Half-Life

aka: Bantiao Ming, HL, Hλlf-Life, Quiver
Moby ID: 155

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Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 94% (based on 59 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 4.3 out of 5 (based on 524 ratings with 30 reviews)

An FPS that doesn't insult your intelligence

The Good
When you start the game, you find yourself on a little trolley/gondolay and that there is no opening cutscene? what? no opening cutscene? What kind of game is that? After a few seconds you find that you're actually playing the opeing cutscene. Cool huh? This is how the game plays for the entire duration. Not only do you play the game, but you also get to see the event unfold before you...awesome...the story of the game has got to be the best in FPS history. It's not the stale old "Aliens have come to conquer the earth and you're the only badass that can stop them." As you play that game you find twists in the plot that can totally suprise you. While all other FPS seem to abandon plot development about three seconds into the game, Half-Life seems to dish up something new everytime you turn the corner.

This is one of games that really scared the crap out of me...even after playing through it once...Try playing the game in the middle of the night with the lights out on the most difficult setting and you'll know what I'm talking about. Half the time you will be wandering around with only three shells left in your shot gun, your flash light batteries on low, and wondering if there are aliens around that corner that you can't handle. Roof tiles suddenly drop down bringin down pouncing aliens, walls suddenly crumble, and more aliens can come tumbling out at you.

The weapons are much more realistic, and well balanced. No more can rockets be fired continuously from your rocket launcher, you have to reload after you finish up a clip, and you can no longer carry more ammunition than a tank, as in other FPS games. Granted, you can still carry a lot of weapons, but its much more realistic than carrying the 99 rockets the way you can in Quake.

The multiplayer in this game simply rocks...you can download mods off the internet and activate them with the click of a mouse...and best of all, they are all FREE...kick ass mods like Counterstrike, and Teamfortress Classic can be downloaded for absolutely free of charge...

Level design is absolute genius, as platform jumps and puzzles are just challenging enough to keep you on your toes, but not so difficult as to make you want to tear your hair out everytime you fall off a crate...The placement of dead bodies and aliens are just in the right place to really give you a scare...

The Bad
I thought as hard as I could but I couldn't think of one bad point in Half-Life...well except the ending was not as rewarding as it should...but in this case, getting there was all the fun, and what FUN it was...so not much to complain about here...

The Bottom Line
WOW...If you are tired of the mindless FPS shooters, then Half-Life is the game for you...in fact even if you're not tired of mindless FPS gaming, get Half-Life...this game is a sure classic, and will influence games to come for a long time...

Windows · by MadCat (53) · 2000

Pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. Half-Life, but haven't we met before?

The Good
Interesting weapons with good variety, great sound and graphics, some impressive stages and good ballistics for an arcade game. Also there's great interaction in the game and there are some truly excellent action sequences, like a whole episode where you are on a little train and one where you have to sneak past a giant tentacle. The game also can create one hell of an atmosphere.

The Bad
Well, the npcs look like the same two guys all through the game, and the AI in the game looks amazing, but that's because it merely follows some clever pre-programmed steps, you'll quickly learn it's "holes" and how to take advantage of them. Also the final boss sucks, it is merely a puzzle-like exercise with zero challenge to it.

But the real bad thing in Half-Life is that it is completely over-rated. Half-life is a great game, but let's not confuse the issues, that doesn't mean it does anything new or innovative, it merely does everything we have seen before better. For instance, the storyline is a piece of crap, it's the usual "bad aliens come to kick ass" thing but updated to our current times (cue in the government cover-ups and X-files references). Why does it seem better then? Because it is made a part of the game. In previous games you played through a level/mission and then you sat back to watch the story unfold in cutscenes, on Half-Life the story unveils before your eyes in the game!! Revolutionary you say? I say System Shock, just because it's the first one that comes to mind. The gameplay itself is also unninspired, and shows the true nature of the game, for instance: take the giant tentacle sequence: what's it really about? flipping switches, and shooting anything in the way... However by lots of inventive designs and atmosphere tricks, we get duped into thinking it's actually a deep non-linear affair, millions of times I was fooled into thinking "wow, there must be hundreds of possible ways to finish this game" Wrong, Half-Life is a shooter pure and simple, and though it may seem deep it is actually Doom Redux: kill everything in the room, flip the switch, move on... ad infinitum.

As such, it is very easy to understand the reason Half-Life is so successful. Half-Life is nothing but a sophisticated Doom, yet everyone hails it as the next coming in terms of level design, storyline, etc... Don't get me wrong, like Doom, I love Half-Life! But I know what the game is REALLY about. In the end it is all about illusions really, you may say that I'm being overly cynical, and that illusions is what gaming is all about anyway.... but still, I can't help but think that the gaming industry can provide something different that just newer, better versions of Doom. I'd like to think that they can provide original storylines and true depth of gameplay instead of pulling quarters out of our ears, showing us a series of nifty tricks and making us believe we have had the time of our lives

The Bottom Line
To be fair let me state that Half-Life really IS an atmospheric rollercoaster ride to remember. It is one helluva game and I loved playing it. But does it deserve it's success? I can't help but feel outraged when people that have been in the business for years get the shaft because they refuse to do the same stupid things over and over and try to be innovative, while along comes Valve, rehashes Doom, and suddenly they get considered the next design gods of the century... No, something must be wrong...

Windows · by Zovni (10503) · 2011

We'll make an excellent team

The Good
A modern classic, this is an finely-honed first person shooter with a compelling story, some excellent action set-pieces, great presentation, and a ground-breakingly perfect musical score. It reeks of quality, and stinks of class - the creators obviously cared about making a good game, and that simple fact sets 'Half-Life' apart from everything else. Now almost two years old, 'Half-Life' is still just as good as it was, and it could be released tomorrow and still make the same impact. It's an embarrassment of riches, with too many good things to count - in amongst the seemingly-intelligent soldiers, giant tentacles, amusingly jingoistic security guards and radioactive water the game almost off-handedly solves the problem of how to tell a story with a computer game - and it's extremely immersive. You really need to play it with headphones, or an expensive stereo. Everything from the plausible, gloomy environments, to the metallic chatter of your machine-pistol, fits the atmosphere perfectly, and there's a sparse, scary set of musical cues which mix ambient techno with noisemusic. It's even excellent fun as a multiplayer game, or even in related 'Team Fortress' form. It's rock-hard, too, but in a way that makes you want certain bits again and again. All told, it's a classic, and you should own it already (plus the mission pack).

The Bad
It's not perfect, though, although familiarity has no bred contempt. The narrative flow breaks down in the final, alien-bound levels, which are a disappointment after the recognisably real-world environments in the rest of the game. On the alien world there are a couple of places where you can be inextricably stuck, too, which seems unfair. Some of the creature designs don't seem to fit, either - whilst the mutated scientists and head-crabs are fantastically hateable, the hulking, wasp-firing alien 'sergeants' seem to belong to another game entirely. Play it in the dark, for the first time, and you'll be scared to death, too.

The Bottom Line
It makes 'Blood 2' look amazingly, implausibly bad.

Windows · by Ashley Pomeroy (225) · 2000

A landmark to be sure, but not quite the work of genius it is hailed as being.

The Good
Half Life has a lot to like. The way the game begins is beautiful and very cinematic, actually letting you play out the intro yourself which is a very nice touch and adds tremendously to the games feel. There is a constant air of wonder at what the next area will contain and the gameplay is solid and has some great set pieces. Aurally there are some great effects that constantly keep you on edge and the AI on the enemies is of a very high standard.

The Bad
Some of the levels are really pretty average to be honest, particularly the awful alien stages. You get so hyped up to see the alien world of Xen and when you finally get there it's a terrible mess of floating platforms and the whole game goes downhill from there. While the enemies are very smart, the AI on the allies you find in the game is moronic, often they will get stuck in a simple corridor and sometimes even get in your way so the only course of action you have is to shoot them.The story, while well presented is also nothing special. Just the same old aliens coming to our world scenario that we've seen a million times before. It is also not the first game of its type to have a story that carries it. Many shooters have had detailed plots that far outweigh the mediocre story that's here, remember Jedi Knight?

The Bottom Line
Half Life is a good game and definately worth getting hold of, but it's not the wonder game that so many have hailed it as being. First ever shooter with a plot? I think not.

Windows · by Sycada (177) · 2001

Undoubtedly fantastic -- but why does it have to be impossible?

The Good
Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere! The settings, simple puzzles, locales, and especially sound effects were 110% accurate and believable. Overhearing radio transmissions that give away plot points, manipulating environment controls to kill enemies or overcome obstacles, and witnessing army grunts work together to take you out is riveting to watch. I found myself completeing certain sections over and over again, not because I had screwed up or lost too much health, but because the outcome was just so friggin' cool to watch.

Having a good graphic engine doesn't hurt, either. With any TNT or Voodoo card in OpenGL mode, graphics are very fast and very nice.

