Halflife
Ah, the joy of a good FPS. In my experience, there is nothing more soothing, claming and uplifting...than using a heavy machine gun to redecorate the walls of a room with the lower intestines of your foe!! And thats just what you doin this game. Welcome to Half Life, the latest and greatest FPS, brought to us by the talented folks at Sierra and Valve. The title has been in development for several years now, but I do believ that it has been worth the wait. Using a heavily modified version of the Quake and Quake 2 engine, the creators of the game have managed to give us the best FPS ever, represtenting both an excellent, in depth and challenging single player mode; AND a god multiplayer experience as well.
GRAPHICS
As I said earlier, this title uses a version of the Q2 engine, but fear not, you will not be doomed to seeing the same dull, drab, industrial colors over and over and over...Rather, by modifying the original code, the game presents a vibrant and colorful depiction of a working science base, and later, an alien homeworld. The level of thought and care put into designing the many areas and locations in the game is apparent the instant the intro starts. You start the game travelling on a monorail, going through the base into the underground depths. In the first five minutes of this game, I saw more environmental diversity than I did in all of Q2!! Once the intro is over, you are free to roam around the base, until you perform a set task and all hell breaks loose. I won't ruin the experience by telling you what happens. In your travels, you will see that the base is truly a working enviroment, populated by intelligent humans[ at first]. Guards and scientists know you by name, and will open doors for you, show you the way, and sometimes make idle chit chat. And even if you aren't there, you can walk in and they will be talking to each other, or just going about their business.My only complaint about them is that there are only three body type for the scientists, and only one for the guards. Its a minor quibble but still. Your character bears a resemblance to Spock with glasses and a twelve guage which is disturbing. You will notice the diversity of rooms the minute you start exploring the base. Laboratories, bathrooms, missle rooms, reactor cores, they are all presented in painstaking detail. Then when the alien invasion starts, look out, cause all hell breaks loose! My jaw truly dropped at some of the pyrotechnics is saw during combat. At first, all you fight are aliens, which are modelled quite well, but they are rather generic. Although the aline Shark things consistently scared the crap out of me when they rose up from the depths. Later in the game, the government tries to whack yer ass, so you have to fend off marines, helicopters, tanks, and APCs. Cudos to whoever did the skeletal animation for the marines and humans, they seem to have captured the fluidity of human movement almost perfectly. It really is a noticeable difference from Q2. And of course, to fight these little lovelies, you have a whole bag o'tricks in the form of about a dozen heavy duty weapons. There are of course you standard pistol and shotguns, but then you have energy weapons, kinda like the Hyperblaster in Q2, and you can pick up organic weapons from the aliens. These toys will be put to good use splattering enemies into the wall, and I do mean splatter. You punch someones ticket at close range with a combat shotgun, and it turns into the elevator scene from "The Untouchables". Also, there are reload animations for each weapon. For instance, you fire six shots from the Colt Python, and the character will eject the shells then pop in a speed load, Dirty Harry style. I just wish he would have spun the cylinder when done, but that would have taken too much time I guess. I must confess, I was slightly dissapointed in the weapons though. They were cool and well balanced, but it never felt as though I had a weapon that truly kicked ass in my inventory, like a BFG, railgun, or Bullgut. THe up side though is that all of the weapons, especially the mines are very well balanced, and truly do lend themselves to death match play. With Halflife there will be no scrambling for a rocket launcher or BFG in a DM game. You can just as easily take someone out with your SMG as with a sachel of plastique. One final note, all of this eye candy is availabe to you if you have a decent Open GL card or 3dfx. The box claims that it supports Direct 3d, but it doesn't, at least not until the next patch comes out. Curse you patches, curse you!
SOUND
While not up to the high standards set by Thief, Halflife sound is quite good. Each weapon has its own distinct report, and when you start wasting people with the SMG, you will hear the "ting ting ting" as the shell cases you eject from the gun hit the floor. Also, the hollow "whoosh" from a grenade launcher being fired is quite realistic, and instantly recongnizable, so when you hear it in a DM.....RUN!!! Scientists talk to you and to each other, giving out hints and instructions. My favorite sound byte was when one of them quipped at me: " The military's idea of containment is to kill veryone involved." It was delivered in such a dry manner that I had to laugh. The enemies also will be making noises and communicating with each other, but the marines take the cake in this department. They actually bark out orders to their teamates, like "move out",
"cover me" and the dreaded "Fire in the hole!" If you hear the last one, you can be sure that one of the little SOBs just lobbed some heavy ordinace in your direction. On a sick note, someone in the team also coded in a "whump" noise that you hear when bullets hit you. Sick, very sick, yet somehow funny. I remember getting caught in the open by an Apache chopper, and it let loose with its 30mm chain gun on me. I died running away, but all the time I was running I hear this "whump whump whump whump" as the bullets hit me. it was funny for some reason. And then there is the obligatory "squish" noise when you blow yourself up like a dlot. Trust me, this happens more often than I would like to admit.
CONTROL
Its an FPS. Use a keyboard-mouse combo, just like Thresh, and you'll be fine. Nuff said.
GAMEPLAY
Well, I've praised the graphics and the sound, but how does it truly play?
To be honest, its the best single person FPS that I have ever played. The single player experience is so deep, cohesive and enthralling, that it truly reminded me of playing System Shock. You will have objectives that make sense in Halflife, not any of the generic find the key crap. Wether its starting up a reactor, crawling through ventilation ducts, lauching a satellite, or protecting a scientist so he can open a door via a retinal scanner, everything you do just makes sense. Its hard to explain, you'll just have to play it to see what I mean. One complaint here is that the alien word just plain sucked. I'm sorry, but the whole idea of having to go into a portal {know the feeling] to kill the big boss on his home planet was too contrived. There should have been a way to close the gap on my side. THe reason I'm bitching is because once you get to the alien world, its just a series or organic floating platforms in space. One reviewer rightly commented that these levels should have been called "Super Mario dies and goes to hell." The game would have been much better if the alien planet was just left off entirely. All in all, its good to see developers that make a single player game, instead of just tossing it in as an add on to a primarily deathmatch oriented title *cough* Quake 2*cough* However, the multiplayer aspect is quite nice too. I did encounter some lag problems, but once I found a good server using Gamespy, I was able to happily gib away. As I said previously the weapons are exceedingly well balanced, so you must fight the urge to run around frantically until you find a railgun. If you do that, some one is just going to throw a sachel charge at your feet and laugh as they blow you into the wall. It sounds stupid, but deathmatches hear must be approached quite differently than in most titles. So, in summary, what Halflife does is to meld an excellent single player game with an intense multiplayer game in what deserves to be noted as Game of the Year. My only fear is that with so many other FPS out there that are also good, the public will overlook Halflife and it will not get the recognition that it deserves. We don't need another System Shock here people!!! GO BUY THIS GAME!!
Summary
Graphics: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Control: 9/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Overall: 11/10 Yes I can add! This game just deserves an"11", thats all.
Madgrad
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