How does one start such a review? The original Half-Life (HL) has been considered by many to be the pre-eminent first-person shooter (FPS) game since its release some years ago. Whether or not that's truly the case, as I believed it to be for a time (until Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was released), it is indisputable that HL remains a strong-selling title even today. Its unique blend of single-player action, multi-player gaming, and great support for third-party mods have given it a longevity and near-universal appeal that no other FPS game has matched.
Crafting a successful follow-up to such a successful game has got to be as much a curse as it is a blessing. On the one hand Valve had plenty of seed money, rightfully earned by their first game and unending support thereof, yet on the other hand they faced the expectations of the mob. No matter how good a sequel they might make, any deviation from the original would be questioned, every flaw would be magnified a hundred fold.
And then, as if they needed any further pressure, the game's development became something of a soap opera almost overnight. I was at the E3 conference in 2003, at which Half-Life 2 (HL2) was announced and previewed for the first time, and I still remember the sincere and repeated promises that HL2 would definitely be on store shelves for purchase no later than September 30, 2003. Yet somewhere in the intervening months some jackass (or jackasses) managed to hack Valve's internal network and filch their source code, posting it on the Internet for all to download.
Since then the game has been delayed more than a year in its release. The original, stated purpose for the delay was to make sure that the anti-cheating mechanisms built into the multi-player code could be properly reworked. But how much sense does that really make? After all, the game's multi-player component has turned out to be nothing more than Counterstrike, lacking any of the modes so typical of most FPS games. And what's more, there's no way I can be convinced that it takes a full year to re-work some anti-cheating code. That just doesn't make sense.
Was the game actually quite far from being done, as some who downloaded and examined the illicit source code have suggested? The huge delay does seem to support such a theory, but I truly don't know what to think. And more to the point I don't care, and neither should you. The question to be answered is far more straightforward: is HL2 a good game in its own right and a worthy sequel to HL?
When HL2 was first demonstrated in May of 2003, the collective sound of jaws punching holes in the floor was deafening. Never before had high-dynamic-range (HDR) lighting been seen in a game engine. The flexibility in shaders was unheard of. And the facial animation technology was simply staggering. In short, the Source engine made an incredible debut, impressing the living daylights out of everyone who saw it.
But during the year that HL2 was delayed, a fair bit a new technology was released. Both Far Cry (FC) and DOOM 3 (D3) hit the market before HL2, and both of them arguably did one better than HL2 in certain respects. For example, FC demonstrated an amazing ability to render huge outdoor scenes, whereas D3 showcased real-time lighting in a way that not even FC matches. As HL2's ship date continued to lengthen, I began to doubt whether it would reign supreme in terms of its visuals.
But that was before I played the final game. To be fair, FC still does a better job at rendering incredibly detailed outdoor environments, and D3 does clearly have better overall lighting, but HL2 gets so many things right that it is truly the best looking FPS game ever made. Even though it doesn't define the current state of the art in every individual respect, its combined visual features clearly raise the overall bar a few notches.
The environments are well modeled and nicely detailed. Everything in HL2 has a plausible feel to it, particularly because because of the blemishes that prevent the various textures from becoming repetitive. Seriously, walking through the hallways of City 17 had me gaping at the walls, wondering how the developers managed to "weather" them so perfectly without the obvious, glaring repetition that is characteristic of all other games. Virtually every surface in HL2 looks like a real surface, complete with pits, dust, cracks, grime, and anything else appropriate to it. That may seem like a small thing, but the overall result is very powerful.
The shader effects are equally stunning. HL2 has the best looking water I've ever seen in a game. It's still not quite real, of course, but it reflects and refracts the artificial lighting in the game better than any other FPS game I've played. The same can be said of the visual distortion effects for glass, other liquids, fire, and pretty much everything else in the game. The developers have unquestionably re-defined the state of the art.
But this is to say nothing of what I take to be HL2's most powerful visual feature: the near-perfection of its non-player characters (NPC). The original HL featured mouths that moved more or less in sync with anything characters had to say, and that was a pretty big step forward for its day. But since that time too few games have done any better. Oh, I've played several games that feature lip-synched dialogue to one degree or another, but even the best of them still feature largely static faces, which only destroys the illusion of interaction. In contrast, HL2 features near-movie-quality facial animation in real time!
