Half-Life 2

System: PC
Release Date: 2004
Published By: Valve Software
Reviewed by: Stephen
Rating:

If Half-Life 2 isn't better than Half-Life, it's damned close (I'm rating it higher because the game doesn't devolve into a terrible platformer at the end). Picking up an indeterminate number of years after the first game so abruptly ended, Half-Life 2 expands the scope of the original and has some of the best levels I've ever played.

Top among these is a journey through a ravaged town that has been mostly taken over by alien zombies. Rather than just letting you blow them away with conventional weapons, the game provides a number of traps you can use to dispose of them in bloody and exciting ways (e.g. dropping cars on them). The whole level -- which it must be mentioned includes a shotgun-wielding priest who helps you out intermittently -- also serves as a set-piece for the game's new weapon, a "gravity gun" that lets the player pick things up and shoot them. Ever killed a zombie by throwing a paint can at it? How about a radiator? Even better, ever killed a whole line of zombies by shooting a saw blade through the bunch?

The whole game sparkles with this sort of creativity. Even moreso than the first game, HL2 provides a variety of play styles. There are puzzles, there are vehicles, there are pure shooting parts. There are parts where you command a squad of computer-controlled characters and engage in massive urban combat against giant mechanical striders that are armed with huge plasma cannons. There's another part where you take out the guts of a giant alien bug and use it to make smaller alien bugs take out machine gun nests for you. It's a game that's not easily pigeonholed.

Most of the game alternates between tactical combat -- fighting soldiers using fairly realistic weaponry -- and light puzzles, similar to the first game. There's a little less emphasis on horror this time, as much of the game is outdoors as opposed to the underground facility of the first. There is a little more story and quite a bit more interaction with NPCs. While the first game from time-to-time paired you with security guards, HL2 somestimes gives you squads of friendly soldiers and medics that fight by your side.

The game is also stunning graphically. I write this more than a year after its release and it still looks better than many new games. The environments are as carefully designed as the first game, and the greater variety to them makes that all the more impressive. The gravity gun is used in clever ways throughout, a neat touch that makes the environment seem more interactive than in most games (you can pick up just about every small item and move large ones with the gun).

There is almost nothing bad to say. There are still some jumping puzzles, and I still don't like them. A few times you have to use the gravity gun to stack boxes so you can jump on them, and that's pretty lame. The arsenal of weapons is a little more limited than in the first Half-Life. But these are all small complaints. Until Half-Life 3 is released, you'll be hard pressed to find a better shooter.

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