Half-Life

System: PC
Release Date: 1998
Published By: Sierra OnLine
Reviewed by: Stephen
Rating:

Half-Life is quite possibly the best single-player shooter of all time. So why is it only getting a 4.5 instead of a 5? Because the last part of the game is so annoying that even though I've replayed most of it three times, I almost always quit before the end. I'm not the first to say it, but whoever decided to take a perfectly crafted and extraordinarily atmospheric FPS and turn it into a lame Super Mario Bros. game in the end made a big mistake.

That said, the game is still worth playing and stands up well some seven years after its release. Valve Software's first game, following about a year after Rareware's Goldeneye 007 for the N64, helped redefine the FPS genre. No longer was it about merely running and gunning -- now players expect some subtlety and obstacles beyond Doom's "find the blue keycard" wannabe puzzles.

What makes Half-Life so great or so different from other games of the time isn't any one thing. Rather it's how Valve managed to take the best elements of shooters and use them in a way that still seems fresh. The game starts slowly, an average day at the lab for new scientist Gordon Freeman. A tram ride as the credits play sets up the Black Mesa research complex where you'll be spending most of the game. You don't even get a gun until you're well on your way toward stopping an alien invasion.

This sort of slow build speaks volumes about the game. Valve is interested in making environments that seem like actual places and not levels in a game, and it succeeds. "Underground research complex" sounds like a generic setting, but Black Mesa remains a unique location to this day. To make it unique, the company lets you spend some time in there getting a feel for the place before you have to start killing everything that moves. But even while the stage is being set, Valve doesn't just show a movie. At no time during the introduction do you lose control of your character and never during the game does it leave first-person view (your character never speaks, either). The story is appropriately brief, and as cinematic as it all seems it never seems like you're watching instead of playing.

When things do eventually go wrong and you have to start to killin', the game is equally superb. Valve mixes interesting and thoughtful puzzles (though sadly a few require jumping) with combat that combines some tactics with frenzied action. Unlike the alleged survival "horror" genre, the game also manages to be truly scary at points. Whether you're blowing the crap out of zombies or firing on soldiers from a fortified location, the combat is top notch. It rewards clever thinking without the leaden pace of so many tactical shooter games.

And then at the end you have to jump on a bunch of platforms and blow up a giant flying baby. It's still a great game.

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