Half Life 2- Best Before 2004!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great graphics and sound, amazing physics, Great Immserive world

Cons: Slightly short, Bland enemy design, Poor AI

The Bottom Line: 
HL-2 is a fine follow up to the 1998 game of the year! Buy Hl-2 if you're a fan of any game at all, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Author's Review
HALF LIFE-2

Theres a damp smell about the air, a chilling wind howls through dark caves, the distant rumble of a Jet fighter plane can be heard far off in the distance, and then all is quiet.

What is this...Half life two? he whispered to me in a stern, yet comforting voice.

'Well Mr Bin Laden, you see Half life-2 is'..........My words were cut short as a tremendous thoom hit the cave roof, the entire abyss shook and creaked, rocks fell around us, there was no place to go now..and before I could answer an immense chunk of rock came upon us and then all was quiet again.

Ok so the first part of this review has almost nothing to do was Half Life-2 except for the fact that perhaps only people in such a predicament as that would not have heard about this game.

Half Life 2 is the sequel to arguably the most popular game of all time, and certainly the most popular First Person Shooter title, Half Life.
Its mixture of groundbreaking level design, intelligent AI and powerful gripping story won it many awards, and notification at the highest level of gaming achievement. The big question was when was a sequel coming out, and would it live up to the lofty standards its prequel had set.

Before I actually discuss the game I think I should first give you a little insight into the games development process, which you may or not know has become one of the most famous in gaming history.

THE MAKING OF HALF LIFE -2 (In short):


For 5 years developers Valve spoke to nothing of the second coming, rumour became legend, legend became myth and for over 1800 days there was no knowledge of when the next game would arrive, untill e3, during May 2003, Valve finally released the first images and videos of the return to the Half Life universe.

The Half life community roared up again and everywhere, evryone was talking about it, they were excited, Buzzing, Maybe even a little anxious. But maybe little could prepare them for the rollercoaster ride that was Half Life -2, In the making.

The game was originally penned for a September the 30th 2003 release, but a huge security glitch and the theft of the games Source code, the bricks and cement of the game totally shook the whole game and its developers up and the release date was pushed back untill April 2004.

For the games rabid fans tthis wait hit them like a crowbar, it would seem that its big rivals, Far Cry and Doom-2 would be released before it, and it would not have the impact it would have had in 2003, and to an extent this proved true, but we'll come to that later.

Spring and summer brought news that the Theives who stole the Source code had been arrested and justice had been done, but it also brought news that the game was not to be shipping this Spring
So the wait continued however, long past April and then a second, september the 30th release date was given but this time for 2004. Far Cry and been and gone earlier that year, and Doom-3 had just come out meaning that for the time being the hype was on that title and not HL-2.

When it was let known that it would not meet its September the 30th 2004 deadline, fans began to grow angry and aggitated, the game that they were so excited about coming out one year ago, wasn't even coming out a year later. Then a fake 'its done' announcement on a well known HL-2 site that built up so many peoples hopes sprung up to further add to the anger, it was beginning to seem like a bad dream for the fans.

But around the end of september it was announced that a final disk had been sent to Vivendi and the game would very soon be going gold for real, the huge fanbase of Half Life erupted and the hype switched back on.

Then just as all seemed to be going perfect the ongoing legal battle between Valve the developers and Vivendi the publishers brought news that it was entirely possible Vivendi could make Valve wait up to five months for the game to be released, assuming the worst the fans were fuming.

This was not to be however and all the worry proved unfounded when, during October Valve announced that Half Life 2 had gone gold and penned a real solid release date, the 16th of November 2004.

So 1 year and almost 2 months after its initial release date, I present to you, in its glorious entirity...Half life -2. But was it worth this rollercoaster wait?

To put it short...YES...Yes it was, but lets elaborate on that shall we?

