Rise and shine, Mr Freeman.
User Rating: 9 | Half-Life 2 PC
A while back I purchased the Half-Life 1 Anthology of Steam and found it to be an impressive bundle with Team Fortress Classic just to sweeten the deal and empty my pockets. I purchased Half-Life 2 after playing the demo and found out I was playing one of the greatest PC games of all time, although I extract every negative aspect of a game when reviewing it to make my reviews as informative as they can be. However, it's hard to find a game that's nearly perfect in it's every possible aspect which is Half-Life 2's issue when criticizing it. You can't say anything bad about it without having a roomful of dedicated PC gamers hacking away it you with their replica crowbars, so let me get the praise for HL2 out of the way. It's good looking, but then again what isn't these days? It's got a great dystopian story, fantastic set pieces and realistic physics due to Valve's Source engine. The story starts in City 17, a human district which is run by an alien race called the Combine who have complete control of the place. Their control over City 17 is so powerful that they've gone out of the way to create an energy field that stops human reproduction, a move which is guaranteed to piss people off. As Gordon Freeman (one of gaming greatest silent protagonists) your mission is stop the Combine and save the universe once again. It seems that the people in the Half-Life universe rely on the Freeman a bit to much, in this game he is unfrozen by G-Man during a fairly bizarre intro sequence which looks likes an acid trip mixed with a speech by George Bush. So let's talk about the crap parts (I can already hear the Valve fans outside my door.) It follows the same formula as Half-Life Uno which is linear connecting sequence followed by thrilling set piece and then repeated, but the game is so damn good that this isn't really and issue. There I said all I needed to say about this wonderful game, and as a PC gamer I suggest you get it so you can be reminded that first-person shooters aren't as brown as the Canadian Poo Exhibition 