The Bad
I don't consider myself a newbie at gaming, especially action gaming. I'm an above-average deathmatch player, and while I don't ruLe N-E-1's w0rld, I'm not terrible either. So why did I find the last third of Half-Life so damn frustrating? Maybe it was the jumping puzzles, which seemed ripped out of Super Mario Brothers. Maybe it was the alien world puzzles, which defied logic until trial and error pointed out the right solution. Maybe it was a combination of the two, such as the Insane Jumping Time-It-Right Teleporter Puzzles of Death. I don't know. All I know is that once I entered the Lambda complex, my enjoyment of the game dropped considerably. I eventually became so frustrated that I had to rely on not one but two cheat codes to complete the game. A game shouldn't have to force the player to become a levitating demigod just to get through a level.

Many people have complained about the ending being a disappointment. I disagree -- I think the ending is probably the only possible ending(s) that could have existed.

The Bottom Line
You don't become unanimously voted Game of the Year for nothing, so this is a title that belongs in everyone's library. But unless you can control computers via telepathy and can predict the future, plan on having some cheat codes around and quicksaving every 2 minutes.

There is also another reason to own Half-Life: Player Mods. Half-Life has one of the most customizable game engines on the market right now, and tons of deathmatch, team play, and custom scenarios exist to extend the life of the product for years.

Windows · by Trixter (8952) · 2000

Indispensable FPS

The Good
Half-Life was for a long time one of the best FPS games in the world and maybe it's still the number one. The Valve studios made one of the most shocking games using a genre which was a little bit stocked, only unreal was on a par with the game. The game has no important new features regarding other competitors of the same genre, it's just a FPS, with weapons (human and alien weapons), enemies (humans and aliens too), and no puzzles, just go on and kill everything that's trying to kill you and you'll finish the game. The story is more of the same, aliens on Earth and soldiers trying to kill the survivors to mask the truth.

Then, why is this game so important? It's because of its essence, it has a great story, something special is behind everything. Gordon Freeman is a perfect character, and he doesn't even speak! How is it possible? That's the essence I'm talking about. Lovecraft could be proud of this game, we have gates from another dimension, monsters coming from there and everything's because of human's mistake. Ted Backman designed the monsters and he really did a brilliant work, the aliens will not give you a fright, but they're disgusting (specially the crabs) and repulsive. There are many enemies and the game isn't repetitive.

Some survivors will help you along the way, security members will go with you killing enemies with their guns (they'll die soon, it's really difficult to protect them and they will be more like a bait to you) and scientists will heal you and can't fight. They can also open closed doors along the game (something like secret areas with extra ammo and med-kits) and that's why you should keep them alive as far as you can.

There's an enigmatic and deep story behind the game, you'll see a man with a briefcase during the entire game, talking with scientists and observing what you do from the distance. You can't reach him or shoot him and you won't know what's happening 'till you finish the game. When you play the game for the first time you'll notice him sometimes, but it's a good choice to start the game again and look for him (now that you know who he is).

The game has three difficult levels, and they're not really hard, they aren't impossible, so, if you've played many FPS try the hard level because it's difficult but not frustrating. There are many weapons and many-kits and when you know how to deal with all your enemies you'll finish the game with no problems (anyway you'll die many times).

The Bad
There are some things that are not as good as it should. The game has two important parts: Fighting against soldiers - Fighting against aliens. There are some parts in which both of them will try to kill you, but not so many, that's why sometimes maybe you'll be a little bored of killing soldiers/aliens and you'll miss the other enemies.

About gameplay, the design of the shark is poor comparing with the other enemies and fighting with it is not a comfortable experience. The survivors that will help you along the way are really stupid, they have a poor AI and they will stop walking leaving you alone. You'll have to come back to make them follow you and not walking so fast to avoid this thing, furthermore, they're not useful as a fellow team member.

Music's not good and this game deserves something better. There's only music in some parts of the game, and it doesn't suit with it. It sounds strange and out of place. It's the only important bad thing of the game (well, better to have this bad things instead of other important things like gameplay, right?). The FX is good, and the dialogues (maybe I should say "monologue" because Freeman doesn't talk and he just listen to what the others say) are adequate.

The Bottom Line
Half Life is something more than a FPS game. If you like the FPS genre you'll notice that since the beginning. The atmosphere, the characters, the enemies,the main story... Everything has something special. It's a really pleasure to play a game which you know that will make history since the beginning... and it's not overestimated.

Windows · by NeoJ (398) · 2009

Go take granddaddy down a peg

The Good
I honestly don't know how everyone can be wrong about the exact same thing, but I suppose that's how you kill an American president back in the 1960's. I read over and over again that the best thing about Half-Life is the story. Well, it's a very average story: something goes wrong at a top secret facility and it's up to one guy to save the world from an alien invasion, even though the government tries to stop him. If you disagree, then what point could you make that would spoil the story? You can't , because the plot is paper thin. It's not like someone is someone's father, one someone is actually a ghost, or that someone you didn't think was a dude is actually a dude!! See, those are meaty stories, some with more meat on the bone than others.

Now, what it excels at is how to tell the story. By only using your protagonist's POV the entire story you are witness to how this common sci-fi story could play out practically in the real world. Gone are power-ups that spin around in mid-air. If you find weapons there is a reason why that weapon is there, as in being in a weapon lock up or near the body of a fallen soldier. Basically it's taking a movie and filling in all of the blanks when the camera isn't there to explain what happened. How did he get back to full health? Oh, he crawled around in back through the air ducts and so on. This idea of logic adds to the plausibility of the story, and thus our immersion into it.

Having every area bumped into smaller areas to facillitate numerous yet very short load times makes the game into basically one level that just continues on and on. But where Half-Life succeeds is in it's use of set pieces that punctuate the flow of this one, long level and makes the game memorable. So there isn't the dam level, or the commando assault on the surface level, or fighting the helicopter level; instead you remember it for the set piece and not a level, something that increases your immersion in this game greatly.

Immersion is important because the game attempts to let you experience all the things you'd ever wanted to do in games (or life, if you're really ambitious). Fight commandos, helicopters, tanks (I'm not sure, I finished the game half a lifetime ago), use homing RPG's... immersion makes the experience much more visceral, and therefore a much better gaming experience.

Another thing I found great about this game is how you identify with this guy, faceless save for the box art or any fan pic in which he is always holding the crowbar. By making him late in the beginning of the game and giving him the option of turning on the security alarm in the reception area makes him a guy like you and me; even though he works at a top secret government facility, it's crappy!

The Bad
Even though it tells the story well it really doesn't make much sense. So who is this G-Man guy? Why is he always behind bulletproof glass? How can this Gordon Freeman guy be late for work in the beginning and in the end be taking down highly trained extremely dangerous army operatives? Doesn't it cost a fortune to run (and clean) Black Mesa? Isn't it so big that you can see it from outer space, let alone at the side of the oad that borders it?

For Half-Life to be true Gordon Freeman has to be running from one coincidence to another, and in the end it's just too many: in Half-Life one guy saw/caused the beginning of the invasion, keeps running into the mysterious G-man, and in the end travels to another dimension. See, if there were cut scenes and some invisable camera was watching secret proceedings that weren't privvy to common knowledge then you can accept that. This device hurts the believability of the game, and as such the story. In that case, how can the story "rock"?

The NPC's really weren't that thrilling (unlike DOOM3, there aren't any Asians around waiting to be turned into zombies). Really they're just there to spout some exposition and then open a door. Back in the day on planethalflife there was a section called the Scientist Killing Club; this inspired me to play through the game again, only this time I would try to kill as many "innocent" NPC's as I can. You know, once they open a door you can kill anyone you want. What kind of story is that? That just means the NPC's role in Half-Life are really not that important.

It is too bad about the last third on Xen. I would have appreciated a shorter but better game. I think this is a case of making it longer just to satisy the common consumer and also making it harder just because you are getting close to the end. 2D platformers are 2D because they work well in 2D. I think with a well-thought out first and second half you're bound to be let down at the end. By the way, I've done both choices, but for what? The game ends either way.



The Bottom Line
Half-Life is worth playing but not worth worshipping. Games matured a bit with Half-Life, but this is definitely not a "thinking man's shooter" by any account. In retrospect Half-Life doesn't deserve all of the acclaim it received for its time, but then people thought Half-Life had an amazing story because people hadn't ever been told a story that well through a FPS.

It's funny that the one game that influenced Half-Life the most, DOOM, will then rip it off Half-Life in DOOM3: arriving late, being witness to the "resonance cascade", jumping through portals, and even another monorail ride!

In truth, it was unicorn b lynx who got me really thinking about games and also prompted me to get involved on this site, so it's all your fault. Myself, I got tired of reading "pwns" and "rox!" and "suks!"

Windows · by lasttoblame (414) · 2007

The best 1st person 3D shooter I have ever played.

The Good
Half-Life is remarkable, both from the technological aspect and the design aspect. It has a REAL story line, and as the plot unfolds, you will slowly put together what happened in the Black Mesa Research Facility. The story line is linear, but it is still a VAST improvement over its predecessors (except Unreal, of course). The engaging story line is the reason one keeps going, and although the game is divided to levels, it feels more like chapters in a book then levels in a game.

The graphics are very good and the engine is quite fast. Although the game uses a modified version of the Quake 2 engine, it looks nothing like it. Clever use of pre-rendered shadows, pre-lighted textures, and wise modeling, helps to created the most realistic looking scenes ever in a real time 3D game. Everything looks, feels and reacts real.