Half Life 2 takes place after Half life 1 obviously, but we're not told how long after, so use your imagination. You once again assume the role of Gordan Freeman, the Doom-esque, non vocal commando that tends to work better in games when they dont do corny one liners, and I sometimes believe that is why they choose not to have him speak.

STORYLINE:

I wont reveal too much of the storyline here, and keep spoilers to a minimum, but if you dont want ANY spoilers then I suggest you skip this part.

Those of you who played HL-1 will remember that at the ending, you were given an option to either work for the mysterious 'G-man', or to die. Hl-2 assumes you picked the first option... and I would imagine thats the logical option you would choose in that situation!

You arrive by train, to a place named 'City 17'. City 17 is basically a typical run down European urban centre, although we're not told what country, even if there are subtle hints throughout the game. The captivating storyline is something that made HL-1 so popular and HL-2 doesnt stray far from the formulae, the story in HL-2 is pretty immersive. However its not as noticable as it was in HL-1 and there are some cliffhangers and unexplained parts which may annoy, but I suggest you understand there IS going to be a Half Life 3.

You are once again asked to save the world from an alien invasion and the story will build up as you play through the game. There are lots of twists and surprises in the storyline, none of which I will spoil here, but its safe to say that it's well scripted and should not really disappoint. Characters such as the Female Solider/technician Alyx, and her father will become well known to you, to the point where you actually really want to embark on some of the missions, then theres the 'Doctor Breen' characters and of course the infamous 'G man'.
Cut scenes where you are free to move around, but limited to within that area offer a chance to get to know the characters and the story without it becomming more of a seperate action movie that detracts from the game. They are fairly in depth and long, without being drawn out.

GAMEPLAY:

Gameplay in Half Life two is possibly the best in any FPS to date. It doesnt stray overly far from a standard FPS core, but its features and layout offer an unprecedented level of depth, realism, and play styles.

Half Life 2 follows 2 main game paths, shooting enemies, and puzzles. The combat in the game is refreshingly direct but tactical at the same time. For the most part you can take a fair bit of damage, but its always worth building a barricade up, or retreating to a hidey hole to conserve health for a harder foe.
A slight niggle the game as here is that it's not always easy to tell when you are being hurt, and you may not realise you are being hit at quite badly until you're health is quite low, however once you get used to it, it becomes less of a problem and you tend to take darting glaces at the health percentage more often.

During combat the games stunning physics will come into play, although I will talk about the physics more later its worth noting that during combat, using barrels as shields, pieces of metal as weapons, and shattering windows as diversions really makes the game feel immersive and unique.

The puzzle side of Half Life 2 is equally as amazing, and features some of the best Puzzle/trap/ tiny gap sequences I have evr sen in a shooter, in fact the best ever.
I wont spoil too much, but to give an example, in one scene you have to get a hoverboat over a high wall that surrounds a pool of water some barrels of air and a plank of wood with a cage underneath it. You have to carry the barrels underneath the cage to rise it up untill it is at roughly a 45 degree angle, so the craft can now zip over the wall.

Some puzzles require a great deal of thought to advance, and require you to sit back and look at everything in the area, it's all great stuff!

Nor do the puzzles get tiresome. Each one seems fresh and inventive and throws a new challenge at you, it's something Doom-3 lacked but that Half Life 2 has really refined and executed superbly.

The level design is also top notch and the way you traverse each area is often unique and interesting. Its all about vents, shafts, tiny gaps and holes, and theres always that little plank of wood or ledge there to get you to the next area. This is something I personally love about FPS games and again something the games of late have lacked.

The game has an immersion level to rival Doom-3 easily and even excells its rival in some parts. The streets or City 17 Buzz with life, but theres a sense of a depressing atmopshere, an unnamed fear. The coast line whistle with wind and the beachhouses ripple with authenticity. The walls are cracked and falling apart, the wooden shafts creak and sway, every area has its own u ique atomosphere to really bring us a level of immersion never before seen or heard.

