GregHowley.com

It seems that I've come into the habit of writing about games just before I finish them. Right now, I'm just finishing up Half Life 2. While I've never been a huge fan of first-person shooters, Half Life is a phenomenal game.

The first thing you'll notice is the graphics. The scenery is so detailed that I caught myself at least once stopping to catch a breath and enjoy the scenery. At one point, Combine soldiers came by and caught me with my pants down while I was standing on the beach staring out at the ocean. Yes, the graphics are that good. You'll also notice that you can pick up nearly anything. I had fun at first picking up discarded glass bottles and throwing them against a brick wall.

The second thing you'll notice is the physics engine. The laws of mass, friction, momentum, gravity, and buoyancy are obeyed in full. Everything from water to tractor-trailers to dust behaves exactly as you'd expect. It's very impressive. When I got the gravity gun, which is essentially a handheld tractor beam whose proper name is the "Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator", I spent time on a narrow cliff road pushing cars over the ledge, watching them teeter on the guard rail, slide off onto a ledge, then totter down the cliff and splash into the water eighty feet below. It was plain old stupid fun.

Many of Half-Life's biggest fans love it for the multi-player aspect. Personally, I've got no interest in going online to battle rude 13-year-olds. I've never liked MMO's.

I was worried at first, since I'd never played the original, that I'd be a bit lost about what was going on. But apparently, many people still had no idea what was going on after finishing Half Life 1. Luckily, I found a site that explains the whole backstory pretty well. In the first game, the Earth is invaded by beings from another world. The invasion begins when an apparent accident teleports a number of horrific creatures into Black Mesa, the research complex where your character, Gordon Freeman, works. Eventually, marines are sent in to clean up the mess, and apparently all the scientists that work at Black Mesa are part of that mess.

In Half Life 2, we fast-forward to a period some ten years down the road. Earth has been conquered, and humankind has been forced into numbered cities and policed by genetically-engineered humanlike soldiers called the Combine Overwatch. A "Suppression Field" has been activated, which prevents humans from procreating, and chemicals have been added to the water which will make peoples' memories of the recent past unclear, thus they will forget why they hate The Combine. Gordon Freeman is summoned to lead the human rebellion...

The enemies are unique: "headcrabs" which jump into the air, devour a person's head, then perch at the end of the neck, turning him into a zombie. "Barnacles" that affix themselves to high ceilings and drop down their long tongues to catch prey which they then reel in and devour. "Manhacks" which are essentially flying gyroscope-powered buzzsaws built to kill men. The novelty of these foes is a definate lure.

The scenarios and puzzles the game's creators come up with are fantastic. They send you through a water-filled room with live electrical equipment that makes the water deadly, forcing you to jump on floating objects. They give you a giant electromagnet-powered crane and a bunch of cars and let the physics engine do its thing. And they give you airboats and dune buggies, sometimes mounted with weaponry. Very nice.

I have to say that one of the main reasons I like this game is because it feels less like "Doom" and more like "Night of the Living Dead" or "War of the Worlds", and changes greatly from scene to scene. The game startled me quite a few times, which was one of the things I'd loved about Resident Evil 2, and had the government-conspiracy thing going, which was something I'd loved about Beyond Good and Evil.

It seems that the original game had an expansion called Opposing Force in which you play one of the soldiers sent after Gordon Freeman in Half Life 1. I'm not sure if I'll try that, but the original Half Life is being ported to the Half Life 2 engine, and when released, it will sell as "Half Life:Source". That, I'm interested in. Even better may be Black Mesa: Source, a player-created (free?) version of Half Life 1 which will not only run on the new engine, but which will sport the new improved textures apparent in Half Life 2. Given that you can't buy Half Life:Source without buying a bunch of other stuff you probably already own, I might just wait for Black Mesa:Source. Lastly, a new chapter of Half Life 2, called Half Life 2: Aftermath, is being planned. Can't wait.

I'm currently on chapter 11 of 14, but I'm having trouble playing for more than 20 minutes without my machine freezing, a problem which seems to be getting worse. Wish me luck.