These past few days have been all about learning the right way to play Half-Life and games in general. I spent a few hours on Saturday with pupismyname at his house and we loaded my quicksave game on his machine and I began to play with him watching over my shoulder. When I left off the last time I was experiencing my first encounter with the soldiers. One lucky grenade launch later and I had cleared the room of them. I took that slow opportunity to practice my movement. I thought I showed improvement, but one glaring weakness is that I'm too wrapped up in movement to really look around and pay attention. I was too concerned with getting two clips of ammo that I didn't see a grenade launched at me (I died). As I made it up an elevator shaft I got outside to an area with helicopters and a ton of soldiers, with much of the same results. I was too wrapped up in my movements to watch out for a bombardment of soldiers and grenades.

This is where practice comes in and I am focused at the moment on getting these moves down. I may back track in the game, do another round in the training facility, or even start the game over to sure up these movements. Regardless, I want the full experience of half-life instead of just "getting by" so I'm going to do what I have to do.

Sorry there aren't any screen shots of the latest action, but I wasn't playing on my machine. There will be more soon as I play again.

An awesome shacker that goes by changejar419 heard my cries of weakness as far as my movement in half-life and recommended to me that I play a game like Unreal Tournament. So he sent me UT2K4 in the mail.



and this awesome letter ...



I have no idea what this game is about, but it's worth a shot. If it can help me learn to play the right way, I'm game.

more to come ...