Wow. Busy. Work. And Half Life 2. And comment spam.

First, my sincerest thanks to the jerk currently at 221.219.2.87 for comment spamming me; moderation's enabled for the time being. Hope we can get a nice CAPTCHA thingy implemented here soon.

While it might *look* to the casual observer like Halo 2 came out and I stopped blogging, it's more like Halo 2 came out, and then Half Life 2 came out, and I wasn't blogging because between my extended work hours (busy at work), and my extended home hours (avec loud sound effects), there's no time for anything, really. I refuse to apologize, cos blogging apologies are possibly the least useful of the wide range of useless blog posts.

Back to something I care about: I really wanted to say that HL2 rocks, but something's stopping me from saying that. I can't yet articulate what my problem with HL2 is, but there's something not quite right about it. As a technical accomplishment, it's pretty darn amazing - graphics on a par with Doom 3 in some ways (I think Far Cry still looks most appealing of that set). As a game that you play, I don't know... it just feels like work for a lot of the time.

Aha - I think I've got it - what am I fighting for? Where's the story!?  I'm at least halfway through and haven't a clue why I'm here, where I am, what's going on, or who I'm fighting against from the game itself. I feel like I'm going through the motions because it's asked of me, and the game is basically on rails. Shoot this, Gordon. Do that, Gordon. Travel sixty eight miles for no obvious reason, Gordon. Solve this puzzle using the ridiculously conveniently placed items we put here just to slow you down, Gordon.

My desire to see what happens next is overriding my lack of interest in the story so far... hope it gets clearer from here.