Shelf-Life_X_2

Wake up, Mister Freeman...

You are Gordon Freeman, and years ago, you were at the epicenter of a disaster. In the accidental meltdown at the Black Mesa government laboratory complex, a dimensional gateway was opened, and your self-contained world was flooded with all manner of horrifying creatures. Somehow, through sheer determination, you became a survivor that day. More than that, you turned back the threat, facing down the horrors on their own turf and taking down their leader from the heart of his lair.

If only it ended there...

A lot has happened since the debut of Half-Life. Reprising your role as Gordon Freeman, you awaken to a world turned inside out. Whatever creatures broke through into our world at Black Mesa that day, they have since gone on to crush humanity and ruin the planet. Half-Life 2 begins wwith you trapped in a nightmare world of brutal rule: part 1984, part Fahrenheit 451, and everywhere you go, bleak and desolate. What humans remain either put their heads down and allow themselves to be shuttled from place to place...or they hold on to hope, band together, and fight. To the underground, you are something of a hero: the man of legend who single-handedly stopped the aliens (who now call themselves "The Combine", or "Our Benefactors"). As you meet the resistance, you give them hope.

It was 6 years ago that Half-Life was released by Sierra. Programmed by Valve development team, the game was initially assumed to be a Quake clone. But then something happened: people started to notice that this game had depth. It had a storyline, characters, and the ability to interact with your world more than the frag-'em'-all scenario of Quake. Playing Quake was exciting, but Half-Life was immersive - you felt the horror because you were part of an ongoing story.

It's been a long wait, and there has been a lot of doubt about whether Half-Life 2 would measure up to the competition. A further delay following the theft of source code from Valve had the gaming community up in arms: it was an excuse, they said. A way to avoid competing with Doom 3. There were problems--Valve was buying time. Speculation ran rampant as to whether the game would be released at all.

All I can say is, it's been worth the wait. Half-Life 2 has not measured up to the competition: it has bulled past it and broken new ground. Not only is HL2 unlike anything else on the market, it delivers so completely that it's hard to think of anything more that could have been added.

Or is it?

Gimme Steam...and how you feel can make it real...

There are multiple ways to purchase Half-Life 2: there is a retail boxed product, a collector's edition box (this review), and you can opt to download the whole game through Steam, Valve's "content delivery network". Think of it as a direct pipeline to the development team. If you access the Internet through a dial-up account, or your Internet access is limited and you pay any kinds of usage fees or bandwidth charges, then the boxed version is probably best for you. But if you have an open broadband account--a DSL or Cable modem that doesn't hold you back--you can pull the entire game down onto your machine and install and unlock it right then and there through Steam.

That's right: I said "unlock". Whichever form by which you purchase Half-Life 2, the game will not function until you connect to Steam and "activate" the game over the Internet. As you can imagine, this also caused a bit of an uproar...talk of spyware and Big Brother ran rampant. As someone who is intensely suspicious of companies, distrusts giving information to anyone who doesn't absolutely need it, and regularly monitors firewall/antivirus/spyware/malware on his home network, I've been surprised by how happy I am with Steam. In the past, one of my biggest gripes with Sierra was that the updates you needed to fix bugs in Half-Life and its fellow games (Blue Shift, Opposing Force, Counter-Strike, etc.) were difficult to find without signing up to a gamer site's services and standing in line to download them. With Steam, I can tell the program what games I have installed, and it will automatically keep them up-to-date. What's more, it seems like Valve is giving me the chance to grab a number of goodies I would otherwise have had a hard time getting my hands on: I've got "digitally remastered" versions of the original Half-Life (called "Half-Life: Source") and Counter-Strike ("Counter-Strike: Source"), a fun 2-D platform version of Half-Life 2 called "Codename: Gordon", and the Deathmatch version of Half-Life 2. It's easy for me to connect online and play multi-player, and any Valve games I tell Steam that I've got, it'll optimize them to run better by creating a "precache" (a new Windows XP trick that boosts performance). I've even noticed by accident that I can launch HL2 without having the disc handy. Last but not least, none of this costs me a nickel: everything I've downloaded has been free.

There is one drawback: the default settings for Steam are to connect when you boot up your machine, run an icon in the tray, and keep a small window open on one corner of my desktop. But with a quick trip to the settings, I managed to get Steam to go away until I need it.