The AI is unprecedented. The enemies you generally face are not tough. They are clever. Very clever. The marines, particularly, are amazing. The act as a group, covering each others back, taking cover and always moving, changing their position to better get their target - you. They will never: blindly charge you, get in each other's line of fire or stay in one place, waiting for you to finish them off. They will: run from cover to cover, retreat to a better position, and throw a grenade at you before charging at you. They move, act and fight so much like real marines, that I won't be surprised to find that the developers consulted actual marines, or at least had some knowledge and experience in combat in an urban environment. It is obvious that without the power suit, which protect you, you won't last 20 seconds against even one squad of marines. The same, although to a lesser extent, applies to the aliens in the game. They too will act as a group, run away if necessary, and come at you when you least expect it. I sometimes load save games simply to experience the feel of fighting these marines, trying out various ways to trap them, or pick them off one by one.

The level design is clever and varied. The levels are realistic: the labs look like labs, and contain a lot of equipment, offices, and elevators. The security stations contain weapons lockers, sandbags, barricades and many trigger-happy guards. The missile silo contains blast doors, sophisticated panels and a giant alien beast, which you can't kill, so you will have to find another way to move around it. In fact, the levels are GOAL oriented and not kill oriented. You job is not to kill everything in sight, but simply to get from one place to another,or restore the power to certain areas and so on. There will be some obstacles which you can't kill, and you will have to use your wits to go around. All this makes for an extremely addictive game - and I couldn't leave it until I finished it.

The sound effects are of exceptional quality, even for a 3D shooter. And if you have a 3D capable sound card - you will find that the 3D sound makes for a completely immersive environment, and you can actually rely on it in combat.

All these things make Half-Life the best 3D shooter I have ever played, and the only one I didn't get tired of after a few levels.

The Bad
No game is perfect, and there are always a few snags:

  • The plot is interesting, though it is not overly original. But the real problem is the ending, which is very unsatisfying, and is a very big disappointment.
  • There are some very small parts of the game, which I think should have been kept out of it. For example, there is a section where you simply jump from platform to platform, and if you fall, you die. It is very annoying, since the game interface, although perfect for a 3D shooter, is a very bad choice for a platform game.
  • The save game mechanism is horrible - since you can't actually write a description for your game. It simply gives you the place, and the time the game was saved. This is a REAL problem when two people play the game on the same computer…



The Bottom Line
This game is still one of the best of its kind: smart enemies, clever design and immersive and challenging gameplay. What more could you want?

Windows · by Mickey Gabel (332) · 2000

The best PC game of all time. Period.

The Good
Everything. AI is quite possibly the smartest to ever grace a computer game; the marines and aliens, run from you, take cover, speak and are very smart. Also, you get fellow scientists and security guards help you along the way without being a pain. The storyline is about government cover-ups and experiments gone horribly wrong...Basically a fantastic sci-fi story that should be made into a movie sooner or later. Levels are excellent, always throwing something new at you when you least expect it. No more are you searching for keycards, HL has gameplay that makes you think of what to do next, and strategies to defeat a squad of grunts, or the huge alien Gargantua. All the weapons are very interesting and all have a very good use. For example, sometimes when you see a squad of grunts, unaware of you, but always kill you when you enter where they are you always get killed until you bounce a grenade in there. You can't just go in there and kill everything right away like you would in DOOM...HL is much more of a challenge. Basically the game has nothing wrong with it, and it not only fits all the criteria for a great game, it exceeds it and creates an experience like none other, with many innovative features added to an overcrowded genre...the one of the best FPS and games of all time.

The Bad
Multiplayer Half-Life is not that good, with some heavy lag sometimes, although maps and weapons are very good...fortunately, HL has some great mods that improve this downside, namely the tactical Team Fortress Classic. In other words, one player is the meat of the game. Sometimes it got VERY difficult, but usually you would just keep playing anyway, no matter how fustrating it was, just so you could see what happens next...Half-Life is that good.

The Bottom Line
Think of the tactics of Rainbow Six strategy, combined with a fantastic sci-fi story containing the elements of the movie ALIENS, but not with all the mindless action of DOOM. One of the few games you could get someone like a real time strategy gamer to actually play and get interested into.

Windows · by Dragoon (106) · 2000

Eternal masterpiece

The Good
- Innovative at the time. - Change of pace from chapter to chapter. - Fast and satisfying gameplay, good AI, responsive controls. - Enormous modding potential, elevated by Valve efforts.

The Bad
- Product of its time, most of the innovations became the norm. - HD content from PS2 is pretty ugly. - Some Xen maps feels very underdeveloped.

The Bottom Line
It's still holds up and i still would recommend it over Black Mesa remake.

Windows · by SanfordMorgan · 2023

Mysterious and unique FPS experience

The Good
Half-Life's main strength lies in its atmosphere and overall approach. The game is a highly immersive experience that combines a dark, gritty feel with intense yet realistic action. These aspects are also aided by the fragmentized, purposefully vague storytelling which adds a really strong element of mystery.

The level design is also good, with that classic Doom philosophy of non-linear maze-like maps adapted by Valve to realistic, functional locations.

The Bad
The only real problem with Half-Life's design is overreliance on platforming, which can be rather annoying.

Surprisingly, another weak point is the game's gunplay. It feels like, in its quest for realism, Half-Life lost the simple yet powerful joy of mowing down enemies with a clearly overpowered shotgun and experimenting with futuristic guns found in earlier sci-fi FPS games. But because the overall experience is so immersive and interesting, the unsatisfying combat is just a minor flaw.

The Bottom Line
While Half-Life's revolutionary significance might be overstated if you consider Quake II's objective-oriented mission structure and Unreal's detailed environmental storytelling (let alone System Shock which did it all several years earlier), it's still a really good game that provides a unique experience you won't forget. 7/10

Windows · by Pegarange (216) · 2023

Still looks as fantastic as it was back in 1998

The Good
id Software rose to stardom in the Nineties when it released its highly successful Wolfenstein 3-D to the masses. If you see the id logo on the front cover, you know that you will be taking home with you an awesome first-person shooter. Hits such as Doom, Heretic, and Quake were being churned out every year. In 1998, Valve, a small company headed by a former Microsoft employee, released Half-Life, and in my opinion, it is a classic. A review I read in PC PowerPlay gave the game a whopping 98%. The only negative thing they said about this game was a connection between hunger and African children. It was Half-Life itself that revolutionized first-person shooters on the PC even further.

Right from the start of the game, I was surprised to find out that instead of a long cinematic showing Gordon Freeman traveling to the Sector C Test Labs on a train, you are free to move around the train yourself. You can even look out the windows to discover construction areas and security offices. Then, once you reach Sector C, you can either explore the area fully or go find your HEV suit. Freeman’s HEV suit is fantastic. Besides telling you how much health and ammo you have, it displays different warnings depending on the environment you are in. It even talks to you, too. With the suit in place, it’s time to enter the test chambers. There are no cinematics in the game; Valve wants you to be immersed in the game world as much as possible.

Eventually, there is a resonance cascade, which is caused when Freeman pushes a specimen in a scanning beam. A portal opens up between Earth and an alien world called Xen. As you progress through the game, you will hear aliens teleporting in your vicinity. The first of these are headcrabs, vortigaunts, and houndeyes. The player will encounter more aliens as they progress, and these can be dealt with using the variety of weapons on offer. They are divided into groups, with the basic ones such as the crowbar on the left, followed by military-grade weapons, then alien weapons and, finally, grenades and other explosives. Different weapons can be selected by using the mouse wheel or pressing one to five on the keyboard.

The security guards and scientists walking around at the start of the game are non-playable characters you have to deal with later. They can help you get into locked areas if you lure them to the door locks. What they won’t do is climb ladders, follow you through vents, or enter very dangerous areas. Both characters have little conversations with themselves if they get bored. You can call their services any time throughout the game, just not before you enter the test chamber. The earliest game I know that introduced the concept of NPCs was CyberMage: Darklight Awakening, but this was an overlooked game back in the day, and you can only talk to them, that’s all.

Another plus of Half-Life is the level design. There are many areas to explore, including offices, rail tunnels, control centers, outposts, and even Xen itself. They are interconnected with each other, and – unlike first-person shooters before it – they don’t require you to press a button to access them first. Some of the areas are littered with puzzles. My favorite is trying to launch an airstrike on the Gargantua. There are bosses you need to defeat from time to time, but it is not just a matter of “shoot to kill”.

In most chapters, the environments in which the player explores look amazing, especially the exterior in “Surface Tension”. For example, the player has to fight HECU soldiers along a cliff. The view of the New Mexico desert is breathtaking, with a little stream at the bottom and huge rocks surrounding it. “Xen” and “Interloper” are outside scenes, and the view looks really good. I enjoyed exploring the planet, shooting alien grunts in the process. In earlier chapters, offices and computer rooms can be entered while players are walking around Black Mesa. I was amazed at how much technology got crammed in the computer rooms, and how good it looks. Furthermore, the offices are clean and haven't got trash lying on the floor. They look better than my bedroom.

