Dark Life 2
Allow me to start off by saying that I love the Half-Life series. The action behind Gordon Freeman is stunning, and so is the story. I love all the characters and all those parodies and all that. To put it in short, I love Half Life. The problem is, after what happened a few weeks ago, I doubt that I'm going to be such a big fan. Note that the Half Life 2 game I got was a cracked version. I was running low of money so I didn't have a good chance to buy the real version.
The Beginning of a New Horror
I started Half Life 2, and it started up just like normal. G-man was talking to me for a while, and feeding me back by memories and all that. After the little talk with G-man, I ended up on the train, as usual. I talked to the guy next to the pole and the guy sitting down. They seemed pretty mad at Dr. Breen for making them transfer. When we got off the train, we walked down the little path, and I saw the combine officer talking to the man. When the officer hit the man with his stun stick, I could have sworn that for a split second, there was a speck of blood coming from the man's face.
"That's weird," I thought.
I continued on, trying to not think about the strange speck of blood. I continued on to the point where I met Alyx for the first time. Up until that point, everything was fine except for the speck of blood. Anyway when I saw Alyx, I was cheering because I made it so far. When I looked at her face, her smile turned into a frown. I looked behind me and saw nothing, but when I turned back around, Alyx was gone. It was completely strange. I thought it was just a glitch, so I reloaded the level, but the same thing happened again. I wasn't that surprised though. After all, I did have a cracked version.
Anyway, I proceeded but for some reason, the game was continuing as normal, as if Alyx was there. I went into Kleiner's Lab and Kleiner frowned when he saw me. When he was off my screen for just a second, he disappeared, just like Alyx. Now things were starting to get creepy. This was no glitch. This was something else.
Barney came in about 2–3 minutes later, and when he saw me, he screamed and ran back to where he came from. Something was not right. These events NEVER took place during the actual game. I knew that this game was probably hacked or something.
I went into my internet history to try and find the download site. When I clicked on the link, it said that the page didn't exist. I guess the admins of the site must have found the file and deleted the entire page...but...what was the name of the user? It sounded something like "LifeofDarkness". I decided to ignore all of this. I reopened the game window and to my surprise, the entire room was red...
Big Scare Revealed
As stated before...the entire room was red. Only certain objects had color, and that color was black. Those objects weren't completely black, just shaded black in small parts of the object. I started to explore the room cautiously. This was definitely not a normal version of Half Life 2. I went up a ladder that led up to a little ledge, and when I looked down, it said a sentence on the box.
It said "Welcome to a Life of Darkness."
This officially creeped me out, but then it hit me. The name of the user was LifeofDarkness. I suggested to myself that this was just the signature of the user. It was intelligently placed. It almost seemed like an easter egg. But then...what was with the blood and the disappearing characters? Was LifeofDarkness trying to scare me? No, I doubt it. He even warned us not to play in the post. I was desperate to play though. It was a year or two since Half Life 2 was released, and I was anxious to play.
Anyway I decided to proceed through the game as usual. When I got to the teleportation room, the computer turned on, and the screen showed some kind of figure for a second. It had blood on its face and hair covering it's eyes. Pretty creepy. I ignored it, despite it's creepiness, and looked and listened for the talk with Eli and Dr. Mossman. After that creepy face appeared, there was nothing but static. At this point, I didn't even care what was happening.
I went through the teleporter, and instead of having a glitching teleporter, the teleporter worked fine, which wasn't what happened in the story. It teleported me to some weird place and the game turned red again. Suddenly, out of nowhere, citizens of City 17 appeared around me...thousands of them. When I looked around, I was on an execution stand. I knew what was happening. I was getting decapitated. I looked behind me, and saw a demonic figure. It had a bloody crowbar in its hands. It waited for about 15 seconds, then it raised it's crowbar, swung at my (Gordon's) throat, and the game went black.
Then, for some strange reason, my entire PC crashed. I wasn't able to turn it back on. When I tried, it would light up red for a second, then it would turn off again. I sent it for repairs and when it came back, there was my brand new PC and a note stuck to the bottom.
The note read "Are you enjoying your dark life yet?"