Customer Reviews

Half-Life (Platinum Collection) (Second Edition)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Honestly, this updated Platinum edition offers everything you could ever dream of in a first person "shooter" game.

In the edition, you'll get Half-Life, Opposing Force, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Blue Shift. All games are more than worthy of being called classics in their own time. And more specifically, Half-Life, OpFor, and Blue Shift allow you to play individually.

Now, what truly pushes this over the top is the ability to get ONLINE and fight with other human opponents! The online community is thriving. Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Team Fortress, and Opposing Force all allow online play or no sign-up/monthly fees. It's all FREE. There are nearly 1000 Half-Life servers and nearly 30,000 Counter-Strike servers world-wide!!!

As a lover of DOOM, Descent, and Duke Nukem 3D, I thought I had played all the best first-person shooter games (as of 1998). Then I played Half-Life! Since Half-Life 2 has not yet been released this still remains the BEST online Multiplayer First Person Shooter on the market today.

With an NVidia GForce2 and a 1GHz PIII, I am getting between 60-99 FPS (frames per second). The graphics are excellent and the play is smooth.

One warning though with this game: ONCE YOU PLAY IT ONLINE, YOU WILL NEVER EVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME IN YOUR LIFE TO PLAY THIS GAME. It is truly awesome and the Half-Life community is a welcoming one...as well as challenging. The Mod community is thriving as well...there are truly a multitude of Mods.

Simply put: BUY THIS GAME!!! GET CONNECTED!!! THEN PLAY UNTIL YOUR EYEBALLS ROLL BACK IN YOUR HEAD OR YOUR FINGERS FALL OFF.

You will never be sorry for buying this product. I have been playing this game online, every month for nearly 3 years...I have tried other games, but none compared to this one.

I am a half-life lover - spent $1000 upgrading a PC in 1998 just to buy this game and it was well worth the money. This game is to PC games kinda like what STAR WARS was to space movies. It opened up a new parallel universe !!

You start the game feeling like an imposter in the skin of "Gordon Freeman" arriving for a day of work at Black Mesa research facility in New Mexico. Luckily, the helpful scientists ask you questions until you stumble into the lab and start doing what you need to do until the big bad accident ... and then aliens teleport in from another dimension, eating all the scientists and the military sends in Marine Commandos to kill EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE SCIENTISTS (YOU) to cover up the disaster completely !! The game really starts with you unconscious in the deepest bowels of this huge complex and you have to fight your way out - 1/3 solving puzzles, 1/3 killing aliens, and 1/3 facing hell-bent marines in your protective suit (as long as your battery pack is still alive) to help you overcome these problems. For the first time characters talk to you, animals move realistically, and the animal AI is incredible. Your first weapon of choice ?? A simple crowbar. Later weapons ?? Experimental prototypes from secret US Military programs !!!

Now I'm back 6 years later and look what's happened. It seems like Valve has the mother of all copyright protection problems. Not only were players pirating the CD's, even the distributor (Sierra) was pirating and selling Illicit copies of the CD's. Sierra was even selling duplicate retail boxes with duplicate keys to customers !! [...] and Valve hates Sierra and is in a legal fight but is contractually forced to deal with Sierra. You will have to be a foot soldier for Valve until the legal fight is won. To be a foot soldier, you must put up with Valve's copyright protection scheme which is called "Steam".

Before you get this game, [...] You will need a good broadband connection to install this game, because you will need to download several hundred megabytes of data. It will be tricky to run the game in the future without a broadband connection. It will be possible but you will have to plan ahead before disconnecting from the Internet.

If you can live with this hassle, you will be highly rewarded.

This is the best game of all. I haven't played a game for so long like I play Half-Life, Counter-Strike and etc. And about the Steam feature, its the best too. I know it is a bit big, but its espeacilly for playing on internet. And if you want to play on internet, you HAVE to have a broadband connection, so the updates don't takes so much time. And about downloading the 723mb pack, no need too, because Steam converts yours game instalation of Half-Life and all mods to work with Steam. And about this pack, yes, its better to buy the Half-Life only CD, but then you will need to download Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Opposing Force, and no Blueshift will be there. So, you choose what you want

Half-Life has revolutionized first-person shooters in an amazing way; it made you use your brain instead of just your left-mouse button. And Even though Half-Life 2 is sweeping up all the press, the original, and its expansions, are still worth much praise. And this set is less than 20$ now! If you have a computer that meets the specified system requirements listed, buy this. Best 20 or so dollars you will ever spend.