Theres both single handed and team based gameplay in HL-2, and the team based scenes can be the most exciting, but they also can show up the substandard AI, which I will talk about later in the review. You can control your squad directly or indirectly and it's a good idea to try and keep as many of them alive as possible, especially the medics.

Saving the game is done by checkpoints, similar to Far Cry's system. However you can also autosave the game at any time, as well as autoload using the F6 and F9 keys respectively.

In fact Half life 2 has superb gameplay overall, probably the best in any FPS game to date. Theres few niggles or annoyances and everything is fine tuned to a tee.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND...AND PHYSICS:

This is the first time Ive really had to put physics on the end of my usual G&S section, but this is because hl-2 is the first game to support a COMPLETE physics system that excells itself in almost evrey direction. So why do physics matter you ask, surely it cant be that important to have an object subject to the laws of motion and gravity. Let me tell you though, when you are running for your life from an alien gunship, machine guns are bearing down on you, bullets whizzing past your ears, shattering wooden crates around you into splinters. Barrels being tossed about by the force of the projectiles, bouncing over ledges and crashing down below, then as you enter a safe house the windows blast in from the gunfire and the tables and chairs shatter. See THIS is why the physics are so important, it creates a level of total immersion that you cannot achieve without.

When I blast a plank of wood, I want to see it shatter into splinters and fall in the right way, I dont want to see a piece of oak take an entire Minigun clip without even a scratch. Valve have made sure that their physics engine is the most powerful in ANY game yet, everything is done to excellence and correct to the laws.

You can pile up objects to make barricades, send barrels flying into enemy locations, use them as shields from fire, watch as combine soldiers fall and bounce off of 500 ft high steel bridges, bouncing off every metal shaft, before disappearing into the deep sea, to put it short this is incredible, never before have I had so much fun without even shooting an enemy, and especially with the Gravity gun which I will touch on later under the weapons section. Of course these physics can create intense action sequences, like the one I described above, its really 'make your own action movie' time!

The only slightly disappointing thing was the fact you cannot sem to dismember bodies with the guns as in the Soldier of Fortune games, aside from launching Buzzsaws at zombies to cut them in half, theres little gun/body interaction, in fact even less than there was in Doom-3, but thats hardly a really negative point, just something that could've been improved.

The graphics in Half Life two are a mixture between Very good, and outstanding. Whilst the indoor renders are not quiter as crisp as Doom-3, nor are enemy models, the textures are slightly more detailed in places and are more interesting. Outdoor areas are very detailed and lush, although they cant match Far Cry for vegetation detail. In a sense, HL-2 mixes Far Crys outdoor areas with Doom-3's indoor, creating a game of visual excellence, there is bump mapping in the game, but its less noticable than in Doom-3. Thats not detracting from some of the stunning areas you will explore though, from cold dark damp prisons, to beaches at dusk, and then round to the evil combine citadel.

Lighting and shadows do seem a bit limp compared to the level of quality given in Doom-3, but thats what have to be given in exchange for the best player facial models ever created. Half life 2 features a full facial bone/muscle set which creates a full set of expressions and emotions, evetrything in their faces is done professionally and it looks very realistic, as do the textures on the characters faces.

The city scape is what really shines in Half Life 2, blocks of flats rise high above the streets, shops and centres give the feeling of what it was like before the invasion, and theres always huge blue tower rising high into the sky above the clouds, leaving you wondering endlessly of its purpose, put in short it looks simply stunning.

However you cant help but feel that had this game come out on its original 2003 release dae it would have been outstandingly groundbreaking, but after the release of Far Cry and then Doom-3 it doesnt have quite the same impact it would have had.

