Busy lately, me. As promised, I’ve been digging through the Half-Life 2 products on Steam, and I’ve found part one of what I hope will be an ongoing release called Minerva. In the initial sequence, dear old Gordon Freeman has been called to a Combine island by an unknown entity that wishes him to discover what these people are up to on an uninhabited rock containing a 70-year old and thought to be unused World War II facility. In addition to all the being shot at by soldiers and assaulted by unusually fast headcrabs, there’s the insult of that voice in your head seeming to equate you with the enemy.

I expect my problem with these downloads, in general, to be that they’re too short. Well, what else is new? On the plus side, though, the story part was highly intriguing, with a lot of literal and figurative delving left to go into Gordon’s mysterious…. benefactor? and into the Combine plans for the facility. Ultimately, though, I kind of expect the project to fall apart before I learn what the whole story really is. Still, maybe not!