And if you don't believe...
I have issues. Let me explain. Don't let me fool you into believing that I'm special or something like that. No. I want to introduce myself as a regular person, who likes to think that he might one day be loved by what he would treasure most in this world, who believes the world has not gone mad and that there's still hope, the kind of person most people would relate to because it represent normality, not in the wicked sense that normal makes no sense nowadays, but in the way that it is average, all the necessities of the world combined with all the vulgar display of uselessness.

My secret is all but too common these days. I'm overwhelmed by three demons, each of which has started a fire that consumes my very essence, without my being able to exercise the slightest form of control.

The first demon is called Frimon, the most beautiful of them all, supreme bodily creature that makes me lust for beauty and to search perfection, discarding everything that is not absolute. I tame him with my mirror.

The second demon is called Crileth, the primitive beast that craves for blood, that urges me to slay and feed and rape, to let go of all that's rational and immerse my feet in tears, to sink in puddles of carnage memories and repress kindness, mercy and forgiveness.

I tame him by whipping myself senseless.

The third demon is called Gratek, geometrical being of unequivocal purpose, calculating his impulses so that every time he makes me take a step, it's as far apart from the next one as the last one was. I tame this demon with the Rubik cube.

Still your passenger

I am not important in the Half Life 2 equation, Gratek would say, but that's not true. I'm not here to make common sense observations about some product, but rather to express the feelings and ideas the essence of this game has inspired me to aspire to.

Don't let my uninteresting introduction affect your perception of this article. This is a PC game review, and I promise to do it thoroughly and comprehensive, so that you may all experience what I never will.

There's no point in delaying telling you Half Life 2 is a great game. Trivial at is may seem, this phrase is very important in the economy of this paper, because many are the aspects I have taken into consideration to make that statement. I've considered what most other people consider when playing a game, while adding a touch of myself that lets transpire a few of my impressions.

I know you can see

Like you, I too have been waiting for this game, ever since it was announced. I found the idea of having a Half Life sequel to be very exciting, as the original game set the standards for what FPSs should be in a time when action shooters like Quake 2 and Unreal were the best thing anyone could think of.

Sure enough, the game took its time in making. I don't want to discuss that though, lots of articles have been written by people far more credible that I am, lots of boards have been flooded, lots of rumors have been heard, and so on. I for one, well I'm just glad it's here.

I wanted to talk about the Half Life 2 graphics, powered by the source engine. This has been a very crowded year graphic wise: Doom 3, Far Cry, X800 and 6800 cards, and so on. Sure enough, HL2's Source engine was expected to be one of the better looking and performing engines. Expectations are met, and more.

I'm not going to go into details like textures, poly-count, filters, special effects and the rest. They are all there, doing what they should and performing great. My primary concern when analyzing a game's graphics it that things look natural. Even though most of the settings are surreal, the familiar feeling of recognizing objects and phenomena is there, I believe what I see and it makes me fit in, get with the program.

The really impressive part about the way HL2 looks is detail. A lot of work has been put into it, with no room left for imagination. Everything's there, all of the surfaces have the natural textures they are supposed to have, all of the objects are well defined and blend in at the same time, so that at first glance Half Life 2 does not look spectacular. I was actually a little disappointed at first, to be honest, because new games try to impose their visual capabilities right from the start. Developers try and hit you with everything they have in order to get that great first impression, and that's exactly where this particular game surprised me.

When I got off the train, nothing special made me feel glad that I was finally playing Half Life 2. I wandered around for fifteen minutes or so, when it hit me: it was perfect!