haxxiy

User Score
7.5

Presentation - 6.0
Gameplay - 8.0
Value - 8.0

Half-life was relased in 1998 to receive massive critical and mainstream acclaim, and be hailed as the best first person shooter ever released and the most innovative PC action game since Doom was released back on the early 90's. Six years later, the game has a sequel released, properly named Half-life 2. As the first one, HL2 received a lot of praise, a nice and good rating at aggregate review scores, plus a lot of sales. Really a lot of sales - over 10 million on PC alone, a feat only a few select games managed to accomplish. Two expansion packs were released also, named Episode 1 and 2. There is word a third expansion is yet to come, named (guess it - I know you can do it) Episode 3.

The game begins in some sort of dream, where a man with distinctive greenish eyes say some random words to you. At first, you won't understand many of it. Then you apparently awake on a train, the kind of train one would expect to find on big cities' suburbs. Look around, but don't try to look below - otherwise you will get the bizzarre feeling you are no more than a floating camera. Or floating eyes, you choose it. This small issue was later corrected by Valve in games like Left 4 Dead.

After you leave the train, you will find yourself in a depressing city built around a gigantic building, towered to the skies. You walk around - many of the places you can see are blocked by guards with some kind of eletric weapon or energy barriers topped by cameras. That's the way the game blocks you access. Tne guards do nothing to you except hit you some times.

Then you met a old friend of yours, and you are conducted to some sort of lab where a teleportation experiment goes wrong... and you will expend most of your first playing hours trying to get to the place you were supposed to be. Why this does not seem very smart to me? Whatever.

You will have a hard time to understand what's going on since your character pronnounces not a single word during the game. To be honest, you could trade Gordon Freeman (that's your playable character) for Samus or Master Chief and no one would notice the difference. And unlike Halo, Metroid or Bioshock, where you can understand the storyline just by log found through the game and NPC commentaries, no one in HL2 is of any help. Deception. It is up to the poor player to figure out some doctor is trying to fly to another dimension... or something like this.

Of course things are not just bad. The graphics are incredible to a game released in 2004, and in my opinion, is the first game released in the so-called seventh generation. The gameplay is also very good, altough controlling your "hand" (when you need to move objects) or the late anti-gravity weapon, should be confusing at times. The enemies offer kind of a challenge, and the soundtrack is almost perfect as far as FPSs are concerned. The best moments in the game are the "god-mode ending" (you will know what I'm talking about if you play the game) and the vehicle riding, especially the hoover.

Concluding, this game stands out among shooters by clear reasons. And it's Half-Life. Even if the storyline and the characters sound bland and uninspired, with exception of a few brilliant ones, this is still Half-Life. If you aren't into hardcore gaming, subtract a point of this score and pass this game. If you are going to play the expansion packs - better in some points than the original game - then add a point.

Half-life 2 is indeed a markstone in gaming, but it could be better.

Presentation - 6

Gameplay - 8

Value - 8

Overall - 7.5