Looks Like Sheffield
One of the perks of downtime—perhaps the perk—is that you have time to play games. I’m a casual and very infrequent gamer: before this past week, I’ve literally spent about 30 minutes playing games in the past two years total. I’m therefore about as skilled playing “Call of Duty 4” as you might imagine.
And yet: how thrilling that Valve & Steam was coming to the Mac; and even more so to hear that Half Life 2 was coming with it! Your average PC user might think my enthusiasm retro (really? I’m super thrilled to play a six year old game?), but I just never played it. I’d only seen screenshots. It looked good.
I’m not into this for the blood & gore. Much like Nicholson Baker in “Painkiller Deathstreak”, his article about gaming in this week’s New Yorker, I’m struck by the beauty the artists have imagined for their worlds. Even when the setting is a depressed industrial town, in ruins after the alien invasion, it can take my breath away.
But the following moments looked… familiar:

This could be the block of flats across from the Arts Tower
Looks a bit like the Park Hill Flats over the Train Station
Wait! How did the Ponderosa get flooded?
I just wish people would stop shooting at me so I could enjoy the scenery.