Half Life
Published by Sierra Utilities I mean Sierra Studios, developed by Valve

This review will be spoiler heavy, because you should only be reading this to rediscover HL, or something.

Most of our reviews have a simple template. We go over the good and bad, and then a final few sentences. But seeing as how this game is more special (seeing as how it's the best thing ever created by a motherfucking carbon unit) it's gonna be more extensive.

There will be (or already is) a supplimental review for this, where we go over other reviews of Half Life and make fun of the reviewers or some shit.

In General:

Best game ever.

Pros:

Everything in the game is a pro, but here's a few things we picked apart.

Graphics-

While the graphics don't stand up to today's higher standards, we can at least say they look "more traditional." This game has the best office levels ever. What was and is important was this game wasn't just good in the graphics department, but REVOLUTIONARY. THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The texturing is a massive step up from the Quake engine that was used, because it's 16 bit. Not only are the textures just plain better, but it's not all just a bunch of brown. There are plain white labs and old faded cement walls and such, it's really amazing. The texturing rivals Unreal.

A lot of the large vistas you will see in the game will be impressive, even if they don't measure up to Unreal. The guys at Valve were smart enough to keep the big rooms somewhat sparse, but not empty. Like the alien battle where the APC busts through the wall, it's a big room with just some platforms and a side room, but it has some extra features to make the room interesting. The archetecture is always made so that low end machines won't be bogged down by a giant flashy room.

Special effects-

While a lot of the effects would be shamed compared to todays massive engines, back in the day they were amazing, which means that whoever made this game is a GENUISSDASHKEAUHFE.

A lot of the effects you will see will impress you, most likely. From the smoke trails of the rockets to the electricity zapping from an alien slave's attack, it all looks wonderful.

Sound-

The use of the sound in this game was another revolutionary factor. Tons of different sounds for each surface you walked on, ambient sounds, NPCs being given hundreds of sounds all together. The grunts and the announcment system both given individual word wavs so literally about a million different sentences could be spoken by them.

Voice acting-

In the majority of games that use voice acting, what's considered "good" voice acting is usually how much a character overreacts to a certain situation. Like let's say the person is angry at someone for killing a relative (any relative). What would be considered good voice acting would be a person screaming. Or if someone is going crazy or is super duper evil RAR, they should be laughing hysterically.

But real people don't act like this, and this is what defines the line between voice acting and REAL acting. Half Life is perhaps one of the very first games that had a lot of voice acting included, none of which with a cheesy accent, and none of which were clearly overdoing their parts. The scis and Barneys were all very soft spoken in normal conversation. In a stressful situation (the lone Barney being chased by hgrunts) the character will yell out, with a complete lack of stupid taunts or anything of the sort. The voice acting is totally believable, and is a massive step in immersing the player into the role.

Music-

Most games that have music make it just one song, playing constantly. Other games have used more interesting technique, such as changing the music based on the game sitation, or in GTAs case, only playing music in the cars that you steal.

Half Life's music is just as interesting. For most of the game, the music is off. In my mind, this raises the level of immersion. Life isn't a big movie, it has a more personal feeling. You are allowed to think without some repetitive elevator-type crap blaring in your ears, non-stop. The same thing was done in Full Metal Jacket. No music except for the period stuff, and a few really low key stuff in tense situations.

But there is music. Half Life strikes up it's score whenever it's programmed to. This means map triggers play certain songs, just before an awe-inspiring game scene, which is just perfect. This would really work if the music was even sub-par. However, the music is excellent. If there is any fault with the music, it would perhaps be that there's not enough of it, around 12 songs in all. The songs are also kind of short, around 30 seconds to 3 minutes.

Story-

As opposed to pretty much every single FPS before or even since, the story here actually works, and actually makes sense all the way through, without having to break for some lame third person cinema explaning how evil the bad guy is, or whatever. There is no point where you would say "hey that wouldn't happen, that's bullshit." The story department never fucks up. Compared to SiN, this is Shakespear [SHAKESPEEREE(E) -ed].

Slight quirks in the story like your incredible Quake-ian agility and weapons know-how while being just a regular white-coated scientist are actually explained decently. Your HEV suit is specially powered to boost some of your reflexes, and because you work in a government facility, you do get a little weapons training.

The story elements are introduced as the game progresses, usually through an NPC conversation of some sort. While the story isn't exactly on an epic scale with hours of dialouge or whatever, this allows action to be fit in more often, allowing for a better repeat playing experience.

AI-

The grunts are fucking assholes, and that's why they kick so much ass.

In shogo (apparently), the enemies wait around the next corner for you, which is so like a computer script instead of an enemy. Half Life's grunts simply throw a grenade in, because they don't like falling for traps. The fact that they have grenades is hell enough, but they actually use them intellegently. Imagine those Quake 2 snargs, or whatever the fuck they're called, with grenades. It would be a disaster.

In Quake 2 as well, if you saw about 6 or 7 grenades bounce towards your feet, you didnt have much to worry about because they'd do almost no damage. In Half Life, the standard grunt's grenades can take you out with just a single blast. Even on easy mode.

