Half-Life
- Half-Life (2001 on PlayStation 2)
Description official descriptions
The Black Mesa Research Facility is an ultra-secret laboratory under a government contract to conduct top-secret and extremely volatile experiments. The scientist Gordon Freeman is a Black Mesa employee. One morning, as usual, he pits his way to the research facility for a run-of-the-mill experiment. However, Gordon comes to realize that it might not be as ordinary as he thought. Odd things happen as he makes his way to one of the Black Mesa test chambers. Even stranger things happen when he begins to move the test sample towards the anti-mass spectrometer.
At that moment, everything goes horribly wrong. Aliens from the dimension Xen suddenly invade the facility, injuring or killing many of the employees. Soon afterwards, marines arrive to contain the situation by killing the aliens as well as the surviving human witnesses. Gordon understands what that means: he will have to fight his way through both aliens and marines to get to the top of the Black Mesa complex and to freedom.
The story of Half-Life is told entirely in-game: everything is seen through the eyes of the protagonist. Most story elements unfold via scripted sequences, triggered by the player reaching a certain area. If other characters have information to reveal, they address Gordon directly. The Black Mesa complex in the game is made up of both distinct levels which progress in a linear fashion as well as hubs where backtracking may be required to unlock further areas.
The game's weapon arsenal mostly consists of realistic weapons like pistols, machine guns and explosives, but there are also futuristic energy weapons developed at Black Mesa as well as organic weapons acquired from the invading aliens. Most weapons feature an alternate firing mode.
Enemies fall into two categories: aliens and human soldiers. While most of the aliens are not very bright, the humans display some relatively advanced artificial intelligence: they seek cover, retreat when hit and try to drive the player from his cover by throwing grenades. Some of the alien enemies cannot be killed by normal means. The environment must be used against them instead, going with a general tendency of the game to alternate the combat with environmental puzzles.
As of the 25th Anniversary Update from 17 November 2023, the Steam version of Half-Life includes content from Half-Life: Uplink as well as sprays and maps from Half-Life: Further Data V.1.
Spellings
- ćæĄćœ - Simplified Chinese spelling
- æ°æ æç©ș - Traditional Chinese spelling
Groups +
- 3D Engine: GoldSrc
- BestSeller Series (Cendant / Havas / Vivendi Universal) releases
- BPjS / BPjM indexed games
- Gameplay feature: Drowning
- Gameplay feature: Minefield traversal
- Gameplay feature: Radiation / radioactive poisoning
- Games referenced in movies
- Games with official modding tools
- Games with officially released source code
- Half-Life universe
- Middleware: SDL
- Setting: 2000s
- Setting: Future now past
- Weapon: SPAS-12
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Credits (Windows version)
80 People (58 developers, 22 thanks) · View all
Engine Programmer | |
Engine Tools Programmer | |
The Half-Life Team | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 94% (based on 59 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.3 out of 5 (based on 556 ratings with 30 reviews)
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
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. Freemanâs 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, itâs 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 wonât 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, thatâs 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 â unlike first-person shooters before it â they donât 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 âshoot to killâ.
In most chapters, the environments in which the player explores look amazing, especially the exterior in âSurface Tensionâ. 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. âXenâ and âInterloperâ 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 whatâs unique about each piece of music is that they donât 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 youâre 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 âOffice Complexâ, one of the NPCs was walking around and died of a heart attack. Also, I remember in âBlast Pitâ, 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 | ă«ăżăăč (43087) · 2021
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 (956) · 2011
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Narrative, wait what? | Donatello (466) | Jul 15, 2012 |
Sorry, Valve | xroox (3895) | Feb 12, 2009 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Half-Life appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Advertisement
Very early beta footage of the game, as well as interviews with some of the programmers, is available on the Diablo expansion pack Hellfire, released by Sierra a full year before the game ever shipped. Sierra already had advertisements for Half-Life in many of their products back then.
Cancelled ports
- Half-Life, at one point, was completely finished for the Dreamcast console. Prima (the Official Strategy Guide folks) even had a Dreamcast-exclusive guide published. Unfortunately, the game wasn't published - probably due to the fact that SEGA announced that they would no longer produce new Dreamcasts. In certain circles of the Internet, a leaked copy can still be found and ran on a Dreamcast.
- A Macintosh port was in the works from Westlake interactive and reached beta before being cancelled because of concerns about responsibility for tech support.
Development
In its first finalized form, as it would have been published if the original release date was kept, Half-Life was nothing more than a total conversion of Quake with new enemies and levels. In the one additional year spent on development the game transformed into the form that led it to critical and commercial success.
Engine
Half-Life was released a full year after Quake II and it's a common belief that it was based on the Quake II engine. This is not true. It is based on the original Quake engine and it's more than fair to say that it was modified beyond recognition by the Valve team. Amongst the additions were built-in 3D accelerator support, skeletal systems and shadow casting (the latter didn't make it into the game). Valve now refers to this engine as "GoldSrc". This is probably how the "Source" engine from Half-Life 2 got its name.
German version
There is a special German version which features robots as enemies, green blood instead of red and innocent people cannot be killed any longer. The robot design was outlined by Sierra's Germany division, then sent to Valve in Seattle, where the artists created and implemented the tin soldiers. The changes in the game's code and art, together with the text and speech localization, served to delay the German version by full four months. By then, even casual gamers had already purchased the original version, which was freely for sale up to its ban. However, Half-Life proved to be so immensely popular that the German robo-version still sold over 50,000 copies, so the venture was ultimately successful for Sierra.
On December 16, 1998, the US version of Half-Life was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.
