Half-Life Review
Played on PC
Developed by Valve
Released 19th November 1998
I feel like Half-Life doesn't need any introduction, especially if you indulge yourself in the gaming industry as heavily as others. Everyone knows this is the smash-hit debut title from Valve, the geniuses behind other classics like Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Everyone knows this is the shooter that revolutionised the idea of narratives embedded in the single-player experience. Everyone knows that this game's code and technology were way ahead of their time. But did you know that Valve themselves made 75% of the code from the game engine and the other 25% comes from the Quake engine, outsourced by id Software? Or how during development, they nearly lost all logs of technical changes from before the final month of development? Or maybe how the German version of this game has robot enemies instead of humans to comply with Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons because violence towards humans was deemed unacceptable? I bet you didn't.
Story
The story of Half-Life is splendid. You play as Gordon Freeman, a scientist at the Black Mesa Research Facility. After an experiment fails catastrophically, a portal to another dimension, Xen, is opened, and it instigates mass panic throughout the facility as inhabitants of Xen pour out and the military are ordered to cover up any sign of this incident - this means no witnesses. This game manages to integrate a fantastic form of environmental storytelling. Instead of relying on cutscenes to fill the narrative void, some important and fascinating story details are placed within the environments, dialogue and even the firefights that you get into. You essentially get to explore the narrative at your pace as you maintain control of your character for nearly the whole game. It almost felt like the whole game was designed in a way to tell the story to the player rather than them just experiencing it passively, and because of that, I adore it.
The only problem I had with the story was its shift from the lab outbreak setting to being positioned on an alien planet in the game's final act. This transition just felt unfavourable in my opinion as it clashed with the mood it established of being hunted by the military and bombarded by a freak species then, all of sudden, being the alien-killing variation of Doomguy.
Gameplay
The gameplay is incredibly revolutionary for any shooter that was released in the 90s or 00s. The reason behind this is that Valve showed players that shooters can be methodical in approach, cleverly adaptable and a never-getting-stale experience instead of the maze-navigating, mindless high-score achievers that Doom and Wolfenstein set a standard for. The level design and puzzle structure in Half-Life are built accordingly, and near-perfect as any shootout can turn into a time-based puzzle if you're clever in using your surroundings, noticing the health, shield and ammo pickups and manipulating the enemy spawns. The best part is that the areas are designed specifically for these approaches.
The AI is wildly mindblowing for a 90s game as all the NPCs, whether they be passive or hostile, react to your actions and your interactions with the environment. The Houndeyes would occasionally nap with their pack leader guarding them, and if the pack leader spots you, it'll send everyone else in the pack after you. The scientists (before the incident) would get angry at you if you turned off the lights or messed with their PCs. The Vorts call for backup when they spot you and will even flee and hide if they get too low on health. These aren't anything crazy to be shocked by as it has by now become a standard in games to do similar things. However, for a game to do these things back when it was the norm to have relentless tanks chasing you in every shooter, I can't help but be fascinated, especially by how these NPC interactions helped build the game world and its lore. I try to avoid a bias based on the ageing of a game but this simple fact is too significant to ignore considering it took the gaming industry so long to advance with Valve that Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Ghosts' main selling point was its "interactive fish AI" - that was released in 2013.
The wide, expansive arsenal you're given is all fun to use and almost acts as a must-use in some scenarios as health and ammo are rare, preventing you from going guns-blazing like a lunatic. The only gripe I have with the gameplay is that the movement feels too slippery, making many of the necessary platforming moments painful to deal with. You could argue that the slipperiness allows for a faster flow of combat, but I see it as an annoyance.
Bossfights
I've decided to only count the final boss as a proper boss fight as all the other "bosses" that appeared felt more like an element in the level design or a piece of a puzzle rather than a grand moment in the game like bossfights are supposed to be. That being said, the final boss was ok. The scale of the fight was immense and quite epic. The best part about it is how the boss would transport you around multiple areas and your goal is to escape them. However, every other aspect of the boss was pretty unfulfilling - lacklustre attacks, unmemorable design and it overall didn't have much going for it.
Characters
There are only two prominent characters throughout this game which don't exactly warrant a rating. The two characters are Gordon Freeman (the protagonist) and the mysterious G-Man. While Freeman is a mute protagonist, G-Man makes subtle appearances throughout your journey, observing you before having a small talking role at the end of the game. These two performances are too minimal for me to either criticise, compliment or score.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere is mostly great. The art design of the whole game is quite good, from the grotesque Xen inhabitants to the brilliant colour palette of the game world, it all together makes the low poly look less visually detrimental. This combination radiates this nostalgic and charming vibe, regardless of whether you experienced this era of gaming or not. The music, unfortunately, can't be said the same.
The soundtrack is an odd mixture of some decent ambience compliments and terrible disco music you'd see in those action sequences in the cheesy 90s films. The only good tracks I came across were Hazardous Environments and Hard Technology Rock as they succeeded in making me more immersed in the world, or in proposing adrenaline spikes. However, it's not all audibly awful. Kelly Bailey did all audio signal processing and programming of the audio engine. This included (mathematical) modelling of room reverberations and other ways in which sound changes with your environment. This meant your footsteps, gunshots and other actions acted according to whether you were outside in the open, or enclosed in a narrow corridor. Once again, it may not sound impressive, but for a game from the 90s, it strikes a jaw-dropping moment. All of this paid off as every firefight was that much more immersive and greater at world-building.
Story - 8/10
Gameplay - 9.5/10
Bossfights - 6/10
Atmosphere - 7.5/10
Great
No matter how you look at this game, you cannot deny that it's great. From a '90s perspective, its unique features were way ahead of time and from a current-day standpoint, it has aged pretty well, not falling behind the standard that newer shooters have set.