Like many games released on CD-ROM, the music is stored as audio tracks. The music in Half-Life is well composed, and what’s unique about each piece of music is that they don’t loop back to the beginning, and each piece only lasts for only two or three minutes. I like how some of them have that beat to them, such as the one played after you don your HEV suit. As for the sound effects, they are quite impressive. My favorite sounds come from the houndeye. When this cute creature sees you with its one huge eye, it sounds as if a door is opening. And as it emits shock waves you can almost hear Freeman screaming even though he is supposed to be silent.

If you’re new to first-person shooters, you want to compete on a hazard course before you start a new game. You will be assisted by a holographic image of a woman who teaches you how to run, jump, duck, shoot, perform long jumps, and climb ladders. It will take you about thirty minutes, given that you may fail at completing a task. You will also learn how to accomplish new tasks such as performing high jumps, using ladders, recharging your HEV suit and health at wall stations, and going around in the dark with a flashlight.

The Bad
I noticed a few bugs in the game, mainly concerning the non-player characters. In some situations, when they finish walking to wherever they want to go, they tend to do a little tap dance. I even remember, in the chapter “Office Complex”, one of the NPCs was walking around and died of a heart attack. Also, I remember in “Blast Pit”, when I opened a door, it seemed to drift out into space as long as it remained open.

The Bottom Line
Half-Life is a fantastic game. There is so much to do here - destroying aliens; restoring power to some areas; and interacting with both scientists and security guards, to make them get you access to locked areas. Most of the graphics are breathtaking, and an excellent soundtrack is heard while you play. There are certain aspects of the game that the player might enjoy doing.

Originally released for Windows in 1998, Half-Life also made its way onto Mac and Linux thanks to Valve themselves. This version - distributed on the Steam platform - is the same as the original retail version but without the flashy menu screens. There is also an updated Source port which I recommend you avoid; it contains too many bugs Valve couldn't be bothered fixing. If you love first-person shooters and you want to do something new, other than blast enemies all the time, give Half-Life a go.

Windows · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2021

I hated it before, but saw the light.

The Good
I earlier posted a review of this game which trashed it and made it seem like the worst game in the world. That was when I wasn't very good at games. That was when I needed god mode just to get past a simple challenge. I've changed my mind. Now that I have the skills, I've played it again, and it's remarkably different. I previously hated the jumping puzzles, but for a skilled player (which I am now) they aren't such a drag. Most of the game is, in fact, action rather than jumping. While some moments are frustrating, the puzzles can be navigated easily and get you back into the action. The marine AI isn't as impressive as it was back in 1998, but it's still great. The story immerses you in a great way. It never takes you away from your first-person perspective. You don't connect with Gordon Freeman, you ARE Gordon Freeman. The G-Man (that idiot with the briefcase) isn't just the bad guy, you genuinely hate him. Barney isn't just helping you get through the game, he's your friend, you care about him, and you feel sadness when aliens or marines kill him. The cliffhanger ending appropriately gets you excited for Half-Life 2. It makes you wonder about what is to become of Gordon, even with the details already released by Valve on the sequel.

The Bad
Some puzzles are frustrating. One in particular is a large puddle you have to cross to get to some electrical equipment. Little do you know that once you turn the power on the puddle will be electrified. Okay, maybe you've guessed, but you have to be really clever to set up a bridge of boxes across it before turning on the juice. You can do that after the puddle's electrified, but it's really hard to do. Also, monster AI (not marine) is dumbed down a little too much. Sure, lower alien life forms are done, but wouldn't a bullsquid be smart enough to at least run away when you shoot it? Also, a little more music would be nice, especially in the On A Rail chapter. That's the most boring chapter of the game and I would've liked to listen to some tunes.

The Bottom Line
I once thought of this as the most frustrating and disappointing game I've ever played. Now, however, I've seen it for what it truly is. This is a classic, and I can't wait for the sequel (and the sequel after that, and the next one, and the next one...)

Windows · by Zack Green (1162) · 2003

A game with potential, but a lot of over-hyped media attention

The Good
Good graphics, good atmosphere at (sadly few) places, splendid AI, and a lot of good add-ons released.

Also, I liked some of the strategic combat and some of the adventure-elements in HL; as the player really do have to think tactical to get trough the game.

The Bad
The story is too linar, and too stereotypical. Also, the game seems to have focused too much on presenting new gaming technology; and far too little on the gaming experience and atmosphere.

I can't comment on the multiplayer aspect, as I review games by their single-player experience, and when it comes to Half Life, I really can't say I liked much of it.

The Bottom Line
Half Life, although it has a lot of potentional, falls short at its single-player aspect; and in my eyes, it got much over-hyped public attention - becouse it really isn't such a good game when you view it by its single-player elements.

HL is simply too typical for late 20th century games; all about making money, presenting new technology, and so little focused on the more crucial single-player elements; elements which could have made the game much better than it is - and actually making it worth all the awards it got.

Don't get me wrong; I did like Half Life at some places, while at othes, it just falls short.

Bottom line: if you are an Quake-fan and action gamer - this is definently your cup of tea. But if you are an adventure gamer as myself who value single-player with a good atmosphere, story, realism and open-ended gameplay, I advice to think twice before buying this title - unless you are intersted in its many great add-ons; some of which is actually better then the original game itself.

Windows · by Stargazer (99) · 2003

A timeless classic that is still fun to play - even in 2003

The Good
STORY You are Gordon Freeman - research assistant at the Black Mesa - goverment run - science facility. Your day starts off as normal, a ride in the tram to your post, the standard checks and so on and so forth... Then it all quite simply - goes to hell. An experiment goes horribly horribly wrong, and a whole bunch of interdimentional aliens arrive at black mesa - they don't bring peace. Things get even worse when the Military being sent in to rescue you are really there to clean up the mess.

GRAPHICS Ok it's 2003 and well back then the graphics were not too brilliant - but I'll just shut my eyes and take myself back to early 1999 where the Quake 3 engine had just started to hatch and we all went "oh my!" The textures and characters are by todays standards - horribly outdated and just plan "ewww!!" Back then in 1998 they were not really concidered brilliant - but nevertheless passable. There are some cool things, like the gibs the excessive amounts of blood one scientist can have and so on. The animation of the characters are very well done, very fluid (for 1998) and nicely done. From the multiple feelers of that large squid alien that likes to spid acid and charge you, to the headcrabs that lunge from nowhere groping in the air with their claws for your face. Other animations like the guards, hapless scientists and other miscalanious things are all well done in my opinion. Other cool things are the random piece of junk that burst out of boxes and bits of debris that fall from things.

Characters are a bit lax, you see THE SAME guard over and over again while there's at least 4 different scientists...Alien models are generally well done, fairly detailed and such, the alien guns are pretty cool as well - like the little alien mine critter that tries to eat your finger.

CONTROLS Standard FPS config, WASD for movement, E for activation, Left mouse for shooting, Right for Secondary fire and so on

SOUND Very very good. While the echos are a bit grating on my latest sound card (it just loves reverb) all the small effects like footsteps, alien sounds and such are well done. And there are also the small things like the wirring of a sentry gun, and the beeping of it locking onto you, plus how in echoy rooms you can hear things crawling in the darkness and so on. The voice acting is also pretty good - while a bit sterotypical (nerdy scientists) it's ok.

GAMEPLAY Now firstly - the game is linear - totally 100% linear - no alternate paths, no different ways though a situation it's 100% scripted. So what makes it so great? The answer is in it's moments, and details. Half-Life is like being in a very high octane movie with something new always around the corner. You turn to go across a catwalk, only to have a large creature teleport in mid-air and crash onto the catwalk destroying it. Things that hang from the clieling and drag you up to be eaten spew remains when killed, fans whirl hapless scientists into them, monsters eat and claw hapless scientists. a scientist hangs off a piece of debris before falling off...(yes they are cannon fodder) What also makes this game great are the situations that you are placed in - they do require you to think a bit. And while keyhunting is almost completely non existant, it's trying to work out how to defeat this seemingly invincible boss....then you hear a guard "it listens for things" Yes - no longer does a boss mean you pummel what ever you have into it - no this one meant you had to sneak around it then activate the fuel and oxygen of the blast chamber and fry it to pieces. The other two bosses were also interesting, one was completely invincible, the other well that was a shame. It looked like a giant baby...thing....and it required a but of a jumping puzzle to kill. But what makes this game replayable - it's just the situations there are so many moments in Half Life that make it so hard to forget.

The Bad
Well...ok it was a tad hard. Especially the jumping aspects of it. Some parts were just almost insanely hard that you just gave up for the night, Mainly thoese parts involved some mechanical thing that tracked and shot you - or the guards with their devious AI.

The other niggle about the game is the linarity of it - while a situation may be cool at starters - other times it's plain annoying when you've seen it for the 15th time after dying from it.

Also the ending just sucks...it is really a truly disapointing end to such a great game. The final levels are more or less like Turok rather than Half Life

The Bottom Line
Play it if you have not. For this a rare game that is a stunning classic

Windows · by Sam Hardy (80) · 2003

One of the best/worst games I've ever played. Ambivalent? Damn right.

The Good
Half-Life is an odd breed. It is widely hailed as the best first person shooter ever, if not the best game to ever grace the PC. Being the first-person shooter fanatic that I am, I just had to give it a try. I write this review with mixed feelings; you will soon find out why.

