At work today a couple of us were jokingly speculating as to what earlier versions of The Matrix would be like—or, more accurately, what we would imagine they’d be like—and I came up with Half-Life. Basically, imagine the Matrix v1 as a first-person shooter.

Makes perfect sense! All they essentially do in the Matrix is run around fighting, with or without weapons. Matrix Savants (or whatever the hell the people like Morpheus and Trinity are called) have managed to hack the command line and discover some cheat codes. But The One not only knows all the cheat codes, but is also able to change the server environment. Flying? Simply set sv_gravity 0.