It's one of the shrewdest mixes of action and brainwork that you'll find in a first-person shooter; as the complex story unfolds, you'll be involved in some heavy exploration and difficult puzzle-solving. With a stunning interactive intro that has all the cinematic style of a cut scene, Half-Life sets the scene better than any shooter to date. You're a Ph. Moreover, you have to confront all sorts of mutated creatures that come fast and furious--yet, for all its smarts, Half-Life doesn't stint on action.
The multiplayer options weren't implemented in our advance copy, but the early single-play missions are up to snuff and then some. Even incomplete, Half-Life's environments showed astonishing quality, and its killer sound is true 3D: Conversations and ambient noises rise and fade realistically as you move toward and past them.
Half-Life also boasts an opponent A. Put this one on your must-have list for the holidays. Half-Life has arrived and will hopefully mark the dawn of a new genre: the thinking-man's shooter. It's faster than Quake II , prettier than Unreal , and more satisfyingly logical than any other corridor-crawler on the market. Players are very firmly placed in the boots of year-old Gordon Freeman, a scientist at the underground Black Mesa Research Facility.
You're at ground zero when a mysterious interdimensional experiment goes awry, and after the project literally blows up in your face, you have to find a way to the surface, picking off otherworldly nasties along the way. But what will you find once you get there? For once, you're not the only guy left in the world; there are other survivors of the accident, and you'll need their help to achieve your goals. Scientists will open doors and give you items, while security guards will help you splatter invaders across the wall.
The presence of others makes things much more emotionally involving. Half-Life's scientific world is one of the most logical ever created on a PC. Power-ups appear where you would expect-- ammo and guns lie next to soldiers' corpses, first-aid kits line the halls of the science labs, and so on. You won't find any floating shotguns in this realm.
Furthermore, your actions and puzzle solutions are all dictated by your need to survive in such a situation--context is a surprisingly powerful thing. Half-Life uses about 30 percent of Quake ll's engine--the developer, Valve, added its own enhancements for the rest--and it's quite an impressive overhaul with fast frame rates and excellent graphical detail throughout Unlike in other corridor-shooters, you won't find cookie-cutter stock effects here; the sounds are robust original, and often integral to your survival.
A low-clutter weapons interface and superior A. Quake II still wins the multiplayer war, but Half-Life's single-player adventure carries more weight than all the other thinly plotted shooters put together. With a perfect mix of brains and brawn, Half-Life stands as a breathtaking new achievement in gaming. All the details have been considered. Hires textures and smoothly animated models give the world palpable realism, while special effects like lightning will floor you.
The music's cool, but you'll want to turn it off to hear the sound effects--otherworldly shrieks, walkie-talkie chatter, and perfect gunfire: Reverb and spatial effects make the game intensely immersive. Any key can control any movement, plus Half-Life allows two configs to run simultaneously, enabling you to easily switch between the keyboard and the joystick. It might sound too good to be true, but its not--Half-Life truly sets a new standard for first-person gaming in terms of quality, immersion, and narrative.
You should buy it immediately. A top-secret experiment gone wrong floods your hidden lab with extra-dimensional monsters. Your friends and co-workers lie dying on the ground. Only the Hazardous Environment Suit you were wearing has kept you alive thus far. Military troops have entered the base, intent on exterminating any evidence of their black activities, including you and your colleagues. Alarms are sounding, slimy monsters are drooling, blue-collar security guards are fighting to protect the scientists, and army goons are mowing down anything that moves.
What we need is a hero, someone to sort out this three-way slug-fest with extra helpings of pump-action justice. Unfortunately, it's going to have to be someone else because you just ran out of ammo and bent your crowbar on some toothy monster's skull.
It is, without a doubt, the best single-player first-person shooter ever. I also have a "poop" bunny and a "crap" bunny. His dazed, delirious expression reminds me of your drawings. But I especially love the drawing of your "evil plotting" face. The big, pathetic eyes remind me of my chihuahua whenever she's terrified of something. Your posts are the only thing on the entire internet that actually make me laugh, as opposed to vaguely smiling or staring blankly at the screen probably drooling.
