aitap

This. This is the kind of Freeman's Mind I remember downloading via the local DirectConnect hub. Freeman wandering around, getting towards the end of the level almost by mistake, getting in an occasional (one-sided) firefight with zombies, remembering yet another acquaintance of his that is even crazier than him. A very solid episode.

It's a pleasure to know that Gordon's worst apartment was somewhere between a cave in Xen and a flat in Ravenholm. I was looking forward to seeing more interaction with Gregory and it's been a blast. Kudos to the person doing the sound editing for zombie-smashing car sounds: very satisfying.

I'm gonna get so drunk tonight, like, way more than usual. It's Freeman's Mind again! Party! Party! Party!

I think that Spec Ops: The Line should be mentioned here as a first person shooter explicitly deconstructing its premise. I wouldn't want to spoil it here (you can read all the spoilers in the plot on Wikipedia), but the way the "good guys" are shown here to be on increasingly shaky moral ground reminds me a lot of the plot of Spec Ops: The Line.

Hey, thanks for the new FM2 episode! I've noticed I'm starting to feel bad about the way Freeman treats Alyx, despite Freeman isn't that much more of an asshole he'd been since FM1ep1, and I still find the way Freeman unsuccessfully hits on women hilarious. Perhaps the reason for that is not a change in the Freeman's character, but the fact that HL2 characters (1) have more personality than most HL1 NPCs Freeman interacted with and (2) Alyx and most of the Black Mesa East drama is there for the player in front of the screen, not Freeman the character. This can't help but conflict with the series where we pretend that the game world is the real world and Freeman has a mind of his own. Also, the beginning of HL2 is more intense. Black Mesa, especially the underground parts, offers a opportunities to relax; Route Kanal to Water Hazard is just a single death march. Looking forward to seeing Ravenholm (wait what?). No idea what could be the spin (and Freeman's motivation) regarding Nova Prospekt and all that follows.

Very vampire, I approve! BRB, going to re-read The Rhesus Chart. P.S. Please release us from the suspense of the Freeman's gassing. Unless Word of God is that Mossman didn't want to bother reviving him.

I wonder how different is Freemanverse from the official Half-Life 2 universe. I mean, there's the map changes at least, but just how unreliable is Freeman about what he's telling the viewer? Did he really used to keep his research output high enough despite drinking so much he routinely ended up naked in an Austrian dumpster? Is Kleiner that dangerous? And what about Freeman's guesses about his situation, are they as far off in his world as they would be in Half-Life 2? Part of the fun is never getting the definite answers, but I'm curious about what I will learn.

I must say, I was worried that all the modding will lead Freeman's Mind 2 in a direction I wouldn't like at all, but I do like the way this episode turned out. Perhaps HL2 is just a worse fit for an asshole protagonist than HL1, because it's more plot-driven. I hope it won't come to painting yourself into a corner. Thanks a lot and please keep them coming!

Re: Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V not working Ross, maybe the problem is that you copy from web pages, and since modern web pages are monuments of complexity, the target application fails to cope with the clipboard in HTML format? It used to work because browsers were simpler and a minority of pages could only "prevent" copy&paste by hooking right click action, but now that it's okay to ship the equivalent of DOOM installation floppy disk in JavaScript alone to display a few paragraphs of text with images, who knows what actually ends up in the clipboard. Sometimes I explicitly have to ask the target application to "paste in plain text format" (Paste Special -> Plain Text in some word processors) to prevent it from screwing up the document because the browser can offer either, but HTML contains too much stuff. Or maybe it's the browser that fails to cope with complexity and place the required content in the clipboard. For example, the word "Featured" in Facebook feed has been reported to consist of multiple blocks containing different parts of the word, some of them invisible. All to make it harder to block ads, of course. Not that I think that this is okay and couldn't be improved, of course. Just offering what I consider an explanation.

I can't help but mention that there is a band called Apocalyptica. They started by playing cello covers of Metallica (hence the name, I guess), then created their own style (see albums Cult, Apocalyptica, Worlds Collide) of instrumental (and quite tuneful at that) metal. Long time ago, I first found them by accidentally guessing the name after mishearing another band name. Funny coincidence.

I'm not sure if my paper for the assignment counts for full points, but as I developed what could be called my own taste of music, I moved from (they used to play Metallica covers, too!) to to (that one was covered by Iron Maiden once!) (that one is pretty metal if you take into account the person it's sung about) and to various . Me and my peers who were listening to that (there wasn't much of us) felt pretty different. I mean, there is we (there's ) but it's not the majority.

Have you heard about Russian Overkill ZDoom mod? It's literally filled with overpowered weapons that are dangerous to use.