![]() ![]() Adjusted for inflation, it's made over $7,000,000,000 to date, most of that within just its first year of availability! After such insane success, it’s understandable that Midway, Pac-Man’s North American distributor, was more than eager for Namco to deliver a follow-up as the calendar flipped into 1982. The original Pac-Man had been a culture-shaking success in 1981 – an arcade game so popular that it's still the highest-grossing video game of all-time, entirely due to the sheer avalanche of quarters shoved into its coin slots over 30 years ago. The video game industry's first leading lady was created out of impatience. The fact that we’ll never quite get the closure that ending deserves (besides Laidlaw’s letter) makes it all the more haunting. After an action-packed series of missions and at least one rocket-fueled victory for the Resistance, the abrupt loss of a beloved character and utter devastation we see Alyx suffer is perhaps one of the most shocking endings of a game ever. He’s murdered by one of the Advisors and we’re forced to watch Alyx hold his body sobbing as the screen fades to black. Alyx’s trusty robot pal D0g manages to save you and Alyx, but Eli is not so lucky. Only moments after Alyx shares a touching moment with her father Eli and the three of you step off the lift, two Advisors – among the Half-Life universe’s most menacing enemies – burst into the room. With the menacing Combine portal successfully closed, Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance prepare to leave for the lost ship, the Borealis. But even before we knew that would become the last thing any of us would experience of the Half-Life series before Laidlaw’s leak, the finale of Episode Two was still unforgettable. ![]() It’s strange to write about the now-infamous cliffhanger that closed out Half-Life 2: Episode Two, in light of series writer Marc Laidlaw’s publication of the elusive Half-Life 3’s story. ![]()
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