Few games have been as controversial as Valve Software’s Half Life 2. Originally, Valve had publicly announced that it would ship Half Life 2 on September 30, 2003. However, unexpected delays, combined with a much-publicized theft of the source code from Valve’s computers, pushed the game back more than a year. Fans of the Half Life series felt deceived by Valve’s promises. They were angry, and impatient. The big question everyone was asking was whether Half Life 2 would live up to the original Half Life.
The answer is yes, for the most part. Half Life 2, while not radically different than the original Half Life, provides an immersive, detail rich environment, interesting characters, and intense but fun gameplay. While there are some minor bugs and annoyances, the game was overall worth the $49.95 I paid for it.
Purchasing Half Life 2
There are two ways one can purchase Half Life 2: buying a retail copy at the store, or purchasing the game through Steam (www.steampowered.com), Valve software’s online content distribution system. Both methods of purchase require “activation” of Half Life 2 through the Steam service (similar to activating Windows XP). Consequently, one must have an Internet connection in order to activate the game. This isn’t an issue for most computer owners since Internet access is fairly common.
Steam works much like any other web based store. I went to the steam website and created an account. I then downloaded and installed the steam client, a program that manages content delivered through Steam. After I purchased Half Life 2 through the Steam website, I logged into steam through the steam client and downloaded the Half Life 2 packages (there are actually two games in the basic “Bronze” package I purchased: Counter Strike: Source, and Half Life 2). The total download was about 4GB, so I let Steam download the games overnight. When I woke up the next morning, everything was ready to go. (Note: you can download the game as many times as you want, but you can only play it on one computer at a time).
Overall, I thought Steam was a pretty painless way to buy a game. It took a few hours to download Half Life 2, but this was better than waiting 3 days to get it from Amazon, and I saved a couple bucks on sales tax by not buying it retail. Additionally, the sales revenue from Steam goes directly to Valve and not to the 3rd party retail publisher, Vivendi.
Plot (no spoilers)
In the original Half Life, Gordon Freeman (the character you play), worked as a theoretical physicist at a secret US Government base called “Black Mesa,” where experiments opened up a portal to the alien world of Xen. Gordon beat back some alien invaders who overran the base, fought government troops trying to cover things up, and ultimately traveled to Xen. On Xen, Gordon freed the Xenian people (called Vortigants) from enslavement by an unknown alien power. After that, a mysterious government man known informally as “G-Man” offered him a special job…
… as Half Life 2 opens, G-Man is waking you up and telling you that your hour has come. As Gordon fades back into consciousness he finds himself in a train moving into what looks like an Eastern European city called “City 17”. It seems you have landed in the not-so-distant future (I would guess around 10 years after the original Half Life), where things aren’t going so well on Earth. The inhabitants of “City 17” are miserable and oppressed. “City 17” and other numbered cities are ruled by a totalitarian regime - headed by your former administrator at Black Mesa, Dr. Wallace Breen. Masked soldiers and “civil protection” police are everywhere, as are floating cameras and large displays playing videos of Dr. Breen. An alien power called “The Combine” is somehow involved.
As you journey through City 17 and the surrounding towns and countryside, you meet old friends from the original Half Life, including Barney Calhoun (a security guard who owes you a beer), Dr. Isaac Kleiner (balding scientist) and Dr. Eli Vance, who has a daughter named Alyx. You quickly become embroiled in an insurgency against the Combine occupiers of Earth and fight them with the help of human and vortigant insurgents.
Plot details are scarce. Piecing together what happened in the ten years you were missing requires you to listen to what the other characters have to say and to read old newspaper clippings occasionally found tacked to walls. This generally means studying the environments carefully for clues.
Environment
Valve did a great job with Half Life 2’s environment. The environments are varied and the color palette rich. The use of textures to create grimy and decaying urban environments was the best I’ve seen since the Max Payne series of games. You journey and fight through underground tunnels, science labs, open highway, countryside, beaches, cliffs, and city streets. Some of the scenes are absolutely breathtaking – walking across steel beams on a bridge about a hundred meters over a river, for example, is as exhilarating as it is scary. The sound of the wind howling and the rumblings of a train overhead only add to the experience.
