The myth. The legend. The game that perfected an already innovative formula to create an experience unlike anything before or since. Or, that's what I said when I first played it. So what about now?
We're still waiting for Half Life 3, and at this point it looks unlikely that we'll ever see the next part of this franchise despite Half Life 2: Episode 2 clearly setting itself up for a third and (hopefully) final installment. It's a well-known fact that Valve stopped making games years ago in their great quest to earn all the money in the world so they can rule with a fist covered in headcrab guts that doesn't seem to have a body attached to it. So why not look at the very first game to ever come on Steam.
On paper, the plot doesn't look like much. You return to your role as Gordon Freeman, and the game opens with the G-Man dropping you into a post-apocalyptic earth ruled not by the aliens from Zen but by a new race called the Combine who took advantage of humanity being weakened by the Zen invasion and themselves invaded. (No, this doesn't have anything to do with Race X from Half Life: Opposing Force. Apparently Earth went through at least three invasions within the space of 24 hours.) The human race is now under an Orwellian regime, but Gordon's arrived to stop all that.
Once again, there's more to it. The progression of the first game has returned, and is better than ever despite having much more ground to cover. You become the savior of humanity without even noticing, as you're simply willing yourself to survive. The game isn't a sandbox, but it's not laden with objective markers. The designers remain unseen, giving you only clues and hints as to how you should progress. You're never dumped on your own, but rarely are you directly told what to do. The game clearly wants you to succeed, but at the same time it wants you to work for it - like a responsible parent, or excellent teacher.
I still have yet to play such an immersive game. There are no contextual button prompts and there is little hand-holding. Oddly, despite this game being filled with memorable moments, the one that always sticks out to me is wandering around an abandoned house in the middle of the countryside when you hear in the very distance a Combine helicopter fly overhead and a sense of dread hits you.
Yet all this being said, the game is definitely showing its age now. Replaying it, I forgot how long that section on the hovercraft goes on for. You think it's about to end when you reach a dock, but then they attach a gun onto the thing and it carries on! When you finally do reach Black Mesa East, it's definitely a relief and I'm more than happy to be locked in a room whilst everyone talks at me for a few minuites just to break things up.
The immersion is also compromised during that one time you have to cross a bridge that's filled with ammo for your rocket launcher. Gosh! I wonder if on the way back through here I'll bump into something that'll require my rocket launcher to destroy. Also, the game goes slightly overboard with the amount of Combine standing right next to explosive barrels during the first chapter - though maybe that's because I've had years of playing FPSs, so I know that red barrel = boom whilst first timers may be a little slower on the uptake.
Almost five years after Opposing Force, Valve still couldn't program intelligent A.I. What should be, and often is, an outstanding third act of the game where everything devolves into a full-scale warzone is marred by having to command a group of resistance members. These guys will run blind into enemy fire, they'll get in your way so you're guarenteed to accidentally give your new BFF a shotgun blast to the back, and they will make navigating narrow corridors a living nightmare. Not only that, but they'll constantly remind you to reload your weapon even though you still have half a clip left and no spares.
Thankfully they all drop like flies, meaning you'll soon be back on your own and in the height of the action. At first it felt odd having non-regenerating health and no ironsights, but once I'd got back into how things were in the good old days I was happily switching between a shotgun and SMG as I ran screaming into combat. This was back when you were supposed to experiment in a fight by running around with advanced weaponry rather than hiding behind a bit of wall. Curiously, almost all the weapon models clearly have scopes so perhaps this was a feature Valve wanted to add but scrapped for one reason or the other.
The shooting still has the same slightly 'off' quality that was present in Half Life 1 too. Yes, it's a combat sandbox, but there aren't any headshots and ultimately the tactic is to just keep throwing damage at everyone until they're all dead. Even games like Deus Ex and the Jedi Knight series had enemies retreating and trying to get backup. Whilst the enemy AI is extremely intelligent when it comes to cover and flushing enemies out of cover, they just continue firing at you until they suddenly drop dead like their skeletons were vaporised. Which brings me nicely to the physics engine.
Games which build themselves on technology rather than narrative are doomed to fail because technology moves quickly. Twenty years ago 3D was about to kick off. Ten years ago Half Life 2 was the height of innovation. The graphics have of course aged, but what separates this from Doom 3 is that whilst Doom 3 boasted rusted grey colours and flashlights, Half Life 2 has the gravity gun. You can stack heavy objects and use them to bypass certain areas. You can pick up the kitchen sink and throw it at the enemy. Radiators remain the best weapon in the game. Right at the end of the game the gravity gun is upgraded so it can pick up and throw people. This is all just as fun as it sounds.
There's also the facial and character animations. To show this off, every once in a while the game will stop whilst you listen to people talk at you. Games like LA Noire just use this to show how much the character models look like real celebrities, but Half Life 2 goes all out by having an extremely colourful array of likeable characters peppering the narrative. From the wisecracking Barney to the smug Odessea Cubbage. Even random members of the resistance have little patches of small talk just to give them some life. It's a huge improvement over the army of clones that populated the first game.
So Half Life 2 is by no means perfect. I prefer it to Half Life 1 mostly because I'll take that seesaw puzzle over platforming any day. The ladders still don't work, but at least in Half Life 2 successfully detaching from a ladder isn't the difference between life and death. The experience certainly isn't as tight as I remember, but it's still tighter than any game I've played before or since.
You could I suppose pick up the 'Cinematic Mod' which modernises the shooting somewhat and hugely updates the graphics. But it also adds in really jarring music, the new character models look awful, and it's both racist and sexist. Alyx is now highly sexualised and all the black characters have been disturbingly whitened. So maybe just stick to the original game.
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