Livestream 7/29/2021 – Civilization II

You ask a few people who’ve been playing PC games for a while to list some early 2000s iconic games Half-Life 2 will likely get mentioned by just about everyone. Valve crafted a sequel to an already groundbreaking game that took interactive storytelling, world interaction and a physics engine into directions that had not been explored yet to that degree. While the game is basically linear in design the story it tells through the world and your gameplay is sublime and the emount of world puzzles that rely on physics was at least for me completely new.

Other games touted interactivity but it was usually just a button to flip or a level to pull like Duke Nukem 3D. It did something neat but that was the end of it. Half-Life 2 offered full physical interaction with the objects in the game world which provided some really neat puzzles. The gravity gun picking up objects and launching them with excessive force will always be a favorite. Flying sawblades and zombies a plenty to be had in this game and it’s a blast.

I can see why Valve has opted not to make Half-Life 3 at this point because the expectations on that sort of game would basically be unreachable. They’ve instead gone the route of making games around that world but not a direct sequels like Half-Life Alyx which is a VR exclusive game. One I’d love to experience because Valve has proven they really are the masters of sublime story telling and fun to play games. Look at Portal and Portal 2 to see other terrific examples there.

I could wax on forever about how awesome the Half-Life games are and specifically 2 here but for now feel free to check out the livestream replay below. It was super fun to revisit the game after not having played it for so long.