Sound is starting to be a major force in gaming achievments lately, what with the effect Doom-3's audio onslaught had on our minds and with the cheap availability of surround sound speakers we're starting to se big improvements soundwise, and HL-2 is no exception. From the crisp snap of a wooden plank, to the humm of a nearby Gunship HL-2 delivers excellent audio throughout. The weapons provide us with a mostly beefy punch, especially with the machineguns. In the city, rumbles occur frequently and start to play on your mind as you navigate the tiny alley ways. Along with the The sound plays 40% part in the immersion of the game along with 40% graphics and 20% physics. Half Life 2 will be no disappointment to those of you expecting a stunning audio experience.

Different enviroments will have their own unique sound and atomopshere. So when you are driving along the coast line theres a howl in the wind, and the sound of seagulls now and then, but sewers and canals will echo with the sound of dripping water and rats. It's all great stuff easily rivalling Doom-3 is terms of audio onslaught.
There is music in the game, but it only comes on when you enter a new area, or get to a major enemy and thankfully it does not detract from the game and fits in well most of the time, when it does appear its mostly a mix of rehashed HL-1 tracks or Techno/Rock pieces, its forgetable but not a problem.

WEAPONS VEHICLES AND ENEMIES:

Those of you who played the original Half Life will recognise many of the enemies in the game straight away. The infamously annoying headcrabs are back, in multiple forms, leaping and scratching at you for afar. However now there are more forms of them to deal with, including 'Fast Crabs' and 'Toxic Crabs', the latter of which will reduce youre health to 1% in one blow of its powerful Neurotoxin. You're health will rise by 10% untill it back to its original amount, but while you're on 1% anything that hits you will kill you instantly!

While Half Life 2 enemies are nicely textured, theres something of a disappointing lack of them, and/or originality in them. Whereas Doom-3 monsters really have that 'classic' effect, with the first time you saw a Mancubus or a Hellknight really sticking in your mind for a long time afterwards, Half life 2's monsters are sadly, quite forgetable.
Other than the crabs theres the Barnacles, which are only really evident during the early game, these things are stuck to rock surface and use their long extended tounges to trap you and draw you up into the mouth. Zombies, which are basicly men with Crabs on their heads, Man Hacks, flying buzzsaws, that are easily too kill but annoyingly fast. Ant Lions, which are basicly slashing green bug things, Combine soldiers, basically mercenaries with a taste for rather bland AI, and Striders, being the most exciting enemy, a towering mutli legged beast that smacks terribly of 'war of the worlds'. It rains down machine gun fire at you, whilst trying to spear you with its long legs.
There are also Combine controlled Gunships, which can produce some of the best scenes in the game. They will fly around you sending hails of machine gun fire at you, and can take a good 4 or 5 rockets to bring them down. Also its worth noting there are Machine gun turrets in the game, that depending on who set them up will be used to target yourself, or your enemies in the Middle/Latter stages of the game, they are shutdown by being toppled over, either by a moving boject or a grenade/Rocket round. Once they are knocked over, they will stop responding until someone right them up again, once they are righted they will serve whichever side righted them.

Overall though I felt slightly disappointed about the lack of and originality in the enmies overall, compared to the original HL which had some real well thought out opponents. After Doom-3 gave us a lavish selection of unique enemies, I hoped HL-2 would do the same, its a shame that such a good base game didnt have that extra quality in every department.

Now moving onto the hardware. HL-2 features the standard FPS fare of weapons, bar one thing, which we will get onto later. The Crowbars back, in good head cracking form as always, theres the pistol and magnum, the latter being very powerful against combine soliders, but innacurate against leaping Crabs. Theres two varieties of Machine gun, one being a basic fare army style m30, thats only really great for medium range soldier and crab destruction, and the other being a more advanced futuristic style rapid fire gun thats much more accurate and deadly against soliders from long range, however it does run out of ammo fairly fast.

In the next section theres the close/long range firepower which includes a powerful shotgun, that will slaughter combine soldiers and zombies at close range, but do little to no damage from medium/long distances. Then theres the Crossbow making its return, that in cludes a sight that lets you target enemies from afar. Essentially its a sniper rifle, but with a little more originality.

