Total Playtime: Half-Life 3 Review Chat
Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.
For the latest Patreon-exclusive episode of Total Playtime - shared of course with the impeccably discerning readers of Jank - there was only one possible topic: the release of Half-Life 3, to which as professional gaming opinion-havers we were granted early access.
It’s a surprising release even by Valve’s eternally inscrutable standards, which makes this a particularly interesting episode as we each share our personal responses to a series of unexpected, nay, unprecedented design choices.
I can’t really describe this without spoiling the episode, so you’ll just have to listen along to discover our reactions to things like Bluto’s Adversary, the high-protein economy of City 18, PodTides and the narrative justification for punching a hole through your own monitor. These are the experiences, and questions, only offered by this calibre of truly next-generation gaming experience.
You can listen to the episode right here, and it's also available on Patreon and Spotify. Share your own experiences of playing this mediation on the last ten years of game development by mailing us at totalplaytimepod@gmail.com.
Thanks to God Ribbon for our music, Marsh Davies for our art (which still doesn’t include Brendy; he’s working on it) and our Patreons for backing the show and enabling us to broadcast assertive statements like “you can get rimmed by an alien super-soldier who shoots bees out of his hands”. Backing Total Playtime remains the cutting edge of arts patronage.
Links!
The DK Bongos are a sadly under-celebrated controller innovation. The UK government provides high-resolution photos of MPs and NASA provides high-resolution photos of space and both are essential public services. NoClip does great work. Bird on a Wire. A Study in Scarlet.
Games!
Half-Life Alyx was Valve’s last release. Half Life 3 will be found on the franchise page. The Darkness pioneered watching movies in-game. Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis was the debut of Creepy Watson.
Recommendations!
Axolotl by Julio Cortazar, the Monterey Bay Aquarium,101 Things I Learned In Architecture School, Vittorio Angelone’s last show was Who Do You Think You Are? I Am but the current one is you can’t say Nothing any more.
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