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PCG: Hey, have you heard about Half-Life 2? It's looking to be one of the better games coming out this year...

CF: Nah, sorry, haven't. What's it about?

PCG: Oh, it's a sequel to Half-Life, one of my favourite games. Have you played Half-Life?

CF: Um... I think I've heard about it...

PCG: 'twas a good game... a first person shooter.

CF: Like Halo?

PCG: Yeah, I suppose...

CF: 'cos Halo's a really great game.

PCG: I suppose it has its moments. But Half-Life 2 is gonna be really awesome. Cool graphics, gr-

CF: Halo has cool graphics! Halo has the best graphics!

PCG: Um... well I suppose it looks nice enough, bu-

CF: Yeah, if you look at the stuff in the game, some of it actually has this, like, shiney effect on it. Looks really cool.

PCG: Well, Half-Life 2 can apply normal maps to surfaces in the game that make it look like a model or surface has more polygonal detail than it really does.

CF: Oh, yeah, Halo can do that too...

[Pause]

PCG: [Shaking head] Lets see... Half-Life 2's got this rather neat expanded Havok physics system, an-

CF: Y'know a game that's got great physics? Halo! 'cos if you've got, like, one dude standing still firing a rocket launcher, and like, one dude running while firing a rocket launcher, the rockets from the guy running go faster than the ones from the guy standing still!

[CF nods solemnly]

PCG: Um... okay, well, Half-Life 2 has loads of objects in every area that are actually physically simulated, so that they move around and interact with each other almost as they would in real life.

CF: Woah... you'd need a really powerful graphics card to handle that!

PCG: What the f... what do you mean? The graphics card doesn't perform the physics calculations, the CPU does!

CF: Pffft, yeah, right. Noob. There's this little secondary processor on your computer's graphics card that handles all the physics. 's called the FPU, the Physics Processing Unit.

[pause]

PCG: I'm going to go find something to do that doesn't feel like ramming a square peg into a circular hole.

CG: I'm gonna go play Halo!

(This actually happened earlier this evening. I'm not naming names, and I'd like to state here that I'm perfectly aware that at least 10% of hardcore console fans aren't like this. I've never met any of them, but I imagine they're out there somewhere.)
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