As others have said, the pictures at the end were incredibly amazing. I love your blog, keep up the great work!!! Thank you for consistently putting me in a position to be silently doubled-over, teary-eyed, and desperately trying not to snort in hysterics while at my office. I love you in all your glorious hilariousness, but the adult in me wants to know how you were punished and assure that it was adequate. I guess that says a lot about your skills as a writer - way to make me still love you but feel so strongly what adults must have felt about this!
Your gift of words has caused me to laugh myself to tears not only while I'm in the midst of an depressed downswing, but also in the middle of a bookstore. And hilarious. Thank you for sharing your gift with the rest of us. Somebody just implemented photoshop into their comics! That was epic. I would have never made or brought cake into the house ever again out of pure evil spite. Perhaps I shouldn't become a parent. I believe I'm starting to scare my co-workers by reading your posts at work, but I cannot help myself.
Also, this was too well-timed to not link back to my blog. Ahhhhh finally a new post!! It feels like it's been forever! And this one absolutely didn't disappoint - hysterical as always. Allie, I need to stop reading your articles and therefore you really need to stop posting them when I'm in the middle of a boring Contracts class. It is entirely inappropriate to start laughing uncontrollably when discussing the tedious details of the Uniform Commercial Code.
I was doing pretty well until the look on your face when you got caught. I still have a similar reaction after eating a bit of ice cream cake.
So I assume from your wording that now you DO have the ability to pick locks? I only just discovered your blog a few weeks ago and then spent the better part of a work week trying not to let my boss hear me snorting with laughter as a read through ALL your archives!
And then I was out of posts to read and it made me feel sad. But I checked every single day for a new post, and here it is! But now I've read it and I'm out of posts to read and I feel sad again.
Another post, please!?!?! It's so cool that I don't have to be high off my ass or trippin balls to enjoy this post!! I have got to learn not to read your posts at work. I am not supposed to be playing and attempting to control my laughter often proves very, very difficult. My niece did something very similar Glad to see you're back.
I just discovered this blog awhile ago when Woot! That was about a month ago for your last post. For awhile there, I thought your absence was my fault. It wouldn't be the first a blogger decided to stop posting as soon as I find out about them, I've been burned before.
But now, my conscience is clear. Sorry to hear about Brett Favre, hope you are managing. Dear Allie, I love all of your posts. I laugh at all of your posts. I created a dreamcatcher out of all of your posts to ensure I only have awesome dreams. Your writing and illustrating skills so compliment one another that the resulting hilarity is just ferocious.
I don't remember the last time something I read on a computer screen made every muscle in my body convulse with laughter. You have a gift. I hope your life is fantastic. Much love, chica. I love that you manage to make me laugh every single time.
I mean, I actually started this one a little worried, thinking that maybe the Party post had been so good that it would outshine every following post. But no. This was awesome. I'm with Noelle! I read the entire archives a couple weeks ago. Then I was sad. Yay new post! Yay cake! Was your grandfather a fan of marshmallow animals? Post a Comment. The God of Cake. My mom baked the most fantastic cake for my grandfather's 73rd birthday party. The cake was slathered in impossibly thick frosting and topped with an assortment of delightful creatures which my mom crafted out of mini-marshmallows and toothpicks.
To a four-year-old child, it was a thing of wonder - half toy, half cake and all glorious possibility. But my mom knew that it was extremely important to keep the cake away from me because she knew that if I was allowed even a tiny amount of sugar, not only would I become intensely hyperactive, but the entire scope of my existence would funnel down to the singular goal of obtaining and ingesting more sugar.
My need for sugar would become so massive, that it would collapse in upon itself and create a vacuum into which even more sugar would be drawn until all the world had been stripped of sweetness.
So when I managed to climb onto the counter and grab a handful of cake while my mom's back was turned, an irreversible chain reaction was set into motion. I had tasted cake and there was no going back. My tiny body had morphed into a writhing mass of pure tenacity encased in a layer of desperation.
