Sony Half-Life by Valve Corporation

Ever since it’s release, I’ve been hearing about how great Half-Life is. Now that I’ve finally played it, I honestly can say ”big deal”.

Gameplay: It’s your average FPS, run, jump, strafe, shoot, corridors full of enemies, and gibs. What sets this game aside from others? Heck if I know. Multiplayer is the only reason to play Half-Life. I guess its fun, but the immense amount of campers and lamers is just overwelming. That and the weapons just aren’t balanced. Far too often you’ll respawn with your handgun right next to some guy with a rocket launcher or a gluon gun. It’s also funny to watch people trying to get away from your bullets by crouching, maybe they don’t realize they’re hardly a smaller target at all, mostly just a slower one. Single player is boring. Period. Too many pointless puzzles and platform jumping, too many of the same enemies over and over (and over) again. The controls and weapons are standard for an FPS, nothing really special. It’s quite amusing to watch the gibs though, your enemies will spew one-eyed bloody skulls, chicken bones, and random globs, often more than one of each. I might give the game an extra point for that. 5/10

Story: After a 10 minute intro in which you are confined to a small area (fun!), you wander around and see lots of scientists that all look the same. Then, you set off to conduct an experiment. You screw up. Then aliens start appearing all over, and you have to escape the research facility. Someone calls in the army, which apparently decides to kill everyone in the facility. You, Gordon Freeman, a nerdy scientist must plow down thousands of aliens and trained soldiers with no previous combat experience whatsoever. It’s amazing what a dork can do when he’s wet his pants. Admittedly, I never finished the game. I was about 3/4s through when I said ”God ****ing **** this game to ****, this ****ing sucks!”. Boring game really. The rest of the story mostly consists of a large alien blocking the way, and you hitting 3 switches that are really far apart to kill it. You do this over and over again, but sometimes theres no alien, just switches. Then again, other times, they’re buttons, not switches. 2/10

Graphics: Well being based on a modified Quake 1 engine, they’re good. By today’s standards they suck though. They were OK for the time it was made, but it’s not exactly eye candy anymore… 4/10

Controls: By these are the WORST controls that I have ever use while playing FPS. The controls are so touchy, that if you put your thumb forward all the way on the joystick Gordon will go all over the place. Its like he has melted butter in his shoes…..

Sound: The audio can be good and bad. There are some sounds that are just stupid sounding, like items respawing in multiplayer. Most of the sounds are just there, nothing great. The machine gun sounds like you’re shooting popsicle sticks. The music is few and far in between, and only in single player. It just plays one of the couple audio tracks off the CD over and over until you kill everything trying to kill you at the time. One good side is that some of the music is pretty good. 4/10

Replayability: REplayability??? I can’t imagine actually finishing the game, let alone playing it again! Multiplayer, I play once every couple months when I’m bored. Like really bored. 3/10

Buy or rent: Considering you can’t rent PC games….I’d say pass, unless you enjoy hours upon hours of boring monotonous gameplay.

My first real exposure to Half-Life was through the machinima/walkthrough called Freeman’s Mind. After that, I wanted to learn more about this game. Learning it came out on the PS2 as well as the PC was enough for me to try this game.

I’m not disappointed. The graphics are amazing, the action is fast and exciting, and it’s fun. I enjoy the occasional first-person shooter, I’m not hardcore, and this has a good blend of action, puzzles, and survival.

So yeah, the game overall is fun and enjoyable. There are some points in which it gets frustrating, like having to manually quick-save, but the difficulty is welcoming.