So first, the good.

  • Game engine. The first thing to look at in a first-person shooter is its 3D engine. For a 1998 game, Half-Life certainly doesn't fail. I wouldn't say it brings unprecedented levels of visual fidelity to computer games (that title is reserved to Unreal), but with its modified Quake 2 engine, Half-Life certainly is nothing to sneeze at; the Research Centre looks exactly as it should: gray walls and red lighting where needed. Luckily Valve's engineers didn't skimp on the colours and lighting, so this game looks for the most part terrific (with some really amazing scenes, such as right at the beginning where there is a room with a scientist who's been taken over by an alien, right next to the locker room). I would say that visually the game is stunning.
  • Audio: the game features one of the best audio engines I've ever heard (although I haven't had the chance to play Thief yet). The "regular" audio implementation, that is without any positional audio extensions, is relatively good (for the most part it's easy to pinpoint from which direction voices are coming from and at what distance), but with audio acceleration it excels: despite generally lacking EAX implementation, the A3D 2.0-enabled engine is incredible and adds a sense of depth to the game I've never experienced before. This is very notable from the beginning (especially in the test chamber) and becomes very useful as the game progresses, since you can hear exactly where your enemies are, and with reflections coming from all around it's just as easy to pinponit where in the corridor you should aim. The audio reproduction is terrific, and the voice quality isn't lousy either (unlike a lot of other games).
  • The music, where there is any, is great; admittedly most of the ingame background music consists of short, atmospheric tracks, but it's good enough as it is.
  • The atmosphere in this game is one of the heaviest I've ever experienced, especially at the early levels. The suspense is incredible: things fall and blow up, catching the player surprised; an elevator with screaming scientists falling down and exploding on the bottom of the shaft... Half-Life heightens the sensations to points never experienced before. Unfortunately, this feeling doesn't last too long, and before reaching the middle of the game one becomes so accustomed to everything that it's difficult to be surprised again.
  • Half-Life's plot, while not deserving a Nebula award-winning book, is easily one of the best in any computer game to date. The only similar game I can think of off-handedly that has a better plot is the masterpiece System Shock. Half-Life's story evolves quite well (not as well as I would like though) and is executed to a science in the game, something that is missing in most other computer games (and is the main reason why Half-Life is considered such a good game).
  • Some things in Half-Life are incredible: the "dragon" monster (the big one with three heads) part is a stroke of sheer genius. The guy with the suitcase helps heighten what could've been boring-out-of-your-mind levels to interesting plot elements. That rocks.
  • I have to give credit where credit is due; although I do not necessarily agree with most people that say that the enemy AI in Half-Life is amazing, I will say that the marines are certainly the most challenging "monster" in a first person shooter game I've encountered so far. People say that they really act like marines; I disagree, as what chance does some science fellow have against squads of trained marines? I will, however, agree that they are much more intelligent than a typical enemy, what with them running around for cover and throwing grenades at you. Also, the little guys that run around real fast, shoot you and run again for cover are fairly challenging. But still, I don't think what a lot of people say regarding Half-Life's AI holds true.

Unfortunately, Half-Life's fantastic qualities are severely crippled by it's less appealing ones. Read on.

The Bad
I guess the single thing that bothers me the most in Half-Life is the poor execution of great ideas; the level design is incredible, but at times I almost tore out my hairs in frustration because of such stupid design mistakes that should've never been. Seriously: Half-Life is the single most frustrating game I've ever played to date. Playing Half-Life is not a pleasurable endeavour at all. Moving along the game is, for the most part, not a test of wits, not even a test of sheer playing ability, but rather a completely frustrating trial-and-error ordeal.

I do not enjoy having to play something over and over again until I can figure out what I did wrong and fix it, and unfortunately Half-Life fails miserably in that area. Want examples? Alright. For one: the dragon monster I mentioned in the previous section. Once you get past the terrific concept, you will find that this part is utterly frustrating! I had to load a game at least a dozen times just to complete this part, because: 1. There is no gurantee that walking slowly around the monster will make it ignore you; it happened many times that I walked slowly around the wall, and still got killed. And it only takes one or two blows for the bloody thing to kill you! 2. Once you DO get across the monster, it happens twice I think that the bridge under you will collapse. Of course that in retrospect it was obvious that it will happen, but how the hell are you supposed to know that the first time you play?!

That's exactly what I mean: trial-and-error gameplay. That's not the way it should be.

I decided I will finish this game out of sheer resentment for the parts that are stupid and mind-numbing, and it was not an enjoyable experience at all. I had a load of fun up until about third of the game (I would say, up until the giant robot you have to electrocute just before the rails), and afterwards the entire game was painful to play. Constant reloads were bad enough, but what truly pissed me off is the poor control system. It's fine for the most part, but for example having climb down ladders can drive you crazy. It happened at least a hundred times during gameplay that I fell off a stupid ladder because of it and had to reload. And who says you can't strafe or jump off a ladder midway? Why should you have to do it a few times just to get it right? That's frustration.

Another thing that bothers me about Half-Life, in regards to its highly acclaimed AI, is that while enemy AI is for the most part good, the AI of the guys you're supposed to work with (guards and scientists) sucks royally. They are completely impossible to work with. They walk around doing stupid things, and will constantly forget that they're supposed to follow you. The guards will shoot you at the back because you're accidentally in their way, and the scientists wlil run around you while you're furiously fighting an alien or another, getting shot in the process. Stupidity reigns.

And the final nail in the coffin: Half-Life is literally PLAUGED with bugs, beginning with small, annoying ones (a missing polygon wreaking havoc in the scene) and ending with abysmal ones that will literally hold you back from finishing the game: When I finally got to the Lambda complex and the scientist there was supposed to let me in, he simply forgot. Why do I mean by that? Well, he said what he was supposed to, agreed to come with me, and... nothing! He wouldn't touch the bloody retinal scanner, and I couldn't even kill him out of frustration because that would forfeit the game. Eventually I had to resort to the "noclip 1" cheat in order to get past that particular section. Why?!

The Bottom Line
A potentially fantastic game, marred by frustrating gameplay and far too many bugs to mention.

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 1999

Possibly the most involving, intriguing, yet hardest FPS made....

The Good
Half-Life. Hundreds of publications and web-sites have praised it's gameplay and innovation. Thousands of people play the game and it's various incarnations. After purchasing Half-Life, I have one thing to say.

It has lived up to all expectations and then some.

The opening of the game feels like a movie. You are Gordon Freeman and you are a scientist at the Black Mesa Research Facility - Anomalous Materials Laboratory, a decommissioned military installation in Arizona. As you arrive to work, you ride the tram into the facility. A great aspect of this "typical" ride in is that it isn't a movie. It's all rendered in real-time using the game's engine. So you can walk around the tram, look up and down, and watch the credits go by. But the intro does something else. It immerses you into the role. You get a sense of vastness and complexity, just by looking at the size of the facility.

As you start your day at Black Mesa, you start to learn and piece together facts about what you do, and what type of research is conducted. In fact, there are area that you cannot gain access to until you get your Environmental Suit. So you need to go to your locker and suit up (like if you actually worked there) before exploring the game. I like the fact that you learn about what happened as you go through the game, similar to System Shock 1 and 2.

Half-Life runs using the Quake II engine. But trying to compare Quake and HL is like comparing Castle Wolfenstein and Wolf 3D. The basis of the engine is intact, but the guys at Valve have modified it so much that it's considered a completely new graphics engine. Running on a NVIDIA 3D card, the graphics are absolutely fabulous.
Cool electrical effects run rampant through the game, as creatures from another world materialize before your very eyes. And they seemingly appear at random as well, so if you walk into a room, always "check your six", because you never know if one will pop up behind you. Luckily, the electrical noise that is made is very distinct, so if you hear it, you can be sure that their is a creature around the corner.

Another nice graphical touch involves the numerous weapons you find while escaping from the Black Mesa Research Facility. Most FPS weapons are stationary in front of you. You are always holding them, ready to fire at any given moment. In HL, If you are holding a rifle, you'll occasionally move your hands, as if you are getting tired of holding the weapon (if this affects gameplay, I'm not sure. I haven't seen it have any drastic affects yet). It's nice to see this type of attention to detail in a FPS, especially considering the state they were in when HL released. Also, you need to reload your weapons. Take the shotgun, for example. The shotgun is a powerful weapon, but only holds 8 cartridges. So after firing 8, you'll need to reload. But you'll actually see your character loading the weapon. If you are in the middle of a firefight, then you are left defenseless. So reloading your weapon also becomes a tactical decision as well.

The controls are standard FPS layout, which can be modified as you wish. I personally feel that the initial layout is a bit clunky (but then again I feel ALL FPS shooter's initial layout is clunky) but remapping your keys is a breeze.

The sound is unreal. If you run across walkways, the metallic thumping sound is quite realistic. Yet, if you decide to crouch/walk over the same walkways, the sound is muffled, and sounds like you are making an effort to keep quiet (which is useful in some levels). Digital panning and echo effects make is sound like you are in a sterilized, cavernous research facility.

