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Review: Half-Life 2
- Title: Half-Life 2
- Developer: Valve
- Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 9/10
With all those caveats out of the way, Half-Life 2 is an incredibly impressive experience. In playing the game you step again into the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who originally worked at the Black Mesa facility. The first chapter of the game finds you arriving via train in the dystopian atmosphere of City 17, a ramshackle series of buildings raised from the remains of a now mostly destroyed civilization. A mysterious organization known as the Combine exerts control through police forces and alien troops. Via televised transmissions the citizenry is controlled mentally, spiritually, and even reproductively. From the first moment you enter the game Valve does an excellent job of imposing a sense of despair and barely contained anger rippling within the populace of City 17. What we are not imparted with is a sense of what has happened to Freeman since the events of the previous game. While clues are unearthed during the course of the game as to what has occurred, there are no firm answers to the many questions players are likely to have. With confirmation already in the news that Valve has begun work on Half-Life 3, the impression that you're left with is that this only part of a larger story. The story stands well on its own, but don't expect to come away from the game with all your questions resolved.
The new graphics engine that Valve created for their second game, Source, is an incredible achievement. The level of detail in the game is nothing short of breathtaking. From the reflectivity of water and tile flooring to the incredible facial animations, the game engine places Gordon Freeman directly into the world and makes exploration a joy. One of the best moments of the early game comes in a lobby. You emerge from the depths of the train station and face one last room before the freedom of open air. It is dusty and decrepit, filled with lost souls looking for nourishment rations handed out by inhuman robotic servants. Light pours into the room from windows set high in the external wall, and these amazing shafts of light fill the room. Motes float inside the light beams, lending an almost reverential air to what is essentially a ruin.
The physics of the game are wonderful to behold as well. The tech demo at E3 last year was quite an eye opener, and Valve allows you several opportunities to enjoy the physicality of the Half-Life world. At two points in the game you take control of vehicles. The wildness of the bouncing white knuckle ride you get with the airboat and dune buggy make for memorable gaming moments. The airboat in particular makes for excellent visuals as you speed across the water in a series of canals, ripples and waves speeding away from your craft and beautiful splashes marking where you hit the water after a jump. The gravity gun displayed in the tech demo is indeed as much fun to use as it is to watch. The weapon allows you to snatch objects from distances and launch them as projectiles. While the uses of the gun are usually more practical than some of the opportunities shown in the tech demo (the number of saw blades lying around in Ravenholme is kind of disturbing), there are a number of creative opportunities scattered periodically throughout the game. Beyond the vehicles and the gravity gun, there are constant reminders of the physics underpinning the game, as enemies push objects aside rushing at you and heavy objects swing like deadly pendulums through obstacles and crush opponents.
Once you step outside the door of the train station, your moments to stop and enjoy the beauty of your surroundings are few and far between. Almost immediately you as Gordon are connected up with the Underground Railroad, populated with peoples not willing to submit peacefully to the Combine. You reconnect with old friends from the previous game and after an experiment accident, you find yourself on the run from Combine forces. The instant the crowbar returns to your hands is truly a sweet moment. From there you move through the urban landscape of City 17, hop an airboat to duke it out with Combine troops in flooded waterways, and explore the Lovecraftian ruins of a small town inhabited by alien hunters and a mad priest. The game keeps you engaged with a constantly changing backdrop of locations and a series of pretty memorable characters. I was particularly impressed by the voice actors, all of whom do an excellent job of getting across what their characters are about. Each of the non-player characters has a nice moment to talk to you and make an impression. Dr. Vance's daughter Alyx is actually the one who introduces you to the gravity gun, and the quirky time spent with her may be the funniest, best written part of the game.
The visuals in the game are astounding, but the auditory experience is fairly impressive as well. The musical moments in the game are few and far between, and are used to accentuate tense or impressive moments. The music tends towards electronic stings and they raise your heart rate by a good deal when they're used. The sound effects range from pretty standard clinks and clunks to the viscerally gripping howls of stalking predators. The atmosphere in the town of Ravenholme, where the predators live, is phenomenally creepy all around, and is conjured by the pervasive sound environment. The weapon sound effects are all very competently executed, with the satisfying blast of the revolver being a personal favorite.