It's uncanny interacting with some of the characters. Their eyes track the player, their expressions change dynamically based upon the current context, and their faces even seem to have "muscles" beneath the "skin". I was amazed at the near-perfect light reflections in their eyes. The simple truth is that HL2 defines the new standard for in-game characters and gets them almost exactly right. There are still some minor divergences to be found between genuine human expressions and those of the in-game characters, but for the first time such characters are good enough to be convincing. And that's an enormous achievement.
The result, in terms of game play, is as subtle as it is important. For on the one hand it doesn't matter at all; I mean, who cares what expression is on an NPC's face when the player is trying to shoot the bad guys? Yet on the other hand it makes a world of difference, because it truly sucks the player into the game world. I found myself having genuine feelings in response to the game's characters. Watching one of the Combine's grunts kill some hapless fellow was bad enough, but seeing the sadness in his wife's face was much worse. The result is that HL2 provides a far more intense and emotional experience than other FPS games.
And the good news just keeps coming! Despite all the beauty of the engine, it runs shockingly well. In my case, I'm running it on a system with an Athlon 3000+ XP CPU, 2 GB of RAM, a BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC video card, and a Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum Edition sound card. It's obviously not cutting edge, but it's a pretty fast computer. And I'm happy to report that I can run the game at 1280 x 1024 x 32 bpp with 4x anti-aliasing (AA) and 8x anisotropic filtering (AF) without any frame rate issues. I thought for sure I'd have to ditch the AA and AF image quality enhancements, or perhaps drop to a lower resolution, but HL2 runs better than most other games on my system despite looking better than they do! That's damned impressive.
Suffice it to say that I have nothing but superlative praise for HL2 in the visual department. Everything looks great. It took the developers quite a bit longer than it takes to develop most games, but they clearly got the visuals right in HL2.
And that's not all they got right either, for the audio holds up as well as the visuals with one caveat. The music is both engaging and well-suited to the various portions of the game wherein it plays. The voice acting is absolutely top-notch in delivering virtually every line. The worst I can say about the dialogue is that here and there one finds a line or two that isn't completely convincing, which puts it beyond any serious criticism.
And the sound effects are magnificent. I'm not sure how many different firing sounds and such have been provided for each weapon, and I don't care. For whatever reason, be it the number of sounds or some subtle coding that varies them a bit each time, the sound effects of HL2 never grow old. I literally sat and fired the weapon on the swamp buggy vehicle for extended periods of time, just to see if I was hallucinating, but it never seemed to get old. And the same is true of virtually everything in the game; weapons, vehicles, etc. all sound great and don't grate on my ears at all. That's a huge accomplishment.
Yet there is one problem which prevents the game's audio from being perfect. I mentioned it in my original coverage of the first HL2 demonstration, and the problem is still there in the shipping version of the game. At predictable points the game engine "stutters" or "hitches" for lack of a better term. After every quick save, after every automatic save, and seemingly whenever a new area is about to be displayed for the first time, the audio (and sometimes the visuals as well) stutter in a jerky fashion.
All the evidence seems to suggest that this is a problem due to accessing the hard drive or perhaps loading textures, but whatever is causing it is annoying. Anyone who has suggestions on how to handle this problem is strongly encouraged to write me; I'd love to get rid of it. Frankly, I can't believe the developers ignored it for as long as they did, given that it was obvious even back at the first demonstration in 2003. Valve has released a couple of patches that help reduce the stuttering, but it still happens occasionally on my system.
The interface is roughly what one would expect from the sequel, though it does have a couple of really nice touches. The animated view behind the menu is pretty neat, as are the game loading thumbnails. The HUD is reminiscent of the original HL, yet it packs more information and manages to remain relatively unobtrusive. All of the key bindings work well by default, but they're easily changed for those who disagree. I was going to complain about having to access the game through Valve's Steam client until I discovered that I could create a desktop icon for it. In short, the interface is everything it should be. Even the squad-command interface is as simple as it is functional.