Decisions, decisions

If you're looking at the boxed versions, there's some stuff you should know. The standard box is a CD-ROM version of the game. You get the discs in a box. The collector's edition is...a bit of a disappointment. Unless you're just wanting to treat yourself, to own something special, the extra money doesn't deliver as much as you might think it would. Inside the box is the game on a DVD-ROM, a free T-shirt (men's black XL with the logo), and a booklet. But the booklet is not the Prima Strategy Guide. It's also not very big. Instead, it's a pocket-sized mesh of parts of the strategy guide and bits from "Raising the Bar", the new book on the making of Half-Life 2. The strategy part isn't anything you couldn't easily find yourself - it covers the first several minutes of the game. And it has a couple of spoilers in the character bios that are more fun to find out on your own. The box promises "Half-Life: Source" and "Counter-Strike: Source", and they are on the DVD...but you can download these anyway from Steam. I was also surprised that there was no physical manual - these are handy to have around when you're doing key configs for a controller like my Belkin Nostromo n52. So think of the collector's edition as "I get a free T-shirt". I have not taken delivery of the game via Steam, but the reports I've heard thus far have been positive, that the game comes down just fine--only it takes a lot of time to get it, install it, and unlock.

Once you've got yourself a copy of the game, you'll see how Valve delivers. In a time when games like FarCry, Prince of Persia, and Doom 3 demand heavy-duty machinery just to run, Half-Life 2 just needs a 1.2GHz Pentium 4 (or AMD equivalent), 256MB RAM, and a Direct-X 7 compatible video card with DirectX 9 installed on the system.

(for more information on what this means, see the http://www.microsoft.com/directx/)

The Play's the Thing

Okay, Pyanfar! But how does it play?. Like a dream. Or a nightmare. "Wake up," the game begins, and like a drowsy sleeper, you slowly get introduced to your Brave New World. Like the first Half-Life game, you can crudely "talk" to people (you press the 'E' key, but you don't pick what to say, or hear your voice speak as you would in Unreal II). They seem to be less likely to talk back to you, and each person has a limited number of things they have to say. In yet another nod to the original, you have about a dozen or so different faces and voices that appear on different civilians as you play the game. Then there are a handful of regular characters, unique individuals who come and go within the storyline--some of them apparently survivors of what they refer to as "The Black Mesa Incident", the events that were your journey through the first game. These people form the core of your story, and you'll find yourself enjoying the times when you get together. One odd thing about your interaction with this world, though: when you're holding your weapons, it's a full first-person perspective: you see your hands holding the item, and they move in a way that is realistic, shifting around as you walk, giving a slap-spin to the drum of the Magnum 6-shooter when you reload, etc. But when you pick things up, they just seem to be magnetized: they snap to the center of your vision, and stay there until you either throw them or put them down. You get used to it...and after a while I came to the conclusion that they did this because if you saw your arms across the screen, you'd have a hard time being able to see anything else. I have to change the angles that I'm holding something in order to see where I'm going to throw or place it. I think that would be impossible if Gordon's arms were in the way.

And speaking of inanimate objects, you have a new item that is universally being called "well worth the price of admission": the Gravity Gun. This device can pull, shove, throw, or pick up heavy objects. Aim it at the right spot on a car, pull the trigger, and you'll shove or even flip the vehicle. You'll find this device amazingly handy, and the physics are impressively lifelike: a tire will bounce, a wooden crate will shatter, and you can even pick up the pieces. Oh, and a steel barrel will stop bullets...but a wooden box will get chewed up and leave you standing there with a handful of splinters. You'll notice that bodies have ragdoll effects (that get more dramatic closer to the end); that wood floats, and metal sinks. And accidentally plowing a buggy into a deep pool of water will kill the engine. The Resistance (your allies) won't be too happy with you for wasting their equipment, and there are times when you don't die, but you get "Mission Failed" because they needed you to bring your vehicle with you.

TIP: Use the gravity gun to get to hard-to-reach bonus items. Or pull supply crates off a shelf or out of danger to crack them open at a safer place.

There are several opportunities to interact with the other characters in the game. Some are connective scenes in which a main character will fight alongside you. But since the events at Black Mesa, you have also become a kind of hero to these people, and random members of the resistance will make a beeline for you, shouting things like, "Hey, everybody! Look! It's Gordon Freeman!" They will then fight by your side. And they're pretty smart, as bots go: medics will see when you're badly injured and try to patch you up, all of them will keep an eye on you and remind you when you need to reload, and they'll look embarrassed and shuffle apologetically out of your way when they're following too close. The only drawback I've seen is that your interface with them is too simple: press 'C' to have them scatter, then 'CC' to bring them back. More than once I've needed to slip ahead of them and minesweep with the gravity gun--only to have them forget that I told them to wait, charge in too close, and get us all killed. I think it has to do with the auto-sensing they do when you're close: they're not stupid enough to shout, "Hey! It's Gordon!" again, but I think stepping away and stepping back automatically kicks in the duckling behavior. The game also tells you you can point them at a specific target, but I've not figured this part out yet: it might be handy to point them at the back wall for a few minutes...