Next in line is the heavy weapons firepower, consisting of basic spray can grenades, great for clearing out rooms of combines or headcrabs with little ammo wastage, and the Rocket launcher.
The launcher in Half life two is slightly unique in that after you've fired your projectile, the missile follows your mouse pointer around untill you trace it on an enemy, this is used for dodging laser defences of gunships and to follow mobile enemies around. It does a good amount of damage without being too powerful, and its good not to overuse it as Ammo is fairly sparse most of the time.

Then in section six theres the Therapods, these innovative little balls of theramones, attract the lethal Ant Lions to you and they will the follow you around and attack all enemies in your path, they are great support units during your time in the prison levels and are also great diversions as they never cease to tunnel out of the ground everywhere to aid you're cause.

Now I did miss out one weapon, because it deserves its own little section. Its both innovative and great fun and is one of the best things about the game, and it is...the 'Gravity gun'.

I did say earlier Half Life 2 had some amazing physics to couple its visual and audio achievements and the Gravity Gun really shows these off,it basicly acts as a magnet, whereby you can pick up almost any object that isnt nailed down, from circular buzzsaws to tables, chairs and even cars and launch them out at high speed as a projectile weapon. It's great fun to be facing a horde of Zombies and be able to wrench a radiator from the wall and floor them all in one throw, or too lunch a flaming barrel at the enemy, shattering shrads of flaming metal evrywhere. Everything reacts perfectly with the laws of physics, so large bricks will not be thrown quite as far as small pieces of wood. The gravity Gun is also used to solve many puzzles in the game, and to pile things up to make barricades, it's the most interesting feature/weapon in the game, but obviously done to compliment the stunning physics engine.

Half Life 2 also features a couple of vehicles to use, including a Hovercraft, thats equally as agile over land as on water, it controls fairly well and this sets up one of the best levels in the game. There's also a Buggy in the Middle stage of the game, but its controls are a bit awkward and it can grow slightly frustrating at times. Both have some sort of weaponary attached, but most of the time you'll be using its speed to escape enemies as opposed to sitting back and shooting them. The Vehicles overall do not really take a large part of the game up and offer mostly as a transport method along two of the levels. They are directly related to a lot of the games puzzles, as many levels will require you to exit you're vehicle and solve a puzzle to continue, this adds a lot of spice to the vehicles part of the game.

ENEMY AI:

Advanced AI is something the first person shooter cannon has been approaching on relentlessly in the last year or so and Half Life 2 does Boast advanced, experienced AI.
It's a shame this isn't the case.

Far Cry featured a competant AI system that comprised of triggers, evasion and stealth. For the most part it pulled it off excellently, however it did go frustrating at times when the slightest rustle in the bushes would attract the entire island of mercenaries.
Half Life 2 however does simply not appear to have any of the AI it says it has, from the combine soldiers which are supposed to run for cover and assess threats, but which just stand there motionless waiting for you to come in and shoot them, to the Gunships which hover in the same methodical way again and again. Theres little to tell betwen the zombies and the combine soldiers half the time, and AI was a big let down for me. This can make the game easy as well, and even on hard it's pretty much a walkthrough most of the time, and its only harder because you take damage faster and you're weapons do less damage. You're team-mates are equally as stupid. They will get in your way, fire with you in their way and walk straight into grenade fire without a care in the world for that ticking spray can they just stepped on. It really can destroy the immersion of the game at times.

There seems to be little motivation to take cover and even less to avoid grenades, in fact in all its rather substandard, which is a shame for a game whos Prequel showed us what advanced AI for the late 90's was all about.

