Longtime listeners and friends who know my gaming history know that I was a console kid growing up. I had a PC with a few games, but it was mostly edutainment games, TIE Fighter and Rollercoaster Tycoon. By the time 2004 rolled around, I was firmly into the Gamecube and Xbox, with PC gaming far in the rear-view mirror. When Half-Life 2 released, I never heard about it. I continued on without hearing about it until I started seeing the Half-Life 3 memes, when I started to gather that Half-Life 2 was maybe pretty good, or something. Why else would its sequel become a meme? But I'm not a PC gamer, or wasn't at the time, so I just figured I'd let that lie.
Fast forward a while, when I finally remember that PC games exist, and there are a lot of good games out there that maybe my budget laptop can run! As a rule of thumb, indie games and anything released before 2010 is generally, maybe possible on my laptop. Portal 2 can run on my laptop, and hey didn't Valve put out another critically acclaimed first-person game? Luckily Half-Life 2 also ran just fine, with some hitches and slowdown here and there, but that's to be expected. And there was always that nagging doubt that happens whenever I boot up a critically acclaimed game from decades past- does it hold up? Not to spoil what we talk about in the episode too much, but.....yeah! It's great!
I'm joined in episode 35 of Tales from the Backlog by Jay Davis from the Super Bracket Bros podcast to deep dive into Half-Life 2. Super Bracket Bros is a "who would win in a fight" tournament style podcast where fictional characters from all kinds of media are pitted against each other in single combat. The current season is focusing on firearms experts, and I was even on the first episode where Archer faced off against Black Widow. Find Jay and Super Bracket Bros wherever podcasts are found, as well as on their website, Instagram and Patreon!
You can listen to episode 35 (Half-Life 2) of Tales from the Backlog in the player below, or you can follow the links to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or search "Tales from the Backlog" in your favorite podcast app!