“STRIDERS!!! Here Dr. Freeman, take some ammo”
One of my favorite games of all time is Half Life 2. I’ve played it through a dozen times easily and it now takes a long evening.
One of the very distinctive things about it is the sound crafting of the various enemies. The vocal tracks and sound effects of bad guys of various stature add an awful lot of the atmosphere that’s made the franchise what it is.
I’m sitting where I sit when I play games, working on the market.
Cut to an hour ago when I hear this weird ascending whooping sound coming I’d never heard from 3 places in the city bounds. It sounds just like a strider, a daddy-longlegs looking badass.
It took me a second of recalibrating to not try and select weapon group 5 (the rocket launcher) and to actually look out the window to that great big place with no roof.
A few minutes of that before I heard “This has been a test of the emergency warning system” clear as could be.
So THAT’S good at least. Makes me feel better that there’s something like that out there.
But DAMN did it freak me out for a sec.