Recently

Played more pinball, and some more SMG2, though not much of that. It’s really good, I just haven’t gotten around to playing it much.

Played an hour of Half-Life 2 that I was fortunate enough to be given. It’s really quite good so far. One annoyance: guy-whose-name-I-forget says “I’ll meet you in the plaza.” I get there and wander around a little. He’s not there. I wander around a bit more. I decide that clearly I need to trigger his appearance somehow. I go around poking everyone and everything in the place, as well as going back inside and poking everyone and everything there in case I missed something. Result: no guy. Actual correct action: jump over a fence and wander around a bit. Eventually guy shows up elsewhere. Doesn’t say “Oh, yeah, sorry about leaving you to be zapped and beat to death. I was getting a coffee.” Said something more like “Oh, you’re finally here.” as I recall. Bah. I hate wandering around lost. The environment is neat and all, and I don’t mind exploring (I enjoy it quite a bit, actually), but if I feel like I’m meant to be doing one thing and I can’t then I tend to get a bit frustrated.

Related annoyance from another game: I tried out… Modern Warfare 2? Maybe? Some shooty thingy… a while back and there are all these soldier types and they’re all like ‘follow me’ and I’m all like ‘sure!’. But then they simply will not move forward unless I stupidly charge ahead and run into bullets with my face. Hint to game developers: if a character tells me to follow them, I expect them to move and me to follow, not the other way around. If a character says they’ll meet me in the plaza, I expect that they will do that unless I’m given some reason to think otherwise. Don’t force me to ignore all reason in order to move the game along. That is annoying.