In addition to the Half-Life game that is present, they ability to switch to other single player games is easy. Instead of exiting the game and having to "program" the new levels in, it simply a matter of copying the files into the directory, and clicking "Activate". There are quite a few single player MODS out there that have a polished feel to them, so scout them out. PC Gamer's "They Hunger" and "U.S.S. Darkstar" are a couple to check out.

And then you have your online component. HL makes for an absolutely incredible online experience. From the start, HL was design for the average user to just make a few mouse clicks and then POOF you are online and actively playing. Be it Counterstrike, Team Fortress, DeathMatch Classic, Day of Defeat, or any of the countless mods that ordinary people have released (OK, not ordinary, but unbelievably talented people), there is something for everyone's taste in blowing up the bad guys. And hats off to Valve for making the source code open and available, allowing the people that play the games to play in the sandbox with the big boys. They have opened up what used to be a rather closed community, and have let regular artists, musicians, programmers and gameplayers in on all the fun

The Bad
Well this is only a personal gripe for me, and it pertains only to the single-player game. It's hard. Real hard. Even on easy, you need to use your quicksave key a lot. Now I'm not saying that it should have been easier, but for those who don't eat, sleep, and drink Quake/Unreal, it could have been easier. But I'm determined to finish the game without using cheat codes (I'm in LAMBDA CORE and it's using up all my available willpower to do so!)

The Bottom Line
Get it. If you love fast action online gaming, it WILL consume your free time. If you love a great single-player experience with plenty of ways to play, it WILL consume your free time. :)

But regardless if you have free time or not, Half-Life is a great addition to any gamer's library... You do have a library.... right? :)

Windows · by Chris Martin (1155) · 2001

Half-Life, Instant Classic

The Good
What is NOT to like! Half-Life created a new outlook on first person shooters with it's amazing plotline and it's NPC interactions. The Impact of this game is still felt today with the millions who play it and it's many mods online. There's enough variety of weapons to get anyone drooling and the scientists and security gaurds, though helpful, are sometimes icredibly fun to waste ammo on. The enemies for the most part are insanely intelligent which adds to this instant classic. Half-Life has finaly eliminated the boring kill everything aspect of all shooters before it and forces players to think and not just shoot. It's obvious other amazing games such as Deus Ex and the upcoming Return to Castle Wolfenstein have taken their ideas from this legend of a game. Such strides like this haven't been taken since the full 3D aspect of Quake.

The Bad
For the most part I have a few complaints only... First off sometimes it isn't excactly clear on what you have to do or where you have to go which can cause a mind numbing headache, many deaths, and getting lost quite a few times. The NPC's, though at times useful, are incredibly stupid (like the sercurity gaurds shooting you in the back while you're being attacked, and the inabillity to dodge any obstacles), and you never seem to find a scientist when you're low on health, I usualy just use them to avert enemy fire away from myself. Other than that and some horribly strong and smart enemies, the game is the best shooter ever created.

The Bottom Line
If you have a PC and you don't have this game, shame on you! Don't just but it for the incredible single player game but also for the multiplayer mods such as the Quake remake of Team Fortress (Team Fortress Classic) and of course the unbeliveably popular and realistic Counter-Strike!

Windows · by Aaron Savadge (4) · 2001

A first person shooter with a plotline.

The Good
The scientists/guards talk to you, and help you. The game has a really scary atmosphere to it (play it late at night with the lights off). The weapons are realistic (no BFG 15000's here), you find ammo and weapons in realistic places like on bodies and in gun racks (not hovering above the ground). It's quite a challenge too, so you'd better save often. The multiplayer function runs pretty smooth even if your ping is terrible, and the multiplayer modifications for it are really impressive.

The Bad
At certain points it gets too damn hard, makes you want to cheat. The multiplayer community (like all gaming communities) has some idiotic people in it. You need a top of the line video card to play it optimally.

The Bottom Line
Not another DOOM or Quake, should be in it's own genre. If you've ever wanted a FPS that had more behind it than "Save the earth", then get half-life.

Windows · by ZombieDepot (40) · 2001

Best game ever? Not any more, but still damn fine

The Good
This game, with over 50 international "Game Of The Year" awards behind it, was something of a success for Valve. The company shot from complete nobodies to superstars in one game. People have been waiting for their next game for about 5 years and nobody seems to be complaining, Valve can do no wrong it seems.

This game has only a few major tricks behind it, the rest is nothing particularly special. However these tricks are implemented so well that it doesn't really notice, and it's very strange how still no other games company has taken on board what they've done and improved it.

Firstly, the AI. The intelligence of the enemies in this game has been talked upon at length before. While the aliens are characteristically not the toughest foes to beat; the human opponents are astounding. They certainly were back in 1998. The soldiers were extremely quick, effective at working in a team, able to throw grenades at you, able to scatter when you threw one at them, able to flank and outmaneuver you, and able to take cover behind objects. They were nearly as good at playing as you were. Then the ninjas: lightning fast, cat-like, they'd shoot you from behind and run off when you found them, a team could pick you off in a second. The AI still has not been beaten.

The second major trick is the use of set-pieces and, bizarrely, no game has ever improved on this. Half-Life was so full of set-pieces that it seemed like literally anything could happen. Lifts would go out of control, whole ceilings would cave in, people would get pulled into vents and eaten before your very eyes. It was so intense and so amazing, why there isn't another game like this is a mystery to me.

Anyone can name a "moment" from Half-Life, like first encountering that incredible tentacle beast in the silo, or stepping into the suspended cage and having it plunge into the water. The fact that one of these legendary moments would happen every couple of minutes was enough to make you scream with delight. These moments were heightened with the excellent use of sound. The faint tapping you hear when you're rooms away from the tentacle beast silo, gradually getting louder the closer you get, until you finally open the silo door and see the gaming world's greatest enemy smashing it's claws against the walls looking for people. - Just terrific. The sound of the head crabs sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it. It's pretty amazing really.

The rest of the game is nothing that special. The level design is quite good, so are the graphics. That's about it. But then who cares because you know this is the only game where you could turn a corner and see a room explode, or a person being eaten alive.

The game also cleverly lets you get accustomed to this world before tearing it apart, it sounds so simple and yet no-one does it. The first 20 minutes or so of the game involve you seeing how the building is run, walking around it, and only then does it throw a spanner in the works. This makes it all the more exciting because it's happening in your new world, not some place you've never seen before. Half-Life is still the best FPS currently around at the time of writing because it introduced so many concepts that have still never been beaten. Plus it has one of the most successful mods around in the form of Counterstrike.

The Bad
There is a lot of platform jumping in between the moments of greatness. First-person platform jumping is the work of the devil. Xen is also looked upon unfavourably because it's taking the player out of the world he recognizes, and also because there is a lot of hopping about on islands. The game's trial & error philosophy is looked upon unfavourably by some, and with good reason. Although it's sometimes necessary as this game world seems so alive and it's almost a trait that anything can happen at any time, that's part of the fun.

The AI of your allies incidentally is dire, that is a bad point. The game is also pretty linear.

I also HATE head crabs. I can't play this game now because of them. They are the scariest enemy ever, and they're in an otherwise non-scary game. Which makes it pretty frustrating.

The Bottom Line
Terrific FPS. Not perfect, and not the best game ever. But it certainly might have been at the time of it's release. Introduced never-before-seen concepts as de riguer in all further shooters. It's linear, it's got scenes of platform-jumping, it's got one skin for the security guards. But it's fantastic, and in terms of pure FPS magic has still never been beaten

Windows · by Shazbut (163) · 2004

The average shooter on rails with wonderful PR

The Good
If there is anything good to say about Half Life, it is this: weapon feedback. Half Life is first and foremost a shooter, it is your method of interacting with the world, and for the most part, the weapons look solid, feel solid, and sound quite good. The weapons were varied but kept well with the theme of the game and were placed logically, and just as you needed them. Specifically the .357, the shotgun and the gaus cannon provide great feel, sound, and do a good job of killing your enemy.

Half Life flows well from one region to another, with quick loading transition spots that are barely noticeable, save for a subtle change in the lightmap on occasion. You move through several environments which are mostly labs, warehouses, utility centers and the outdoors, along with an alien environment. Half Life does deliver in giving a sense of physically moving from one place to the other.

Memorable moments can be had a few times, particularly the Ichthyosaur and the encounter with the Tentacle in the missile silo, along with much smaller scenarios.

The world is fairly detailed with mild touches reminiscent of Build era games, details like the microwave in the waiting room which can have the power go up higher and higher, until it ruins a meal, and the soda machines which produce cans.

The Bad
Half Life fails mostly on where they claimed their strengths to be. It is billed as the thinking man's shooter, yet there is little thinking required, merely trial and error. You are guided through the entire game on a mostly linear path, where every action you take, save a few exceptions, is required to progress, if it is the wrong action, you are punished by an arbitrary obstacle, or worse, pain or death. Every puzzle encountered, every scripted event, every new weapon and every enemy is placed in such a way that you have to find it then and there, and every other player of the game experiences it in the same order with the same effects. There is no way to own your experiences in Half Life as it can be adequately followed with a walkthrough.

