10 Stupidly Awful Gaming Prisons Staffed By Total Idiots

2. The Trash Compactor €“ Half Life 1

Interior design remains a chronically overlooked skill in the field of prison design, but judging from how the military deal with Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 1 it's about time they made their long-awaited(?) comeback. I understand that the 'prison' here isn't really a prison at all €“ time isn't a luxury the Marines have, so when in doubt, any old trash compactor will do. But still, if you're going to kill someone through over-dramatic crushing, you have to make sure they're imprisoned long enough for the crushing to begin €“ if you fail at this crucial point of the crushing process, you've sort of shot yourself in the foot. I mean, it's not as if it was difficult €“ all those Marines had to do was make sure the crates inside Doctor Freeman's temporary prison didn't resemble an obvious staircase, and they could've gone home unmolested and simply waited for the Combine to show up and start wrecking everything. It's not as if this was remotely difficult €“ in the Half-Life world, opportunistically swinging a blunt object at stuff makes it disintegrate like nobody's business, and lobbing a grenade clears a room faster than a drunk Mel Gibson armed with a yarmulke, a ukulele, and a song in his heart. They simply had no excuse for leaving an obvious, breakable staircase in the compactor, nor did they have any right to feel shocked when the bespectacled angel of vengeance rocked back up with a shotgun to take vengeance on those who knocked him out. It's this sort of kerfuffle for which the box-stamping area was invented guys, and you went and screwed up the endgame. Personally, I blame HR.