I first saw Half-Life at the 1997 E3 Expo in Atlanta. I hadn't heard of the game previously, and certainly had never heard of Valve Software. This new game was being shown, a game that used the Quake engine as its basis (the final version uses the Quake II engine), but certainly didn't look like Quake at all. Upon closer inspection, the enemies showed a level of intelligence never before seen, and the atmosphere was positively cinematic without ever resorting to a third-person perspective or narrative. Nearly two years later, the final version of Half-Life is on store shelves, and was worth every minute of the wait.
You play Gordon Freeman, a 27-year-old scientist who works at the Black Mesa research laboratory, buried deep beneath the desert sand. You arrive at work a little late the day the game begins, showing up in time to help perform an experiment - one that will change your life forever. Everything that can go wrong does, leaving most of your colleagues dead or wounded. Still in your environment suit, your only hope of survival is to make it to the surface. Of course, that's no simple task.
One of the most original things about Half-Life is the way the story is progressed. You never leave the persona of Freeman, and everything is viewed through his eyes. There's never a cut scene, and you never see what's going on unless you are there. The beginning sequence of the game is one of the most innovative. There's no combat, and you are simply a man on his way to work. Of course, work in an underground lab is not typical, but the first half-hour of the game or so involves no combat at all. You begin on a train that moves towards your lab. A voice on the train P.A. system gives you some information on the lab. It's all very smooth, and none of the information feels forced. Upon arrival, a number of co-workers talk to you and help you along. Security guards allow you access to certain locked office doors, and scientists allow access to the high-security labs. Everyone seems to be mentioning that you should head towards "the experiment". Once suited up, you arrive at the lab and then it really hits the fan. The experiment goes horribly wrong, and an explosion takes out most of the complex. In your environmental suit, you survive, and walk back past the wreckage that was once you place of business.
Even post-accident, the non-enemy characters retain an interesting quality. One of the first things you see is a fellow scientist performing CPR on a downed security guard. Life forms never before seen start popping into existence all over the lab. It's an eerie environment, very creepy and remains that way through the rest of the game. You begin your slow climb to the surface, aided by the guards and scientists as you go. Guards and scientists open locked doors and give you more information as you progress. Guards will also watch your back and help you kill the strange aliens that have infested the complex. Ultimately, you'll encounter a team of Army Rangers that have been sent into Black Mesa. You watch in horror as your fellow scientists cheerfully rush headlong to their executions. The soldiers are not there to help, they're there to secure the area and make sure there are no witnesses.
None of this could have been accomplished without the immersive graphical environment that is provided in Half-Life. It doesn't look like the Quake II engine, it looks infinitely better. Acceleration is provided by both OpenGL and Direct3D, the latter not even provided in the original Quake II engine. If you haven't bought a 3D accelerator yet, this game is your reason.
Sound effects are wonderful, everything from the gunshots to footsteps retain a realistic quality without going overboard. The alien screams and calls are imaginative done very well. Even the voice acting is superb, something I'd expect from an adventure game, not from a 3D shooter. The music is some of the best I've heard in a game, but there just isn't enough of it. At certain key points in the game, the music kicks in and it's great but once it's over you won't hear new music for a while.
The enemy AI is unbelievable; the Army Rangers will actually hunt you. They'll act as decoys while talking to each other, throwing hand grenades to flush you out, then mercilessly ventilating you with machine guns. They'll even hide when they need to reload and run when hurt. I've never seen AI like this before. The aliens have their own system of attacks, some single-mindedly pursuing you without real intelligence, others using special attacks to try and stop you. When the Rangers fail, specially trained Ninjas are sent to stop you once and for all. These are some of the single scariest enemies I've ever seen in a game like this. They're very quiet, although you can still hear the padded scuffling of their feet as they surround you and try to assassinate you. They use crossbows as their weapon of choice, because it's very quiet and deadly. They can pop up anywhere, and are so fast and agile they're almost impossible to kill.
The weapons are very interesting. You start out with the simple crowbar, used as much to break open windows as it is to hit things over the "head". Upon finding a dead security guard, you'll recover a pistol. A guard post gives you a shotgun and some grenades. When you encounter the Rangers, you'll gain access to machine guns, mortars, and bazookas. Of course, the aliens provide their own special surprises. Much later in the game, experimental weapons show up. Everything you uncover makes sense in some way, from the weapons based on the real thing, to the ones that exist only in the game.
Multiplayer support is available in Half-Life, of course. The Quake II engine was built for it, and was already rock solid. But it's the single player game in Half-Life that sets it apart, with incredible AI and a scary story.
No game is perfect, and I actually have a couple nit-picks about Half-Life as well. The save mechanism is a little clunky, and quick save doesn't use the same save slot over and over again. Every time you save, it flashes back to the Windows desktop for a second before going back into the game. This is very minor; at least the game allows you to save whenever you want. In this day where console games are being ported to the PC with all of their inferior traits intact, I can't complain much about the fact that a decent save mechanism exists at all. I can, however, still complain very loudly about the lack of an automap. What used to be the most basic feature of 3D action games is still notoriously absent even from this excellent game. With around 70% of the Quake II engine rewritten, you'd think that the designers at Valve would have included this most basic of functions.
Half-Life is, without a doubt, the most incredible game of its type available today. The environment is amazing, the AI is ruthless, and the story keeps you wanting to know what will happen next. I never thought I'd give five stars to a 3D action game without an automap, but everything about Half-Life is so well done that I just can't resist.
