Half-Life

Centering on the main character Gordon Freeman, the story takes place sometime in the future, from within a science laboratory called the Black Mesa Research Facility. Gordon's job here is a difficult, daring, and important one. As a research associate working in the anomalous materials laboratory, the job Gordon is about to encounter one day will leave the rest of the future in terrible misery. When a lab experiment goes awry, the entire facility comes crawling with alien life forms that used to be Gordon's own colleagues. Now, it's up to Gordon to stop the chaos and to seek help, so that the mishap is a mess no more.

It's easy to compare Half-Life to the summer's Red Faction title. Both games share similar controls and both an interesting storyline. Although, Half-Life's controls aren't the exact same, and are a little more difficult to be able to fully master right away. The main character can crawl. Perform jumps and long jumps. Shoot. And even climb, like as most any shooter's control scheme is mapped out for. Using these functions are difficult much of the time because of the fact that there's no auto lock on feature. Instead, the player has the option to freely point the target within sight, and manually practice emptying rounds, or move the cursor onto the enemy, and then lock on for a steadier aim manually. Next to the shooting is the climbing challenges. Either the action is focused on either shooting or climbing. And, since the game is a First Person Shooter, climbing is nothing simplistic, as your view is always wide spread, making the character invisible to the visibility of where the you are placed. Many a times you'll find yourself falling down steep pits due to the fact that the stiff control takes a lot of time to get used to.

However, the gameplay isn't all that bad, since the tremendous AI involves the player in the game with other characters, and challenges that are unique. For example, scripted occurrences where in a hallway, the lab will break apart when the walls explode from the damage that's been done to the building. You've got to dodge electricity beams, and flying debris from harm's way. The method in which you can fool around with a fellow human and anger or excite them is also extremely entertaining. In the middle of exploration, you'll discover guards still alive. Upon approaching one, they can aid you in the fight against freedom. Not just that, but the way each human reacts with your actions is extremely notable. Like, how an AI turns their head towards your direction when speaking. Or even the way the scientists are scripted to die is always a great form of entertainment. A good example would be how if you were staring in the window of one locked room, you can spot two scientists trying to escape through a ventilation shaft in the distance. By the time you slip inside, screams can be heard from within the wall, and a spout of blood and guts exits right out.

Even the fact that's there's a good variety in enemy AI makes the game worthwhile to play. You'll encounter deformed scientists that now have a bug's head, and a stomach that opens and closes with sharp teeth. There's tiny slug creatures, hounding, screeching aliens, slime spitting squatting creatures, and even types that hang on the ceiling, and pluck you right from underneath your feet to swallow you whole up above. These monstrosities are smart, and it takes a lot of skill to exterminate the massive load of them. With enough firepower the game supplies you with, you should be able to sustain the depth of play. Weaponry ranges from grenades, to a pistol, to a shotgun, to even an assault rifle with secondary choice of grenade launcher. Every weapon has a secondary function. The more destructive the gun, the cooler the secondary option is. For example, the pistol is capable of firing one bullet at the time. But, using the secondary option will load a faster amount of bullets into the opposition ahead. Either you can save your ammo, or you can take out the enemy in full force. The choice is always yours.

Trips around the expansive levels of the game will have you come across many items in which you'll need to survive the mess. Items such as ammo clips and new weaponry are a must. As for health items, though, that's a little different. Gordon Freeman has equipped on his body a protective suit that guarantees 100% efficiency, or your money back. Through this protective suit, you'll come across operating machines that can either restore your health with a needle prick, or restore your suit's energy, to power up the suit's features. One main purpose for the suit is to give power to a flashlight. Without the light, you'll be crawling through darkened shafts not clearly seeing the enemy swarming in the distance. The suit also gives defense to your character, so the outcome of this battle of man against alien is much fairer.

Heading into the graphics, well, I can say they're not that bad. Through the massive rooms, hallways, air ducts, lounges, computer labs, and much more, there really is a lot of detail that went into the rendering process of how the lighting effects are nicely done. From a distance, you can spin the camera angle around to check out the glow of the dim ceiling, that transitions into darkness of one room. Or maybe you'd like to just stare at the glow of a room filled with radiation pools, pipes, and steam leaking out from the walls. It's also incredible in the way that how bullet and explosion marks stay indented in the area they were placed. Unfortunately, though, when up close to an object, the pixilated walls, light bulbs, doors, and even aliens don't have as much a visual effect as they once did from far away. In fact, the graphics in Half-Life seem to be more reminiscent of the now aged PC game with little improvements.

Another gripe I had with the game is how there isn't a large amount of variation in the human life forms. Four scientist AI models, and one security guard model are all you'll get. No more. But, the way each of their facial expressions, with the moving jaws that when in motion, fit just as they should with the spoken dialogue, and motions when they're attacked, or trying to escape are particularly well done for a three year old game like Half-Life. Yet, the irregular and annoying pitch of the way these scientist characters are heard is just not right.

It sounds as though one voice actor was hired to talk for each of the four scientist models. One man is bald, another has short gray hair, another has dark brown hair, and the last is an aged African American. Yes, even the African American AI human sounds similar to the aged old man. It's a voice that doesn't fit exactly right, but all the while still does okay enough not to call the voice acting a major disaster. And like almost every game, there's the attention paid to background noises. Half-Life lacks in music, but for what it lacks in, the game makes up for in excellent gunshot noises, explosions, electrical sparks, alien slithering, growling, and much more. The sound of the game is decent at best.

Really, the only major addition the PlayStation 2 version of Half-Life has that the PC one doesn't seems to be the new co-op player mode of Decay. In Decay, you and a friend, or a family member, will initiate in a cooperative team based effort, where it's as if you were playing a single player game...only with puzzles that only two people can solve simultaneously. The number of kills, best accuracy in targeting the enemy, and damage taken is part of the overall score to see who is the more skilled player in this game mode. If you're not up for a multiplayer game where you must think together with a partner, then, there's always the deathmatch multiplayer mode, where you and another can duel to the death in 10 different areas of bloody mayhem. To go along with the single player mode -- having an Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty of level settings -- Half-Life is a decent, but not fantastic, multiplayer game on the PlayStation 2.