You may, dear reader, be asking one important question – ‘What the hell is Half Life Machinima?‘
Good question! The answer is – ‘fan made films using footage from the computer game “Half-Life”‘.
If you’re wanting to know more about the term ‘Machinima’ then I suggest a quick pop over to Wikipedia.
Whilst Half-Life is a computer game series, introduced to the world back in 1998 by Valve Software.
There, boring explanations out of the way, onto the point of this post. I’m not entirely sure how I stumbled upon this – idly clicking about in YouTube instead of doing something constructive no doubt…
Ross Scott’s brilliant “Freeman’s Mind” is what I’m talking about.
The series basically follows through the game’s plot but with the internal dialogue of the main protagonist, Dr Gordon Freeman, dubbed over the action. In Ross’ own words we ‘Follow the thoughts of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a 27 year old physcist and neurotic individual.‘.
I think it’s one of the best things I’ve seen on YouTube, although it probably does help if you’re a fan of the original game.
So popular has this been on YouTube that there have have been two very good spin-offs, inspired by Freeman’s Mind. each one focusing on the main characters of Half-Life’s two expansion packs, Blue Shift and Opposing Force.
Ian Riley’s “Barny’s Mind” – The events of Half-Life through the eyes of security guard Barny (taken from Half-Life : Blue Shift).
And lastly (but certainly by no means leastly) we have Krimsin’s “Shephard’s Mind”, where we see the Half-Life events through the eyes of Corporal Shephard from the game’s second expansion pack ‘Opposing Force‘.
Like I said, it probably helps if you’re a fan of Half-Life, or have at least played it before.
If you’ve never played it, then might I recommend that you do so. Half-Life and it’s two expansions are available in a very cheaply priced combo pack via Valve’s Steam website (No, I’m not on the take from Valve, I’m just trying to enrich your life by recommending some classic computer games).