Gina Freeman
Apparently, Valve had written a part for Gordon's wife, Gina, to appear in the game, this idea got scrapped but she still made it to the game, her model was the one used for the holographic trainer.
id Software
When id Software saw what Valve was doing with their engine, they were reminded of their original idea for a seamless, story-based DOOM and thought it would fail. It didn't.
Innovations
Half-Life was influential in many little ways, popularising several gameplay devices which have subsequently become standards, such as: * The between-episode text which appears, overlaid on the screen, before slowly fading out (adopted not just in other computer games, but in several different Linux windowing systems too) * A training segment which is presented as an integral part of the storyline * The practice of rendering cut-scenes with the in-game engine * Blood-splatters and other persistent stains * Semi-random NPC speech and 'interaction' in an otherwise straightforward action game * Weaponry which needs to be manually reloaded between magazine changes * Constant playflow: the levels directly connect to each other
Inspiration
According to Valve's Gabe Newell, originally Half-Life was inspired by Stephen King's novella The Mist. However the game evolved so much from the preliminary concepts that the only things that remained were the horror/technology combination and the designs for the Bull Squid and the blind tentacle.
Lambda
Half-Life's lambda symbol is not the scientific symbol for half-life, but is instead the decay constant in the differential equation for exponential decay. The actual scientific symbol used for half-life is t1/2.
Mods
Counter-Strike was not a freak occurrence. Valve made the game editor immediately available, produced the mod Team Fortress Classic as an example of a finished mod, and also sponsored "Mod Expos", events where modders could present their work to other gamers and the press.
Plot
According to planethalflife.com: "the material that makes up the three green triangles protecting Nihilanth is the same as the crystal sample which you pushed into the beams to start this whole mess in the first place. Valve Software originally intended to make this connection more obvious but never did."
References
- The security office is in sector 7G. Homer Simpson works in a sector with the same name.
- The Gluon Gun was nicknamed "The Egon" after the Ghostbusters Character Egon Spengler. The Gluon gun projects a plasma stream similar to the ones used by the Ghostbusters.
- The surnames on the lockers where Gordon goes to collect his HEV suit are of people from the development team. Gordon also has a book by Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw in his locker.
References to the game
The game makes an appearance in season 1, episode 22 of Lost, a popular TV series. Some in-game action is shown, and the characters shortly discuss the use and the effectiveness of the crowbar as a weapon.
Remakes
- In 2004, Valve released a re-mastered version using Half Life 2's Source engine, called Half-Life: Source.
- In 2012, a group of fans released a remake of their own, called Black Mesa. The team's goal was to provide a completely new and more modern version of the original experience, since according to them, Valve's remake "didn't fully live up to the potential of a Source engine port of Half-Life". In fact, most of the game's content remained unchanged: Half-Life: Source mainly added new water and physics effects, but didn't upgrade the game's textures or character models.
Sales
As of 2007, the game sold of over eight million since its release. (source)
Shotgun
There's a minor technical error with the shotgun. It's presented in the game as a double-barreled weapon, and the alternative fire mode shoots two shells at half the speed. However, the shotgun is modeled on a single-barreled weapon, the popular Franchi SPAS-12, which appears in several computer games. What looks like a second barrel is actually the under-barrel tubular magazine, which holds the shells.
Sound engine
Half-Life was one of the first games to utilize a software-driven environmental sound engine. Effects are applied in context of room size and surfaces of reflection. Reverb effects are calculated in realtime and applied on the fly as sounds are triggered.
University of Innsbruck
In the game manual, the first two pages contain a fictional letter from the administrative offices of the Black Mesa Research Facility to Dr. Gordon Freeman, concerning his upcoming employment. The address on the letter indicates that Freeman was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck, before moving to Black Mesa. In contrast to the common practice of using fictitious addresses for storytelling purposes, the listed address is actually real. As confirmed by the official university website, "TechnikerstraĂe 25, A-6020 Innsbruck" is the real-world location of Innsbruck University's Institute for Experimental Physics.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- April 1999 (Issue #177) â Game of the Year
- January 2001 (Issue #199) â Introduced into the Hall of Fame
- March 2001 (Issue #200) - #1 Game of All Time (Readers' Choice)
- March 2001 (Issue #200) - #2 Game of All Time (Editors' Choice)
- GameSpy
- 2001 â #2 Top Game of All Time
- 2012 â #1 Top PC Gaming Intro
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/1999 - #17 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
- PC Gamer
- April 2000 - #1 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
- October 2001 - #1 in the "Top 50 Best Games of All Time" list
- April 2005 - #1 in the "Top 50 Best Games of All Time" list
- PC Player (Germany)
- Issue 01/1999 - Best Game in 1998
- Issue 01/1999 - Best Shooter in 1998
- Power Play
- Issue 02/1999 â Best Action Shooter in 1998
- Retro Gamer
- October 2004 (Issue #9) â #38 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
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Related Sites +
-
Hints for Half Life
Question and answer type hints give you the solutions at your own pace. -
Planet Halflife
The usual 'planet' site for the Half-Life game. Lots of new maps, skins, addons etc. Together with the daily news ticker this makes a 'must-stop' for every Half-Life fan. -
The Final Hours of Half-Life
GameSpot writes about the last part of Half-Life's development. -
The Half-Life Saga Story Guide
A site devoted to detail the various events and lore in the Half-Life universe so far. -
The Official Half-Life Web Site
Wayback Machine snapshot from 2000
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by doj.
Macintosh added by Sciere. Linux added by Kabushi.
Additional contributors: Tomer Gabel, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Zack Green, Apogee IV, Daniel Saner, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Plok, lethal_guitar, MrFlibble, FatherJack.
Game added June 6, 1999. Last modified July 23, 2024.