I recently played through Gabriel Knight 3, since Matt recommended the GK series. I was disappointed that there were no zombies, but I guess that was GK1. I found the puzzles to often be too hard to solve with logic, so the walkthru was my very good friend. Even with the answers, there were a few that I couldn't see anyone guessing given what they would've known... Anyway, besides the puzzles (which you don't often see in adventure games) and the fact that it was in blasphemous 3d, I liked it. Good setting and story.

Now, I'm playing Curse of Monkey Island (also #3 in a series of which I've played none), and it's much friendlier with its puzzles. There were only three I've had to look up so far, and I noticed clues for one of them after finding out the answer. Too bad it doesn't work quite right with ScummVM. In the scene at the start of Ch. 3, the pirates start to sing a song, but the words never came up for me to choose, so I got stuck. :( It comes in standard and extra-puzzly, so now I'm playing the extra-puzzly version, to see if it'll work. Obviously, the solution is more puzzles!

--regolith

On the whole, Half Life 2 is less vomit inducing than the first. Don't get me wrong, the weird movement code and the way you always feel like you're sliding around, even on dry land, is nauseating in its own way. But there's nothing like that horrible reactor sequence at the start of the first game.

Despite the hype, HL2 was mediocre. The physics felt very gimmicky -- you couldn't do much with them, and all the "physics objects" were constantly in the way. Psi-Ops uses the same physics middleware as HL2 to much better effect. The story... Well, the story was basically non-existent. Don't get me wrong, there were a series of linear scenarios the game prodded you through, but there's no more story here than there was in Doom. The graphic engine was at least half a generation behind Doom 3, and while the art direction was very consistent, it was also a bit generic. And don't get me started on the load times. The worst I've seen since Road Rash on 3DO. I have a 10K RPM HDD and 1GB of memory -- there's just no excuse.

Overall, it kept my attention enough the I completed the game. Was it worth the full $20 I paid for it? Maybe. I'd be more comfortable with $10, or maybe up to $15, since I have no right of resale.

Speaking of which, Steam, apart from the game, is an annoying piece of shit. It stays resident after you exit the game, forcing you to close it manually. It bombards you with the same survey day after day, even after you've already taken it. It pops up "news" that you don't give a shit about. I'm very much less than thrilled that I'll be stuck with it again for the upcoming Sin Episodes.

-apon