These are my thoughts about the game I made for the Ludum Dare 26 compo.  I will focus on what I feel was the most successful aspect of the game and the two issues I feel were the weakest.

I wanted to develop something I felt was complete and I accomplished this.

I have been preoccupied lately with the idea of games as complete creative works.  To help me in this thought process I have been toying around with parallels between a painting composed of component parts and a game composed of component parts.

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Below is a copy of the post Richie made on his personal blog about playing through Half Life 2 for the first time.

Looking at Half Life 2 with new eyes

—or—

How come I can’t play games the way I used to before I started developing…

Well I started a blog. Then I did not write anything for months.

I am not sure if writing this article will jumpstart my blog activity again, but I am compelled to write something after finally playing Half Life 2 for the first time.

Some things to mention before I begin.

• I have never played the original Half Life.
• I have missed out on most of the PC gaming culture in my life, other than Jeopardy for Dos. (Great game!)
• After playing Portal and HL2 this past week, my Valve gaming experience is now Portal, HL2 and Left For Dead.
• I have played all of these games on Xbox 360.

note: HL2 is a fairly very large game. And I assume there are countless articles out there about HL2. My interest is to discuss one specific aspect of the game that I found one of the most successful and detrimental to my experience. …