I’ll play it with an Xbox controller on PC, but what I mean is the thematic impact of playing it while so much of the world is also isolated isn’t - hopefully won’t be - repeatable.

It’ll always feel like a relic of that time, won’t it? I wonder how we’ll talk about it in 20 years…

I played a chunk of it then on PS4, but found the text exhausting and put it down. One of these days I’ll have to play it on PC, but it just won’t feel the same.

Yeah, the vehicles and battlefield chaos are really well executed. It feels genuinely grandiose today, so it must have been mind blowing at the time. I can also tell the campaign is meant to teach you how to play multiplayer, which other games would go on to do in the years to come.

There’s a lot of Battlefield 3 in there. Or the other way around, more appropriately.

I played a bit of Infinite coop - that game is super faithful, by way - and that was a lot of fun. Playing this in 2001 with a friend must have been fantastic fun.

You know, having just played the Library level, I get the feeling that it was thematically necessary to drive home the scale of the cosmic horror you’re facing. It needs to be exhausting, overwhelming, unending…

I tried it on PC in 2004 and all I got was a slide show.

Incredible, I’m sure. Especially for people who weren’t playing on PC before - it generally stands up to Half-Life in a lot of ways, including the enemy movement and maybe even AI, but the cutscenes have that more traditional cinematic look. I love the constant immersion of Half-Life, but this feels like watching an awesome sci-fi action movie, like Aliens. There’s enough survival horror and cosmic horror vibes as well to keep you going.

[crosses legs and hums]

Halo: Combat Evolved. I get what all the hype was about. This is a good game!