"Rise and shine, Mister Freeman. Rise, and shine." Are the words that awaken you from your cosmic coma. The G-Man seems eagar to put you back to work. The game starts out with a train ride, just like the original, but it has been toned down time-wise. Already during this point I was completly immersed by the game's incredible visual and audio effects. The grafitti all over the train, bullet holes tattering the windows, waste paper all over the ground, reflections on the windows, the powerlines dangling about outside. 30 seconds in, and this game was already amazing. The train stops and I exit, as soon as I exit, I get a tiny taste of the incridible psychics. Chinese food twirling to the wind, cans rolling around, and bottles falling off edges and breaking. Little things like that make you wonder how Valve was able to put so much into the game that some people might not even notice! When I walk into the trainstation, I see a large viewing screen directly infront of me. A well-dressed, important looking man is dilevering a pre-recorded welcome message: "Welcome, welcome to City 17, you have chosen or been chosen to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers. I thought so much of City 17 that I elected to establish my administration here. In the Citadel so thoughtfully provided by our Benefactors" Take a little walk in the trainstation and truley appreciate all of the detail put in to this game, try picking stuff up and throwing it at people. I spent nearly an hour and a half just in the first few levels. I kept finding new things that kept me interested, and I didn't even have a gun yet!
Half-Life 2 takes place in a run-down city named City 17. The Combine invaded and completly oblitherated Earth's armies and defenses. Earth surrendered in a 7-hour war. After the Human's crushing defeat, the Combine took complete control of Earth and have herded the remaining Human population into selected cities. This seemed like a fair gesture (The other option was killing the humans..) But the Combine are not the friendly type. They severly beat people for no reason, they won't let you have any personal belonings, and they raid apartments and kill people for rediculous reasons. Consider them very, very, very unfriendly police. Of course, humans will revolt. A large resistance has been formed over the past years of the Combine occupation. With the help of some of your old scientist pals, Rebels can communicate from one base to another. Also, teleport devices have been created to transport people and equipment. Nothing extremly hostile has come of the Resistance yet, but things may change once Gordon freeman is back and shooting.
The story is a very unique one, I enjoyed it a great deal. It's a thinking story, It's not spoon-fed to you with cutscenes like some games. (Halo 2 comes to mind...) The concept is hard to grasp at first, but once you understand it, the story may have you occupied more than the game itself! I've spent hours trying to figure some of it out, and I had a great time doing it because of the wide array of possibilites there are. The story in Half-Life 2 is a complex one, but I think it is one of the best stories in computer gaming today.
Okay, enough with the basics, lets move onto the real juiciness of Half-Life 2: Graphics and Physics. Let me start out by saying these are by far the best psychics I've ever seen in any game, ever. And some of the best graphics as well. The first thing you see in the game is the G-man. Already you get a tase of the astounding detail of the facial animations. Valve hired a doctor that specializes in the face and jaw area to help them out with their work. Man, that really paid off. When a character smiles, facial lines realisticly appear and disappear when the character stops smiling. Other expressions like anger and surprise are beautifully done and defenantly the most realistic I've seen. Quite a relief from the boring "Up and down" nutcracker talking from other computer games. The most eye-catching thing about Half-Life 2's graphics is the water. Heardly any game comes close to it. If you are far away, it becomes more foggy and the ripples in the water become more ocean-like. However, if you are close up to it, you can see down to the bottom and the ripples in the water become smaller, just like they would in real life. Any object or creature will realisticly reflect off of the water, even if the character/object is in the water. The lighting and shadow effects are also a big plus. If a character's body is half-inside a beam of light, it will light the character appropriatly, and if a character has a gun out, the game will cast the shadow of the gun on the character if the light is pointing in the right direction. Not to mention the characters look, walk, talk, and fight smoothly and beautifully.
Okay, moving onto the Psychics, oooh man. I expected great psychics, but I didn't expect super great, amazing, brain-popping goodness. If you drop a matress into some water, it will float and move with extreme accuracy. If you toss a cardboard box at a wall, it will break apart and flop around just like a real one would. Some objects won't do as much damage as others would. For example, if you throw a wooden box at someone, it woulden't do near as much damage as, say, a radiator or a metal chair. Practicly every movable object is, well, movable by you. And it will act like what it is, a metal bar won't float, but a wooden pallet will, but if you put something heavy on the pallet, it will sink until that heavy object falls off, than it will pop back up to the surface. Barrels will roll like barrels, chunks of fragmented wood will still act like wood, which means they will still float in water, but since the small chunks are now lighter, they would deal much less damage to enemies. Speaking of damaging enemies, that brings me to the best weapon I've ever used in any game: The Gravity gun. Without this gun, Half-Life 2 would not be the same. You are honored with the use of the gravity gun about 15 percent through the game. This monster hurls rocks, barrels, doors, tables, cars, chairs, radiators, boxes, flammable things, sawblades and countless other things at your awaiting foes. It is absoloutly priceless to slice up five zombies in a row by flinging a spinning sawblade into them. You can barricade a house with couches and matresses to hold off a Combine assault, almost anything is possible with this thing. The Gravity gun makes Half-Life 2's replay value skyrocket, because nothing will be the same as the last time you played! Is a gap too big to jump? Find a large piece of wood and build yourself a bridge! wrecked cars blocking your path? Toss them out of the way with ease! Annoying enemies got you down? A sawblade into their guts should do the trick! Dang, all of this talking about Half-Life 2 just makes me want to load the game and play!
