I might have otherwise prided myself on finding each of the pages, but this wheel picker selection late in the afternoon was an obligatory install if there ever was one; I was just in that sort of mood today. After one of the pages described up-keeping the birdhouses without so much as a basic interaction with the one directly next to it, I had lost all hope; however, the surprising scale of the landscape drew me back in slightly, specifically because of the broken ramp in the cemetery and my success in breaching over it Skyrim-style. The checkpoint system is unfortunately not complex enough to account for this, and my wandering in the river led to instant death. A little game I spuriously imposed on myself near the end was to use the rifle to shoot each of the box robots from the far end of the valley; only one off, although a couple shots had already been spent before I reached the ideal spot.
The game is a spray-and-pray Nerve spotter whose main mechanical conceit is empty guns being used as grenades, constantly requiring not just new ammo, but new guns wholesale. Overdrive seems in a translucent position, where understanding its effects is rather ambiguous, as well as my skill often disallowing it to be seen in the first place due to a lack of remaining enemies.
Several attempts have been made in the name of history for me to play Half Life 2; it was only a few summers ago that I had made my way through the first game for the first time and enjoyed myself a lot. By comparison, the second game has the aura of expectation that I can't help but notice and become disenchanted by it. The style perhaps works better for a game like Portal 2 being slower and more pensive, but it's the kind of thing that every wise player avoids engaging with when playing Skyrim et al.