Overall, the game is an incredible accomplishment. Valve has done an excellent job living up to the expectations their first title has prompted in the gaming community. The lack of closure in the game's story is the only real flaw in the plot, which otherwise provides excellent motivation to keep moving and find out what will happen next. Gameplay elements stay true to the previous game, providing action and some simple puzzle solving moments. The visuals and physics of the Source engine make for a beautiful and interactive world to move through. The deep audio environment keeps the player rooted in the moment, while the excellent voice acting makes the non-player characters come to life. The collaboration of individuals who created Half-Life 2 has proven again why video games are a unique art form. I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys first person shooters, horror and suspense, or engaging storylines.
For all its praise I'm not too happy with steam. The essence of which boiled down to this for me; pay $50 for a game, then download it at 30-50K/s (on a line capable of 200K/s). To add insult to injury, I have to go through Steam every time I try to play the game, which wastes a few seconds 'Preparing' for an unknown reason (I have heard that it actually connects to the server every time I play... which seems rather redundant)
In terms of the game itself, I haven't played Half Life (1), so I really don't understand what is going on, or why. Vague references from the in game charecters hint at what is going on, but I really think I would have needed to play the first game to understand
Valve needs to walk over to Bungie with a presents one day, and beg them for education on how this load/save/death thing should work. Pausing for 3-20seconds in the middle of an action sequence while the game loads the next zone doesn't make any sense and just works to break up the game play. Death also requires a reload of the previous checkpoint. This is all stuff that Bungie figgured out for Halo 2, if only Valve could watch and learn.
The physics is fun, I really enjoy the ocasional puzzle with ropes and weights, It adds a little something, especially when most of them are optional for extra ammo or health. You feel like you've accomplished a little something when it's done. There have been a few places in a game where I was requird to load a previous save in order to continue (dune buggy was under water, and couldn't be moved, I was surrounded by radioactive slime, and couldnt escape, etc) which combines with the annoying loading to break up the game play. It has however given me an opportunity to catch up on some reading.
Overall I would give the game a 3.5/5, Steam is slow, loading is slow, loading while playing is annoying, and I still don't really understand what is going on. The game physics are fun, and the graphics are decent, I just lack the background to understand why it is all as it is.
paul reinheimer
It's kinda small, but is worth's the money.
Don't forget the biggest MOD comunity on the world used HL1 engine, and 90% of their code is compatible with HL2.
A must!
buy the $60 ($5 more then retail MSRP) silver edition from steam, and you'll get every valve game ever, so you can at your leisure play thru half-life 1 (in original, or newly created source-engine flavors), and then optionally play the alternative perspective opposing force, before heading into half-life 2.
I know some of you will argue that Doom 3 is more visually appealing but doom 3 still had a lot of work needed on the muliplayer aspect. Whereas half-life 2 focused on the multiplayer. This fact alone makes it a more appealing to developers
Well said. I agree with your analysis -- except that the game itself is just so fun that I am enjoying it my second time through, and I expect to have some fun with it in the future as well.
The interesting thing about the linearity of the game is that it's so natural -- the first time through I didn't really realize I was being led around by the nose.
As far as climb-and-jump puzzles go, I don't remember a single one. I remember a couple of points that were evidently supposed to be climb-and-jump puzzles (like 'stay off the sand!' and that radiation-filled room in the underground car tunnel) but I was able to complete these sections with a minimum of climbing and jumping through 'abuse' of the gravity gun.
This is taken from my blog, but I felt it was thorough/pertinent enough to post here.
So I finished Half Life 2. Ironically, I never actually completed the original, but I've been excited just like any other gamer over these past few months about what the six-year-development cycle has done for the game in question.
How has this gestation period treated the game? Very well. It seems that two things are apparent to me as I made my way through the connected, fluid universe of Half Life 2:
One: Valve are masters of atmosphere. While Doom 3 had its moments, it was mainly atmosphere in the form of no atmosphere. The lack of a true outdoor environment (albeit a small one with high rock ledges around and a fast-moving sky) prevented it from truly sinking in the idea that this is a living breathing world and more of a series of spooky outposts.
