Half-Life 2 Review

[SALvation]

INTRODUCTION

Half-Life 2 is the highly anticipated successor to Half-Life, published in 1998, one of the most successful games ever. Half-Life 2 was created by Valve and published and distributed by Vivendi Universal Games Inc. It has been in development for the past six years. Half-Life 2 was originally promised to be released in September 2003, however shortly before that deadline the source code was stolen and made available on the internet. Valve claimed that this caused the delay of 14 months. Others believe that it was a good excuse to gain time for completing and refining the game. With success comes lawsuits, and there have been numerous lawsuits between Valve and Vivendi. Both parties obviously want to keep as much profit as possible for themselves and Vivendi is probably not thrilled about the new Steam electronic distribution system (below). But the game has finally come out and the multitudes of fans can finally see if the sequel lives up to the promise of the original.

Initial impressions of the game? It takes a while to install and register the game. The story resumes with Gordon Freeman awakening in a moving train where the mysterious G-Man is telling him to “wake up and smell the ashes.” Several years have passed and things have taken a turn for the worse while Gordon Freeman has been away. The Earth has been taken over by the Combine and is now under martial law. The action takes place in and around City-17. Everywhere there are viewscreens where the big-brother figure of Dr. Breen talks to the repressed population. It takes a few cut scenes, but eventually it is back to business with the environmental suit and the signature crowbar in hand. Oh yeah! It is finally good to get back to the business of alien butt kicking...


CONTENT

The game has been made available in several different forms. A boxed disk set can be bought in a store, or alternatively the game can be ordered online and downloaded (broadband recommended). Additionally, many people who bought ATI video cards also received a coupon to download the game. For the game media, Valve has switched to something called Steam. Steam is Valve's content delivery system. All people wanting to play the game need to create Steam accounts with the provided CD key (box key, coupon, or email) in order to play. Note that the signup and validation is mandatory. An internet connection is required to play the single player game. By default Steam also is accessed every time the game is run for patches and updates (these can be turned off). The electronic delivery and activation on such a mass scale is an industry first. There can be many potential benefits. These include higher revenue by bypassing all physical media related costs and a simultaneous worldwide release date. One of the current problems of staggered worldwide releases has been that it causes software piracy. With Steam, all of the code can be released in advance, and then on the release date, the authentication server can be turned on to activate the game for everyone. Other software developers will be looking to see how successful the Steam distribution system is, and if successful, they will either emulate it, or use it if available for their own distributions.

At least that is the theory. There have been numerous reported glitches like servers going down, validation delays, etc. There have been a lot of irritated customers that are not able to play and cannot do anything about it until the servers go back online and the registration process completes. The cost via Steam is about the same as the cost in stores, but with no manuals or CDs (although there are options to create backup media). Some people have reported that it takes 40 minutes to install the disks and complete the Steam signup. There is a booming market for used software. With Steam it becomes questionable if the game can be resold, or if used versions will be available for sale. If the game is ever registered, it will have to include a Steam account as a part of the sale. If multiple games are a part of that account, then that will put a damper on sales of used games, and the consumer will lose.

GAMEPLAY

When the first Half-Life came out, it set the bar in every way imaginable for a single player game. It was not just a standard first person shooter, it was a fully-fledged interactive story. My reaction was “Wow, they could make a movie from this game!” The game itself featured many things that had not been done before. Now Half-Life 2 does the same. Half-Life 2 humiliates its predecessors with its richness and scope of gameplay. Virtually all aspects of the game have been refined and improved from the original. There are many varieties of game play, single player shooter, vehicles, puzzles, squad based combat, etc. All of this is integrated into a cohesive whole. The game has a satisfying conclusion, but there will be more coming. One can only hope that Half-Life 3 improves upon the game like this one did from the original.

There are a huge amount of challenges, goals and puzzles. The environment is immersive. Puzzles come in the form of figuring out how to move from one section to another, not endless repetitive button mashing. The levels are pretty huge. There are some 15 chapters and they will take from 15 to 20 solid hours to complete. There is plenty of ammo and health scattered around the levels, enough to where if a difficult section is completed, the player can recover as he moves on. There will often be sections marked with a "lamdba" - the Half-Life Greek symbol. It is now a symbol for the resistance and that will often be where the player needs to go, or in many cases an optional “hidden” areas to pick up energy and ammo. There is no real manual included (hardcopy or electronic) or even a training mode. People that have played the original Half-Life should be familiar with all of the controls. Three difficulty levels are available. If the game is too hard or easy the difficulty can be changed without restarting the level. The game allows for quick saves and also saves automatically between minor sections. The initial level loads are a little slow, but quick saves and quick loads are relatively fast and painless. Health can go to 100 and the environmental suit can also be charged to 100. It is difficult to be certain how the suit takes damage compared to the player health; however the suit does seem to drop fairly quickly to 0.

The game features two types of squad fighting. The resistance can be directed in some town episodes, and also there is a weapon that releases pheromone bait that allows the player to direct ant-lions as close up weapons. Having the help is useful, but they also tend to die easily, and the player does much of the work regardless. In addition, the NPCs can also block movement, which can be annoying.

This game also features indestructible vehicles. Provided are a swamp boat and a dune buggy. The area covered by the vehicles is surprisingly huge. Drops from any height will not cause damage in the boat, however crashes in the dune buggy will damage the player somewhat. They are rendered very nicely. Vehicles can detract from the game for some people. The rapid movement can cause feelings of nausea. Everyone else however will enjoy the implementation. These levels consist of opening gates, bridges, activating ramps, and making jumps. The vehicles are somewhat hard to control. They are driven with the cursor keys and weapon fire is aimed with the mouse. It is easy to get spun around and become disorientated. The dune buggy is prone to overturning and then it is necessary to use the gravity gun to push it upright or push it out of water, usually while being attacked by ant-lions.


