Half-Life

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• New weapons; new levels; solve a variety of puzzles; first-person shooter

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000DMAE
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: February 15, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,837 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Many action games begin with a catastrophic event, but none matches the intensity of the opening level of Half-Life, a first-person shooter published by Sierra Studios. Utilizing a heavily modified Quake 2 engine, the game follows a day in the life of Gordon Freeman, a mild-mannered scientist who inadvertently opens a portal to an alien dimension.

As Gordon, you'll battle a variety of hostile alien creatures and some not-so-friendly government soldiers while you attempt to escape from the underground--and heavily ravaged--testing facility. Featuring both an engaging, atmospheric single-player experience and frenetic multiplayer action (supporting both local network and Internet play), Half-Life is currently one of the best games of it type.

What makes Half-Life special is its combination of crisp 3-D graphics (supporting many 3-D hardware accelerators), creepy ambient sound effects, and nail-biting action, which creates an immersive, movie-like experience. In moments reminiscent of the movie Aliens, creatures leap from behind desks, drop down out of air vents, and pounce from dark corners--nowhere is safe, and you'll often feel overwhelmed and outgunned. Speaking of weapons, Half-Life features an imaginative offensive and defensive arsenal, from a simple crowbar to the explosive heat-seeking rocket launcher and crafty crossbow. If you're looking for an action-packed, story-oriented game that continues to impress after many hours, check out Sierra's Half-Life. --Doug Radcliffe

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You play the star in this exceptional action 'movie', December 21, 1999

By 

Mr. P. Crowe (Kent, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Half-Life (CD-ROM)

Forget Quake II, Sin and other lesser experiences, Half-Life is the unchallenged ruler of the single player action game. The excitement comes from playing the unlikely hero in a fantastically well scripted movie.

Due to an experimental accident you become trapped in a fictional `Area 51' type of underground facility. The experiment you were working on created a dimensional portal that damaged the base and unleashed hordes of repulsive aliens hell bent on destruction. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (like you have a choice!) is to get out of the base alive and get help. Unfortunately the military have other Ideas. The military brass wants the whole problem to go away, they want to kill the aliens and all the scientists too. Your only allies in your herculean task are a few intellectually challenged security guards and a few terrified scientists. Fortunately you have the use of an `Earthworm Jim' environmental suit and along the way you accumulate a devastating arsenal of weapons. The time to chew gum is over, the time to kick a$$ has begun.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Half-Life, August 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Half-Life (CD-ROM)

Few games transcend mediocrity and bash down the doors of greatness-Half-Life is one such game. Unlike Quake's mindless corridor rampage, Half-Life is equal parts action and adventure. Ammo is limited, so you'll have to find other ways to frag your foe. Also, there's a fair amount of jumping and object manipulation, so über-fraggers may dislike Half-Life's more adventurous spirit. You'll have to mix up your attack strategies to survive-there are no Runes of Invulnerability or Quad Damages here.

As scientist Gordon Freeman working deep within the underground Black Mesa complex, your workday takes a hard right-turn into hell when top-secret experiments go awry, unleashing a blood-thirsty menagerie of nasty critters. Only your wits, stealth, and effective use of weapons and cover will save the day.

Fighting your way back to the surface is a bone-chilling affair, but the scenery makes it all worthwhile, thanks to Valve's choice of 3D-polygon engine. Half-Life took the best that Quake and QuakeWorld had to offer and taught it a thing or three, with a staggering list of tweaks and optimizations. For starters, Half-Life is the only Quake-tech game to support both OpenGL and Direct3D. For peak performance, we recommend the OpenGL option (with its multitextured lighting), although the D3D isn't shabby. Either way, Half-Life packs all the expected visual tricks, including alpha-blended water and glass, procedural texturing for blood-splattering effects, and even cool spark effects. Unfortunately, the clean, bright, and varied textures are limited to 256x256. But they do run in either 16-bit or 24-bit depth for even crisper colors. Rather than traditional multipiece polygon models, Half-Life's models are made up of a single mesh. This is then wrapped in a single texture and animated via skeletal mapping for realistic motion with no visible seams or joints. And each model has twice (roughly 400/800) the polygon count of a normal game, such as Quake. These beefier models sport animated facial expressions, long missing in first-person shooters. But these aren't just animated textures-Half-Life's mouth movements are fully animated polygons.