Half Life's storyline is that of Doom's, only with marines coming in as a third party. Scientists tinker with technology, a portal appears and aliens invade, however instead of military being on base to help stop it as in Doom, they come in later and do a cover up. The only true spin on this is that you play a scientist and thus must face both groups. At first it is cool to see marines duking it out with aliens, but replaying scenarios reveals that due to the low level of variance in the ai, it usually turns out exactly the same. Half Life in terms of story plays like Doom where the former marines are instead current marines, and you have to sit through cutscenes (true you never stop being able to move, but you're locked into an area for the duration of an NPC speaking).

Half Life is a cold world, the NPCs have little personality and do little to garner sympathy, in comparison with Unreal's nali, or in opposition the civilians of Blood 2 which are actively made to be disliked. The NPCs serve mostly as mobile keys for the typical locked door.

The artificial intelligence is superficial, but looks great at a glance. Marines seem to take cover and seem to want to live, until you realize that they behave nearly the same regardless of your approach style. It is rewarding to toss a grenade at a group of soldiers and hear them scream "Grenade!" and duck, but the ducking seems to happen regardless of the grenades position, and Ive successfully taken out a squad with a single grenade, as they all ducked right around it. Half Life's ai can be summed up with being on par with Quake 2's in the use of basic breadcrumbs, and stylized with scripted events.

The level design though linear was fairly solid, up until Xen, the alien planet which functions mostly as a jumping puzzle with nuisance enemies. Throughout the game the levels serve mostly as a way to kill time until the next scripted event by mowing down mindless Vortigaunts and Headcrabs.

Lastly, who coded this interface? Half Life seems to be using an external program for its menu, which leads to a lot of mode switching for your monitor. And what for? The mouse driven interface? I really don't understand why it was done this way, and it makes it a chore to do simple things like changing your controls or looking at your saved game list.

The Bottom Line
On the whole Half Life is a basic shooter that attempts a cinematic quality by playing to the weakness of cinema - linearity and lack of input. It is a decent first play through which loses itself as you move forward. Good for $10, but not for the awards it has received, and definitely not the original retail price.

Windows · by David Queener (6) · 2007

Gaming's Potempkin Village

The Good
Half-Life represents another chain in the link that started in 1993, when Doom shipped without any sort of "High Scores" table.

Basically, the trend of shooter games towards realism, away from gimmickiness and "arcadeness", and into the a future where games get compared to movies as works of art and you don't wait for the punchline.

Immersion is the altar this game worships at. Not just great graphics or great sound or lots of polygons - immersion. Every aspect of Half-Life is engineered to create a world you can get lost in, from the level design, to the audio, to the overall concept of the game. It's still a shooter with the same fundamental rules as Doom - the way out of these elaborately crafted environments is still generally "shoot the crap out of everything" - but with various subtle touches that seem like nothing yet add up to everything.

It's hard to overstate how successful Half-Life is at what it does. Black Mesa is never anything less than a real place, filled with vending machines, garbage cans, querulous scientists, etc. Within the first few minutes, you get to see a locker room. Open the locker marked GORDON FREEMAN, and you see some of the main character's personal effects - including some books he's reading. The main character in this game reads books! A tiny detail, yet a complete paradigm shift.

You don't find weapons and ammo lying in the middle of the hallway in Half-Life, you find it in a place that makes sense (like a gun locker or a weapons cabinet). You don't open doors with brightly colored keys, you actually have to find a scientist or soldier and ask them to grant you access (which sometimes entails an argument). In one incident a guard started helping me in a gunfight, and yelled "got another one!" as he plugged a headcrab. Despite Half-Life's datedness, scripted moments like this still have an eerie power. For just a second, he's the player and you're an NPC in his game.

Half-Life is masterful in keeping the ugly, clunky machinery of videogaming off-screen. The game seamlessly transitions from level to level. No load screens. No cutscenes. The game just doesn't cut away. It keeps you locked inside the experience, like a movie. Again, the effect is subtle, but you definitely feel it. It's like an orchestra that effortlessly segues from section to section, versus one that has to stop and re-tune their instruments at the end of each movement.

The game has barely any story, but it gives you the ineluctable sense that there probably is a story, you just aren't around to witness it unfold. Not so much "this is a plotless game" as "gee, I wonder what I'm missing out on, wandering around empty hallways with my crowbar." The widely parodied, widely mocked decision to not have Gordon Freeman speak works really well, as you imagine your own voice and your own words flowing into silences in conversation.

The Bad
Half-Life is so overpowering as an experience that it took a while to sink in that I wasn't having that much fun.

A goofy, arcadey FPS like Quake kills Half-Life in enjoyment factor - and Quake's hardly an FPS benchmark par excellence.

Half-Life is just too clever for itself. It's filled with inventive ideas that just plain don't work in an FPS game. Too many times when you have to perform Lara Croft-esque jumps without seeing your feet. Too many places where you have to navigate instant-death tripwires with only a hazy idea of your proximal surroundings. Too many places where you're trying to push boxes around and they go unhelpfully skidding off in the wrong direction. It's like the game gets bored with being a groundbreaking FPS, and also wants to be a shitty version of Rayman.

And what's with the several million miles of air ducts you have to crawl through? Why? What's meant to be fun or enjoyable about that? I swear that half the game is spent hobbling through air ducts. Go fuck yourself for that one, guys.

Looking at Half Life in hindsight, You can see a real "cool stuff overload" coupled with a neglect to the basic principles that make gaming fun. Hit detection is seriously wonky. You're reaction when shooting isn't so much "eat death, hellscum!" as "man, I hope that last shot did damage". Overall, this game's action just isn't satisfying. The entire dynamic of the gameplay and weapons feels "off", like you're just slightly out of control of everything. And the game depends such ridiculous levels of mid-air finesse - I lost count of how many times I had to jump while crouching to fit into a tiny air duct - that it feels like you're playing a third person game hastily reprogrammed for first.

Gradually the illusion wears away, like a woman's makeup tearing. You'll see how facile and shallow much of the game is - how the bosses can be beaten by a chess-playing computer, how the enemy AI is full of holes, how the game has a tiny number of character models and keeps reusing them. It's like Being John Malkovich: The Game.

Half-Life pushed the FPS genre in directions it probably wasn't ready to go. It's an impressive exercise if you value games as artistry, or as visual experiences.

But if you value games as games? I'm not so sure.

The Bottom Line
It's an old, perhaps apocryphal story. Grigory Potempkin, lover of the Russian queen, was given the task of rebuilding the devastated towns along the river Dneiper. Rather than do this, he built a series of beautiful fake towns, with his own men playing the part of happy, well-fed peasants. They would smile and wave as the Empress passed by, and then rush on to populate the next fake town.

Half-Life is amazing to look at, even now. But don't look too hard, or too long. You'll notice the parts held together with duct tape and silly string.

Windows · by Maw (833) · 2015

FPS to the next level.

The Good
Half-Life is the kind of game that a lot of gamers have been waiting for. You take your average run-of-the-mill FPS, give it a well thought out storyline, ooze on some frightening atmosphere, add realistic weapons and an Intelligent AI, and you get this game.

The wonderful part of the story is that you aren't necesarily at the center of it. Things go on around you that you may or may not see, but have some relevance to what you may experience. The atmosphere also adds something to the story. There you are, a lone scientist trying to survive an out of this world (pardon the pun) experience, walking through a deserted office area, when the ceiling comes down on your head. And with the debris comes a handful of headcrabs! If you really enjoy being scared, play Half-Life in the dark.

As if being surprised by aliens and military grunts in abandoned hallways weren't enough, you have to reload your weapons. Yes, you heard me right! There is no such thing as a 99 round clip for your weapon anymore. You actually have to stop shooting and reload. And with the more realistic (for the most part) weapons, this can add a little bit of difficulty to those that charge into a room guns blazing.

The Bad
When I mentioned that the AI was one of the good things about this game, I wasn't lying. Just that upon closer inspection, the AI isn't as wonderful as I originally thought. The humans were indeed the smartest and most dangerous baddies that had to be dealt with. The grunts especially worked well together to get you to come out and die. The aliens however still seemed to be on the charge until he's (I'm) dead kind of AI. This doesn't detract too much from the enjoyment of the game.

The Bottom Line
All in all, Half-Life is a must play game. Not only is the single-player unbelievable, but the multi-player is really good too. There are tons of mods for multi-player Half-Life, among them the VERY popular Counter-Strike. Fans of the FPS rejoice!

Windows · by Narf! (132) · 2001

Wow.

The Good
This is truly one of the best games of all time. This game takes you on a journey, and never lets go until the end.

First of all, it involves you with the characters. Gordon Freeman is a real character, not just an action hero. He doesn't want to be involved in this - he simply does not want to die.

Secondly, this game actually scared me. It takes a lot to scare me, but the little barnacle-thingies-that-I-forget-the-name-of dropping onto my head spooked me.

Thirdly, the AI. The marines are some of the best opponents ever programmed. The scientists are generally quite smart.

Fourth, the bosses. These bosses are so badass looking and well programmed it amazes me.

Fifth, the graphics. Was the best-looking shooter when it came out next to Unreal.

Sixth, the episodes. I know it isn't an original idea, but I love being able to go back and forth between levels.

Seventh, the expandability. This game is the most expandable first-person shooter out there. Plenty of mods will be released.

Eighth, multiplayer. A whole lot of fun, especially Team Fortress, which flat-out rocks.

