I already did a "first impressions" review of Half-Life 2 a long time ago, but I did actually write a full review afterwards and shared it with some of my friends. Well, now I feel it's time to share it with all of you. :)
First of all, for those of you not familiar with it, I'd better set up the story and the environment that the game takes place in.
I haven't yet played the first Half-Life, but I've read up on it. In that game, you play Gordon Freeman, a young theoretical physicist trying to escape from the secret underground Black Mesa Research Facility, where an experiment into teleportation technology has gone disastrously wrong – an event that later became known as the "Black Mesa incident". Aliens from the alternate dimension Xen enter through the dimensional seams and flood the facility. And in order to escape, you must fight your way past both the hostile aliens and a US Marine Corps special operations unit dispatched to cover up the incident.
Now, Half-Life 2 takes place some time after the events of Half-Life 1, and the story is that an alien race called the Combine has invaded Earth and basically enslaved humanity. So the game basically takes place in a dystopian future, with the Combine implementing a brutal police state. Now, Gordon Freeman has returned, and he's basically trying to rescue an old friend and colleague who's being held prisoner in the Combine Citadel – but he unintentionally stirs up a rebellion against the Combine along the way, because the resistance sees him as a saviour who will lead them to freedom.
And, before I start detailing my own opinions, I'd better give a brief overview of some of the enemies you face. It'll come in handy later. :)
• Headcrabs are perhaps the most common enemies in the game. They're parasitic life forms about the size of watermelons, and they can leap surprising distances and heights to catch their prey. When they catch and bond with a human host, they mutate the host into a mindless zombie. As well as standard headcrabs (top), which have thin skin and round bodies, there are fast headcrabs (middle) (which are smaller, spider-like and very… well, fast) and poison headcrabs (bottom), which are much darker in colour.
• Barnacles are predators with bodies about two to three feet wide. They attach to ceilings, the underside of bridges and so on, and drop down a very long, highly adhesive tongue. When something gets stuck to a barnacle's tongue, it retracts it slowly into its maw and eats the prey alive.
• Antlions are insect-like creatures as big as people, and apparently live in underground hives very similar to ants. You find them mainly on (or rather under) the beaches along Highway 17, and if you step on the sand and disturb them, they come out onto the surface and attack. 
• Antlion Guards are among the most feared creatures and the most powerful in the Half-Life universe. They're as big as elephants, and far more aggressive than regular Antlions. They charge and headbutt you, doing a great deal of damage. Fortunately, you only face three of them in the entire game.• You also face hordes of Combine soldiers throughout the whole game, fighting back with a variety of weapons including a submachine gun, a Magnum, a crossbow, grenades and a pulse rifle.
But the biggest trademark of Half-Life 2 is the Gravity Gun, one of the most jaw-dropping weapons in video game history. The Gravity Gun allows you to pick up objects and launch them at enemies. So with this weapon, everything becomes ammo! :D Furniture, crates, circular saw blades, exploding barrels – anything in your vicinity can become a projectile!
And now, on to my own personal opinion on the game! :)
In short, I loved it. But it has a number of detractors that keep it from being one of my top favourites.
But let me start off with some positives. I just adore the premise, which I've already gone over. And all the characters that inhabit this world are just awesome.
There's not much point in discussing the graphics, but I just love the physics of the whole thing and how realistic everything's made to be. I especially like how, during the driving stages, you can get out of your vehicle and realise exactly how much ground you're covering; that really did feel real. I remember someone saying at one point that you won't get very far on foot. That's absolutely right! :)
Now, video games usually alternate between gameplay and pre-rendered cutscenes that detail their plotlines. But Half-Life 2, just like its predecessor, never takes control away from you for the entirety of the game. It all plays out from a first-person perspective, and the game has no cutscenes, instead integrating scripted sequences into the background. At the time, that must have been groundbreaking.
