Half Life Two

Settle down, settle down. It's nap time. I'll tell you a story.

This is a story of adventure, romance, and danger! It's a story about Half Life 2!

Half Life 2 uses an AMAZING new invention called 'STEAM', which stands for 'Security Through Evil Anal Monkeys'. You see, STEAM is a magical tool which, by magic, translates money into the developer's pockets. This is a good and kind WHITE magic, using the internet to solve all our problems. However, the internet is the darkest of black magic, and the spell was befouled.

They insisted the original spell survived unscathed, that you could play without this 'internet'. This turned out to be true. You could play off line. IF YOU WERE ON LINE. This was genius, much like punching someone's face with their own hand and asking why they are hitting themselves.

So, my actual legal purchase did not work. I tried illegal cracks. But even they required internet activation. The curse was complete: no trace of the shining, golden spell they intended to cast remained. All was darkness.

Then, I found a NEW magic spell. I do not know who cast it, or for what reasons, but a million blessings upon them, for now, by magic, I could PLAY WHILE OFF LINE.

And so I played. And it was good. Well, except for the twenty-second load times every minute and a half. And the arbitrary puzzles. It's like freaking Adventure.

But, hey, it's purty. And the setting seems interesting. Eventually, maybe I'll get to see something besides train yards and sewer pipes. Maybe some place with, I dunno, people. Or interesting things to look at. Some place where the primary manufacturing industry doesn't specialize in exploding barrels.