Has some short falls but it is definitely revolutionary and is a great achievement. A definite must have game
I never played the first half life so the whole environment and feel to the game was completely new to me, but as the game progressed and the story unfolded I found that I didn’t really need to play the first game to understand this one and that it was a very easy game to adjust too and you really don’t need to have a well developed understanding of games to play it as it’s a very user friendly game, that I didn’t think I’d be saying.
The story in half-life 2 isnt very deep but is still good and keeps you interested. There are many twists and turns in the story of Half Life 2 that will keep you hooked on the games story but nothing really takes place throughout the game that will really wow you, yet the ending did leave me a bit confused but that may have just been because I had not played a Half Life game before now. Half life 2 resolves around Gordon freeman again and takes place a few years after the black messa incident in the first game, as the story unfolds you find out that City 17 is under the rule of a totalitarian administrator named Doctor Breen, who is the former administrator of the Black Mesa Research Facility in Half-Life, he is merely a ruler that is being controlled by the alien race the Combine.
But the main problem with the story is that it feels rushed and underdeveloped and though in Half Life the story was probably one of the best parts of the game sadly this is not reflected into its sequel as it feels as though there is something missing and that something needed to be explained to make it all make sense.
The gameplay in half life two is amazing and probably the most intense gaming experience to date, they have used the havoc physics along with there own source engine to make a environment and world that is fully interactive and everything from the way bodies fall to the way cars explode to the way bullets dent metal doors on impact; everything has been made from scratch to reflect the way in which it would react in the real world.
One of the several changes to the gameplay was the addition of vehicles, you can only control two of them in the game (hover boat and buggie) but they are incredibly fun to drive and offer a different experience to the norm. The vehicles aren’t difficult to control either, to people that are familiar with games such as halo they will get used to them in a flash but for non Halo players the controls are still easy enough to grasp fairly quickly. What I liked about the vehicles in Half Life 2 is that they are not overall powerful and you can still easily get killed in them but they are more used as a mobile use of transport than as a mobile gunship as you use them to locate you past non habitable pieces of land due to being on for you would not make it there, or be able to pass as of hazards such as toxic waste preventing you from passing on foot.
Valve also attempts to change the pace of the game in some parts of levels with element of puzzle solving. This is a great change in pace and allows you to actually think when playing this game in sections instead of just blasting your way threw the game, on example of this is in one of the earlier levels where you have several barrels and you have to put them in an underwater basket to help weigh the bottom end of this ramp down to allow your vehicle to pass.
They take advantage of this revolutionary technology with giving you an unbelievably fun weapon the Gravity gun, and is an achievement in its self. It is a gun that plays around with physics and is used to pick up tables, doors, pipes or even razor sharp blades and launch them at your enemies doing so is deeply satisfying. But the gravity gun is just one of many great weapons in this game there is a variety of guns from the standard smg to the rocket launcher, crossbow, revolver, pistol, grenades, shotgun and many more.
But my overall favourite weapon to use is the Antlion Pheropod (Bugbait) that you collect to bring to your control ant lions. Simply throw one at a combine soldier and watch them rip them to shreds, the ant lions will find any source of entry to get to the position of where the egg landed from burring through sand to tunnelling and smashing through concrete floors. The only disappointment with this weapon is that you only get chance to use it properly is in about two levels, I would have liked for them to have had a more of a role as they are just so fun to use.
The Graphics in this game are outstanding, the graphical power of the 4Gb P.C game was defiantly not lost in translation from the Port to P.C to X box thats for sure. The real time lighting and water effects are amazing and the animations and the character models in the game is shockingly life like and are the best part about the graphics. Characters will grin, frown, look shocked and a whole variety of other emotions during the course of the game. Developers Valve Software have got the animations spot on by the way in which the facial expressions change due to the mood of the characters.