On one hand, I love the sense of realism that this style of gameplay attempts to convey: how you feel like you're actually wandering freely through these events as Gordon Freeman. But, on the other hand, it does call attention to the fact that it's just a game, especially in how you have no concept of where a sound's coming from and that sort of thing – you know, the sense of your surroundings that you have in real life. So, the first time playing through, you can't tell where you're supposed to look to see important details in the story sections.
That also becomes a problem during combat. Having a point-of-view perspective and a rather slow turning speed means that you can easily lose track of enemies – especially headcrabs, who can leap up at you and end up behind you. Several times while trying to defend myself from headcrabs, I just found myself going, "Where the fuck are you?!" Other times, it's obvious that a soldier's shooting at you, but you can't tell where you're being shot at from – again, because you can't just follow the sound. That's the problem with first-person games: they just leave you thinking, "I think it's pretty safe to say that it'd be easier to do this in real life!"
Actually, the combat itself is my main problem with the game. Being mainly an action shooter, Half-Life 2 is very heavy on combat – too much so for my liking. Playing this game, I came to the conclusion that shooters really aren't my thing. In fact, that's why it took me so long to get through the game: my progress was very slow and methodical, saving before each obstacle and trying repeatedly to get past it while keeping as much health and ammo intact as possible. Basically, I was playing through it one step at a time with the mindset of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again".
In fact, my favourite stages were always the ones that didn't involve direct combat. For example, any battle that gave me an excuse to use the crossbow from a distance was the most fun. In other words, sniping was my preferred method of attack.
Speaking of my favourite stages, there are too many standout moments to talk about, but I'll tell you my three absolute favourites.
In the Sandtraps chapter, I love the sequence where you have to avoid stepping on the sand. That finally gives you a break from all the fighting, instead relying on nervous tension. And if I accidentally touched the sand and heard the rumble of the Antlions coming up, I could just reload from my last save point.
Then, in the same chapter, there comes a whole section where you use an Antlion pheropod to get an army of Antlions at your command! You can send them to scout ahead and attack any enemies they find. That is awesome! :D Just when I was beginning to hate the Antlions, too! :)
And, towards the end, when you actually get into the Combine Citadel… well, first of all, I loved the free ride in this transport pod, where you can simply observe your surroundings! :) But then you're dropped into a confiscation chamber and stripped of all your weapons – except for the Gravity Gun, which disrupts the confiscation field, and is also disrupted itself so it becomes stronger than ever before. Now you can pick up and throw the soldiers themselves! Well, the Gravity Gun was great fun before, but now it kicks major assage! :D
And let me just end with a bit of a confession.
The enemies in this game… they scare the shit out of me! No kidding: the alien creatures are more terrifying than anything I've seen in a horror film! And I think the first-person perspective just enhances that: you always feel like they're out to get you.
If you were to ask me which one I find the absolute scariest… well, headcrabs in general immediately spring to mind – no pun intended! :) Especially how, all throughout the game (even as far as the Citadel), a headcrab occasionally springs from nowhere and makes you jump out of your skin. But by far the most nerve-racking are the poison headcrabs, for reasons I don't even need to explain. That and, in the Ravenholm mines, which are infested with both the fast and poison variety, the poison ones can easily be distinguished by how slowly they move; something about that slow crawl just makes them even more unsettling.
But in terms of what personally creeps me out the most… the barnacles. God, I fucking hate those things! I mean, I know they can't move, and you can easily shoot at them even as they're pulling you in. But still, the idea of being slowly pulled up to such a terrible death… it's just horrific! So as soon as you see those long tongues dangling from the ceiling up ahead, you know it's bad news! Fortunately, they'd be very easy to avoid in real life. But in the game, most of the time, they're right in your way! And the fact that they're mostly found in dark, dank sewers makes them even more unpleasant to think about.
To cut it all very short, I think Half-Life 2 is excellent in almost every respect, but very frustrating. If it had just cut down on the shoot-'em-up aspect, it would have been perfect.
My rating: 95%.
No comments:
Post a Comment