WEAPONS

Many of the original weapons from the original game are carried over. Available weapons include the ever so useful crowbar, the 9mm gun, a 357 "one shot drop" Magnum, an SMG machine gun, a shotgun, grenades, the enjoyable gravity gun, a pulse rifle, a rocket launcher and a crossbow for sniping. There is a general zoom command available; however, weapon fire is not supported while in this mode. Some weapons support a secondary fire mode, grenades for the SMG, double barrels for the shotgun, a plasma ball for the pulse rifle and zooming for the crossbow. The crossbow is ok but it tends to be slow, and overall there are probably better weapons for the job.


PHYSICS

The physics are now an integral part of the game, and are required to solve many puzzles and continue forward in the game. The physics engine is designed to complement gameplay and also not to ruin multiplayer modes. Bodies can be dropped and will flop around, but once a body is dead, the interactive physics properties are removed from it. So the nice visuals remain, but the engine is not going to spend time tracking the individual movements of all the body parts. That is as it should be. Too much physics can easily ruin multiplayer. The multiplayer modes available in Counter-Strike:Source include physics and they work very well. The physics engine supports gravity, mass, friction and buoyancy. Things can be picked up with the use-key, and moved around to other areas then dropped. The gravity gun is similar except that it allows for much greater range and can do other things also. The gravity gun was probably added to further demonstrate the remarkable physics abilities of the game; however it is very useful. It can "pull" and pick up objects and also to sling them away at a very high velocity. Saw blades are very lethal when used for this purpose. Unfortunately the same cannot be done with enemies - except ant-lions for some reason. The physics are good, but not perfect. Still they are better than the bouncing bodies that can be seen in many other physics based games.


VISUALS

The first Half-Life was based on the Quake engine. A completely new graphics engine called the Source was created for Half-Life 2. The previous versions of the game can also be played on the Source engine to see some benefits, like physics and water effects. The textures however are the originals, but higher resolution textures may become available in the future.

The game will easily scale between different graphics cards. For the best effects a minimum Geforce 3 is recommended. This will use the DirectX 8 rendering engine, which includes most features from DirectX 9 except the soft shadow edges. The water will look better in DirectX 9 as will the weapons and distant objects, but otherwise DirectX 8 will deliver a satisfying visual experience. Lesser cards can also be used with DirectX 7, but at a cost of reduced visuals, however the game still looks good. The graphics engine is superb and state of the art. The enemies are probably rendered better in Doom3, and the "volumetric" shadows are rendered better in Doom3, but that is all that Doom3 has over Half-Life. Valve has made some phenomenal efforts in their graphics engine. The talking animations are bar none the best that have ever been seen in any game. The textures for every surface look great. The water effects are rendered more realistically than in Farcry.

People that have had problems with Doom3 and Farcry frame rates will probably be more pleased with Half-Life2. Most people will probably be able to use higher resolutions and have a smoother experience with this game. Last year there were problems reported with running the game on Nvidia hardware, but these issues have been long resolved and the game will look good on any platform.


SOUND

The music and sound is top notch in the game. There will normally always be some quiet background music and ambient environmental sounds. However when the real music starts playing, it is time to get busy because there will be in a situation happening. The voice acting is excellent, from professional actors like Robert Guillaume and Robert Culp. For some the sound could be problematic. If the player does not face NPCs that are talking, then the sound can fade out completely. That may be a driver problem however. In addition the sound will hitch when the game is busy doing other things like screenshots, saves and loads.


MULTIPLAYER

For multiplayer, alas, there is no multi-player mode, aside from Counter-Strike. The game and graphics are updated, but it is the same game at heart; that will please some, and annoy others. Some multiplayer featuring City-17 and the various weapons of Half-Life would have been nice. Mods will probably come out soon to support these, but still it would have been nice to see them included in the box.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Minimum recommendations:
1.2 GHz Processor
256 MB RAM
DirectX 7 graphics card
Windows 2000/XP/ME/98

Recommended system:
DirectX 9 graphics card (Geforce 5000+ Radeon 9000+)
2 GHz Processor
256 MB RAM


VALUE

The normal game costs $50 as a download from Steam, or $55 in a store, or for $25 more the collectors edition can be had on DVD which includes a T-shirt, book and the original Half-Life remastered for the source engine. That isn't bad at all for the best single player game to have ever come out. Add to it the multiplayer component and it is easy to have hundreds of hours of entertainment from the game.


FUTURE

Valve overall has always provided extensive support for their gaming community. Mods are already available to enable multiplayer coop play in Half-Life 2. More extensive mods are expected, and indeed Source is supposed to be one of the easier platforms to develop for. Counter-Strike was the first highly successful mod for the original Half-Life and more can be expected. In addition there will be Half-Life 3 to look forward to. One will hope however that it does not take as long to produce and release.


CONCLUSION

This is by far the best single player game ever made for any platform ever. The graphics and physics are top notch as are the multiple types of game play available. Multiplayer is built upon one of the most successful mods ever. This is a game that everyone should have and enjoy.

On the negatives, the swamp boat levels were a little too long, multiplayer maps based on the game would have been nice, and the Steam registration system is somewhat unfair for the consumer.

Overall - this is a must buy!

[MassacreAL]

this is one of the bests games, in my opinion