Half-Life

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.