The game mechanics of HL2 are an evolutionary step forward in FPS gaming, insofar as the basic FPS mechanics are all recognizable but are also augmented by a fabulous physics system. Other games have attempted to integrate more or less realistic physics, but HL2 is the first game in which it really feels right (for the most part) and, far more important, actually matters to the game play. The physics system in HL2 not only helps make the world and objects in it more believable, it also provides the player with new challenges and opportunities.
For example, shortly after the player receives the zero-point energy field manipulator, a.k.a. the gravity gun, he finds himself entering the abandoned town of Ravenholm, which serves not only as a training ground for using the device but is also one of the more memorable sequences in the game. The sheer volume of enemies will rapidly exhaust the player's ammunition if he sticks to conventional weapons. But the real fun lies in using circular saw blades, propane tanks, radiators, bricks, and pretty much anything else that isn't nailed down to fend off the mutant hordes.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are various areas in the game where the player must leverage the proper in-game physics to progress. One particular puzzle requires the player to break a series of boards under water in order to release a number of objects, all of which float to the surface and provide a walkway across the pool. Suffice it to say that HL2 is the only game made to date in which such realistic interactions are not only possible but wildly entertaining. There's nothing quite like using a barrel as a bullet shield until the angle is just right to crush some hapless Combine soldier when hurling it.
Additionally, the physics system makes the handling of vehicles as sensible as it is entertaining. Once the player gains a feel for the little swamp buggy and the jeep, the mobile sequences become much more interesting. They were a bit long in my estimation, about which more shortly, but tearing across the countryside, smashing up Ant Lions, gunning down Combine troops, and occasionally running frantically from airborne enemies, is simply not to be missed.
In fact, the only complaint one might raise against the game mechanics is that grenades are pretty hard to use. There's something about the arc they traverse that takes quite a bit of practice to get right, and their timer only complicates matters given how the physics system lets them bounce, roll, and so forth. On far too many occasions I missed my targets badly, sometimes with disastrous results. Perhaps this is a harbinger of things to come; i.e., maybe grenades are unavoidably going to be more difficult to use in light of the increasing prevalence of physics systems. Maybe us gaming old-timers are just going to have to pick up a new skill set.
I'm not sure whether the developers deserve kudos or a punch in the face for the story in HL2. On the one hand, the game is a beautifully realized conception of life after an alien takeover. There are quite a few scripted sequences, all of which advance the plot forward one bit at a time. Yet on the other hand, none of them really tell the player what he wants to know. The ending of the original HL was a cliffhanger to say the least, leaving tons of questions unanswered. What binds all of the various aliens together? How does the enigmatic G-Man character fit into it all? What did Gonarch and Nihilanth have to do with any of it?
HL2 not only fails to answer any of these questions, it raises still more and then fails to answer those as well! I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds that irritating. Yes, I'm happy that the sequel is finally here, but I'm disappointed that I don't really understand anything more than I did at the conclusion of the first game. Worse, I haven't a clue why one of the alien species now seems to be working with the resistance, where Gordon was in the intervening years, who the G-Man is and for whom he is really working, and so forth. In short, I'm more curious and more in the dark than ever.
Perhaps that's precisely what the developers intended, but if so they need a good slap to the face. I figure they owe us at least some answers by this point. I guess I'll have to hope, like so many others, that a forthcoming expansion pack or sequel will provide some more information. It sure would be nice.
First, the obvious: the content in the game is generally wonderful. Many of the weapons carry over from the original game, with suitable tweaks, but the additions to the arsenal are even better. I particularly liked that fancy Combine pulse rifle and its wacky secondary fire mode. That thing was my bread and butter weapon for a fair bit of the game's latter half, particularly once the Combine's elite troops started showing up in greater frequency.
My only beef with the weapons is a minor one: the player really doesn't have many good options for combat beyond close range. There is no sniper rifle, and though the player can use the zoom function to draw a bead on a target he cannot fire his weapon while zoomed. The pulse rifle seemed to me about the best option, but even it can be inaccurate at distance. The .357 magnum pistol is a great choice, but I found it important to save its ammunition for use as a sniper rifle. Does it strike any other gun enthusiast as odd that a pistol is far more accurate than a rifle?
