Unless you live in a cave in the mountains and have just returned to civilisation (I used that word reluctantly!) and this is the first website you have checked, you will no doubt have heard all about Pokemon Go.

I have got almost no idea how Pokemon Go exactly works, nor do I want to, so please don’t explain, but here is how I see half-Life Go working.

At various locations around , well, everywhere, are hidden various Half-Life enemies. You job is to kill or avoid them. For example, when you are in 5 metres of a headcrab your phone starts to make that purring sound sound. Upon lifting your phone up and scanning the area, when you are facing the headcrab it jumps and screams at you. The only way to kill it, is to position it at your feet and kick it, making sure the camera sees it happen.

With other enemies, you must use your phone as a gun. In some cases you must run away. There would be ammo caches scattered around the area. For example, if you saw a strider you would know that there is a rocket launcher nearby, as well as some rockets.

Players could locate Easter eggs of extra caches buy looking in groups i.e. the caches only appear if there are two or more “rebels” with 2 metres of each other.

I suppose you could buy extra weapons, ammo or range detection and I assume you can do those things in the Pokemon version.

Anyway, would you play it?

What other Half-Life inspired features would you add?

---

Now that Steam is available on mobile Windows devices I started thinking about all the Half-Life games I had seen on Android, which lead me onto whether I would actually want to play Half-Life games on my mobile (I can’t, I have an iPhone – at least I don’t THINK I can) or a tablet (I can’t, I’m sure this time because I don’t have a tablet! Ha – gotcha.).

I know that desktop usage among non-business users is dropping significantly and mobile and tablet is soaring but there are some things better done on Desktops. I’m not suggesting that games HAVE to be better on desktops but some games work better there, just like some films HAVE to be seen in the cinema to really appreciate them. I’m sure you get what I mean.

The future could easily be VR goggles wirelessly connected to your mobile/tablet – who knows?

I don’t want you to think I am some old fuddy-duddy, I have played games on my mobile but only a couple. Mostly Dumb Ways to Die

I’d love to hear your thoughts on mobile gaming in general and specifically to FPS games like Half-Life.

---

Have to admit I was struggling for a good question and I really wanted to avoid another Half-Life 3 one, but this idea just popped into my head.

Obviously, we want the story to either be finished or explained at least to some degree, but personally, it’s all the new mods that we hope to get that really excites me.

Of course, the chances of Half-Life 3 being released WITHOUT mod support is probably as close to nil as it can be, but Valve might decide to move in a new direction.

Plenty of single player games do well without a modding community or do you think that once a company starts down that road it would be commercial suicide not to continue with it.

Are times changing?

---

Just a sill question this time, but after reading a BBC article called Whatever floats your boat – the unstoppable growth of themed cruises and how the band KISS hires a whole cruise ship once a year, I thought Heck, why not Half-Life?

The topic itself isn’t exactly new, in fact I suggested something similar an article called Ten-Year Anniversary Half-Life Convention (2007) and even Poll Question 244 asked If there was a ValveCon within 6 hours travel of you, would you go? (2011).

So besides the basic question, I want you all to suggest fun activities the passengers could all get up to. Keep it clean and family friendly. I’ll post some ideas as comments too.

---

Only a fool would think that Half-Life 3 will be a VR exclusive, but that doesn’t mean that some sort of tie-in with VR is impossible.

I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t followed much about Valve’s involvement with the HTC Vive but that’s mostly due to the fact I know I won’t be able to afford to buy it. If, like me, you don’t know much but want to learn more check out the Steam page.

The question is whether Valve will promote both Vive and HL3 at the same time.

---

A few days ago on the HalfLife SubReddit quimralho asked Why is the game called Half-Life? What is the relation of the title and the game?

It’s a question that is often asked, by new and seasoned players alike. Most often people talk about the decay of radioactivity etc but it doesn’t really address the question.

However, this time scriminamp got right to the heart of the issue with a very funny, and quite sad really, answer.

The game is called half-life because it takes half your f*%king life for a squeal to come out.

It was then suggested by Don that this would make a good poll question, so here it is.

---

Sorry, I’m a few days late with this week’s poll question and lucky too because I didn’t really have one until I read Reddit today and saw the above.

I’ve talked about outsourcing Half-Life 3 before, specifically with regard to Gearbox, but I wonder if Valve would ever sell the whole Half-Life licence. If they actually plan to never make another HL game again (and I don’t believe that for a second), it could make financial sense.

The question is if whoever they sold it too make a crappy game that would also tarnish Valve reputation. In many ways it’s a lose-lose situation for then.

But maybe it comes down to would you rather take the chance of playing a crappy HL game than never knowing if Valve were to make one?

---