I still remember where I was when I first saw Half-Life. A guy in our office bought it and installed it on his work PC. Several of us spent a couple of hours each just standing behind him, watching him work through the levels and plunge deeper into the Black Mesa mystery. To us, it was better than a movie, and equally engaging. Soon, I had my own copy and sat in awe as I was ferried into the Black Mesa research facility, to be that hapless soul that, amid trillions of dollars of electronic equipment, had to manually push a cart into a gigantic laser.
It's been six long years since that moment, but Valve has done it again with Half-Life 2. Using beautiful graphics, they have weaved together a new story for our luckless Gordon Freeman, who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, Gordon enters City 17, which makes George Orwell's 1984 look like Disney World. Giant big brother talking heads tell us all to relax and enjoy ourselves, while fully garbed "storm troopers" gleefully beat us down with their stun batons. Innocent civilians huddle in fear, not believing what has happened to their lives, waiting for the police to come and take them away. All of this under the cold, gray sky, in a rundown ghetto that always seems to accompany prophecies of societal doom.
Half-Life 2 starts Gordon on a train again as he rolls into the City 17 terminal. Like its predecessor, it gives you the feeling of control as the story starts to unfold, letting you walk Gordon through a tightly controlled level to introduce you to the game. It's not long until it all starts going badly, and Gordon is running for his life again while playing the typical anti-hero, who just wants to get out of the way but whom everyone relies on.
The game feels more like another chapter in Freeman's adventures than a whole separate game from Half-Life. (Which is a good thing.) The game is consistent with the same overall style and bearing of the original, and has a similar combination of stress, terror and highbrow tongue-in-cheek that comes from other works in the genre. For people like me, who enjoy a good conspiracy theory or prediction of self-inflicted doom as entertainment, its perfect.
Graphically, the game is stunning. I was pleasantly surprised that I could increase my video settings from the "recommended" values for my machine (AlienWare 3Ghz, Radeon 9800 Pro) and it still performed beautifully. While there is the usual amount of technical "ooh" and "aah" that accompany a new generation of graphics, Half-Life has something much more important: attention to detail. I found myself literally stopping and just looking around while playing, trying to get to different vantage points to look at the detailed level design, or staring at textures up close to try to see how they were made. Little touches, such as making the power lines sway ever so slightly in the breeze, are everywhere and combine to make the world feel very, very real. When the graphics and design can fade into the background and just "be", the story stands out so much better and draws you in.
The mood of the game is really set by the audio. Be it haunting background music, or just the surround sound of the dismal future, everything audibly fits. In many levels, you hear that familiar future female authoritative British voice, calling you an "individual" and telling you to give yourself up. The stormtrooper police are having routine radio communications as they go on patrols, often giving themselves away for a quick stealth attack. Plus, really cranking up the surround sound is enough to give you a heart attack, as there are occasional "Resident Evil" moments where things jump out at you. Nothing says "A+ title" better than having to change your drawers.
Another piece that adds to the game is the generous use of the Source Engine's new Havok physics. Not only does this add to the realism in how Gordon interacts with the world, but it also becomes a vital part of the game, including how to solve some of the puzzles or obstacles. One of the most ingenious uses of this I've seen to date was the use of floating plastic barrels underwater to push a ramp into position. Another example is the real physics found in a playground, which allows you to swing the swings and to spin the merry-go-round. Do yourself a favor and stop and play for a bit. This is yet another example where Valve used the technology to make the game better, and not just use the technology to be able to write it in big bold letters on the box. In fact, I found that certain situations could be solved in ways the designers hadn't intended, such as gathering up a bunch of loose boxes on the map to stack them up like stairs to get over walls and fences. This probably caused more than a few fits during the play-testing, when trying to lock down the levels to keep the player "within bounds."
Which brings us to the one problem that seems to plague nearly all of single player games; the story is very linear. There aren't a lot of branching possibilities, and Gordon is ferried through by sometimes not-so-subtle methods, like the infamous "click-click" of a locked door. Like I said, this is a gripe about the genre, not necessarily this game, but the beauty and realism of the game just beckon to be explored and it's sometimes frustrating to not be able to go places. Heck, I'd probably pay a few bucks to be able to download updated maps that just let me walk around the entire City 17, or other locales in the game.
The other glaring issue I've found is the occasional long load times to get into a level. While friends of mine have complained about load times lasting several minutes, mine loaded in 20-30 seconds or so. While this isn't very long, it does bring you out of the experience. This is a shame, considering all of the time and trouble Valve went through to get you to forget it's a game.
Finally, there are two things that excite me about this game, and the future of gaming. First, is the Steam delivery model. I know there were reports of problems, long unlock times, or server unavailability, but none of that affected me at all. I did take the time to let the game download over the past few months, so the unlocking was relatively pain-free. I think the delivery mechanism was proven, and that it will be refined over the next few years until we all rely on it, which will hopefully reduce the price of the games, or at least get more money into the pockets of the studios.
Second is that the mod and machinima communities have yet another formidable tool in their arsenal with the Source engine. I'm very excited to see some of my favorite mods get ported to the Source engine once the SDK is available. (Natural Selection - pretty please?) I'm also happy to see that Valve has added the SDK and mapping tools into the Steam distribution, making it even easier for amateur gamers to get a hold of the tools. Counter-Strike proved that the indie gamer can produce big market titles, and I'm hopeful that Half-Life 2 helps bring more of that innovation into the light. Not to mention that it extends the value of the game for years to come, which makes Half-Life 2 a "must buy" for any serious PC FPS gamer.
Dave lives with his wife and three kids, doing independant software development consulting and fits games in every nook and cranny of his free time. He particularly enjoys seeing new and fresh ideas from the Indie Game Studios, and believes that they are the true future of gaming. He'll play just about anything if you put it in front of him, and usually like about two thirds of it. He's also an "0ld Sk00l" gamer, having cut his teeth on Adventure, the Vic-20, Apple II and Infocom. Back when playing a new game meant you had to type the program in from a Family Computing magazine, during a snowstorm, up a hill, both ways.
