Monster Closets and Head Crabs

Playing the Half-Life 2 demo made me realize - Monster Closets are here to stay. Monster Closets are those parts made famous from the original DooM where you would enter a room, a secret door would open up and wham - apparently three hungry imps had locked themselves in a pantry.

Course, in HL2 they don't seem to be closets per se - but walking around Ravenholm it two things became apparent: every room probably has a corpse in it somewhere, and that corpse will get up to eat you. There also seemed to be a nearly unlimited source of the creatures from somewhere, even though I swear I was stone cold trapped in that hallway.

I just think it's fascinating that everyone bitched about Doom 3's use of them when it seems that HL2 is just as guilty, if only more subtle. I will say though, that the grav gun might be the most gimmicky thing I've seen in an FPS for a while - but it's also one of the most fun. Valve is to be commended for an excellent use of third party physics, something games like Deus Ex 2 proved isn't as easy as it sounds.