This is a review for Valve Software’s Half-Life² along with its sequel, Episode One, that are embedded with spoilers. So if you were living three years in the past like me, don’t read on unless you’re OK with plot details being revealed. Ariel dies. My opinion is mixed as I can recognize the assets that were well executed and the decisions that reduced the game’s replayability. That’s a fancy way of saying there are obvious pros and cons (not of hitchhiking).

I played through the original Half-Life twice back in 1999 and 2000, which was a revolution in PC gaming due to the immersing aspect of the narrative. Since at the time it was so popular for games to switch from a first-person perspective into third-person for short cinematics of dialog to further the game’s story, the nerds were blown away by a game that let you roam freely during non-player character interaction. It was also fun to kill scientists with a crowbar, am I right, you sadist? I never bothered with the Blue Shift or Opposing Forces expansion packs by Gearbox Software as they were just variations on a theme, even if they were canon to the series. See: re-using resources to pad gameplay time and put moneys in the corporate bank.

The original game left your character, Gordon Freeman, on a cliffhanger, having accepted a job with G-man, a creepy guy in a suit that followed the player throughout the game as you could see him behind locked doors and at a distance at various points. Half-Life² begins with G-man awakening you from stasis for a new task, of which he does not spell out for himself. Instead, you are teleported to a train, which soon halts to the last stop on the line, in City 17, an Orwellian nightmare of fascist high security. A white bearded Big Brother appears on multiple large screens littered throughout the buildings and streets, welcoming citizens to the safe confines of the city walls. You then go through the motions of being forced through certain rooms and hallways until an interaction with a character is to be had. It is, of course, Barney, the security guard grunt that returns from the original game. Question: How does Barney know Gordon Freeman was arriving? Does he interact with the G-man?

The game then has a short chase sequence, ending in the safe house of Dr. Kleiner, the bald scientist that also returns from HL1. Fifteen minutes of dialogue follows to setup the story… which there really isn’t on at the moment other than citizens being controlled by a fascist power. Another teleporter accident then occurs. Can these dudes come up with a new plot device? But that convenient occurrence leads the main antagonist, Dr. Breen, the white bearded leader of the city, to become aware of Gordon’s presence and pull out all the stops to ensure Gordon does not… I dunno… fuck shit up? A quarter-way through the game, a low resolution newspaper clip on a bulletin board points out Breen was the administrator of Black Mesa, the scientific laboratory that was the setting for the first game where alternate-dimension beings hurteded the Earthlings. Well it seems our new leader was in on the invasion to only his own gain. Oh, I hate him and must kill him, must I!

Necessity stipulates that you must run through sewers and canals of the city for the first quarter of the game to avoid Breen’s army, which are an alien race called the Combine that force its enemies to adapt to their culture physiology through some genetic-fusion process that isn’t explained. So for a couple hours you fight a few man-like soldiers along with flying circular-saw bots and the usual Xen-life alien force that were encountered in the original game. The ambient sound in this area is very well done, with distant gun shots and rotating propellers above the player giving the impression of a world much large than the immediate surroundings. Valve does manage to build on ideas in the sequel by adding vehicles, such as the air boat that can travel across both water and land. It’s not as good as the motorboat. Many people hate this section because it’s just adding length to the game to justify its four-plus year development time, but I found the jumps and gun-play at the end fairly fun, just to get away from the usual first-person shooter claustrophobic building setting. Hi, F.E.A.R.

You finally get to your original destination, called Black Mesa East, which was where Gordon is to meet another scientist and his mulatto daughter, Alyx. Srsly, that girl is clearly a honky. It’s here that we are introduced to Judith, who is clearly a bitch. She also snaps at Gordon when you walk into a room where she’s alone by a computer. Treachery! After jumping around with a new weapon called the gravity gun for a couple minutes, you realize this is where the game’s fun begins. The gravity gun can pick up game objects such as barrels, saws, and furniture to fling them at enemies. The Combine discover the Black Mesa East hideout and Gordon is left to escape alone to Ravenholm, an abandoned mining town that’s Valve’s chance to get their film noir horror on.