The Bad
It ends. It doesn't end too quickly, but it ends. Also, a few bugs here and there, but no more than average.

The Bottom Line
My personal favorite single player first person shooter, excluding System Shock, because that's a hybrid.

Windows · by emerging_lurker (160) · 1999

It's not a game...It's like your living it..

The Good
This is one of the most amazing games that can get you so engrossed into it, that you forget its a game. The engine and gameplay was so unique for 1998. The way you could interact with other characters and witness cool events in realtime made it feel like a movie. The graphics were really good to back up the gameplay, you could hardly tell it was made from the Quake 2 engine. Valve really modified the engine and made it good. The movements and characteristics of the enemies were really cool. The sound and lightning of the game made it downright scary. Even more incredible was the online multi player and the ease of custom and mods which lead to another classic..Counter-Strike!

The Bad
It's a pretty hard game, especially in the latter levels when the army comes after you. Apart from that, the AI for the NPC characters is a little weak sometimes but still pretty good considering when the game was made.

The Bottom Line
If you love FPS games or Horror or just PC games in general, you must play this once and see what made it so special. Once you see the intro, which is one of the best of all time, you will get hooked.

Windows · by The Ring Hawk (826) · 2003

Best FPS game of 1998

The Good
Blazingly fast game play based off the Quake2 engine. Great graphics and sound. Half-Life really distinguishes itself from Q2 by having a really compelling and immersive story. The story line is so good that it is quite easy to lose yourself in the world the folks at valve have created. The AI in Half-Life is head and shoulders better than anything else offered in 1998. The enemy's are difficult to predict. They offer cover fire for each other, don't voluntarily move into sure death situations and those that can use grenades and the like very effectively.

In addition there are a number of Multi Player Online mods for HL. The two best are Team Fortress Classic, a port of the Team Fortress Quake mod to HL, and Counter Strike, a terrorist/counter-terrorist team play mod only for HL.

The Bad
The auto update functionality is quite buggy. A failure is reported every time you receive an update even though the utility states in a different message box the it has succeeded.

The copy protection is also quite annoying. In order to play online you must have a registered cd-key w/ WON. This requires the WON servers to be online.

The Bottom Line
Damn great First Person Shooter game.

Windows · by nullnullnull (1463) · 1999

An excellent, if not the best, first person shooter so far.

The Good
FPS games are a dime a dozen these days and I had pretty much given up on them until this came along. If I want to run around and shoot monsters, I can go back and play Quake or Quake 2. What this game has that the others don't is an interesting plot and a creepy atmosphere. There are actual surprises in this game. Things happen that you don't expect, people do things that you don't anticipate. You are moved to continue playing not because you want to blow up more stuff, but because you are interested in what is going to happen next.

I loved the way your character (Gordon Freeman) interacted with the other NPCs (for lack of a better term). Guards and scientists are not just decoration. They talk to you and help you get through the game. Some of them put on a brave face while others run and hide at the sight of your gun.

The Bad
The game rocks until the end. The second you enter the alien homeworld, the game started to suck big time. I hate jumping puzzles. I hate having to beat a big boss at the end of a game. And I hate working as hard as I did to finish this game to be rewarded with what has to be the weakest ending I have ever seen in a game.

The Bottom Line
If you liked Quake, Doom, UnReal, or any of the other FPS games out there, you will love Half/Life. It is what FPS games should aspire to be.

Windows · by Courtland Funke (53) · 2000

Amazing

The Good
The graphics, the gameplay, the storyline, the characters, the mouth syncing, all were top-notch for their time and still provide for excellent gaming here in '06.

The expansion packs and updated graphics from later versions only made this one that much more fun to play. Every tidbit of info made the story more interesting and engaging.

Love/Hate: The puzzles. Frustrating but thought-inducing!

The Bad
Headcrabs were impossible to kill with the crowbar, they almost always get you once before your swing actually hits them. Unrealistic.

The scientists' voices are like 2 different guys' voices for 40 different scientists. Very annoying.

Love/Hate: The puzzles. Frustrating and annoying to death!



The Bottom Line
If you are one of the 1% of the teenage population that has not played this game then pick it up now. Only $X for exciting, fast-paced action that will blow you away.

Windows · by Ian Badeer (19) · 2006

Hello Anyone??? Did you actually played this junk???

The Good
OK, I am a late bloomer, I know it. So after about 7 years that I have the Game of the year edition of Half Life, I decided to see what the hype is all about.

I don't mind games with past graphics, what I really like about a game is a story and a good design that let me blend in the game world effortlessly.

With Half Life what I liked is the promise of a great story and great setting. The good stuff is here.

Also, the scripted events are cool and add to the atmosphere of the game.

OK, that is about it, But Half Life is like a cake that looks great from a distance and turns out to be plastic when you get closer...

The Bad
For some reason everything that I am about to say has already been said in the past but people chose to ignore it when they gave the game the final scoring. So here is the full list:

Design: Really sucks. This is a FSP, not an adventure game where you have to guess what you need to do next or what valve needs to be opened. It is not Tomb Raider where you have to jump from platform to platform. At times I had to reload 15 times to go past one of those jumping puzzles. Totally out of place.

AI: I guess for 1998 it was great, but by today's games, the AI sucks.

Weapons: Not cool, you have a crowbar, a pistol, machine gun, and some other not very exciting weapons. I have completed 40% of the game and no weapon was really cool.

Monsters: Stupid and not scary at all. Take the zombies for example, they walk slow and simply try to get to you so you should them and they are gone. Or the crab head. Totally annoying. Compare it to Doom's monsters and you get my point. I recently re-played Doom and it was 1000% more fun than this crap.

Bugs: Yes, annoying bugs that prevent you from finishing. Like the one that does not let you leave an elevator and then kills you since you can not move.

I could go on and on. But this game feels half baked and with lots of bugs. I am puzzled what all the hype was about.

The Bottom Line
Life is too short to waste on this crap, go spend time with you family or better still with Halo.

Windows · by The Gay Elf (12) · 2006

Lots of fun and lots of flaws

The Good
The entire story is told through interaction which is the best way to tell a story when you make a game. The story is also much better than any other shooter I played in the 90's, they even made an effort to put in some decent characterization. I had to laugh at this because there were only a handful of models and they still acted very differently.

There is a nice balance between platforming sections and fighting sections. Like the story, this sets it apart from many other games that try to combine two genres, most if not all of them end up leaning too much towards one of the genres, automatically making the other feel like an annoyance. In Half-Life both the shooting and the jumping are part of the game and both have a difficulty curve.

The boss-fights are rare, but also unique to Half-Life so far. I am not even sure if they are boss-fights as the game uses the same "bosses" multiple times throughout the game. The thing here is that the fights are mostly a collection of clever puzzles that you need to solve in order to kill the boss. There are enemies along the way and you will need to sneak past the monster, which is very scary and keeps you on the edge of your seat. At the end all the puzzles you completed form a connection which allows you to deliver the final blow to the monster. Good job Valve, good job.

The Bad
The game is very difficult and at one point I actually had to quick-save between every few shots because I couldn't do the fights in a single solid attempt anymore. I had to constantly reload saves where I was able to fire a few good shots without taking too much damage and that is just insane. It also has the problem I mentioned in Dragon Age 2 where incredibly huge fights can be right around the corner, sadly you don't have a mage with healing magic in this game to keep you going, so you need to be extremely careful.

The level design is a big problem, not just the design, but also the progression. All the scientists keep urging you to get to the surface at the start of the game, but once you get there you will be forced to go underground again before you even got to look at the scenery a little bit. As the game progresses the design also gets very confusing nearing the end and I mean in the Doom or Wolfenstein way where everything just looks the same.

I arrived at the point that the game was almost impossible for me in every aspect. The puzzles were still fun, but the combat and platforming was near-impossible, but there was still like four hours of game to be played. The game wasn't even fun anymore, I was done with it. This seems to be a nasty habit of games that are amazing, Psychonauts had it as well, nearing the end when you decide for yourself that the game should end before it outstays its welcome, it still keeps going for another hour or more.

The Bottom Line
This game is still pretty fun, but it also has some very serious problems. The game keeps going for way too long and becomes very difficult and repetitive nearing the end. HOWEVER! This game is still worth checking out because of the great balance between platform end shooting sections and a well-told story.

The game offers a lot, but you do have to give a little yourself as well if you want to fully enjoy it, is what I am trying to say here. If you can ignore the very annoying flaws of this game then you will be able to enjoy it, but if you are like me and you don't have enough time to play through a game like this, you might want to skip it.

Windows · by Asinine (957) · 2011

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by DarkDante, Thomas Helsing, lights out party, Scaryfun, Flu, Tim Janssen, vicrabb, Cavalary, Patrick Bregger, Alsy, Jeanne, Big John WV, Crawly, Longwalker, Wizo, Plok, Tomas Pettersson, Matt Neuteboom, Klaster_1, Marko Poutiainen, Kabushi, Cantillon, Solid Flamingo, Riamus, yenruoj_tsegnol_eht (!!ihsoy), ti00rki, vedder, 666gonzo666, Emmanuel de Chezelles, Jack Torrance, jumpropeman.