I should also mention that the game's scripting still needs some work at points. When rescuing Barney from snipers, for example, I saw only one sniper. But after grenading him the sequence clearly wasn't over. So I threw grenades into every open window I could see, and the sequence still wasn't over. It was only when I noticed a route up to the roof and headed up there that two more snipers began to fire at me from windows I had already grenaded. Gotta love that.
When I reviewed Call of Duty (CoD) I commented about its unusual doors policy, namely, that the player would never need to open one; doors in CoD are either open or inaccessible. I thought it was an odd thing at the time, but I found several situations in HL2 where I got stuck for not being able to find which door to open. The most lethal such situation was facing the terrible death-from-the-sky suppression device in "Follow Freeman". I had to spend a solid fifteen minutes or so on that sequence, growing more and more frustrated with each passing attempt, until I noticed the stupid door at the end of the street. If only every door that could be opened was somehow more obvious.
The squad AI is also absolutely terrible. Frankly, I kept hoping for my squad mates to die, simply so I wouldn't be running into them all the time. I tried shooting Barney in the head, but I simply couldn't kill the rotten bastard. And while I'm on the subject, it really shatters the illusion when dumping a clip into some schmuck's head doesn't even merit a blink of his eyes. Come on, developers, you've got to stop allowing such obvious inconsistencies.
Anyway, the main problem with the support fighters is not that they don't shoot back, get stuck on corners, or do the typically stupid crap that AI-controlled teammates do. No, the problem is that they are constantly in the way! Their idea of "following" Freeman is to stay so close they can dry hump his butt the whole way. The result is that it's irritating as hell crawling through buildings, impossible to retreat from danger, etc. Whenever the squad is there, the game is more irritating than fun as far as I'm concerned.
It's also worth noting that HL2 is an entirely linear game. That wasn't at all unusual for the original game, but after five years in development I was hoping for something a little more interesting in that respect. Granted, non-linearity is pretty rare in FPS games generally, but I figured if any game was going to do it and get it right it would be HL2. I can't say that I mind all that much, but it did become obvious a few times just how tightly controlled a path I was travelling.
Finally, in the negative column, I think the vehicle sequences were a bit drawn out. I got tired of the swamp buggy thing at roughly the halfway point in the sequence. It did get a lot more fun once they had mounted a gun on the buggy, but it didn't happen nearly fast enough for my tastes. Perhaps this is merely an idiosyncracy of mine, but I had become a bit bored with the vehicle by then. I personally think it would have been more fun to have more frequent access to the vehicles for shorter periods of time, for whatever that's worth.
Returning to the positive column of the ledger, HL2 packs what is now a solid amount of game. So many FPS games these days clock in at ten hours or less, but HL2 took me a solid sixteen hours to complete during my first run-through, and I was moving pretty fast in some spots. Given that I'm going to play through it at least once or twice more, without a doubt, I'm definitely going to get my money's worth for it and then some. And that's to say nothing of the mods that will surely be released.
The environments are varied enough that no particular setting gets old. The situations are varied enough that moving and shooting at stuff never gets dull. And the myriad of wildly fun ways to use the gravity gun give every situation some good replay value. Add in the few mini-games that appear along the way (e.g., working a huge crane), and it should be obvious that HL2 packs a lot of solid content.
Perhaps the very best thing I can say about the game's content is that the ending is awesome. Many games get progressively harder and harder, leading up to a final boss battle that's just so bloody ridiculous it's frustrating as hell. Those games leave me with a bad impression, largely because after I've tried and failed to resolve the situation for the dozenth time without the barest hint of success I just want to be done with it. Finishing the game becomes a chore, not something fun.
In contrast, HL2 takes a very unconventional approach to the ending, leaving the player only a single weapon, albeit a very powered-up version of said weapon. The change in circumstances means that the last few levels of the game are truly a joy to play, a pure payoff for previous achievement. There's something amazingly satisfying about getting to that point and then being able to wreak serious havoc on those formerly tough bad guys. I loved it. Kudos to the developers for getting this right; i.e., that the game should ultimately reward the player for making it to the end, not punish him.