You fight your way through Ravenholm, which has these crazy fucking zombies that jump across building roofs, run really fast, and scream at the top of their lungs in the dark. The scream is loud enough to give goosebumps, even after encountering them for the hundredth time. The only live human found in the town is a priest tending to his flock of zombies through a series of traps that you must get past. He obviously kicks ass for the Lord. After a fight in a church cemetery with zombies, you are led through a short romp in the mines that lead Gordon back into daylight. How does one go from total night darkness to a noon Sun within 15 minutes?

I think the following part is the most fun in the game, as Gordon drives down a coastline in dune buggy, attempting to get to Nova Prospekt, a former-jail where Alyx’s father, a scientist part of the resistance movement, is held captive. Of course, you too are part of the resistance. But I want to be a tyrant! Why don’t I have this choice? Digressing, you drive down a seaside road with small stops along the way with abandoned homes, cargo ports, and lighthouses. I think the neatest area in the game was a train bridge here where you must traverse the scaffolding of its underbelly in order to disable a forcefield that prevents your dune buggy from crossing.

Unfortunately, it’s in Nova Prospekt where the game gets unfun again; back to the tight confines of concrete buildings with dull combat-focused fights lacking in puzzles. You rescue the scientist, along with Alyx, and discover Judith has betrayed the resistance, working for Breen in an attempt to capture Gordon. She manages to escape to The Citadel, a huge tower in the centre of the city where is Breen’s headquarters, taking Alyx’s father Eli with her. Gordon and Alyx teleport to Dr. Kleiner, however another teleporter malfunction in the form of a huge explosion delays their transport by one week. This explosion causes an uprising in the city, where the streets turn into war zones with the resistance rising up against the Combine to take back their planet. Rock! \m/

You then fight through a series of streets and buildings, trying to get closer to The Citadel. The combat here is a bit more interesting, including sniper sequences and open areas involving rocket propelled grenades used to shoot down tall alien creatures called striders. Once you get inside the tower, your weapons are stripped except for the gravity gun, which is now power-boosted so you can shoot pulses of energy at enemies or even pick them up to throw at their friends in a form of people bowling. The architecture of The Citadel is a bit more industrial and alien, kind of like Halo except it doesn’t have as much weight to its structure. You ascend the tower, including a long sequence where you travel in a container on an assembly line and marvel at the large number of people captured and enslaved in the building’s confines, all working to grow the Combine’s war machine.

You finally come face-to-face with Breen, still captured in the container, along with Eli and Alyx, where he outlines that he will kill them all, Earth is his (under their benefactors), Combine über alles, etc. But wait, Judith turns on Breen! He then tries to escape by teleporting off-planet and your final task in the game… is it a boss battle? A super cool chase? No, you shoot energy balls at a reactor causing an explosion in a hope that Breen doesn’t escape. Lame.

Right at the point of the explosion, time is stopped and G-man comes in to tell Gordon he has done well on this job and he’ll have further work for Gordon to the highest bidder. You’re put back in stasis, leaving Alyx to die in the reactor explosion. So the game was simply all leading up to, “there’s more to come!” Episode One picks up the story at that exact point, where the alien Vortigaunts revive Gordon, teleporting him and Alyx outside The Citadel without any explanation. Teleportation? No explanations? Noticing any trends here? You and Alyx go back into the tower and manage to jump start a reactor in order to delay a massive explosion that will wipe out the city, along with the resistance force. You fight through underground parking lot areas (car park!) and then the streets above, with the help of Alyx whose AI is pretty decent. Gordon and Alyx finally flee City 17, ending in a very cool sequence where you rapidly exit the metropolis by train while a massive blinding explosion eradicates The Citadels and its immediate surroundings, leaving me to assume the series’ next episode will take place in the countryside outskirts of the city.