The arsenal, from the typical shotgun to the alien Hivehand spewing living projectiles, keep Half-Life fresh. But what good are all these delectable death-dealers without some moving targets? Enter Half-Life's much-vaunted artificial intelligence.

Half-Life challenges the notion that a programmed AI is predictable and easy to beat. The virtual denizens react so lifelike, you'll wonder whose brain is hooked up on the other end. Lob a grenade into a squad of soldiers and watch them scramble for cover. Likewise, a squad leader may yell "fire in the hole" as a grenade bounces into your lap. And if the humans weren't bad enough, the extraterrestrials are even worse. Each species has its own traits-some retreat when confronted alone, but will turn around and attack with the proper reinforcements. Their sophisticated AI beats the stuffing out of Shogo's anemic intelligence any day of the week.

To safely traverse these darkened corridors, you'll need to keep a keen ear open for the soldiers' radio chatter, gurgling alien noises, and ominous footsteps. A host-based reverb/echo combined with 3D positional support via A3D and EAX make Half-Life's acoustics rock.

Start to finish, Half-Life is a cinematic gaming experience like no other. Forget [bad] pre-rendered FMV drivel-Half-Life uses the actual game engine to seamlessly move the story along, all from a first-person perspective.

At times, prescripted actions restrain your role to that of a hapless voyeur. As you try to piece together what the hell went wrong, you'll stumble onto scenes of horrific carnage: fellow scientists being attacked by parasitic head-crabs, a guard's mangled corpse being cut in two by a stray laser, elevators full of escapees plunging down deep shafts. But when you can intercede, you won't have to adventure alone-Half-Life's NPCs help out in your quest. Fellow scientists might be able to heal your wounds and security officers can be convinced to provide cover fire.

And ample cover can be found in the design of the Black Mesa complex, which is excellent, with catwalks and air vents spanning upcoming levels and environmental hazards that require traditional puzzle solving. And the lag between nodes within the game has been minimized so it doesn't intrude on the action.

Is Half-Life perfect? No. For all the attention to detail in most areas, little details such as seeing the weapon while you climb ladders takes away from the immersion. And while the interaction in Half-Life is reminiscent of Duke Nukem 3D, with breakable soda machines, usable microwave ovens, and even a hand dryer, this interactivity dwindles as the game goes on. Also, you may encounter the once-in-a-blue-moon clipping problem and floating body. While we applaud Valve for its D3D implementation, lag plagued the single-player mode with certain videocards-but this seems to be more of a driver-specific problem.

Also, multiplayer can get laggy, but it's so easy to hook up and frag someone, thanks in large part to Half-Life's alliance with the World Opponent Network (WON). Rather than snooping around and learning an IP address, a simple one-click process connects you to the carnage quickly and efficiently.

With its grand one-player odyssey and easy-to-use multiplayer aspect, Half-Life goes down in history as a massive shock wave that rattles the first-person shooter genre to its core. It will become the new benchmark by which all other games will be judged. Half-Life is as close to perfection as you'll ever see. - Andrew Sanchez

Talk about a close encounter-Half-Life's denizens are thirsting for scientist meat.

Rating: 10/10

©1999 Maximum PC

System Requirements
 CPU: Pentium-133 or equivalent
 RAM: 24 MB
 CD-ROM speed: 2X

 Video Mode: SVGA with 2MB of video memory
 Hard Drive Space: 400 MB
 Sound Board: Yes
 Operating System: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT

Recommended System Requirements:
 CPU: Pentium-166 or equivalent
 RAM: 32 MB
 3D Accelerator Board: Yes
 Operating System: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT

Test System
 Micron with a PII 300 processor  RAM: 128MB  CD-ROM: 2X Toshiba  Video Board: Diamond V330 AGP with 4MB of video memory  Sound Board: SoundBlaster 32  Controllers: Keyboard, mouse  3D Accelerator Board: Diamond Monster 3D II  Operating System: Windows 95

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Half Life is Awesome!, January 23, 2000

By 

"dragon76n" (Port Richey, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Half-Life (CD-ROM)

This first person action game is great, whether you are playing the the single player game or online with other players. The computer A.I. (artificial intelligence) is great in the single player game. The creatures/enemies in the game will take you by surprise. This game is the best first person action game that I've played so far.