Half Life 2, on the other hand, truly delivered in the atmosphere environment. Everything is as it shouldn't be, which is to say totalitarian and controlled, from the first moment of the game you are subjected to the mindless droning of the Omnipresent Master along with the suddle and barking tones of the Military Component. It's enough to make you creeped out. And in a good way. Not in a Monster Closet (my code name for Doom 3) way.
Two: The female character of Alex was masterfully done. Never have I truly cared for, nor even felt better just being in the presence of, such a character before. She brought a calming effect that is truly unmatched by any other thing in the game.
I believe I have noticed something of First Person Shooters here recently, something that I was speaking with my friend Jon about. I call it the Waking Nightmare syndrome. There is a level of stress that the latest FPS's put on you by taking as much control and normalcy away from you. Whether this be Monster Closets (regarding both the mechanic of "boo scares" with doors and the game Doom 3 itself), or spooky towns filled with baddies or buggy rides through the open (and dangerous) road, these games want you on edge.
And frankly, this type of gaming is scary and nerve-wracking. It makes me not want to play.
Yet, it does want me to play. But the difference is in the amount of which I can take at any given time. With Doom 3, I honestly just stopped playing it. There reached a point where I realized that the game had determented into Monster Closets, where you would either pass a locker and it would shoot out a monster, or one would simply crawl out after you passed to sneak up on you soon after. Either way, it got to be distracting, formulaic, and yes, even a bit scary. But not creepy scary, like those really good Japanese horror movies. In fact, it never reached horror. It reached scary, and that's nowhere near horror.
Now Half Life 2, on the other hand, reached something very close to horror, but never quite got there. It presented a world out of control, yet the way that world came to be was never explained, even in the very beautiful and psycho-centric last levels. Now that would be true horror, the ability to build this world then show the awful unmaking of the world you were used to.
I would also like to note that the finale was grand, but the ending was awful. Fine, Valve, you didn't want to "end" it by any Movie Sense. But we basically just played through one, albeit in a first person point of view, yet you gave us a Kubrick-like (or Twilight Zone) one and expected us to enjoy it. Amused, yes. Enjoyed, no.
Regardless, it is highly recommended. The game, when it works, even in Waking Nightmare style, is beautiful stuff. There are plenty of levels, locations, and characters that make the trip worth it. I believe the bonds between the characters of Barney, Alex, and the rest were established well, but I do hope that next time they spend more time working on those bonds (or perhaps putting the co-stars in real danger, you know the kind that kills people) and actually -gasp- mak
I mean, you've got this freakin' gun that can telekinetically heft and fling oil drums over great distances, but you've still gotta worry about flashlight batteries?
Flashback 20 years: You mean you have a walkman that can carry 10,000 songs, has as much file storage as 1000PCs, can sychronize contact information, plays games, has an LCD screen, all in a package the size of a deck of cards, and you still gotta worry about the battery wearing out in 8 hours!
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Actually, in terms of contributing to gaming suspense, I prefer games where flashlights have batteries.
The original Unreal level called "The Sunspire", where half the level is played in pitch-black spaces with slithery, nasty bug things leaping at you is for me the benchmark by which most light/dark gaming horrors are compared. The permanent flashlight in Doom 3, even though it is probably scientifically accurate for a Martian space station, was something of a let-down in terms of game play.
"The whole 'having to be online to play a single player game' isn't an issue for me, cause I got roadrunner on all the time, anyway."
Assumption that steam will always be there, thatn you will always be able to connect, and that valve doesn't get bought.
Stream/Valve aside; This model of content delivery is bad for the consumers.
I won't buy HL2 becasue of it. Perhaps I'll loose out on the greatest game in the world, but it's a small price to pay compared to only being able to run programs you have purchased with the permission of somebody else. somebody who will have financial reason to not give you permission is even worse.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
actually that patch has already been released, but not by Valve.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Since when is a 2.7GHz laptop a "lower end machine"?
I understand the lack of substantial video card bein an issue, but most of the peple I know are running sub-1GHz machines....
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Every now and then, unfortunately not very often, my cynical nature is let down when something long awaited leads not to major disappointment, but to actual satisfaction. Is the game perfect? Nope. But it's a damn fine piece of work.
