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Half-Life 2: more than half the fun

Game: Half-Life 2
Platform: PC
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Vivendi Universal
Released: February 2005

Nowadays first-person shooters (FPS) are now in the back burner, with massively multi-player online role playing games (MMORPG’s) like Ragnarok, Tantra and MU Online ruling the roost. But with a game like Half-Life 2 (HL2), all that could change: if only players disconnected from clogged servers once in a while to kick some alien butt with the meanest guns on the planet.

The original Half-Life was the yardstick by which all good FPS games were measured, and now with the sequel to the original game, the gaming world has yet again been shaken to its foundation... or maybe you haven’t felt it yet because it’s just way too fun playing Gunbound. HL2 presents some of the most engrossing gameplay since the original game, while keeping you at the edge of your seat for that alien critter about to lop your head off on the next corner. Or maybe that Hydra ready to whack the heck out of you if you come too close. Or maybe you’re like me and you have this compulsion to line up all the steel drums you can find in a level.

You play the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who messed up an alien experiment at Black Mesa in the United States, and then escapes to City 17 in Eastern Europe, launching a massive alien attack on the world. The most unfortunate scientist in the gaming universe then tries to escape the wrath of the US military, the people of City 17, and robots and aliens to boot.

The game boasts a jaw-dropping graphics engine: everything looks real, and they all act real. Wood surfaces act like wood: firing bullets in them will cause splinters and bullet holes. Ships and planes that fly through clouds will split the clouds up like real ones. Ramming a vehicle on a steel wall will dent it. The game has one of the best water effects ever found in a game, with real-time particle motion: different vehicles will kick up different dust patterns (hence, a motorcycle will not displace as much dust as a tank). Weapon modeling has been vastly improved, making you ogle over the new pulse rifle (the weapons of the Covenant faction in Halo II look like crap compared to this gun). Physics have also been tweaked that you can use this game for your Physics experiments.

Thus said, HL2 will require some pretty meaty PC’s to run: for the game to run smoothly, the least you would need is-aPC with a Pentium 4 2.4~GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 128 MB video card. The game isn’t cheap either: an original copy costs at least P3500 (a game this good isn’t as good when pirated).

With the kind of expense that HL2 brings to the table, it has to deliver in gameplay and longevity. After all, even the best-looking games can sometimes be boring (like Need for Speed: Underground 2) and isn’t as fun over time (again, Need for Speed: Underground 2). This is where HL2 delivers: it not only looks good, it plays good, too. It can be unbelievably short if you take the direct route to ends-of-levels, and/or through cheating, but if you explore your way and try some of the more creative ways to kill the critters this game can offer well over 30 hours of gameplay. It doesn’t hurt to play it all over again, especially if you want to find a way to kill those Strider robots that are as tall as skyscrapers using the gravity gun alone (it can be done).

The true strength of HL2 is still its multiplayer aspect: and yes, there is already a Counterstrike mod available for the game. But with the heavy-spec PC’s required to run the game, it’s highly unlikely that before the requirements become cheaper and more readily available that HL2 will grind MMORPG’s to dust. One of the reasons why the original CS was so popular was because it ran quite well on low-end PC’s, and this is what keeps HL2 CS from reachmgihe heights HL CS achieved. In case you were wondering, the new CS is essentially the old CS with hyped-up graphics, sound and riot shields for the counterterrorist faction.

So how does HL2 stack up against other games? It’s not exactly the most cost-efficient game available today, but it surely provides the best gameplay experience ever: can’t wait until Half-Life 3.# Marck Rimorin for NORDIS

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