Customer Reviews

Half-Life

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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

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.

Half-Life, unarguably, was the best game of 1999, and a breath of fresh air into the dangerously stale FPS (first-person shooter) market. In Half-Life you play the role of a scientist at a top-secret research facility in the Black Mesa Desert somewhere in the U.S. Southwest. While doing an experiment in a lab, something goes wrong, and a wormhole in time-space is opened between Earth and Zen, a dimension filled with all kinds of weird, outlandish, and frightening creatures. Some look like small, two-legged headless dogs, others are crabs that attack by attaching themselves to your head (and then manipulating your corpse to attack others).

So, what do you do? Get out as fast as you can! But this is a HUGE facility, and soon you find that no only do you need to find an exit and escape the clutches of the interdimensional aliens, but the U.S. government has called in the military to clear out the experimental complex of evidence... including scientists (you!).

You'll need to rely on your wits, your reflexes, your skills with various weapons (from grenades to crowbars to shotguns to a crowssbow), and finally, you might want to actually interact with some of the survivors. In what is bound to be duplicated in shooter games hereafter, you can speak with scientists you find, who you can save (or kill if you are feeling sadistic), and security guards who will be more than happy to follow you around and give you backup if it's needed.

The mood of the game is at parts exhilarating, at parts dreary or horrific, but always FRIGHTENING. At times you will go through a heater duct in darkness, with only the small light of a flashlight to help you on the way. You'll hear a noise coming ahead of you through the darkness, and if you don't react quick- SURPRISE! an enemy will pounce on you. In other parts you'll have to decide how to pass through an area... You can take the bridge and try to fight an Apache helicopter of the military, or go through a dam and brave whatever beast may be lurking within.

The controls are intuitive, and aim is done for the most part automatically in single-player mode, so beginners don't need to worry about perfect aim.

If you have a 3D card the game is gorgeous, but it will work without one.

Highly recommended, although not for the squeamish or children under 13, as there is considerable violence.

Half-life has restored my confidence that the software industry can produce intelligent, visually pleasing, entertaining, and involving games, all in one package. With a totally engrossing single-player game and rollicking multiplayer, Half-life is the new and undisputed powerhouse in the FPS genre.

Although the story lacks originality, the plot is revealed and implemented in a wholly appropriate way. The game is entirely unbroken, with no discrete stops between levels; you can even go back to a previous level. Even though the gameplay is linear in nature, the excellent level design always gives the feeling that there are things going on that you can't control. Any imbalance in the weapons in single-player mode is made up for by the judicious availability of ammunition. Items always are found in logical places.

The artificial intelligence is truly awe-inspiring. Soldiers work together in teams, laying down cover fire, throwing grenades with deadly accuracy, flanking your position, and generally disallowing the stale strategy of "wade in with guns blazing." If you do not like being beaten by a machine then you should not play this game.

The multiplayer extends the game's replay value indefinitely. Although slightly lag-prone over the internet, the game is fun nonetheless. The weapons in multiplayer are superbly balanced. A few maps are included with the game and countless user-made arenas are available online, ranging from wide-open bloodbaths to intricate cat-and-mouse chases. Several mods are available as well, such as Team Fortress Classic and CounterStrike, which extend the multiplayer gameplay to more intelligent, team-based bouts.

This game has outdone every similar program that has come before it and I have a feeling that FPS's for years to come will be regarded as merely pretenders to the throne.

I was never a big fan of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre, but after giving Half-Life a try (thanks to all of the glimmering reviews), I am absolutely hooked. From the opening tram sequence, you're mesmerized by Gordon Freeman's plight and the falling Black Mesa world surrounding him. It's a game that keeps you in a trance from midnight to the first crack of sunlight (apologies to my wife!). After dishing out punishment to those Marines, be sure to frag some people in the outstanding multiplayer modes. The fun gets even better, and the taste of death is even sweeter when you blow apart that guy with 196 kills. Half-Life is truly a work of art. Opposing Forces, here I come.

There is no other game on the face of this planet that comes close to Half Life. You can hardly even call it a game, its more of an interactive move. The game looks so real, and things happen that you would not expect to happen in a game. This is not a world that was created for you in which everything is there for you to shoot at. It feels like a world that doesnt care about you, and things blow up in your face, things fall on your head, thing go about their merry buissness, not caring whether you are there or not. Nothing was forgotten here. Do yourself a favor, tell your girlfriend you are going on vacation, and buy this game. Turn the lights off, turn the sound up, and live this experience through-you will never forget it!

Revolutionary. This is one of the best games I ever played. The skeletal movement system and A.I. make for a very awesome time. It's long and kind of boring in some parts, but its really fun. I recomend Blue Shift and Opposing Force, as they add to the fun and tie together nicely with the story. The High-Def models that come with BS are ok, but I found out that the ones at http://ambientimpact.hl-improvement.com/index.htm were better because they have moving eyes, 5 fingers, and a much higher poly count. BUY THIS GAME

This game is awesome, I started the game, five minutes later i was hooked. I played the game for 5 hours strait and would have played more if my dad didn't need the computer. This game has awesome graphics(with a 3d card)and keeps you on the edge of your seet . This is a must have

Half-Life is a really great game. It applies a mysterious story line with a large world to explore, a huge bestiary of enemies and more weapons than you can handle. Half-Life blasts you into the character, a scientist, Gordan Freeman, and everything is great...until the experiment goes horribly wrong! Now with no friends to turn to, monsters everywhere, and a military death squad out to kill everything related to the project, can you escape before you wind up in a body bag? 5-stars all the way! *****