The soundtrack is effective and reflects extremely well the mood and tone of the game. The soundtrack in Half Life 2 doesn’t ever really come to life in a sense and is more of an ambient slow paced yet effective piece of music that changes as the story in the game progresses. The voice acting is another one of Half Life 2 highlights as it is highly convincing, all the characters sound the way in which you'd imagine them to sound if they were real. As for the Sound effects they as with the rest of the game is of high standards, one of the prime examples of this is the gun effects, such as the SMG as the sound in which it makes really compliments the power of the gun and makes it feel just that bit more powerful.
But the best part of the audio defiantly comes from the audio. As like in the original Half life game Gordon freeman’s character does not speak, so the characters around him that address him will normally either ask a rhetorical question or for instance will then question him on his ignorance after not replying.
Like many games now days half Life 2 fits into the 10 – 15 hour range to complete in normal difficulty. The game took me roughly 12 hours to beat, but is a very memorable experience and has huge replay value, and after completing it again I will revisit it again on a harder difficulty. But sadly and this is one of the main reasons that stops this game from being a lot better than it could have been is that there is no multi player options and that there has been no talk or even rumours for that matter of downloadable content being available for Half Life 2 on Xbox multi player aspect, which is a shame as this game would have benefited greatly to the addition of multi player.
The A.I in Half Life 2 is pretty good as well but I have a felling that Valve could have done a little better, as there are certain parts of absolute greatness, you will be flanked, chased down and left for the dead by this highly functional intelligent A.I, then there are some parts in the game where the A.I really is let down a lot, such as in some parts of the game you will end up in close quarters with the combine and sometimes they don’t activate properly and you will be standing there having a staring contest with him for about two seconds before he finally activates.
But the main problem with the games A.I is that enemies don’t half of the time present a challenge and sometimes it is as if they are just standing there waiting to be shot, they will at times charge at you but you can just mow them down in a couple shots as the game isnt at all challenging in all it is disappointingly easy game as most people will be lead towards the normal difficulty setting due to it being classed as normal but here you can breeze threw the game without even breaking a sweat so if you are a fps fanatic I’d advise the harder difficulty.
One of the things that I liked the most about this game was the level design. It never gets repetitive and you will be seeing great pieces of scenery and locations during your time playing this game. One of my favourites being the ravonholm levels where you are in a run down city that is overrun by zombies, one thing that Valve can deliver in style is atmosphere, this is shown to the best effects in the ravonholm levels, as there are numerous points in the levels where the zombies can jump out unnoticed and if you are not on guard will make you become very trigger happy for a few seconds.
There are set paths for you to follow during the games missions but it feels as you can side track on yourself at any time during a level like you have been given a much more expansive world to explore than is on offer. Valve also in some levels have the inclusion of vehicles to differentiate the levels and help keep the game fresh, these levels are fun and they have used great use of the vehicles as they are merely used mostly for transport than a mobile weapon.
The characters in half-life 2 like not many games today are possibly the main highlight of the game. Some of the best sequences in the game come from talking to the characters and just getting to know them as they are interesting and so well developed. The Combine are also very interesting, they are a very underdeveloped race and feel as though there is a lot more to find out about them than Valve has currently shown us.
One of my personal favourites would have to be dog who is a robot that was built by dr clinner for Alex when she was a child, on the introduction of dog you have to play fetch with him while throwing a ball at him and catching it again with the gravity gun, which again was another cleaver yet fun change of pace and direction with the gameplay that Valve took full advantage over there highly functional physics engine.
Sadly there are some problems with this game upon the port from it from P.C to x-box and one of the major problems has got to be the frame rate which does suffer quite a lot during loading between checkpoints and when there’s a lot of action on screen, but I tried my best to avoid this problem to try and forget that it was occurring but sometimes the framerate just dips beyond playable level and it really an be a bore after a while.
But on the Plus side to the erratic frame rate the load times in Half Life 2 are not frequent and occur very rarely and when they do appear they are very short lasting no longer than 10 seconds then you are back into the game, which is a huge achievement due to the power of the game.
In all though Half life 2 shouldn’t be missed, it has short falls but what game doesn’t, there is always room for improvement it delivers an experience that is unique and thou the absence of multi player haunts this title it has a single player experience that will keep you coming back again and again.