MUTLIPLAYER ONLINE:

Who remembers Counterstrike? Ok everybody remembers counterstrike! It was the Mod that gave Half Life its incredibly long..Life and become a cult following thats just as strong now as it was when it first came out, and its finally got a much needed face-lift with Counterstrike:Source! First off lets get one thing straight, there is NO Half Life Deathmatch and Counterstrike:Source is the games Multiplayer component. In some senses its a shame there isn't a seperate Multiplayer section, but it's also good because Counterstrike is still an amazing game. Veteran Counterstrikers will take to the game like a Joyrider to other peoples cars, little has changed, just the graphics and physics in fact. Some may feel that nothing new is a bad thing, but some will see that the old adage 'If it aint broke, dont fix it' really comes into play here. One things for sure, you will also need Broadband of some sort to play this part of the game!

For those of you who dont know Counterstrike is a team based Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists game which revolves around the terrorists trying to plant a bomb, and the counter terrorists trying to defuse it, it became so popular because of its team-based action and the way two games were never the same. It was so popular that Valve decided to turn it into the multiplayer piece for Half Life 2, although Mods will soon come out with other modes without a doubt.
Connectivity is fairly standard with CSS and bar a few issues that Valve are currently working on patching, you will find it fairly easy to find games.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS AND POSSIBLE GAME BUGS:

Now this is the part that all you hardcore technology buffs will want to know about.

I cant offer you a detailed benchmarking system or an exact frame rate count, but I CAN offer you the experiences of someone with a medium/high end machine and someone that isn't being paid by a certain Graphics card company!

I run Half Life 2 on my machine which specs up as follows

AMD ATHLON 2800+
1024 Mb DDR 333 RAM
GEFORCE XFX 5900 XT
120 GB 7200 RPM HD
500W POWER SUPPLY

I run the game on the resolution of 1280x1024 on high settings, and for almost all of the time I get perfect frame rates and little to no lag, maybe a slight frame rate drop when I exit into a wide open spaces.
The minimum specs are a 1.2 ghz pc or AMD equivilent 256MB RAM, and a geforce fx 5200 or ATI equivilent and 3 gig of disk space
The reccommended specs are 768MB RAM geforce 6800 or ati x800 pro AND 4 gig of disk space.

The game claims to run better on ATI Radeon chipsets, however this is almost certainly marketing as Ati and Valve are very closely linked and a high end Geforce card will run just as well, if not better.

However, there is a slight glitch with the geforce FX cards such as my 5900 xt. Because of certain graphical issues those on the Geforce fx range of cards will actually be running HL-2 using direct x 8 or 7 rather than 9 for all the shiney special effects. This can be overcome by putting a line of code into the console, any good Half Life 2 Fansite will tell you the answer and how to do it, please bear in mind my review is done using the direct x 9 and playing the game as its supposed to be played.

Another slight glitch/bug in the game is that there is currently a sound lag bug which cause the game to experience sudden frame rate drops when saving or loading a new area, Valve are currently working on a patch to resolve this, so I wouldnt worry about it too much.

Please be aware that installing Half Life 2, rather inconvieniantly requires you to be connected to the internet, and the same with playing it. This was a move on Valves part to protect against piracy, but decrytping all the game files and installing steam is a bit of a burden, still with all the online Piracy now its a move that is justified.


CONCLUSION:

To put half life- 2 in one line one would be 'Half Life-2 is an excellent, thought provoking First person shooter, that is better than the sum of its parts'.
Fans of Half Life 1, (yes thats possibly enough people to fill the entire of London) you SHOULD not be disappointed by this game, but be aware, it's not without its faults.
Shoddy AI, bland monster design and a slightly short SP campaign make this game not quite match its extreme hype that it gathered over the last 2 years, but for me this game was mostly an action packed, innovative Materpiece that matches Doom-3 entirely, albiet in different ways.
Stunning graphics, sound and especially physics, coupled with an immersive world and storyline makes Half Life- 2 a worthy successor to its prequel, and with Counterstrike getting a face lift there seems that it too has no intention of fading away. Doom-3 has been and gone, let Half Life- 2 take you on the Third and possibly best FPS ride of the year!

Rise up, smell the ashes, and buy Half Life-2!

Rating-96%-Excellent