Two days till 25

It's that time of year again when my birthday sneaks up on me. Although as you get older, the grandeur of birthdays seems to fall of, but then again in two days, I'm going to be 1/4 of a century old soon, so maybe that calls for a celebration. Man...I'm getting too old :P



I managed to pick up Half-Life 2 along the way, and so far I'm enjoying every minute of it. When you open the box, you're greeted with 5 CDs (Grr...they're really cutting back on packaging as the 5 CDs didn't even come in a jewel case...just 5 paper sleeves), a $20 coupon for a purchase of an ATI video card up till March 1, 2005, and instructions on how to install the game. But other than that, no instructions on the background story or anything. You start the game up, and you're plopped in the middle of the game. So far, I'm not really finding any connection between the first and second game, but hopefully as I get further into the game, there should be more connections that become apparent. Although the game isn't as graphically amazing as say, Doom 3, but the presentation is done very well. Most impressive is how the facial movements sync up with the voice acting very well, better than any game I have ever seen so far. One of the small controversies is the decryption (when you first install the game, the files are encrypted) and verification process of the game through Steam, which is Valve's solution to counter pirates (but of course, Ender finds a way around it :P). Also, once you create your Steam account, the serial number of your HL2 game is forever bound to it. But so far, once you get pass the installation process, Steam only comes up to verify your game before playing, so it doesn't seem overly intrusive. Alas, age seems to have caught up with me as I can't play HL2 for more than an hour before getting dizzy or a headache >.< Ah well, hopefully that'll let me appreciate the moments I spend with the game :P