Some of you may see this image and wonder what I'm talking about. I've made a decision that may lose me some blog readers, but it was something I felt like I had to do after reading some of the responders to my last post. I started Half-Life over.

After the God Mode fiasco and thinking over these many months of struggling with this game I debated on whether or not to scrap the whole idea of playing and moving on to Half-Life 2. I considered stopping this game all together and moving on to something else. I also considered just forgetting FPS and going back to my console sports games that I love like NCAA Football 2009. But then I realized it's August 2008. I've devoted 8 months to learning to play FPS games and Half-Life. Now granted I wasted a lot of time, cut corners, didn't play with audio sometimes, used the keyboard wrong. In essence I don't think I learned the right way.

So, I played through the training level again. This time I was using all the correct keys and I moved through it with great ease when last time it took me several days.

I also started Analmous (sp?) Materials over with playing on medium. I got the hazard suit in a matter of seconds after watching the train ride all the way through again. I want a greater appreciation for this game by going back through and seeing how much I actually learned the first time through.

For some of you that wanted to see me finish, well this may have set me back a lot of time, but it's still something I'm determined to do. I think this time through will be more fun because I'll remember things that frustrated the heck out of me the last time. And I'll get to the end levels, eventually, after playing through the first half of the game all over again.

For those of you that read this post and understand my decision I appreciate it. I had lost sight of what I was actually doing and was just playing to be playing. That's why I could go 3 weeks without a post and not think anything of it. Now I can take the game in small steps, get through sections a lot faster, and hopefully have an overall better gaming experience.

I hope most of you who read stick around. I promise to make it exciting.