One of the things that aggravated me about Unreal II was that when your group was attacked, the others would distract the enemy, but it seemed like you had to go running around the battlefield and put every single bad guy down yourself. Here, they tend to do their own thing: if you let them, they'll take care of some of the other bad guys. And there are times when it's your turn: they'll tell you your HEV suit means it's your turn to go through the next section and double back to clear the way for them.

TIP: There seem to be times when no matter what, you will lose everybody in your group. Accept it, and move on: it's supposed to happen. There are other times when your objective isn't the obvious goal in sight, but to protect your team until all of you can move forward.

Then there are the bad guys. One of the things that makes Half-Life 1 so interesting is that at a certain point in the game, you're beginning to think it's "just another bug-hunt". And then along come the Special Ops forces. You think they're here to rescue you and maybe you're going to team up with them...until they start mowing down the civilians. And they are especially gunning for you. In a twist reminiscent of The X-Files, it becomes clear that the government wants no one to live to tell about what happened. Suddenly, you have no idea what's around the next corner: will it be a monster? A trap? Disaster debris that is hazardous to navigate? Or trained marines out to kill you? Half-Life 2 takes a page from the same book, and goes it one step further. The police and the military are after you, the horrifying creatures from the first one are there...and there are new and more terrifying upgrades to everything. Some of the soldiers are like supermen, and they're not only tough to kill, they have godlike weapons. The slow-moving headcrabs and "zombies" you so easily stood back from and picked off a la Resident Evil are tougher, and there are faster ones, who come out of nowhere at you and can run, jump, and climb. There are extremely creepy black headcrabs whose bite contains a neurotoxin that will damned near kill you. You don't pick them off with a pistol or hack them up with the famous crowbar: you open up and let loose...and run. You'll waste a grenade on the chance to take them out from a distance. Add vehicles to the mix, and now you have a whole new level of play. There have been many times that I have died, but I've never been angry about it: I've always known what I did wrong. Or if a section is particularly tough, I accept it because the game is playing fair. The enemy is smart enough not to stand there and let you shoot at them. The flying gunships don't just stick to a pattern: they are extremely tough to pin down. And the tall-walking War of the Worlds style machines don't just wander around waiting for you to emerge from cover: they hunt you down and try to flush you out.

Last but not least, I want to share an experience I had. It's a bit of a spoiler, so you might want to skip this paragraph. There are these bug-like creatures called "Ant-Lions". They look like the bugs in Starship Troopers, only about half the size. They're strong, fast, and tough to kill. They're also programmed with a hive-like AI, and later in the game, you get to control them with pheromone "bug-bait". The way they behave is amazing, and it starts to get a little bit creepy the way you surround yourself with nasty critters and send them forth to do your bidding. You can call them up from the ground, bring them to you, and order them to hit targets by pasting the target with a thrown clump of bait. I was in an area where I was being hit by men in towers and sentry posts, and getting constantly strafed from the air. I'd throw the bug-bait at the sentry posts and towers to get the bugs to swarm over the bad guys and tear them to pieces while I waited from cover. But where it gets interesting is the flying ships: they were extremely hard to deal with. They can only be taken down by rockets, which are scarce and you have to comb the level to find them. I found a place to hide that was continually being bombarded by the gunships. I waited until the ships tried swooping low to get at me under the roofline. When they swooped low enough, I stepped out, nailed one with a ball of bugbait, then ran back under cover. The bugs went crazy. They wanted to get at the gunship, but it was flying too high for them to reach. So they started swarming the level, looking for high places to use to get to the ship. It was amazing: they swarmed over fences, scaled walls, and finally found two tall towers they could climb. I watched them sit there, wait for the gunship, and leap on it when it passed close enough. None of them were doing enough damage to actually take the thing down, but it kept the gunship off my back and distracted long enough for me to scrounge for rockets and take it down. It was fascinating to watch.

How High?

On my high-end machine, the graphics are phenomenal: they look just like the hi-res screen shots I've been seeing on the web. On my low(er) end Inspiron, it looks like Valve compromises quality to get better gameplay performance: textures get blocky, but gameplay stays smooth. These are just the settings the game chooses, of course, and you can tweak to your taste: the options are just as detailed as most other games. I have noticed a performance lag when I go into the menus, be it to save, load, or make changes. Like the original Half-Life, there seem to be areas where everything freezes and you wait for up to a minute while "Loading..." sits atop your screen. This can get frustrating, when you're still pumped from the action and you have to stop and sit still. It can also get inconvenient--a couple of times I was being shot at when "Loading..." popped across the screen, and I'd be out of sync when the game kicked back in (and take damage from it). Lastly, every once in a while, people and objects disappear between loading areas: you'll turn around and they'll be gone. This was a problem with the original Half-Life, and Valve has taken one big step to address it by overlapping the load areas. In other words, in the original game if it was loading and you accidentally took a step backwards, you'd get "Loading..." again. And have to step forward one step, get "Loading..." a third time, and wait--again. In Half-Life 2, once you enter a new area, you'd have to backtrack about 20 feet to get the load cycle to kick in.