This game is almost perfect, I enjoyed nearly every minute of it. But, there were things that disappointed me. I'll start with the AI. Don't be fooled by the "Traptown" Movie that was showcased at the '03 Electronic Entertainment Expo (Or E3, for short) The movie is showing off the games "Incredible" AI and psychics engine. The psychics are right on target, they are just like they were in the movie. But the AI is painfully different, If you've seen the movie, you saw the playtester push a table to barricade a door from incoming Combine, one tries to open the door, he fails, and he walks over to the window and attempts to shoot at the playtester. That is pretty accurate, but the next part isn't. In the movie he waits for his friend to get there, and they both kick open the door, the table goes flying and the door swings open. Moments like that never happened for me, In the real game if they can't get a door open, they'll just stand there like morons and wait for you to come in view, and if a soldier is being shot at, he'd just stand there like an idiot when there was a house right next to him that he could've easily hidden behind. And squads of combine never work together, they never try to use tactics or anything. They just stand there and shoot at you, for a little bit I thought I was back to playing Duke Nukem 3D because of how bad the AI was at times. There were even times when I would be right next to an enemy soldier and he woulden't even shoot at me, he'd just stand there looking at me for 5 seconds until he realized that I was an enemy. This is kind of sad, but in alot of instances in the game I thought the original Half-Life's Marines would have done a better job than Half-Life 2's Combine.
in the third chapter of the game you get an Airboat. It's basicly those Fanboats that you find in places like Florida. In the first few sections of the boat chapter, you don't have a gun and you are pretty much dodging what the Combine throw at you as you jet across narrow streams and slide under bridges. I thought this sequence was alot of fun, I hoped HL2 had a dirving sequence, and I was not let down. The Airboat was one of the high points in HL2 for me. It added more pizaaz to an already awesome game. I thought the driving parts were over, but in the 6th chapter of the game you get issued a jeep to drive across the coastal areas. I thought "All right, more driving!" It was indeed enjoyable for the first few sections, but after a few more it seemed to drone on and on with nothing exciting happening. Sure every so often you'd run into a town or something that you need to fight in, and you also get to do an amazing bridge level (One of the best levels in the game for me) But that is outside of your jeep. When you are driving it seems as if nothing happens, and all you are doing is driving on endless beaches. Every so often an Antlion would jump at your car, but that's about it. I found myself yawning of boredum during most of these parts, praying that the next section I could get rid of the jeep and go on foot again. Out of all of the sequences in HL2, that was my least favorite.
In the later levels you get to fight with a small squad of Rebels trying to loosen the Combine stranglehold on City 17. I found these parts to be quite entertaining because i'm a squad combat junkie. It's kind of a shame that the Rebel AI isn't that good, they won't take cover, they stand right in the line of fire and they arn't good with enemy grenades. They do have pluses, though. If they find a better gun than the one they are carrying they will drop theirs and pick it up, I found this to be a good feature, and if you get a full squad with good weapons they can assist you greatly. Other then a few flaws in their AI, I enjoyed these sections of the game. It was like an extra glaze on the Half-Life 2 donut.
Flawed human AI and some boring levels are a tiny price to pay for a truley incredible game. With a ground-pulverizing psychics engine, jaw-dropping graphics, and a story to keep you hooked. Half-Life 2 will be my favorite for years to come, If HL2 ever gets old, i'll have plenty of help from the modding community to keep me asking for more. It's HL1 all over again when it comes to awesome mods. I predict another amazing time for gaming, i'm going to be hooked on Half-Life 2 until Half-Life 3 comes out!
FINAL VERDICT:
95%
HIGHS: Physics to die for, awesome story, great graphics, extremly immersive.
LOWS: Questionable Human AI, some levels are boring at times.
BOTTOM LINE: Half-Life 2 meets almost all expectations, and smashes other games while doing it. Undoutably Game of the Year.
-Krazyman
Have you beaten Half-Life 2? Do you want to mess around with the physics? Then you have to try Garry's Mod! It's a must-have for HL2 owners.
*Internet connection is required for activating a steam account, but is not required to play HL2.
**CD/DVD ROM drive only needed if you have the retail version