Characters have realistic facial expressions, thanks to modeling of facial muscles in the character models. You can tell when characters are happy to see you, and when they get impatient with each other. Characters also express sadness when their friends get killed or injured.
The physics in Half Life 2 are also very realistic, thanks to Valve’s use of the Havok physics engine. You can pick up, manipulate, and throw many objects either with your hands or the Gravity Gun. Objects break and you can pick up the pieces. Bad guys go flying backwards when blasted with a shotgun.
It’s hard to describe the environment without screenshots, but the object interaction in Half Life 2 is very convincing. While Half Life 2 doesn’t look quite as realistic as Doom 3, it certainly works more realistically as a whole.
Gameplay
Half Life 2 revolves around three major gameplay themes: investigating, puzzle solving, and shooting. I’ve already touched on the investigating part – if you want to know what’s happened in the years since Half Life, you must investigate every area and talk to every character you can.
Puzzle solving revolves around manipulating the environment and physics in order to accomplish some goal (usually getting around obstacles). Figuring out how to use crates to get over barriers or using objects to create ramps for vehicles are some examples of this. I didn’t find the puzzles all that difficult, and most added to the realism of the world.
And then there’s the shooting. Many of the old weapons from Half Life return, including the trusty crowbar, 9mm pistol, Magnum revolver, shotgun, and crossbow. Your chief new weapon is the Gravity Gun, which allows you to lift heavy and manipulate heavy objects with ease. The Gravity Gun is easily the most versatile tool/weapon. You can use it to retrieve objects from dangerous areas, lift mines out of the ground, and fling almost any object against enemies.
The combat scenes are generally intense. Early in the game, you drive an airboat at insane speeds through canals and down a river while Combine troops shoot at you and attack helicopters circle overhead. Whenever there are vehicles involved, you will probably feel like James Bond escaping from a ridiculous number of armed foes – they’ll shoot at you and miss most of the time. The urban combat, in contrast, is literally hell on earth. The crossfire between insurgents and Combine troops is murderous. Grenades, automatic rifle rounds, and pulse weapon shots will turn your fellow resistance members into Swiss cheese. Laser cannon shots from huge, 50-foot striders blast huge holes in the walls of houses, causing large chunks of debris to fall on you and your friends. Rocket propelled grenades fly back and forth as resistance members shoot them at striders, armored personnel carriers, and Combine soldiers.
Overall, the gameplay is excellent, though it does suffer from a few flaws.
Bugs & Annoyances
The sound sometimes stutters, and I’m not sure why. Also, the game pauses as you advance through a level to load the next part of the level – this got to be annoying sometimes as it would cause a 15-20 second break in the gameplay.
By far the worst problem was that the game initially gave me horrible motion sickness after playing for half an hour. The problem is that the default field of vision (FOV) is 75 degrees, while most other games, including Counterstrike: Source, have an FOV of 90 degrees. To fix this problem, go to the “options” menu in the game, enable the command consol, and press the ~ key to enable the consol. Type:
sv_cheats "1"
default_fov "90"
fov "90"
You can also create an autoexec.cfg file with this text in the cfg folder wherever you choose to install Steam and Half Life 2. This will automatically set the FOV to 90 every time you execute the game. I haven’t had any motion sickness playing with an FOV of 90.
Multiplayer:
I’m not really a multiplayer person, but Half Life 2 does have Half Life 2: Deathmatch as well as Counterstrike: Source as multiplayer options. I haven’t tried them yet, and probably won’t use them much.
Conclusion:
Was Half Life 2 worth the wait? Yes. I wasn’t one of those people who counted down the days until the Half Life 2 launch, and I didn’t even buy it until a week after it came out. But the environment, characters, and gameplay are all superb. If you enjoyed the original Half Life, or are just looking for a game with interesting puzzles and some action, Half Life 2 will provide plenty of entertainment.
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