First, I have to note an obvious inconsistency. One of the stated reasons for delaying HL2 for such a long time was that the developers needed to rework the multi-player code, the point being to change things sufficiently so that hackers wouldn't be able to cheat easily in light of their prior access to the purloined source code. Yet HL2 ships with only a single multi-player game mode, Counterstrike: Source (CS), which was tested for months prior to release. Does anyone else find these facts greatly inconsistent? I could see how it might take a while to rework the network code if the game shipped with a half-dozen different game modes, but how does it make sense if the only mode included is a glorified Source-engine port of the original Counterstrike?!
While on the subject, the lack of other game modes is really pretty cheesy. Yes, I'm aware that the original Counterstrike mod for HL remains the most popular on-line multi-player game even today. So yes, it does make sense to provide it as part of HL2. But how does this absolve the developers of providing any other game modes? I was so looking forward to basic deathmatch, capture-the-flag, and at least the other modes that shipped with the original HL, that HL2's exclusion of all but CS was disappointing, and that's putting it quite charitably. Happily, the developers have already released a deathmatch mode as a free download, so maybe they'll include some other goodies as well. Valve does have a good track record in this regard, supporting HL long after most companies would have thrown in the towel and called it quits.
To continue flogging this particular horse, there's also the fact that I'm not the only gamer who thinks Counterstrike sucks. I can agree that CS does seem to be an improvement over the original, but even CS isn't entirely free from my complaints. I've still seen players manage to avoid shotgun blasts at point-blank range far too easily and other such absurdities. I'm sure I will play the game's multi-player aspect more than I played the original Counterstrike, but what I really want is an update to Team Fortress, capture the flag, or something new and different. Is that really too much to ask for a game that's been under development for half a decade? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Venting aside, though, the multi-player portion of the game is very good for what it is. If you liked the original Counterstrike, then you're probably going to love CS. It manages to take the game play from the original mod and weld it, almost seamlessly, to the much-enhanced Source engine. The visuals are great, the old favorite maps are all faithfully re-created, the weapons are just as deadly by any other name, and so forth. If anything, the enhanced visual fidelity serves to make the game easier to play, insofar as it's easier to tell terrorists from counterterrorists than it was before.
More importantly, the network code seems perfect. As long as the player has a good connection to the server, the gaming is smooth and almost completely without any sort of glitch. To date, I've played a few dozen on-line matches, and I can't think of anything fundamentally questionable in the game play. Admittedly I've got a pretty good connection, but the game experience remains surprisingly good, even on servers to which I have a high ping. That's a sure sign of quality in the network code.
The multi-player interface is also as functional as it is simple. I do wish it were a bit easier to create and manage custom filters, but HL2 provides virtually everything that most other games these days provide. It would be nice if the "friends" features of Steam were a little more closely coupled to the game itself, but they're good enough. With as popular as CS is likely to be, I'm a bit surprised the developers didn't provide any team-management features for clans, but maybe they'll do so in the future. We'll have to wait and see. For the moment, HL2 delivers a good experience for what it delivers in terms of its multi-player aspect. I just happen to think we've been cheated by the lack of modes.
In the interests of fairness, I do think I should mention that some folk think Valve is ruining counterstrike altogether for various reasons. I encourage readers to check out that link (and other articles on the subject) and form their own conclusions. For my part, I think CS makes for an interesting diversion, but I should admit that I've never been serious enough about the original game to be in the know.
As my reader might suspect, the conclusion practically writes itself. HL2 is a must-buy game for almost anyone even remotely interested in FPS games. I suppose if you're one of those people who simply cannot stand the FPS genre, for whatever reason, then you shouldn't buy HL2 either. But if you have ever played and enjoyed a single-player FPS game, then you owe it to yourself to pick up HL2 and play it too. It redefines the FPS experience in ways that make it too much fun to ignore.
I suppose if you're one of those multi-player die-hards who never even launches the single-player aspect of a game, then you've really got to ask yourself a simple question: is it worth all that money for a better looking Counterstrike? I certainly wouldn't think so, but maybe others would. Suffice it to say that HL2 is a good buy for almost all gamers, especially because it's likely to provide an amazing platform for oodles of free mods if history is any guide.
01/29/2005