I would eat all of the cake or I would evaporate from the sheer power of my desire to eat it. My mom had prepared the cake early in the day to get the task out of the way. She thought she was being efficient, but really she had only ensured that she would be forced to spend the whole day protecting the cake from my all-encompassing need to eat it. I followed her around doggedly, hoping that she would set the cake down - just for a moment. My mom quickly tired of having to hold the cake out of my reach.
She tried to hide the cake, but I found it almost immediately. She tried putting the cake on top of the refrigerator, but my freakish climbing abilities soon proved it to be an unsatisfactory solution. Her next attempt at cake security involved putting the cake in the refrigerator and then placing a very heavy box in front of the refrigerator's door. The box was far too heavy for me to move. When I discovered that I couldn't move the box, I decided that the next best strategy would be to dramatically throw my body against it until my mom was forced to move it or allow me to destroy myself.
Surprisingly, this tactic did not garner much sympathy. I went and played with my toys, but I did not enjoy it. I played vengefully for the rest of the afternoon. All of my toys died horrible deaths at least once. But I never lost sight of my goal. My mom finally came to get me. She handed me a dress and told me to put it on because we were leaving for the party soon.
I put the dress on backwards just to make her life slightly more difficult. I was herded into the car and strapped securely into my car seat. As if to taunt me, my mom placed the cake in the passenger seat, just out of my reach.
We arrived at my grandparents' house and I was immediately accosted by my doting grandmother while my mom walked away holding the cake. I could see my mom and the cake disappearing into the hallway as I watched helplessly. I struggled against my grandmother's loving embrace, but my efforts were futile. I heard the sound of a door shutting and then a lock sliding into place.
My mom had locked the cake in the back bedroom. How was I going to get to it now? I hadn't yet learned the art of lock-picking and I wasn't nearly strong enough to kick the door in. It felt as though all my life's aspirations were slipping away from me in a landslide of tragedy. How could they do this to me? How could they just sit there placidly as my reason for living slowly faded from my grasp?
I couldn't take it. My little mind began to crumble. And then, right there in my grandmother's arms, I lapsed into a full-scale psychological meltdown. My collective frustrations burst forth from my tiny body like bees from a nest that had just been pelted with a rock.
It was unanimously decided that I would need to go play outside until I was able to regain my composure and stop yelling and punching. I was banished to the patio where I stood peering dolefully through the sliding glass door, trying to look as pitiful as possible. I think there is a version with 5 bonus tracks dated in ?
Thanks Marios. I've been listening to Blue Cheer quite a bit recently. This opportunity to hear what Randy Holden was doing earlier is most welcome.
I used to have an import vinyl of something similar to this collection. Also no. Ask people what their memories are of watching videos at school and you can draw an international map of horror, a geography of fear based on various unique-to-their-locale ways children could die if they stopped paying attention and the tapes that taught them to be afraid of them.
In England we had the constant threat of trains blasting us apart and also fireworks, which, if held too long in autumn, would explode all of our arms and legs off in one go. In India, the menace of contaminated water loomed large. It wrinkles my clothes! The ice breaks. The water freezes. A bird like a fridge screams that you are going to die.
Each lecture will last for half-an-hour. Many of the shows played in what was then the pre- This Morning dead zone of broadcasting during the working and school day — The Broadcasting Act of meant broadcasting hours were regulated by the British government, but exemptions for sports and educational programming meant a boom in production of low-budget public service programming that was repeated, again and again, often for decades.
In one feature, surgeons from the University of Manchester gave a stuffed toy Peter the Panda treatment on a heart-lung machine, using modelling clay for the organs and plastic tubing for the arteries. Then you have seen Experiment or one of its spin-offs , which was written, devised and often narrated by former chemistry teacher Jack Smith.
But as well as recreating explosions from a safe distance, the advent of educational videos allowed teachers to outsource the more awkward aspects of educating teenagers, namely sex ed. I think videos are a great tool we don't utilise enough — YouTube alone has thousands of videos I watch to give myself ideas before I teach them on.
So sometimes it just makes more sense to show a video… although I do love teaching sex ed. It was just easier to teach it that way. And crucially: every shot is about information.
0コメント