Half-Life 2

The Good
I will be sincere and frank. Half-life 2 is one of the greatest, most inspiring games I have ever played. HL2 simply has a way of making you feel inside the game, working your way through the desolate and ruined streets of City 17. It has the power to make it seem like Half-Life 2 is so much more than a video game, that it really is you who is dodging the bullets of the combine as you escape through the city canals. Half-life 2 doesn’t make you feel like your sitting at your computer desk with the TV droning a rerun of the Simpsons. It brings you the atmosphere and the storytelling of a Hollywood masterpiece.

Half-life 2 gets its strength from how well it makes players feel part of the game, how it makes players feel immersed into the game play. Half-life 2’s ingenious storytelling is clearly visible through the game’s heavy sci-fi atmosphere and its life-like feeling. HL2 has the feeling of a good Hollywood masterpiece: it is able to make you feel as though you are sitting right there in the game, just as a good movie does. The sights and sounds of City 17 literally make the city come alive. All around HL2 has that utter feeling of deep drama, even without using much dialogue or even traditional cut-scenes. It has the ability to make you feel that something is going on and the game has a huge back-story even though it doesn’t tell you in cut scenes or through dialogue. All real dialogues are completely played in-game, and the camera never leaves your body, to give the narrative a more personal feeling and “silent” feeling. You can feel the post-apocalyptic, Orwellian air as you step into City 17. The narrative chosen by Valve makes the game feel much deeper and allow the player to be drawn in more than a game with a traditional narrative.

HL2 also owes much of its immersion to the masterful Source engine, which in my honest opinion is the most realistic engine ever created. The atmospheric feel to HL2 would not have been possible if it did not have such a realistic environment to work in. And of course, I would have never chosen a better engine. Source delivers such a realistic environment, filled with life-like graphics and physics.

The physics are one of the highest points in this game. Everything in the game bounces and rolls in the way you would expect it too in real life. Barrels roll smoothly downhill, and boxes tip precariously as you begin to stack them. You can pick up almost everything you would be able to in real life, from boards and boxes, to the tiniest insignificant items like paper cups, bricks, paint cans, and milk cartons. The effect of this is that Gordon Freeman’s hands feel like your magical hands into the digital world.

The best part about this though is that the game incorporates it into the game play. For example you can pick up boards and use them to cross dangerous gaps, or you must use the physics to solve puzzles to advance. Of course, the environments feel much more interactive with these grandiose physics, and during firefights you will be shooting down objects which will react to your movements and your bullets. Telephone lines will sway in the breeze as an enemy helicopter flies overhead. But of course nothing would be complete without the game’s ingenious Gravity Gun! The GG allows you to manipulate the area around by allowing to pick up items of almost any size and to move them around or punt them at people. Not only can it be used to manipulate the environment to reach unexplored areas, but it can be used to attack people. This is a gun where the ammo is literally the area around you. With how much detail the developers pore into the game, there is almost a constant supply of ammo for you to play with. Anything from tires to sinks to TV’s can be used, and it ends up being one of the most fun parts of the game. What you do with it is up to you! These are just a few of the things HL2 can bring to you through its ingenious physics. It is so much so, that physics are literally part of the game.

But of course, the physics would be nothing without beautiful and realistic graphics to complement the physics. The Source engine delivers just like it delivers its physics: superbly. The graphics of HL2 could not be more well-defined and realistic. Both landscapes and indoor levels have an unprecedented amount of detail in them.
Textures and lighting are absolutely top-notch, all of which look gorgeous on a computer screen. On a higher end computer, the graphics look photorealistic. The character models are highly developed, with Valve paying special attention to the ability to render detailed facial expressions, which allows for better storytelling through actions rather than words. All of the environments in HL2 are littered with detail and small items to make the areas seem more realistic. All of the areas in HL2 are ingeniously varied yet all contain a mind-boggling amount of detail. Every item is littered with items like couches, cans, boxes, frying pans and everything else you can think of. Any game can make an abandoned seaside village, but litter it with cartons, boards, paint cans, food, clocks, and pictures and it makes the ghost town feel as though someone has actually once dwelled there before you. The environments are wide and open, and make you really feel like there really are parts of the city that you simply haven’t seen yet. The lighting effects of the game are brilliant, with a realistic “iris” effect for outdoors. When you go from a dark indoor place to a bright outdoor area, the game temporarily blinds you to act as though your iris needs to get used to the new light. And if you’re sitting here thinking “yeah, its will have great graphics if I had a mega computer likes yours.” Well I must say you have it a bit wrong. HL2 will even play on some of the worst systems. You see the screenshots we have here at MobyGames? Well you can get that to run at a smooth frame rate with a 64 MB graphics card at 512 MB RAM. No kidding! Trust me, I should know, because those were my settings when I had my first run through this game!

