Half-Life 2

The Good
Half Life, in all of its forms is one of the most beloved IP's to ever grace computers and home consoles. It's obvious to see why, the games are thoroughly enjoyable experiences. They're solidly developed, well produced and competently paced games. The mythological status that the series has developed over the course of years may be a little exaggerated but it can't be denied the core elements of the franchise like the seamless world and well developed story are what defined the series upon release and why it is so popular and so well loved.

So, based on the core fanbase developed by its predecessor Half Life 2 had something to live up to. A change in the dynamics of the gameplay would have totally up ended the solid foundation that had been established and would have ruined everything. Then, it is logical to assume Half Life 2 is very similar to its predecessor. Similar to the point that the two games play almost identically. Judged side by the side the two games are almost identical, very little has changed and it's a double edged sword. If you're familiar with Half Life, if you love Half Life then you'd love Half Life 2. The games virtually identical control system, seamless world broken up by sporadic loads and exposition through interaction with NPC's will be comfortably familiar.

If you're not entirely familiar with Half Life you control a theoretical physicist named Gordon Freeman who in the events of the first game was forced to confront an alien horde invading a hidden government contracted research facility called Black Mesa when an experiment goes wrong. If it sounds strange that a theoretical physicist would be able to fight off an alien horde then there is more explaining to be done, shortly before entering the test chamber to begin the experiment Freeman donned an HEV (or Hazardous Environment) suit to protect himself. The HEV suit provides Freeman with protection and augments his physical strength and speed considerably.

Gordon Freeman is seemingly put into cryogensis at the end of the game and wakes up some time in the future when the world has been dominated by an alien race called the Combine. The story is serviceable and provides a few satisfying twists and turns and memorable characters like the beautiful Alyx Vance and and ex security guard from Black Mesa. The concepts surrounding the story are occasionally more satisfying than the actual reveals, what few of them there are. The hulking, synthetic monstrosities and suggested glimpses at transformation processes give hints at the malevolent machinations of the Combine, while little is actually elaborated on. This suggestion seems to work better than simply laying out a foundation of exposition as every cold war era building crumbling around you and every lonely swingset seems to tell a little story of its own. A story of desolation and neglect, indicative of the grey, depressed resignation of the human race in their subservience.

In every aesthetic respect it's a beautiful game. The Source engine is employed to give the impression of a drab, frightening and claustrophobic world of crumbling buildings and forgotten people. Long lost relics of humanities past lie in the countryside, reminders of how safe a house used to be, now only to be used a base of operation for Combine forces. The town of Ravenholm is a blood spattered mess, filled with corpses, hideous and disfigured monsters lurking in the shadows of the wind swept and long forgotten city. Suggestions of traps being laid, barricades and makeshift hospitals litter the halls of buildings and on the streets. The cityscapes are poetic and do more for the story than the actual story does for itself. What is suggested is powerful and frightening.

The Bad
While Half Life 2 is a beautiful game it lacks any significant gameplay edge. The constant moving from load to load feels like a slog through a drab, depressing neverending world of constant hardship. There are moments of quiet however these quickly end and you're forced back into constant firefights and small, cramped tunnels. It's suffers from the problems that its predecessor suffered from, the rigid insistence not to deviate from the "you are Freeman" concept limits the amount of exposition you could possibly hope to have. It also limits game play possibilities and forces you to adjust to simply going from checkpoint to checkpoint, firefight to firefight and vague narrative point to vague narrative point.

There are sequences where you are able to drive a buggy or a jet boat however these are either too long or too convoluted. There is no pay off for completing them other than going from point A to point B.

The story itself is nothing special either. There was wriggle room to concoct an impressive science fiction story however the narrative elements in this game are either poorly explained or not explained at all. Almost everything has to be picked up from paltry pieces of dialogue or things taped to notice boards and it just isn't enough. The environments tell a story, but they can only tell so much.

The Bottom Line
Half Life 2 is a game that does a lot of things really solidly but ends up coming across as vacuous and Valve as somewhat arrogant. They're convinced that the narrative elements in the game can purposefully remain vague so long as the engine is solid and the game play is too.

The game play is very solid, the firefights are challenging and satisfying and the little deviations like being able to drive a buggy and jetboat are welcome. This doesn't help to alleviate the overwhelming sense of aimlessness. It doesn't help alleviate the feeling that you're simply going through the motions, going from checkpoint to checkpoint.

As much as I enjoyed Half Life 2, I can also appreciate its flaws, which it contains in abundance.

The Good
Visually uncanny. Unparalleled. It demands a hell of a graphic accelerator, but it's only fair in comparison to what you get.

Sound was quite nice. Excellent voices, nice sfx.

Physics in this game are a huge leap forward in game programming. Great stuff.

The Bad
The story is mind-numbingly boring (as a matter of fact: there IS no story!).

"Hi, Dr. Freeman. Here's your gun. Go trigger bum-bum. Shhh, not a peep, not a question ... just shoot and keep the questions to yourself".

The unanswered questions (and not the intriguing, mysterious ones that you could sometimes have in Half-Life, no), redundant gameplay and lack of absolutely everything but "mouse clicking" make this plot a behemoth of a disappointment.

The AI remains drop dead stupid. I've read some "specialized" websites claiming that the AI is "certainly impressive and that the NPC's react with lifelike aggression". Please.

Non-playing Characters are downright dumb. It seems that lately, erratic behaviour is mistakenly welcomed as intelligence to dodge, jump and retreat. Nothing further from the truth. The difference between the old Half-Life NPCs and the new ones is that these last ones now move to the sides a little, instead of staying put till their deaths.

