Shooting stuff (redux)

As you may have gathered, Zibbudie Babbuhl tends to incorporate the magic of shooting people in a virtual realm -- it makes a good round-table (or couch-length) game since, you know, everybody like shooting stuff -- and we are in the process of making another step in this realm. A step backwards and a little to the left, but a step nonetheless. Like a group of poker players starting to dabble in acid-filled Super Soakers and gin rummy after years of neglect, we are going to give Half-Life and its associated modifications another spin.

Free to download, fun, less cursing 12-year-olds, and fast in the regard that we can both run it without problems. What it boils down to is little more than shooting people, sure, but we're taking the time and effort to diversify. A bullet is just a bullet until you give it context, you know? Friggin' poets we are.

We'll shoot Nazis in Day of Defeat. (We do this a lot.)

We'll shoot trenchcoat-wearing Uzi-toting action film charicatures in The Specialists. (For the first time in a while, possibly with more of an emphasis on shotguns and stabbing weapons.)

We'll steal scientists and other various human resources in Science & Industry, contributing to a fictional corporation's grasp of science, more often than not by shooting at what gains our competitors have made.

We'll fire upon the living grime of xenoform-infested mining stations adrift in space in Natural Selection, Darwin be damned.

This bloody engine is almost eight years old now. And there is yet life in these modfications, some updated as recently as last month. It boggles the mind. We're essentially pulling amusement out of a technology that has existed as long as Evan, a person who talks and walks and carries intelligent conversations.

We never hated Gabe Newell.

Honest.