The environments are pretty and crisp, and, in contrast to Doom3, generally well lit. That's actually an interesting point. The game manages to convey a sense of suspense and terror without resorting to the total darkness that consumed much of Doom3. This is done effectively enough that it makes the darkness of Doom3 seem to like a cheap ploy, like the Doom3 level designers couldn't do suspense without total darkness.
The Airboat scene is a great example of what's done very very well in the game: excellent gameplay fun, and excellent eye candy. It's intense, it gradually gets more and more challenging.
One thing that I didn't like was how the non-character NPC's are handled, specifically the members of your "squad" in the final levels. In several places I had a great shot at the bad guys, but was denied an actual shot because of an NPC in the way. On the other hand, unlike similar situations in Halo (for example), the NPC's don't cause damage if they shoot you in the back. It's balanced, I just don't like it, and I don't have any suggestions to make it better.
The ending was something of a downer for it's lack of resolution. But that's fine, it makes me look forward to (1) playing through again, (2) looking forward to the inevitable expansion packs, and (3) Half-Life 3. Saying the game is terrible because it lacked resolution at the end is done by those who would have complained between installments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's not a complete series, it's part of a longer story.
There are a few interesting side-stories that could be done as expansion packs later. Bear in mind that the two original Half-Life expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift, occurred concurrently with Gordon's original escapades through Black Mesa. There are a lot of other events going on while Gordon's doing his thing, so it'll be fascinating to see how the expansions go.
That sounds specific and reproducible enough that you should report it to valve. Valve Contact Information I don't know how good they are at listening to bug reports, but chances are, something specific like that could be fixed pretty easily.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
In the console world everyone is going towards having friends, buddies, clan lists that are shared across games. With that comes presence information as well. Don't fear it. Its a good thing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks. That's the first interesting thing I've heard during the past week. I can tolerate software activation in the case of a title as strong as HL2, but anything that regularly phones home (or even tries to) is a dealbreaker for me and others.
What Valve really needed to do to defuse some of this antipathy was write a "Steam FAQ for People Who Hate Steam" (aka "for people who hate spyware" - because "online content distribution system" are pretty much synonymous with spyware these days).
As long as I'm dreaming in technicolor, the "Steam FAQ For People Who Hate Steam" should outline exactly what Steam does and doesn't do, how it's architected, the relationship between the Steam .exe, the game .DLL/.GCF, and the rest of your drive, and define in CompSci terms, what "online mode", "offline mode", "remember", "backup", "encrypt", "unlock", and "purchase" mean, and how they differ from each other.
No marketing person ("Steam means you never have to remember where you put the CD! And you can use it to preload 6 gigabytes of encrypted/locked Valve stuff onto your friend's computer if you want to play at his house! Just don't be anywhere near him when he finds out you've busted his bandwidth cap! Buy anything we have to sell with a single mouse click, because your credit card's registered with us! And we'll pop up new and exciting information about new and exciting CONTENT through the Steam Netwurk!") should be allowed anywhere near the technical people writing the FAQ.
For all the complaints I've read about Steam on slashdot over the past week, consider this. Now that Valve has proven the concept of widespread distribution of games online (and about time too, considering that what, 50+% of the US is now wired for broadband), other game developers can follow suit. This could take one of three forms:
1) I'm sure that Valve will be more than happy to expand their overflowing coffers by licensing Steam to third-party developers in exchange for royalties similar to those enjoyed by traditional B&M publishers (IIRC, publishers like Vivendi and EA take something on the order of 50% of the profits from a game in return for putting the copies of the game into stores)
2) Other developers create their own version of Steam (provided that Valve has not gone patent happy ala amazon "one-click" nonsense). Of course, Steam required years and years of development, having first been announced something like 4 years ago. But, with the proof that it can be done out there acting as a template, I'm sure we will no doubt see Steam clones soon enough.
