Half-Life Review
I was skeptical when a friend lent me a copy of this game. I was not fond of the first-person shooter genre, with it's gratuitous violence and non-existant feet. Suffice to say that I have been converted. Half-life needs little introduction; it is a legend. The game is long enough to keep one entertained for a while, and the enemies are well designed and placed. The weapons are, for the most part, fun to use, and the environments are realistic, but not open-ended - that is to say, you always know what to do next, but never feel like you're walking in a straight line from beginning to end. The story is virtually non-existant, but this was done in such a way as to make the player feel a constant sense of mystery. Even the main character, none other that the infamous Gordon Freeman, never speaks a single word, and yet still is one of the coolest videogame characters ever. The most important reason behind my love for this game, however, comes not from the gameplay, which is by all means superb, but rather from the modding capabilities that the game has. The official SDK comes complete with tutorials, utilities, and source code. I learned much of C++ programming by looking at how the language was used to create this magnificent game, and reading modding tutorials. So all of us geeks will enjoy modding this game, while everyone else will enjoy downloading these mods, and playing them. Negative points: it's kinda old, but that isn't really much of a negative. It's not as intelligent as many modern games, but is much more so than it's peers - Quake II and the like.
