Beatdown

Inside the oppressive world of Half-Life 2 ROLEPLAYING. 

- Steven Messner

My name is Pritus Jenkins, Citizen #00670. I know this number by heart because in the last few hours I’ve had to recite it around five times. Such is life as a citizen in City 17, where the alien Combine which patrol the streets love nothing more than to stop and harass me. I’m playing on a multiplayer Garry’s Mod server, role playing Half-Life 2. but the role I play isn’t that of a hero. I am no Gordon Freeman. I am Pritus Jenkins, a 55-year-old man with a limp. And I’m hungry.

If Half-Life 2’s role playing community were a food, it’d be the bland, mushy packet of rations I receive hourly from the dispensary located just off the central square of the dystopian city. This isn’t a place for grand adventures and bravery, but a community of hundreds dedicated to experiencing the hopeless oppression of a society crushed under authoritarian alien rule.