I really don’t know why I just made this review a plot summary.

I feel that the whole story of this series is unnecessarily convoluted. Even B-list Hollywood movies have better writing. The mystery is supposed to support the branding of a franchise, because it’s all about being in the minds of the consumer! Write a vague ending to allow further sequels, whether their narrative be dull or not. They get really ham-fisted with the Vortigaunt’s pronunciation of Freeman. Yes, we get it, Gordon is an example of the voice and free will rising against oppressors. In a decade of Duke Nukem, Prey, Max Payne, and Alan Wake, I’ll now take the time to give 3D Realms and Valve the middle finger for lacking subtlety.

The role of the G-man is really the central point of the story that drives the mystery. It becomes a bit more clear reading this Half-Life Saga Story Guide, but overall, it’s like another bad episode of Lost. So why doesn’t G-man just teleport Gordon right to the top of the Citadel so the reactor can be immediately destroyed? Mechanic of the sequence, that’s not so fun!

The game’s physics are what add to an element of that fun. The initial teaser trailers advertising the abilities of the engine were unfortunately much too exaggerated. For example, take Trap Town, which is an early version of Ravenholm, but along with the zombie enemies, it includes Combine soldiers that are eliminated by what seems to be clever concepts that are executed in real time. Also of note, the “striiiiider” video of which parts of these areas appeared in the final game, although the fights and paths were completely changed around. In retrospect, they were obviously all scripted and these large objects such as the dumpster, steel beam, and building walkway are not “physics-enabled” so their weight is dynamically interacting with other forces. They’re similar to the Dog sequence in Anti-citizen Zero where your pet robot throws a car at a Combine soldier and attacks a moving tank. If you get in the way of the thrown tank, it’s like you do an MJ-style moonwalk to be pushed out the way. It’s interesting how these were the type of deceptive marketing tactics, almost in line with the 100% CGI game trailers found at E3 two years ago.

The game itself takes nods from many film and game sources, including Dune (ground pulse from the Combine restrictors/thumpers), Starship Troopers (antlion’s character design), Tremors (antlions, again, due to their reaction to movement on land), War of the Worlds (striders with long legs and laser shots. I know Spielberg’s version came out after the game), Star Trek (Combine with their Borgian behaviour of adapting other species/races to their own modus operandi), and Thief along with Neil Menke’s HL1 mod, They Hunger (Ravenholm’s dark horror setting).

Graphics-wise, it wasn’t until after I finished the game that I realized I didn’t have anti-aliasing enabled and I was in 4:3 dimensions even though I have a widescreen LCD. I’m an idiot. After years of having a low-end PC, I’ve obviously accepted very low standards when it comes to immersion in artificial environments. I thought the water effects looked very realistic up-close, although along Highway 17, the view of water at a distance was very Y2K. Of course, a game from 2004 wouldn’t have the ocean effects as found in the Crytek engine. The game does handle far-view distances quite well, although the size of maps leading to load-times in those areas were a bit too close together. The facial animations during dialogue and movement of eyes toward subjects of interest were also very believable. One thing I didn’t get was the overview map of the city as seen from the top of The Citadel as the graphic looked even worse than anything found in the original game, made in 1998. Maybe they ran out of time? It looked more like a top-down view of florescent-lit Tokyo than a ravaged eastern European burg.

The main issue I have with the game is the almost-too linear nature of the gameplay. Every chapter should be called “On a Rail”, am I right, am I right? There simply is no choice in how you handle situations. It really only comes down to what weapons you’ll use for enemies, and even then there are some restrictions. After non-linear games like Far Cry and Deus Ex have been around for a few years, you’d think other AAA titles that have been in years of development would have more depth than a straight-forward science fiction jumblefuck. But such is life… and I’ll probably play through this game again before Half Life²: Episode Two is released this fall.

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