Half-Life 2: Best game... ever?

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Okay... okay... I am 28 years old and I still play video games. Whew! I feel much better now that I have confessed. Actually, I shouldn't be embarassed. It seems that a lot of people pushing the 30 year old mark and beyond it play video games nowadays. It ain't all pimply faced kids clogging those online game servers - they are a bunch of pimply faced thirty-somethings too. Okay, not all of them have pimply faces I'm sure... but I bet most are single and male (like me).

One of my best friends is into console games and when I'm over at his place, we always wind up in front of the TV with controllers in our hands for hours on end. Man... it's easy to lose track of time when you are playing Halo on 2-player cooperative mode. Most of the games I am into are sci-fi or armed forces type First Person Shooters (or Simulators for the more politically correct types). In these games you get to control a World War II infantryman or space marine and you get to blow up stuff and sometimes drive vehicles. All this from the comfort of your sofa. Some of the games are really realistic, especially those historical recreations games like the Medal of Honor series or Call of Duty (I love this one). I was impressed while playing Halo at my friend's house and he very innocently said, "You know what game you should get... Half Life 2."

That was all he had to say. I started checking it out online. The screen shots looked awesome and reviews from players and game reviewers were glowing to say the least. The system requirements seemed too far advanced of what my now obsolete Compaq 900MHz machine could bear, but I decided to download the demo anyway. It worked well enough on my system with the graphics settings at medium to high levels. SOLD! I had to have this game. I found it online for about $20 cheaper than Best Buy (they usually have the cheapest prices for stuff like this). I didn't feel too guilty buying something that was gonna suck up my time at the lower price. It was delivered about 5 days after I placed the order.

So I installed it the day I got it. It took a really long time to do so, not because my PC is older, but because of the antipiracy system of installation. When installing, you must create an account with Valve Software's internet client called Steam. After installing the 5 CDs worth of data, Steam decrypts and decompresses all the data loaded onto your hard drive. All told, the process takes up about 1 hour of time and 3.5 GB of hard drive space. You actually can not install the game without an internet connection. Pretty snobby, huh? The installation also included a multiplayer Half-Life 2 themed game called Deathmatch and a terrorist vs. antiterrorist mission play game called Counter Strike. More on that later.

Half Life 2 game begins with a sort of dream sequence starring one of the creepy characters from the previous Half Life installment (reminds me of the Smoking Man from X-Files) speaking in a very condescending tone. His face fills the screen and his facial expressions are very lifelike and sync up perfectly with the audio. This fades away and you find yourself on a subway train. The sound effects are awesome and the graphics are beautiful. The train stops and the doors open. Another passenger mutters something sarcastic and you both get off the train.

Let me say here that the first 30 seconds of game play are very telling of what's to come. There are many details included to make the player feel like he is really there living in this fictitious environment... you really feel like the character. The first level is a kind of orientation that gets you used to the controls and gets you in the mood of the Eastern Block martial law environment of City 17. The founder of the area blabs a recorded message at you from a huge LCD screen hanging in the station. Here you have you first encounter with a member of Civil Protection. These guys have no sense of humor and don't like it when you make eye contact with them or encroach on their personal space. One CP hassles some guy very forcefully making him leave all his luggage behind. One minute into the game and you already hate these guys. No weapons yet though, can't do anything about them... have to obey them for now. You actually feel yourself sneering with contempt.

This first level is also where you become aware of just how interactive the experience is. Though the progression is somewhat linear, you are free to roam around and choose your path (in a way) as you interact. You can interact with other people to gain information. There is gravity here... real gravity! You pick stuff up and drop it and it bounces around until it comes to rest. You can push something, like a wheeled cart, and it will roll until friction takes over, slowing it to a stop. You can throw things short distances, you can open storage locker doors at the station and even get a soda from the vending machine! The graphics also help you lose yourself in this imaginary world. The sun streams in through skylights and casts realistic looking shadows as do the artificial lights. The stucco textures on the walls of the station look very lifelike as do all the other textures in the game. All objects and surfaces are very consistent unlike some games that try to mimic the look of reality. They also do not suffer from that "pasted on" look that texture maps often have. Once again... the sounds are awesome... very "real-life" as well.

I don't want to give too much of the story away for those of you that want to get this game. [WARNING: There are some spoilers in the screen shots at the end of this post] A lot of the fun is experiencing it first hand. Suffice it to say that while you do have friends in this game, there are a lot more enemies. This is where the "Shooter" in "First Person Shooter" comes in. While you do wind up with some out of this world and odd weapons in this game (I'll let you be surprised), there are some real world ones too. The game developers must like Heckler & Koch, because you wind up with and HK USP Match 9mm (the Tomb Raider pistol) and a MP7 sub-machine gun complete with genade launcher and red dot sight. A shiny chromed .44 magnum is found along the way. You also get a SPAZ 12 shotgun and a crossbow for long range shots, which has been modified to fire something more evil than arrows. Then there are the grenades which are very intuitive as far as the art of lobbing is concerned. That's pretty much everything I want to include here. You can get a preview of the other weapons in the screen shots.

This game isn't all mindless shooting though. There are some puzzles to figure out in order to proceed. We are not talking Myst or Riven type of “pulling your hair out where's the cheat book” puzzles, though they can be a little frustrating. When friends try this game, I tell them to pretend they are really there... to do what they would in real life to solve the problem. This problem solving involves looking around your environment as you would in real life. You need to contemplate what's lying around and use it to help you. Many puzzles are physics based requiring you to use gravity, buoyancy and other interactive physical forces to accomplish goals.

So it is safe to say that I like this game and recommend it to others. If you get board with it once you finish it, you can always play the multiplayer version set in the Half Life 2 universe called Deathmatch. Here the object is pretty much to frag the other players and get the highest score. There are a few official maps for it, but most of the maps are mods created by other gamers in the modification community.

These guys also love to create maps and models for the other game included in the Half Life 2 package called Counter Strike. This new installment of the popular online game uses the Half Life 2 Source engine to render graphics, sounds, physics, etc. This game is a mission based team game with two sides: terrorists and counter terrorists. There is a mission specified based for the map and a certain amount of time allotted to complete it. Depending on how quickly the mission objectives are met and the global time limit, you may play the same mission on the same map several times. How well your team did on the previous mission determines the amount of money that goes into your team’s bank account. This money is used to buy weapons, ammunition and other equipment, like body armor. Missions include rescuing hostages and defusing bombs. Recently the option to play with and against bots was added in a free program update. Since I do not know anyone else that has Counter Strike and the guys online eat, sleep, and breathe this game, the bots are enough for me.

So go out and get Half Life 2 and prepare to use up a lot of your free time playing it.