-Quick Review-
The Half-Life Series is really a story about a man and his crowbar. This platonic love story has been heralded as a classic within the video game community and was a better love story then Twilight …and Half-Life came out years before.

Half-Life is an early First Person Shooter, and a Classic to Steam, having been one of the first available games on the platform when Valve still made video games, Half-Life was released in 1998.

Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/_HNtRhZ9mB8

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: Our story begins in the morning on the Black Mesa Transit system Tram at the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. You play as Dr. Gordon Freeman a graduate of MIT, having earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. Not that you’ll need to know any of that when everything goes sideways and Gordon Freeman is forced to take up crowbar against an invading alien force.

As you play you’ll encounter some military personnel who have been tasked with cleaning up this disaster, but part of that clean up involves the death of everyone in the Black Mesa Research Facility, especially Gordan Freeman as he has come to realize his true purpose in life: Button-presser, trigger-puller, crowbar-wacker.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348614907

Gameplay: Half-Life was more tough than I expected. I was all confident walking into this game thinking “Hmmm, yes, yes, I’ve played many First Person Shooters, put me at your normal difficulty coach, I can take it”. I guess by that you can say I got what I deserved for being over confident.

The game holds up very well, even though it was released in the late 90’s. I’m not sure if that’s more a testament to the good simple controls of the game, the simplicity of First Person Shooters, my experience with the later Half-Life 2 games… or some blending of all the above.

Nearly all the controls were exactly as expected with standard WASD controls, crouching with CTRL, Interact with E, Flashlight with F, switch between weapons with the scroll wheel or number keys.
There were two surprising mechanics I didn’t learn about until the end of the game. First: There’s a “Long Jump” you don’t get access to until the end of the game, where the scientist who gave me the module said “hopefully you’ve taken the Black Mesa Training”. NO I HAVEN’T TAKEN THE TRAINING, I THOUGHT I KNEW WHAT GAME I WAS PLAYING! Here’s what you do: While running press crouch and then jump. You can’t beat the game without it. After taking the training course (which I was certain I didn’t need) I learned you can also grab and pull boxes towards you by holding down the interact key and moving backwards.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348617412

Conclusion: I’ve played and reviewed a bunch of different games from all kinds of different times; but I’ve always enjoyed having the chance to go back and revisit classic games. Other than going back to visit a classic game, or nostalgia for a different time… I don’t know what else you’d be doing by playing Half-Life.

If you’re interested in checking out Half-Life or thinking about buying it, you can always wait for a Steam Sale. I picked my copy up on a 90% off sale. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a smiley face.

-Quick Review-
Shut up, I’m fishing.
I don’t know how many other games have imitated Animal crossing, I suppose there are games like Stardew Valley, or other House/Family/Fishing/Farming games. Webfishing is if all the animal crossing characters decided to go on a vacation to exclusively fish.
Webfishing was developed by Lamedeveloper, and released in 2024.

Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/LYafRTkfGUw

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: It was a dark and stormy night…
Actually it wasn’t, it was a cozy weekend in October when I decided our collective gaming group should try out Webfishing, I’d seen a short video online about Webfishing and decided tonight is the night!
We dropped into the tutorial zone as the default White Cat’s, quickly figured out how to move around and cast our fishing rods. Then upon mastery of the basics we quickly figured out how to customize our characters, some of us changed to Dogs, and we all changed up our faces and colors.
One of us exclusively wore clothing he fished up, so we dubbed him a “homeless-beach-bum-who-was-provided-for-by-the-ocean”. My method was to try to make my character look progressively grumpier (Matching my personality). He started out as a Green haired Dogo with Goofy Side-eye jokes, but after unlocked eyes which looked like he had fought in Vietnam my character became more and more disheveled in appearance, so of course I had to purchase a cigarette cosmetic to match, and as I’ve continued to play, I unlocked an eye patch, and grumpier and grumpier looking faces.
Webfishing can be cute, but it does have a bit of a raunchy sense of humor sometimes, like in the Titles and in item descriptions. Is this a bad thing? No! If anything the game is more endearing to me.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3355396781

Gameplay: Webfishing is either a Chill fishing game, or and idle chatroom game. It’s also kinda both. We enjoyed jumping into the game and voice chatting on discord, however some people might just drop into random servers to talk to people (but I’m not doing that). It’s fishing, so you’re only occasionally doing something, it’s relaxing. You find a place cast into the Ocean, River, or Lake… and wait for a fish to bite. It’s pretty easy to have a conversation while you wait.
The fishing mechanics are simple; You can cast into the occasional ripple on the surface of the water to get a near instant bite. After you get something on the hook you click and hold the mouse button to reel it in. As you’re reeling in a fish, you’ll hit white bars on the fishing rod icon which require you to “MASH” the button for a certain number of times, after you’ve MASHED you can go back to clicking and holding. At first, I thought I had to mash the button the rest of the way to get the fish caught… Don’t do that.
Say you got a bite, and your fishing rod icon has 3 white bars, one with 10, one with 15, one with 20. Once you reach the first bar you’ll need to button mash 10 times, then once you get to the second white bar you’ll mash 15 times, and lastly once you get to the third bar you’ll mash 20 times… After and between mashing you just hold down the button to reel the fish in.
You get better fish by using better bait, (“Better Fish” are actually the same fish but “Better Rarity/Quality”), better fish sell for more money, but better fish require more button mashing (it gets a little scary after you see a several hundred button mash fish on the hook), so unless you own a turbo mouse or an Auto clicking Macro or something, you’ll want to upgrade your fishing rod.
You can upgrade power, reeling speed, catch chance, luck, and bait quantity. You can also pick up a variety of tackle which can help you catch specific sizes of fish, get extra bonus money each catch, or even to potentially catch double the fish!
You can also buy many cosmetics such as facial features, clothes, colors, and accessories.

What Else can you do on Webfishing?
At this time there’s not much you can do except for fishing, and chilling…
But there are a few other things you can do. You can walk around with a metal detector to find trash to trade in for treasures. As you fish, you’ll complete quests which can be redeemed at the town board for titles, money or cosmetics. You’re also making progress towards your fish Journal collection, you’ll sometimes fish up extra money and even Treasure chests, there’s no “housing”, “homes” or “displays” for your fish at this time (which I would love to have a place to display all the fish I’ve caught) but for now there is a community Aquarium where you can slap your favorite fish into… or do what I do which is take the biggest obnoxious looking fish and put it in there so you can’t see anything else… I only wish the fish would stick outside the aquarium house.
I suppose there is one more thing I can think of you can do in Webfishing. You can gamble; there are scratch tickets you can buy and scratch off – It’s hilarious! And the jokes kinda start to get a little too realistic when we gamble away all our hard-earned fishing money.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3357028251

Conclusion: Webfishing is great! Feel free to send me suggestions for chill relaxing games like this one. I didn’t even get Webfishing on sale; the price is already more than reasonable at five dollars! This isn’t a competitive fishing game, or a traveling fishing game… It’s just a cozy little fishing game to boot up and chill while you chat, or watch something on the TV, or watch my YouTube Videos Cuz that would be really nice of you.