Half-Life - Hiatus

January 29, 2018 Filed in: Video Games

I really looked forward to playing Half-Life, based on its outstanding reputation as one of the great first-person shooters (FPS) of all time. I gave it a try but only managed to finish three levels. Unfortunately, I had to shelve it due to motion sickness. When it comes to FPS games, that is frequently a problem for me. I will probably revisit it in the future and hope for better results. In the meantime, however, I decided to play Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition instead. I already have over 30 hours into BG:EE and should be able to finish it in February.

Postal

January 06, 2018 Filed in: Video Games

As I continue playing my large backlog of computer games in roughly chronological order, next in line was Postal from 1997. It is a somewhat infamous game because of its violent content, featuring a deranged madman on a killing spree. While certainly not an all-time great, it provided a bit of fun for a short time. I completed the 16 levels of the main campaign in around two hours.

The action is presented in a third-person isometric view. The game a bit cartoonish and doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, the best part of the game was experimenting with the wide range of weapons available: machine gun, shotgun, spray cannon, grenades, missiles, heat seeking missiles, Molotov cocktails, napalm, flame thrower, and mines. There was a variety of settings leading up to the final level set on a U.S. Air Force Base.

Postal ended up a brief diversion after playing a true classic in Total Annihilation with another classic yet to come. Next up is Half-Life.

Total Annihilation

January 04, 2018 Filed in: Video Games

I devoted most of my gaming time in December to Total Annihilation (TA). It was definitely one of my favorite computer games played in 2017. Frequently mentioned as one of the greatest real time strategy games of all time, I finally got around to playing it twenty years after its release. The story line of the main campaign revolves around a galactic war. The incumbent power is a governing body known as CORE. The population of CORE embraced “patterning,” which is the transfer of human consciousness into machines. This did not sit well with everyone, however. Some citizens rebelled and formed an organization known as ARM. Thus began the war between ARM and CORE. ARM’s soldiers adopted high-powered combat suits while CORE transferred the minds of its finest soldiers into combat machines. TA begins after four thousand years of warfare has left both sides at a stalemate. The game offers an ARM campaign and a CORE campaign of 25 missions each.

I opted to play the ARM campaign. It took a little while to learn all of the buildings and units for ARM and CORE. There is a wide variety of ground, water, and air units. Thankfully, the number of units available started small and grew as the missions progressed. It started with land battles and added mixed ground/water, ground/air, and other combos as the story progressed. Eventually, things led to a final confrontation on CORE Prime in the last mission. Victory was achieved when my commander stood atop the Core Command Dome.

Although I had a lot of fun playing the ARM campaign, I am not quite ready to invest the time required to complete another 25 missions for the CORE campaign. There is plenty of gameplay left as I own The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics expansion packs. Counting the add ons, there are well over 100 missions left to play.