3) This scenario fascinates me the most. Although I know that today is an odd day and therefore slashdot is in "we hate Microsoft mode", I believe that its quite likely that Microsoft will develop a service akin to Steam for inclusion into future versions of Windows (perhaps Longhorn?). Why? Simple - Microsoft can instantly become a publisher for the majority of Windows games. It would almost be like the license fees they get from every Xbox game sold already. Now, what happens to the games industry if Microsoft creates their own version of Steam for Windows? First, smaller developers who could not find a traditional B&M company like EA to publish their work could go to Microsoft. While a game must have sales of 10,000+ to be commerically viable offline, online the distribution costs are a lot lower thus lowering the threshold. Second, piracy would be reduced from the current endemic proportions. While I highly value my digital rights (I'm a contributor to the EFF), relative to console games, computer games have been on the decline for years. I'd vouch that one of the reasons is that while there may be orders of magnitude higher numbers of PC's out there when compared to the userbase of consoles, getting a free copy of something like Halo 2 requires more than a simple Bittorrent download - you need to physically mod the console. With less piracy on the computer side, no doubt you would see a much greater increase in both the quality and quantity of games developed for the PC.
So, while I agree that Steam does have some worrying implications for our fair use rights (for example, I can not legally resell my Steam purchased copy of Half Life 2 - the only way around it would be to give someone the username and password of my Steam account, something specifically not allowed by the Steam EULA), on the whole I do believe that Steam is the beginning of a revolution in computer games and the end of the B&M dealer. In fact, the same model could also be applied beyond games into regular software and I do not see why future consoles will not include a Steam like component to buy games online. Like it or not, the economics of Steam are just too perfect to ignore. This is the future of software distribution.
The retail version has a CD check not because Valve wanted one but because their distributer Vivendi uses it on all games they distribute. To tell the truth, most of the complaints about the boxed versions can ulitimately be blamed on Vivendi. It was they who packaged the CD installer that creates issues if you don't install CS with Half-life. It is their CD check and antagonism against Valve that is why you can't upgrade a boxed version to one of the better priced Steam version. Etc. ad nausium.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
This certainly seems to be the case, it would appear to be an issue in the CD/DVD installerbut when you're new game is taking up 4.5Gb an extra 300Mb is but a drop in the ocean
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Yeah, this really sucks for people who enjoy speedrunning. There were a lot of impressive tricks that could be used in the first Half-Life to breeze through a level.
I wouldn't call 2.7 GHz low end unless you're a hardcore gamer that's always upgrading to the latest hardware. 800MHz with 128 MB of RAM is my impression of low end these days. I only know a few people with machines faster than 1.3 GHz.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
What hacks me off about HL2, besides all the bugs that is, is the fact that after making you install all the crap off the DVD and authenticate using a cd key and using Steam the steam pile of shit still insists on you having the DVD inserted.
How is it when record companies try considerably less Draconian anti-copy systems (the borked CDs from Sony for instance) slashdotters are up in arms: but when Valve comes up with a control system that would make Joe Staling blush you clamber over each other to get stuck up the arse by them?
Yeah I know, flamebait: but I'm right (and have Karma to burn).
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
One of the reasons Valve developed Steam to deliver games online was to cut out the "middleman tax". Rather than getting $7 out of a $50 game, they'd get the whole pie. I'm cool with this, because this way the devloper gets more money and publishers are usually dicks.
So I check out how much it would cost to order, and its just as much as retail! Zero physical distribution costs, supposedly no publisher costs (how's that lawsuit with Vivendi going?), no inventory costs and they can't give gamers a fucking discount?
If this is some contractual snafu with Vivendi, where they have to charge a minimum price or something, they could offer an incentive to order online, like a coupon for the first expansion pack. NOT offer to let you pay more money for free mods (CS and DOD) that people OTHER than Valve came up with in the first place.
So right now, rather than being the couragious little guy challenging Goliath (Vivendi), Valve seems to be just as greedy as the publisher they are suing. I *had* been all set to buy HL2 but picked up Far Cry instead. I'll just wait for a Black Friday sale and Valve will get $7 instead of $50. Or just wait till HL2 comes down in price. Or just wait for it to be cracked.
Of course they wouldn't do that, because they would be liable to compensate the damage they made to their bankrupted property by preventing further sale of their products! You're usually not allowed to give anything away in bankruptcy, that would affect the rights of your debtors.