Half-Life

The Greatest First Person Shooter

Both of the Half-Life games can be regarded as masterpieces. Anybody that dislikes Half-Life is a hater. Don't make friends with haters. In case you haven't played these gems and are wondering "Do they really live up to the hype?", the answer is "Yes, absolutely!". So, go out and play Half-Life. Both of them. If you're in any way disappointed, you belong in jail.

First Experience

My first experience with Half-Life is with Half-Life 2 on the original Xbox. I've previously relayed my experience and love of Halo on the original Xbox, but upon finishing Half-Life 2 twenty years ago, I easily concluded that Half-Life is better than Halo. Which is saying alot since Halo is awesome. What's crazy is that Half-Life 2 on the Xbox is a diluted version compared to its original PC release. Despite all of its flaws, it still ruled. I had an absolute blast playing through it. I'll never forget Ravenholm. What a legendary level.

Finally PC

I finally played both on PC this year. I don't know what took me so long. Especially when I bought it over eleven years ago on Steam. There was a period in time from roughly 2006 to 2013 where I didn't really play video games much. I didn't have a console and I didn't have a PC. All I cared about was guitar (and I can shred, mind you) and finishing my degree. When I finally got a PC in 2013, I was able to purchase it on Steam. Naturally, I immediately began accumulating a backlog. So, I put it off thinking, "well, I already played it. So, I can put it off and play games I haven't played, instead." Maybe it's because it's been twenty years ago that I suddenly had the itch to play it again. I'm glad I did.

Half-Life

The first Half-Life begins innocently enough. You are Gordon Freeman, a physicist from the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT). You're just clocking into work at Black Mesa facility and performing an experiment. Some of your colleagues joke about a cascade resonance occuring, but that's almost entirely impossible. But then it happens. A chain of catastrophic events is unleashed from your experiment. Portals from another dimension open up and hostile creatures begin teleporting in to your world. As you're clearing out these invaders, you are instructed to head to the surface and call the government for help, only to discover that the military was sent in order to cover up the incident by killing everyone involved. You are then forced to not only eliminate the invading creatures, but take on the military as well. You have to navigate from one facility to the next while neutralizing hostiles, solving puzzles, and platforming dangerous obstacles until at last, you are facing the presumed leader of the alien invasion. Killing him saves the day.... or does it?

Half-Life 2

After being freed from stasis for nearly twenty years, you are once again controlling Gordon Freeman. The consequences of the Black Mesa have beared hideous fruits. An extradimensional race know as the Combine used the teleportation technology to conquer the human race. It only took seven hours. Upon surrendering, humanity was enslaved and forced to live in dystopian cities wrought with tyranny. It is up to you and your rebel and vortigaunt allies to fight back against the Combine and free humanity.

Influential

These games are over two decades old. So, they're going to show some age. If you play the first one in its original state, it can feel a little slippery. The second one still feels modern. Both of these games where massive hits upon release and influenced a whole new generation of first person shooters. It set so many trends that subsequent games borrowed and copied. So, if you play them now, it may not feel quite as special as back in the day. Substituting cutscenes in favor of in-game scripted sequences, for example, is common nowadays. It was a novelty that provided maximum immersion back then. The havok physics baked into the source engine was revolutionary for the time. We now take advanced physics in our games for granted. It's like inventing the wheel. It's so damned common and mundane but without it, our world be impossile. Kudos to the person who invented the wheel. That's a true genius.

Maximum Control

I mentioned that the first Half-Life is a little slippery. Maybe it's my aging reflexes, but every now and then, I felt like I was falling to my incovenience or death too many times. I only really remember this happening during the cliffside section and when you get teleported by the Nihilinth and have to hop your way up. I did get frustrated. I didn't have this problem at all when I played the Black Mesa remake (which I recommend). Granted, the Nihilinth doesn't teleport you as part of the fight. The only other annoying aspect was the weapon switching. I believe this is the only outdated mechanic of these games. It is cumbersome to switch weapons, but not too cumbersome. You just have to plan ahead a little. Everything else is smooth sailing. The movements are fast, but are just below the threshold of being too fast. So, everything moves along naturally: the strafing, the running, the sprinting, the jumping, the aiming. There's also sections where you have to crouch and sneak by quietly and it still flows without hiccups. You never feel like you're bogged down by unresponsive controls. In fact, I believe the first Half-Life was among the first to use "WASD" controls by default. See? Inventing the wheel.

Unrivalled Setting, Fast Paced Action

Half-Life is a perfect representation of the writing advice "show, don't tell". There are no cutscenes. The protagonist doesn't speak. The story is told entirely through action, environment, and NPC dialogue. The result is a game you can't help but be immersed into. Not only that, but the setting, the level design, the art direction, and the characters all combine to create a world that can't be avoided from getting drawn into. And because of this world, the action is non-stop. The transition from fighting enslaved Vortigaunts, to taking down marines, to battling bigger, badder aliens, and finally entering an entirely different world and taking the fight to the hostiles' home is done in a way that is entirely believable. The lore behind these games has been discussed for literally decades for this reason.

Entertainment

It's virtually impossible to find a game more entertaining than Half-Life series of games. It is primarily a first-person shooter, but it also contains a healthy dose of puzzle solving, exploration, and platforming. It's a package that's bundled together to generate maximum concentrated impact. It took me roughly fifteen and twenty hours to playthrough both Half-Life and Half-Life2, respectively. More action occurs in those thirty five hours of gameplay than the ninety hours I spent playing Elden Ring (I liked Elden Ring, but I don't think it's great). Two of my favorite metal albums ever are Reign in Blood from Slayer and Unquestionable Presence from Atheist. What makes them special is their ability to jampack each song with an abundance of riffs while still keeping things ordered and cohesive. I view Half-Life pretty much the same way. It's not an epic, long game with many hours of open-world exploration. But it is a massive dose of adrenaline being pumped straight into the heart. I can't recommend this game enough.