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Gordon Freeman returns to fight for the fate of humanity!
It's been six years since the original Half-Life. The original game, which was release in 1998, consisted of gameplay that did a good job at acting like an interactive movie without the use of cut-scenes. The game became a seamless experience that made it not only one of the most popular PC games of all-time, but one of the best PC games of all-time, being comparable to other legendary PC shooters such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake.
Half-Life put you in the shoes of an MIT graduate named Gordon Freeman who resides in Black Mesa, a facility dedicated to making prodigious discoveries. On that day, Dr. Freeman made a discovery, alright--a discovery that jeopardized the world. He had created a portal to what he would find out is an alien planet known as Xen. The original Half-Life made you go around all sorts of environments, from giant fans that could chop you up instantly to battlefields where the U.S. Army engaged in combat with you, the one-man army. If you did manage to survive all this carnage and defeat Nihilanth--what was apparently the leader of all of the Xen aliens--you were made an offer to either work for a man in a fancy suit named G-Man or be torn apart by an army of Xen aliens that even you could not defeat. The G-Man's background is unknown, and neither is his alignment, but you noticed him walking around the complexes several times during the game.
Half-Life 2 assumes that you decided to work for the G-Man, as you begin the game with an introduction of the G-Man. Right away, it is noticed that the graphics are spectacular and, overall, awe-inspiring. "Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman," the G-Man says in his trademark eerie tone. "Wake up and...smell the ashes." Right after that, the game places you in a first-person perspective: you are now looking out of the eyes of Freeman, who has somehow ended up inside a train to a city known as City 17. His surroundings are an eastern European city now home to the citadel of a dominant alien group known as the Combine. Naturally, you aren't going to take this: after a brief segment in the train station, you're suddenly fleeing from an apartment building that is being swarmed and surrounded by Combine forces.
It isn't too long before you confront Alyx Vance, daughter of Eli Vance, who, apparently, was a co-worker with you back at Black Mesa. Also joining you is another former BM scientist, Dr. Kleiner, star of Half-Life: Blue Shift, Barney Calhoun, and a few other new characters that you can be introduced to yourself. However, each and every one of these characters, as well as numerous civilians throughout City 17, have joined forces to create a resistance against the Combine, which is being led by Dr. Breen, your former administrator from Black Mesa. The story not only has you fight the Combine in the shabby, urban environments of City 17, but also puts you in other environments, such as the zombie-infested lands of Ravenholm and a highway surrounded by barns and other rural elements. Half-Life's cinematography is refined in Half-Life 2, mainly due to the capabilities of the Source engine, as well as superior voice-acting that has been done for the major acting roles in this game (of course, Gordon is utterly silent throughout the game). How, exactly, these two things enhance the story, we'll get to in a moment. One thing about the story, however: Half-Life 2 certainly won't be the last game in the series, as you aren't going to get some key answers that will truly unravel the series. You'll have to wait for Half-Life 3 to see if you'll get the answers you need.
As I mentioned, the Source engine has allowed Valve to step up the cinematography significantly. Did I mention that it also amped up the physics? Well, that's what it has done: it has taken just about every object that will budge--from watermelons to wrecked cars--and made it moveable in a completely random but realistic fashion. And they have introduced the Zero-Point Energy Gun (aka the Gravity Gun) to exploit the Source engine. Yes, with your Gravity Gun, you can pick up and throw, say, armoires or office desks. It also allows you to push and throw objects as well. Is there a pile of boxes in your way? Simply pick up each box and toss them one at a time with ease using your Gravity Gun.
Another neat little "weapon" of yours is the Pheropod, which will come handy for a couple of the game's later chapters. It allows you to summon and command Ant Lions, which are giant, flying pseudo-insects. Both of these weapons allow for some significant changes in your tactics, but the game is open-ended enough so that you can use one of plenty of different tactics for each situation.
But, if you're interested in more conventional weapons, there's the 9mm pistol, .357 Magnum, the Sub-Machine Gun (SMG), the crossbow, and pretty much all of weapons from Half-Life, as well as a new weapon called the Overwatch Rifle. The O.R. is basically a supercharged SMG, but its secondary fire shoots out a ball that, when it comes in contact with a Combine grunt or one of your allies, instantly causes them to die, float in the air for a couple of seconds, and then disintegrate into thin air. It's a really neat thing to see.