And of course, after all of this you simply must have the ambient sounds to complete the package. As with many cases, ambient sounds can often make or break a scene. Sounds tell the player if the scene is peaceful and isolated from combat, or the player is in the middle of a war zone. A chase seems slow and boring when it feels like there is nothing that makes the scene feel urgent or that anything is chasing you. But add the droning Combine Tower alarm and helicopter blades overhead and it seems like the entire city is after you. The Striders seem much more big and powerful when you hear their howling war cries from over the rooftops. Danger seems close to your back when you hear the ticking of bullets flying to the brick wall behind you. A peaceful breeze combined with the graphically beautiful sunsets subconsciously tells a player that the area is safe and isolated from combat. Each sound tells a different story, and HL2’s sounds must be heard to be believed.

All of these things combine and the result is the world of HL2 feels all too real. From physics to graphics and sound, HL2 provides an eerie, life-like atmosphere and drama. And of course, Valve grants us the privilege of being able to play in this fantastic environment. The FPS sections of the game are utterly top-notch. The game allows a right amount of balance between weapons and enemies, and varies the environments enough to not make the game feel repetitive, but gives you enough time there to make it feel realistic. You will often find yourself shooting from rooftops, cliff sides, and more. Action-packed sections of the game are adrenaline pumping and extremely fast-paced, and this applies to the driving sections of the game, which are speedy and filled with high-speed chases. The enemy AI is highly advanced in my opinion, with enemies shouting commands on the battlefield, and actually DOING them. Enemies naturally shape their tactics around the battle, and you will often find yourself being outflanked by enemy troops. The gut-wrenching action of Half-life 2 will not stop until the very end.


The Bad
Like a Hollywood movie again, Half-Life 2’s biggest flaw is that it is the same thing through every time, usually with very little variation. Often there’s only one way to get through sections of the game, and while it is extremely fun it is in the most sense, it is the same way through every time. To do it any other way, I think, would be to destroy the gamer’s sense of immersion. But some players will find this point annoying, especially with big sand box games out there such as the Grand Theft Auto series.

LOAD TIMES. I hate load times. In the beginning of the game, there is also a number of load times that severely hinders the immersion. If you don’t know this game, then I must warn you that the load times can be outrageously long. All of the Half-life 2 files are on Steam’s servers, so that you don’t have to keep the huge amount of files n your computer. But uploading these files to your computer can take quite long. The only time this will hinder game play is the beginning, where because you are being chased it makes you feel as though you should rush through the areas. You may encounter a new load screen every few minutes, a bad flaw for this portion of the game.

And while the enemy AI is fine tuned and polished, the same cannot be said for your allies AI. Squad mates may often crowd around you, or run straight into the path of a strider. Can no game make good AI for friendly units? Is it an attempt to put the burden of work on to you? I can mention a number of games which suffer from this same problem, however a good potion of them have good to decent enemy AI.

But of course, these flaws are quite easy to overlook in the face of what it does well, so much to the point where the flaws become almost negligible.

The Bottom Line
There’s simply no other way to put it. Half-Life 2 is easily one of the most (if not THE most) atmospheric and immersive games out there. Through its sheer perfection of physics, graphics, sound, and AI, it has the uncanny ability to make you feel like you are standing there in the middle of each of your battles. The game has a few outstanding flaws but it is massively overshadowed by the feeling this game has to offer. This game will definitely be one of the most memorable ones of the current era, and sets a new standard for FPS games. Game Informer was right; nothing will ever be the same. Half-Life 2 is not just a game, it’s an experience that must be felt to be believed.

Buyworthy: You bet it is! Worth double of what they sell it for now!
Rentworthy N/A

The Good
The game makes you feel like you actually live in the world. You feel you are Gordon Freeman, not someone punching keys watching someone move. The environment is so life-like, thanks to the Havok Engine physics, that you can do almost everything you would do if were inside this universe, from moving objects to using whatever you see for achieving your goal. The graphics are truly amazing. Maybe not as life-like as the Unreal 3 engine demo shown in E3, but the best there is out there today. The sound is equally impressive.

The Bad
There are just two problems you may or may not face. The sound shuttering bug, which is fixed by now (though you still may face it once in a while), and the fact that the loading times can be long which somehow affects the immersion effect. Other than that, it is perfect.

The Bottom Line
The most amazing game ever released.

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.