Electronic Arts Half Life 2 by Valve

A pretty clever game, though at time rather disgusting. Still, you can’t beat the combination of interesting story, challenging puzzles, and fight-for-your-life struggle. If it takes a zombie apocalypse to justify all that, so be it. I could do without all the blood splats and the hideous headcrabs, but actual alien invasion would probably be a lot less pretty 😉

I am definitely NOT a video game officianado, I rarely play but I enjoyed this game. Even on the easy setting I found it pretty challenging. However, the characters are lifelike and the word is very realistic. A fun adventure, I would buy it again.

The game seems solid, but not “Game of the Year.” The AI is Atrocious, and the gameplay isn’t anything special, but this can help pass time.

Game came very fast and is in great shape for an older game! Very fun to play – I like it

Half Life 2 is the sequel to the highly fun and immersive, first person shooter, Half Life 1 where you are again Gordon Freeman.

Since this is a first person shooter, let’s talk about the guns. For starters you have the basic weapons, pistols, machine guns, a shotgun, grenades, rocket launcher (RPG?) and so on. Some weapons have dual uses like the machine gun has a grenade launcher. The weapons feel very good to use. The pistol has never been so much fun to shoot wow! I’m shocked. The machine guns have real kick to them. The shotgun seems very effective. The rocket launcher is laser guided, which is fun to take down helicopters with. Launch it and guide it to the helicopter, because if you shoot it straight, the rocket will get shot down.

Now let’s talk about the gravity gun, which is a highly duplicated gun. Personally the gravity gun seems more cumbersome to use it as a weapon. Sure it has its fun moments throwing a saw blade or an explosive canister at enemies, but the aim is imperfect and you need to grab something, turn and shoot it, but it should only be used when you’re out of ammo… or if you want to change your style of mayhem.

The combat is rich and fulfilling with certain segments of driving such as a boat or car segment where you still get out and go into buildings to combat things. There are also puzzles and challenges to breakup the action just like there were with the original game. It keeps you thinking, sometimes over thinking. There are puzzles such as using a crane to move your car, using a washing machine to weigh down a platform and taking out a force field by rolling a car (trying not to spoil). There are less puzzles in this game than the last, most of the puzzles seem to involve combat like using the gravity gun as a weapon.

The graphics are amazing and detailed (on the PC, the X-Box version can look muddy close up). Everything is a vista it looks so good. Textures are detailed, areas are detailed as you travel on your journey. Lighting is beautiful both with dark and flame or bright lights. In fact one enemy has an attack that is a blinding bright light.

You really get a sense of distance traveled by this game. You aren’t just put in levels that go here and there. This is a lot like a road trip where you span miles over the game. You see map locations and you travel through realistic areas whether they be ghettos, sewers, train yards, the west coast by the ocean in a car, abandon farms and down a river on a boat.

Level design is well thought out. Areas are very realistic and cluttered with things you’d really find in any given area. There are trees, junk, wrecked cars, beds, dilapidated walls, broken floors and so on. It really helps the immersion that these areas feel real instead of a typical video game level. This is a very linear game that does have little points of exploration, but you are cleverly guided through things that catch your eye. Like lights in a room are turned on or a character standing under a light and the game will condition you to subtle cues that they mean “go here” or characters will flat out say “run Gordon! Go now I’ll hold them off.”

There are several very fun and memorable situations such as climbing under a massive bridge only to have something happen. A graveyard firefight at the side of a priest, a den of giant spiders (head crabs),

The game has several new or altered enemies. Even the old enemies are more difficult and altered. There are new head crabs, the standard and the venomous kind. For humans that have a head crab on them, they are this game’s zombies, smart, difficult, dangerous zombies. You can shoot them in the head, slice them in half, sometimes the head crab will hop off, they scream a horrifying muffled wail, but worst of all… if you don’t get moving they will rise again in a matter of minutes. There are several terrifying enemies that with the dark and new lighting really disturbs you and sends a dread through you that other games fail to duplicate. The game really manages to terrify you through other ways, such as traveling beneath a giant bridge actually gives you a sense of height that is strangely intense because you fear falling when clearly this is a video game. Maybe that says something about the game’s immersion.

Of course there are your run of the mill soldiers, and special ops enemies… but they are intelligent. Several enemies in the game are very intelligent and don’t have patterns, but thought processes. Such as if they are injured, they will fall back and get a better position, if they have you pinned down, they will throw in grenades, rush in with guns blazing or bait you into firing at them. They will never line up to be shot; they will fan out so they can all shoot you.

I’ve mentioned the game’s immersion, just like the previous Half Life, characters and friendly people will talk to you with their voices and not in a cut scene. You can walk around as they talk to one another. Nothing is stiff or forced. Good voice acting, but I feel like the previous game was better and less long winded when their characters talk. I know I should be paying attention, but I get more fun when they speak and I’m jumping on their heads. The game makers like to brag about everything being motion captured, but to be honest I never notice that their motions look real, which could be the intention. So good you won’t get taken out of the game by a stiff or animated or robotic like in the previous game.

After getting several hours into the game and even playing through Half Life 1 and its expansions, I honestly don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how Gordon Freeman went from being in a complex fighting invading enemies to being in a city occupied by human soldiers. I feel like I missed a cut scene, and that really takes me out of the game, which they are really trying to keep you from being taken out.

The game also really seems to stroke your ego a lot. You went from being one man who steps up to being the only man who can save them and you’re the new messiah. All hail you Gordon Freeman. Stop telling me I’m so great and just tell me what I have to do. It makes me think everyone in the game wants me to help it move…

The music is good and will show up at the right moments. It’s nice. The sound is great and I never hear anything questionable or bad. Voice acting is great too.

In all the game is a lot of fun, but a lot of it isn’t, especially if you’re a little clueless as to what the story is, because the game won’t help you with that right away at least. What might be an intense boat segment of the game might be a long annoyance for some people. Sometimes you can over think puzzles that aren’t even really puzzles, but you miss a small lock to shoot off something and end up using the newly acquired gravity gun to pile junk to get over things. What could be a fun car segment with stops in between could be seen as an annoyance to have to stop, because the military has ambushed you or set up a force field.

Runs and plays well. However I’d recommend playing it on the older console – the original Xbox. It lags like crazy on any 360, especially anything newer. Game play is great as always, very slight difference in layout in comparison to the version on The Orange Box. Excellent game.