Must-buy for those who have yet to experience this masterpiece or those who simply want to update their Half-Life games.
Half-Life 1: Anthology is the ideal package for me. It contains the original Half-Life as well as Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift. (Team Fortress Classic is also included, but I am not interested in that.) This compilation, which requires Steam for authentication, allows me to catch up on the Half-Life mythos without dealing with multiple CD-ROMs and trouble of looking for the latest patches as with the Sierra’s Platinum Edition.
When I played these three games, I kept in mind about the time during which they were originally released. Although the games were made using a modified Quake engine, the graphics were quite decent. Without the High-Definition Pack, they were not as good looking as Quake 2, but with the High-Definition Pack installed, the games were much more eye-pleasing. Despite the age of the games, they held up really well. Given the way the narrative unfolds through the eyes of the player (as Dr. Gordon Freeman) I could see why Half-Life made such a memorable impression back then.
As a more mature gamer now, I was hooked the moment the experiment began at the Anomalous Materials lab, and remained so for the remainder of the game until I arrived at Xen. When my friend first introduced Half-Life to me back in 1999, he told me to play up to the part when I arrive at the alien planet, after which he told me to quit. Was he ever right! The jumping puzzles in Xen were annoying and the game difficulty shot from manageable to near-impossible in the chapter, Interloper. These elements marred an otherwise highly exciting gaming experience and turned it into pure frustration.
Nonetheless, the good outnumbered the bad in Half-Life. The chapter, Surface Tension, was exciting from beginning to end. I could never forget about the chapter, Apprehension, in which I loaded up on a plethora of weapons and ammos after defeating the black ops, but only to lose them all immediately when I was captured and thrown into a trash compactor. It was also fascinating to see how the sceneries and weapons in Half-Life inspired the designs in its sequel.
After Half-Life, I played Half-Life: Opposing Force, which was a very well done expansion pack. Opposing Force featured a number of new weapons such as the Desert Eagle pistol, which was my favourite for taking out black ops with deadly accuracy and speed. This expansion pack added more depth to the Half-Life mythos by allowing players to see the events unfold from the marines’ perspective (as Corporal Adrian Shephard), and to see the G-Man’s involvement in the events at Black Mesa in greater detail. Xen also played a very minor role in Opposing Force compared to Half-Life, and that was good. It also happened with good reason since your character had no reason to go there. However, like Half-Life, Opposing Force’s game difficulty level was quite uneven. I found it more difficulty to negotiate the sewers in the third-last chapter, Foxtrot Uniform, than defeating the final boss. I read afterwards that I could use the Displacer (which I did not use even once during the game) to bypass the Voltigores’ onslaught in the sewers. However, there were no clues given that I could do that to make life easier. Still, Opposing Force is a welcoming expansion in general.
Finally, there is Half-Life: Blue Shift, the second and last official expansion pack to Half-Life. Unfortunately, it added little to the Half-Life mythos aside from the formal introduction to Barney Calhoun, a security guard with the uncanny ability to use a variety of firearms. The events that transpired in Blue Shift felt inconsequential and as a result, the game was rather unfulfilling. Furthermore, there were no new weapons in Blue Shift, and the selection of weapons at the player’s disposal was just a subset of that offered in Half-Life. Unfortunately, none of the exciting alien weapons such as the extremely useful hivehand or the powerful gauss gun made the cut. However, of the three games, Blue Shift offers the best balance in game difficulty (though the dreaded jumping puzzles returned). At no point did I feel completely overwhelmed or frustrated because the enemies were too powerful given the weapons that I had at my disposal.
Half-Life is not the perfect game, but it did set the bar for better storytelling in first person shooters and paved way for more immersive games. Technically, Half-Life 2 excelled in every aspect compared to Half-Life, especially in balancing game difficulty. However, now that I got to experience Half-Life in its entirety, I have to agree that Half-Life is a much better game than Quake 2. I should have gotten on the boat earlier.