I LOVE Half-Life 2. It is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest games I have EVER had the enjoyment of playing.

And I'm not even half way through it yet.

Before I really get into this, I just want to say I bought The Orange Box specifically for Portal. I could have cared less about whatever the hell that half-life thing was, and Team Fortress 2 was an added bonus. Portal was all I wanted to play. So I buy it, beat Portal the next day, and then keep on playing it for days. This is because Portal is an amazing game, and I would've have bought it standalone if I had to. But that's beside the point. After a while, I start to get tired of Portal and it's twisted humour and gameplay. So, I decide to play Half-Life 2, but not before looking up the original on wikipedia, and getting the basic plotline down. And after all, I wanted to know why people love it so damn much.

After getting in City 17, throwing the can at the guard, (lol, I really did do that the first time) and basically running around for half an hour, I get tired of it, and turn it off. Now, this is where the 'finally' in my post title comes in. I don't play it for weeks, until one day, I get the urge to go back in and give it another shot. Once again, I run around for a little while, only this time, I find where I'm supposed to go, feel really cool dodging civil protection along that building, meet Alyx and Kleiner, until I get stuck in the Route Kanal level, twice, on seperate occasions. Also note that at this point I was beginning to really like the game, but me continually getting stuck in places puts me in a bad mood.

The weeks roll by, until, just the other day, reading atheistium's blog on her problems with checkpoints, specifically in Half-Life 2, I decide, YET AGAIN, to take a swing on HL2. Only this time, I refer to a FAQ, where I had a stunning revelation.

Gordon Freeman is equipped with a flashlight.

Armed with this incredible knowledge, I race back into those tunnels, destroy a few manhacks(at least I think that's what they're called) hop on the airboat; have a KILLER TIME through feeling like a total badass, dodging that chopper with awesome fast paced music; and then finally bringing it down, getting to the base, meeting Eli and my so-far favorite character Dog, and now I'm stuck in Ravenholm.

See that last paragraph? See how it's one long sentence (fragment)? I get excited just thinking about it. You see, this is the first time I have ever felt like an actual hero, making an actual difference. It's also stimulated the strongest emotional response I have ever given for a game, and, specifically, it's 3-dimensional, realistic characters. If you played the game you know what I'm talking about.

But I want to take out one example that stands strongly in my mind. After you reach Eli's base, and get the gravity gun, Alyx proposes a game of fetch with her robotic 'dog', Dog. This was meant to be an in-game tutorial on how to use the gravity gun, but for me, it was more than that. Because, through the entire game, I was just shooting monsters and the combine, running and shooting to reach this. And then, it changes. For once, I get to play a simple little game with characters I'm really starting to care about, while having a load of fun, and getting a REALLY cool gun at the same time. And then, that damn fucking combine shows up, and ruins it. So now, I'm in Ravenholm, blasting my way out, with a determined goal. Finding Alyx, Dog, Eli, and that other bitch, and hoping to hell they're all right.

And that's it. Just buy the goddamn game. It's so good, I can't take it.

One more thing. You know how you can pick up paint cans with the gravity gun, and when you throw them, it creates a splatter of paint on a surface? Well the other night, I was bored in Ravenholm (stuck is more like it) and decided to do this.

I painted an entire room in Ravenholm, one splatter mark at a time. The whole process took me about 25 minutes. A somehow painted zombie and shotgun lie in either corner. Those miscolored splotches are some kind of stain, and could not be entirely painted over. Neither could the blood. (cool!)