A few years ago, I walked down a hallway towards the light, finding myself in a train yard when I emerged from the dark. There was a bold piece of graffiti on the wall in front of me. It said "Find the Freeman".
I thought "And what are you going to do when you do?"
This is what Gordon Freeman would've thought. A silly statement really, because I was Gordon Freeman at that moment...
From the moment I got onto the tram and stepped off at the anomalous materials laboratory, something felt different. I had cold chills running down my spine while diving down into the nuclear reactors in that HEV suit. The clanging sound that MP5 made just before it needed reloading had me sweating. The darkness and echoes inside those ventilation pipes I had to crawl through kept me on the edge of my seat and wide awake for many nights. Those damn marines just plain annoyed me, even though the challenge of picking them off, one by one (using a crossbow) from 100 meters away was quite a thrill. They wanted to "find me". Instead, I found them.
Everyone has an alter ego. At least once in their life. If I were anyone other than myself, I'd be the charismatic theoretical physicist from Black Mesa. Even though I only resemble him slightly (although a bit more with my stubble these days), I can quite convincingly put myself into his shoes at any given moment. At the time when Dr Freeman became a hero, he was 27 years old. So was I. When I embarked on the journey that is Half-Life 2, that is.
I've played adventure and action PC games since I was 5 or 6, but even though many have kept me entertained over the years, nothing compares to the kind of enthrallment I experienced when I first stepped into Gordon's shoes in 1999. Half-Life changed my world, enriching it with so much imagination and adventure that I've been dreaming about encountering the same kind of challenges Gordon faced ever since. The Half-Life world (specifically the Black Mesa facility) is incredibly expansive, so expansive that I lay awake at night trying to create a map in my mind, only mildly successfully. The storyline was so captivating you couldn't help but daydream about what was going to happen next. Freeman became a hero, not because of having special abilities, but because of what he did. And much there was to do; it's not every day you get to witness the kind of chaos a catastrophic resonance cascade can cause.
Now where's that MP5?