Every other creature in the game acts to stay alive. If an explosive is lobbed at them while they're attacking (especially in hard and medium difficulty) they will actually stop their attack and move away.

The grunts aren't allied with those nasty aliens, either. The enemy alliances are very interesting. For instance, if an enemy alien moves if front of another attacking alien, they will take some damage. They won't turn on their teammate, and the teammate will usually stop attacking. Several times in the game, you will stumble upon grunts fighting aliens, which is immensly fun to just watch. Also, bullsquids don't really like each other, and if they encounter another of their kind on the battlefield, they will attack each other. Bullsquids also like killing headcrabs, which is fun to watch.

Again, unlike a lame computer script, the AI in Half-Life is actually coded so the monsters have a sense of self-preservation. As in real life, any time a creature or person will attack is to save themselves from death or harm. Just like the creatures here, if they see you, they're going to want to take you out first to protect themselves. If the danger is too immediate, most of the time, they will retreat. Monsters in Half-Life will actively retreat from grenades, and some grunts, sensing a threat, will stay away from tripmines. Comparing this to the Quake 2 AI is a joke. The Quake 2 monsters ducked. That was it. Their purpose was really just to stand around for you to come in and shoot them, then pick up a floating box of shotgun shells and move on to the next boring "hit the switch" puzzle.

Non player characters-

Again, another revolutionary factor, raising the bar in NPC interaction in FPS games, and games themselves, only to be topped by No One Lives Forever (where the NPCs not only interact, but are even more entertaining than the ones in Half-Life).

The majority of NPCs have a high level of interactivity never before seen in an FPS, or even any other genre. The barneys fight alongside you, scientists heal you and open certain code-locked doors, and all the enemies have a certain alliance to each other, as mentioned.

Beginning-

Incredibly intense. The game doesn't start you off blasting dumb enemies that can't even follow you through a doorway. Instead, it starts just as you would expect any day to start if you were a whitecoat. A 5 minute tram ride into the amazing Black Mesa Research Facility. The ride itself is incredible. Life is going on around you, and you don't have to interact with it. People running around, forklifts and mechs working. There are some really great sights to see on the ride.

And when the ride is over, the amazment isn't over still. Now you do get to interact with the people. There's a whole bunch of really great scripted sequences that happen to be just amazing. I remember the first time I turned off the light switch in that once study room, the sci walked over and turned it back on, while admonishing me. I was blown away. I wondered how the hell they did that (we were still pretty new to PC games back then).

The official end of your job as a scientist is one of the greatest light shows in an FPS ever. When I was zapped to Xen, I tried to drink it all in as fast as I could. It was over so quickly, my heart was beating into my ribcage.

Middle-

Tons of huge action and endless scripted sequences. This part was what made this game THE BEST THING EVER, EVER.

End-

When you first reach Xen, it's so bizarre and unexpected that it's quite refreshing. After a while, you start to feel trapped in it. An alien world with no escape. Many people hated the Xen part because of that (and jumping puzzles), but the idea is that you're supposed to feel the isolation of Gordon. He's on the alien planet, no way back until he kills some unidentified superpower controlling the alien race. So there you are, stuck in a strange world, stumbling foward, perhaps until your death. The isolation is almost choking at the end here, so much that in retrospect you'll probably never want to play the end area again for the rest of your Goddamn motherfucking ass LIFE. That's how real the Half-Life universe turns out. It actually makes you live through an experience that you don't want to repeat, without making it an experience that's just too boring or too dumb to want to play again.

Multiplayer-

One of the things that seems to be most taken for granted is Half Life's message system for multiplay. Instead of all the messages crammed into one small area on the screen, Half Life breaks it up into three different areas.

The top left is the server messages. If the game wants to actually announce a death, it does it through here instead of sharing the chat window. It usually just announces the arrival of a player or some such. Top right is the real death message window, which is mercifully the player's name, an icon representing the weapon used, and the dead person, as opposed to the system used in every single other FPS game, where it's some long and HILARIOUS message about how you were melted with the plasma gun or almost dodged someone's rocket (which gets tired after a minute or so). Near the bottom starting at the left is the chat messages. In 800x600 there's a fairly large gap between them all. Even in the smallest resolution, you can still play the game without having the death notices, people joining/leaving, AND chat all smashed into one small area.

Remember Quake 3 and Unreal Tourney's message systems? Even Tribes mashed the deaths and the chats together, making team communication truly pointless, and searching for your kills harder than it should have been in the first place.

Everything about this game screams "user friendly," from the easy updating of patches through the game's frontend, to the netplay chat, to the hazard course (one of the first games to integrate one of these, I believe--a training level that still stays in character to the game). Leave it to people who worked for Microsoft to understand how important it is for the people using the software to be able to use it with as much ease as possible.

Cons:

The ladder mechanics are a bit tricky, but not as impotent as Quake 2.

Overall:

Best game ever, and perhaps even the best thing ever in the history of the entire motherfucking universe.

Review by:
John Cable

Josh Cable

Back