More on Half-Life 2

If you're not into Half-Life 2 or FPS in general, you may as well skip this.

I tried that new Combine Destiny mod over the weekend but quickly gave up on it. Why, when the game is renowned for it's superb physics and textures, and you've presumably spent 100s of man-hours designing new layouts, would you want to go and cloak the whole thing in shades of deep black. That's what the modders of Combine Destiny did. I've deleted it. Got pissed off with staring at a black screen, looking for the occasionally dimly illuminated pixel. Atmospheric? Pft!

So I went to Fileplanet and Gamespot, and was rather pleased to discover dozens of maps for my favourite waste of time. Completed a few already. Last night it was the scary 'Nightmare House' map. with it's flickering lights and discarded children's toys (why are broken dolls so scary?). I was running down the drive, shotgun in my hands, surrounded by zombies. I weaved in and out of the lumbering fiends, blasted away two planks of the boarding barring a gateway and click! Out of ammo. In desperation I vaulted the remainder of the gate . . . Game complete! Phew. My hands were shaking.