Also, there are a lot of new adversaries to go with those Combine grunts. Every once in a while, those grunts have vehicles with lots of ass-whoopin' toys to go with them. They've got dropships, gunships (that vaguely resembles a maggot in terms of its appearance), and striders, which are extremely tall, long-legged creatures whose weapons are virtually identical to your Overwatch Rifle. There are also a few different variations of headcrabs and zombies, such as extremely fast zombies and poisonous headcrabs.
Like I said, there are many tactics that you can use to take down an adversary. For example, if there's a Combine grunt around the corner, could you sneak up to them and blast them way with your shotgun? Sure! Could you pick up an oil drum with your Gravity Gun and toss it at them? You could do that, too! Those are a couple of examples of just how flexible the gameplay system in Half-Life 2 is.
Also, the game implements a squad system into the gameplay later in the game. Although it's nice to have some backup of your own, the members of your squad can easily crowd around and get in your way, especially when indoors where the apartment are very narrow-spaced. But, otherwise, the AI is exceptional in Half-Life 2: your allies and enemies will hide for cover, aid each other when hurt, and try to flank you or your enemies. And all of these actions are usually timed just right by the AI.
Valve has even given you a couple of vehicles to drive around in Half-Life 2. An airboat and a buggy will be at your disposal throughout the game, and although it's nice to not have a game where you're on-foot 100% of the time, the vehicles drive pretty awkwardly, especially when you're often forced to drive and shoot at the same time with your keyboard. Fortunately, there's only a couple of segments where you're gonna have to drive these vehicles, and they won't take too long, so you shouldn't get too frustrated at the driving that you'll be doing. But other than the awkward driving, the controls are completely perfected, with an entirely flexible and customizable control scheme.
However, one thing that hinders the gameplay is the occasional event where the game freezes momentarily. Although it is most likely a bug and can be fixed over time, it can really kill the thrill of combat if it occurs during a firefight.
The game, simply put, looks absolutely spectacular. Both the indoor and outdoor environments have been very well done. You'd be doing yourself a favor to get a good video card for this if you haven't already as, on the best details, Half-Life 2 has superb textures and character skins and models, not to mention the excellent lighting. The Source engine, as I mentioned beforehand, allows for immense body language and features very flexible facial models, allowing for realism within the acting of characters. Characters like Alyx and Barney will make gestures and faces that will convince many of the people who will play this game of the surreal acting that the characters and their respective voice actors perform.
The best thing about the graphics is how great the game will look and perform on today's entry-level rigs. For example, my system includes an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with 512MB of DDR400 RAM and a Gainward GeForce FX 5700. On a 1024x768 resolution with that card's default details (medium model detail, medium texture detail, simple water reflections, trilinear filter, no AA) with the model detail turned up to high and the AA turned up to 2x, and the game often ran at a smooth 80fps.
Like I said, the game features superb voice acting to go with those excellent visual expressions. Dr. Kleiner and Barney both retain their voices from the original game, which will most likely relieve fans of the original Half-Life, as those two characters in Half-Life have been memorable characters since the release of the original game.
However, the sound effects are nothing to be awed about. Some of them are just rehashes of the original Half-Life's SFX, but some of the weapons have new sounds, some of them matching the overwhelming power of their respective weapons. For example, a shotgun blast really does sound like what a shotgun blast should sound like. But a few more new sound effects would have really rejuvenated the game in the audio department.
Overall, Half-Life 2 is just as brilliant as hardcore fans of the series expected it to be. And despite a lot of improvements over the original Half-Life, these improvements just aren't enough to consider the game legendary. However, the game's one revolutionary element is the amazing Source engine, which has done wonders to make for a superb game with a meserizing graphics and physics engine. However, it can easily be considered, by far, the best game in the series. And if you weren't a fan of the Half-Life series before, chances are that you will be if you play Half-Life 2.
Additional reviewing done on Alienware -- Troy Matautia, PGNx Media
---- Nov 19, 2004
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