Half-Life 2

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.