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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
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                      <h5><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="2">Birth 
                        of a Gamer: </font></i></font><br>
                        <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i><font color="#904C10">Half-Life 
                        - No more butterflies.</font></i></font><br>

                      </h5>
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 
                        Heather &quot;<a href="mailto:heatherhazel@eudoramail.com">elki</a>&quot; 
                        Haselkorn</font></div>
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                  <td width="45%" align="right" valign="top"> 
                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 6<br>
                      December 14, 1999&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><loonystart></font></p>
              
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I finally 
                found my suit. &quot;So now what do I do?&quot; I thought. Actually, 
                no, I said it out loud. I've discovered I have this bad habit 
                of talking to the computer screen, as though it'll answer me. 
                I also curse, shout, and congratulate it accordingly. If I was 
                home this wouldn't have been such a bad thing, but I wasn't. Those 
                of you who have followed my adventures thus far already know that 
                I own a PowerBook with a track pad, not a mouse, so I actually 
                need to use someone else's computer to play most games. That someone 
                is usually either my brother, or our awe-inspiring editor himself. 
                In this case, I was at loony's Palace o' P.C. Pleasure. So of 
                course, every time I said something to the computer, he thought 
                I was talking to him and he just had to answer me. Every time 
                I asked, rhetorically, &quot;What next,&quot; he actually came 
                over to tell me what I had to do. When I whined during the tutorial, 
                &quot;How come I can't jump straight,&quot; he came over and taught 
                me how to jump. Which was nice of him, but I would rather have 
                figured it out for myself. Eventually he realized that and said 
                he shouldn't even be there. &quot;So leave,&quot; I answered.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There. 
                Now I was alone. Me and the game. Me and the freaky mutant monsters. 
                Oh, not yet, actually. I still had to botch the big experiment. 
                But first I had to get there. I found an elevator. There was a 
                ladder next to it. Common sense would dictate that I go into the 
                elevator and press the button. I have none, so I tried to climb 
                down the ladder. And let go too early. Ouch! Ten minutes into 
                the game and I was already dead. So I started over. I finally 
                made it to the test lab, but I couldn't quite figure out what 
                I had to do, and the technician, rather than providing helpful 
                assistance over the P.A. system, just kept berating me and asking 
                why I was taking so long. Sigh...I'll just have to figure it out 
                myself. Big explosion, flashing lights, everything's read and 
                green, lots of wounded and dead. Yay! I did it! I started bobbing 
                up and down in my chair in glee.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now it 
                was me and the freaky mutant monsters. I started talking to people 
                to try to find out what to do, and occasionally they would open 
                doors so that I could pass from room to room. One of the scientists 
                told me I had to get back to the surface. Now how the heck was 
                I supposed to do that? I started wandering around aimlessly, going 
                up and down elevators (probably just the same elevator over and 
                over), grabbing guns when I could find them and shooting things. 
                I have to admit, killing monsters is fun, and it seems to let 
                out a lot of pent-up aggression. But I was still getting nowhere. 
                I had learned how to smash my way through wreckage, duck and jump 
                through small spaces, press buttons to open whatever doors still 
                worked, talk to people in order to get them to operate the retinal 
                scans, and wait for laser beams to open some of the doors that 
                I couldn't open by other means. That still didn't help, and I 
                began to feel like the proverbial rat in a maze. So I started 
                using that old trick of following one wall of a maze to eventually 
                find the way out. But then I was confronted with the ultimate 
                dead-end: The door that wouldn't open. The button closest to it 
                didn't work. I couldn't hack it open with my crowbar. I couldn't 
                crouch and walk through the space at the bottom. I couldn't duck-jump 
                through the space at the top. Aack! What do I do? I wandered around 
                some more until I got nauseous again, and then I gave up.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm a 
                quitter. For the moment, anyway. So many people have told me so 
                many good things about Half-Life that I can't simply let it go. 
                Just from the opening I can see that there really is the potential 
                for a good plot to the game, and we all should know I'm a sucker 
                for a good plot. I just have to figure out how to advance it. 
                So I'll get back to it soon, probably over winter break, when 
                I'll have time to spend an entire weekend playing a game. Maybe 
                I'll even write about it again, just to keep you posted on where 
                I am. Just cuz I know you care.</font></p>
              <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>-Heather 
                &quot;<a href="mailto:heatherhazel@eudoramail.com">elki</a>&quot; Haselkorn 
                actually enjoys this.</i></font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></loonystart> 
                </font></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="index.php"><font color="#7C420E"><b><font size="+1">&lt;&lt;Prev</font></b></font></a></font> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. Birth of a Gamer is &copy; 1999 Heather Haselkorn. All 
  other content is &copy; 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction 
  is prohibited, you cartoonish villian, you.</font></i></p>
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