Don't get me wrong: this is better that before. It makes for a, somehow, more "realistic", more challenging experience, but those people you relentlessly shoot at throughout the game will continue to come to their deaths like lambs in a slaughterhouse. I'll eat my hat if anyone challenges this paragraph.

The fights are ... well, so so. Sometimes fun, sometimes 1980's mediocre. The feel of the guns, the reaction to hits, the insane number of bullets needed to kill and be killed, it all screams YAWN.

The puzzles in the game are ... are ... well, whoever's responsible for this should be whipped and then stoned to death. They're nothing but moronic stepping stones in the gameplay. They add nothing new to the soup, they couldn't possibly be challenging for anyone with an IQ of eleven or more and they wither sadly in a most unfortunate attempt to add "some sort of variety" to the game.

The Bottom Line
Half-life 2 is a good game, but it doesn't remotely live up to the expectations.

Some seven years have passed since the release of Half-Life and the only thing that Valve could come up with after all this time was ... better graphics. That's it. Not an inch more than what's necessary. Not one light bulb went off in that company. They plain and simply relied on the advances of technology. Period.

All the hype, all the ridiculously generous ratings, all the momentum seem very dodgy, in my opinion. A phenomenal marketing and advertisement maneuver that had a large number of people convinced that this game was some sort of Messiah, when all it had was good graphs.

Big disappointment. Don't buy.

The Good
Half-Life 2 places you in the shoes of Gordon Freeman again. His day starts exactly the same way as it did in Half-Life: He travels to work by train and has to make his way to his destination. In this case, the environment is the City 17 Train Station, a place where you hear Dr. Wallace Breen explain the benefits of living in City 17. Freeman finds out that the city is overrun by the Combine, a mysterious Alien group who has enslaved all humanity and taken control of Earth on orders by Breen. A teleport malfunction later on alerts Breen to his presence, and he sends the Combine to get rid of Freeman.

Freeman can do a bit more things than he was able to in HL1, like pick up and throw objects. I remember at the start of the game, I was ordered by a Combine soldier to pick up a soda can and toss it into the bin. Rather than caving to my master's demands, I just threw it at him only to receive an electric shock. You can also put down objects rather than throwing them, a technique most useful for solving puzzles, particularly ones where you have to stack objects and stand on them to get through gaps in a gate for example. Freeman also has the ability to communicate with a number of troops. In this situation, I decided to tell them to stay put since all they do is get in your way and walk into the line of fire.

All throughout the game, you are faced with Combine soldiers, which are easily defeated with the machine gun. There are also headcrabs, zombies, gunships, and striders (the biggest enemy that I have seen in a first-person shooter). Two nastiest enemies that I faced were the ant lions. Not only do they attack you, but they are capable of throwing you back several feet into the air. Another nasty is a zombie that hurls poisonous headcrabs at you.

All throughout the game, you are faced with Combine soldiers, which are easily defeated with the machine gun. There are also headcrabs, zombies, gunships, and striders (the biggest enemy that I have seen in a first-person shooter). Two nastiest enemies that I faced were the ant lions and a zombie that looks as if it carries a lump on its back. Besides their ugly appearance and aggressive attack, the antlions capable of throwing you several meters into the air. The aforementioned lump on the zombie's back happens to be a sack full of headcrabs, and while the zombie is attacking you it manages to pull out a poisonous headcrab every five seconds.

The weapons are not bad. I got a lot of enjoyment out of the gravity gun, which is similar to Freeman's “pick up-and-throw” technique, but it deals with objects far away from the player. You see, you can aim for an object far away and pull it toward you and then you can throw it at enemies or other objects, or put it down in a safe place. A variation of the gravity gun can be picked up later in the game, where it acts like a laser gun used to vaporize enemies, as does the Overwatch rifle. You start out with a measly crowbar, but this can be used to kill the early Combine soldiers.

The highlight of this game for me would be driving the airboat in the “Water Hazard” chapter, going through the numerous tunnels and mowing down any Combine soldiers that get in the way. The best thing about using the Airboat – or any other vehicle for that matter – is that it can't be damaged. You can crash it into a wall as many times as you like.

HL2 uses the new Source engine, which, in my opinion, is much better than the GoldSrc engine used in Half-Life. As a result of Valve changing to this new engine, HL2 provides richer graphics and excellent animation. The Closed Captioning feature is a good thing as well, because for me, the dialogue goes in one ear and out the other. Also, the game allows you to select a chapter to start on, but only if you have played said chapter previously. So if you finish the game and want to relive all the action in the chapter, go ahead.

The graphics are breathtaking. The buildings are well designed, especially the Citadel, the blue building that extends into the sky (you can get up real close to it in the last two chapters). I had the feeling that most of the chapters are set in an entire day, because as you play through the entire game, you will notice the sky changing color as if some of the action takes place during the daytime, in the middle of the dusk, and at night.

When it comes to music, the pumping soundtrack goes well with the action. You'll notice a few soundtracks that are played in the game are taken from HL1. The sound effects, meanwhile, are good. I'm glad that the headcrabs and the HL1-style zombies still retain their attack/death sounds. And what's funny about these zombies is that they sound like old men begging for something.

The Bad
I really can't think of anything bad about this game.

The Bottom Line
Half-Life 2 once again places the player in the hands of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who starts his day as usual and tries to help out with something with one of his colleagues, only for that something to go wrong and Freeman suddenly finds himself killing aliens with an arsenal of weapons he has picked up. HL2 uses a new engine, and the result is breathtaking graphics and superb animation. The soundtrack blends well with what you are doing, with a few tunes taken straight from HL1. Two new features that are worth mentioning is the chapter selector and the Closed Captioning. If you like the original game and want to play this sequel, then I suggest buying it with Steam then downloading it so that you don't have to change CDs during installation.