As far as Half-Life: Source and Counter-Strike: Source, if you played either original game with the "Hi Definition Pack" that was offered with Blue Shift, from what I've played of it the game isn't a huge step up from that. Textures are a bit nicer. If you just had the lower-resoltion out-of-the-box games (minus the definition pack), you'll be pleasantly surprised at the shinier new look. If you've got a newer video card, the Source engine will dress the set with some better lighting and a bit of the ragdoll effects and object/environment physics (e.g., water, crates, fire) that feel more like HL2.

Summary

Half-Life 2 is the best first-person shooter that I've played to date. It is not only a complete package, but it breaks new ground and raises the bar (pun intended) for higher standards in gaming in general. While load screens are an inconvenience, the game is otherwise the most complete package a company can offer, and the level of support provided by Steam makes the experience of patching and keeping up-to-date as smooth as possible. Where the game stands out is in its tolerance for lower-end systems: its nearest rival, Doom 3, has far heftier system requirements, but doesn't really offer anything more in quality of play. Despite the necessary presence of chapters and scripted events to maintain the story flow, the game is less linear than other story-based titles, such as the Max Payne series, and as a result you will be more likely to enjoy replaying this game again and again. Bonus games strongly enhance the value of the Half-Life franchise. And best of all, Half-Life 2 rewards creativity. It's very satisfying to do something different and see the results work better for you than if you had just blasted your way through the level, or thrown things at the problem. If a game is a button-masher, blowing things up from end to end, all the elements start to feel the same. When you can play smarter, you feel better about playing...and you come back the next time with new ideas.

And now, just for fun, I give you:


Top 11 (bonus!) signs you've been playing way too much Half-Life 2:

11. You talk about "The Black Mesa Incident" like it was something you saw on CNN
10. You keep trying to convince your S/O that life would be so much easier if you could just buy that Gravity-Gun you saw at the hardware store
09. You've installed a medicine cabinet and a battery charger in every room in your house (grumbling the whole time about that Gravity Gun!)
08. Every time you look at your car, you wonder where the Vortigaunt is going to mount the mini-gun
07. You have a hard time talking to co-workers beyond simple instructions like, "Wait here," and "Come with me"
06. You're uncomfortable going near a Pepsi machine because it reminds you of "Dr. Breen's Personal Reserve"
05. You hate spiders now. No, really...you REALLY hate spiders now.
04. You bought a pair of black-framed glasses. You have 20/20 vision, but you felt you needed them.
03. Your favorite places around town have all been "tagged", usually with the Lambda symbol
02. You can't walk by the frozen chicken section of the grocery store because it gives you feelings of terror

...and the number one sign you've been playing way too much Half-Life 2:

01. You bought another crowbar. You don't need another crowbar, but the old one was just painted wrong...




System Requirements:
1.2 GHz Processor
4.5 GB HD Space
256MB RAM
DirectX® 7 graphics card
DirectX® 9.0b
Windows® 2000/XP/Me/98
Mouse
Keyboard
Internet connection
CD-ROM Drive (for Half-Life® 2 Standard Edition); DVD-ROM Drive (for Half-Life® 2 Collector"s Edition)

Recommended System Requirements:
2.4 GHz Processor
512MB RAM
DirectX® 9 graphics card
DirectX® 9.0c
Windows® 2000/XP
Mouse
Keyboard
Internet connection
CD-ROM Drive (for Half-Life® 2 Standard Edition); DVD-ROM Drive (for Half-Life® 2 Collector"s Edition)

(courtesy of http://support2.vugames.com/hl2/search.aspx)


I played Half-Life 2 on:
an AMD box I built
2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 3200+ (Barton Core)
1GB Dual-channel RAM(@ 2x512MB PC3200)
Radeon 9700 Pro 256MB Video card
160GB Western Digital SATA Hard Drive
Sony DRU-530A DVD+/-RW

and

a Dell Inspiron 8200
2.0GHz Intel Pentium IV (400MHz FSB)
1GB SDRAM (2x512MB)
nVidia GeForce Go 4 32MB Video Card
40GB 5400RPM IBM Travelstar Hard Drive
10X DVD/CD-R/RW combo drive