Psychorner: 'Happiness'

The quotation marks are very important.

See, I went through all the effort of drawing this.

Disclaimer: These are my personal views, I am not a philosopher, this is pure philosofapping, I love talking to people and I love coffee (so, if you want to discuss this feel free to take me for coffee- please, I really want coffee).

                If I were to summarize my current state in life I’d say that I’m currently meandering about like Goku on Snake-way, in the fact that I have a pretty clear and dainty idea of where I have to go but have no clue about how I’m going to get there, how long it’s going to take or how many exotic snake-women I’m going to meet along the way. One of the things my current lifestyle propagates are meaningless contemplations regarding life, the universe and all that jazz, though I suppose I might feel bad for those who studied philosophy considering the fact that I can take a drunken morning off to ponderously ponder things in life – like the principles and ethics behind cheese – and can call myself a ‘philosopher’ based off the fact that I just think random thoughts a lot and then try to articulate it in a way to create the illusion of ‘making sense’ and then try to put it down in word so that it all comes across as some really deep train of thought and not as something I thought about while I try to summarize my current state in life.