I've always been courios about Half_Life and Counter-Strike, and about a week ago, my cousin bout this package, and we played all day. Well, the very next day I went out and bought this, and I still havn't put it down! When you first start playing Counter-Strike, sure, some of the more experenced players will put you down for being a noob (someone new to Counter-Strike, but it's ment to be a strong insult), but after a few games, you'll find yourself getting better and better, and soon, you'll lose hte title of "Noob" "Nub" "Newb" ect. and then you'll really start to have fun. A good idea would be to play with a friend that has played before, especially if he/she has a clan, and then you can just scrim (play pratice games) with them. I play with my friends clan and I see my skill rapidly improving. Also, if you know someone else you just got this game, you could scrim with him.her for a while, and both your skills will improve. But that's not it. Aside from the great gameplay of CS, there's tons of maps to play on, and you can also download and make your own maps. Sure, making a map isn't exactly the easiest things in the world at first, but it just takes pratice. And remember, I havn't even SCRATCHED the surface known as the greatness of CS. Plus you get 4 other games, and these are all COMPLETE games. Half-Life is a great single-player game (I havn't tried multi-player on HL yet) and Opposing force and Blue Shift is a continuation of HL. And finally, you get Team Fortess Classic. Now, I havn't played this yet, but I suspect it to be just as great. Now what are you wating for? Go out there, get this, get ome friends to get this, get together, and SCRIM! Perhaps after you get enough pratice and you become semi-good, you can form a clan (A group of people that play together) and magnify the fun 100 times over!

Mention first person shootears and this is probably the first game that will come to your mind. its' tht damn good!

i first played this game in 2000.. asked my sister from american to get it for me. was so excited after playing uplink(the half life demo) that i just could'nt wait..and as soon as i installed it onto my computer.. i was hooked.. i had never seen anything like this.. i mean, duke nukem and doom 2 were appetisers compared to this baby!!

okay.. about the game :

WEAPONS : you start off with a crowbar and slowly move on to advanced guns like the machine gun,RPG,M-16(aaaaah)magnum,gauss,etc. But the RPG is my all time fav. Guiding missiles with ur mouse controls.. i mean.. how cool is that?
i used to mess around with the missiles half of the time.. just for fun:)
unlike doom or duke nukem. guns ARE'NT Just lying somewhere. You're supposed to collect most of them from the dead enemies, which makes it so real. i was surprised when i got the machine gun after killing one of the soldiers. i was expecting it to be lying somewhere, waiting for me to pick it up.. or a miracle! You might find it funny but these are just some of the minor details which earlier games did'nt have.. guess the guys at valve were taking this a little seriously,which is a good thing.

ENEMIES : the best AI ever. the soldiers, the crabheads, the 'oh so cool' apache helicopters, the huge monsters at the end of the game.. ooooh(drooling)..!!!
every enemy was detailed and hit back at you. they don't wait for you to make a move. If the see you coming, u better be prepared. a slight noise and they're gonna come back at you with everything they've got. they reload and use ammunition in the same way tht u do.

STORY : wow!! breathtaking.. this game is totally story driven. right from the beginning. You're probably thinking wht's so good about the story.. every game has a story,probably even better than this one. But i dont think any game out there allowed you to be a part of the story like this one did. it is so intense and it just sucks you in.
There is this one part of the story called APPREHENSION, where the kidnap gordon freeman. I've showed this scene to my friends over and over and over again. These 2 soldiers are carrying you and you have no guns with you nothing.. You just wait for their coneversation to get over. You have no idea what they are going to do to you, what's coming next.. It is one of the coolest scenes ever. And it's not CGI. It's actually the game. You're in it..
You actually would want to complete the game just to know what happens at the end. I knew that the moment i defeated the final monster, there was something bigger coming. And that is exactly what happened.. One of the BEST and the coolest ENDINGS for an FPS EVER!!!

To sum it up.. i would give this game 5 stars all the way for its cool factor and its originality. I have'nt played half life 2, quake 4,F.E.A.R. and doom 3 yet.. but my new PC is on the way..should have it in a week.. an athlon 3500, 1 GB ram and a 6600 nvidia geforce.. have already bought the games and cant wait to play half life 2.. it has been rated game of the year and i'm sure they already have a platinum edition out for it yet. They are just taking games to the next level!!
Thank you valve. We'll never forget this game.. It is a classic!!

Don't get me wrong, I loved Half-Life and the expansion packs (not the best FPS ever, Deus Ex beats it, but thats another argument). The thing about this pack is that its not worth it. Opposing Forces comes with Blue Shift, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic were released as free mods if you purchase Half-Life. Anyways, the point is you get all these games just by buying Half-Life and Blue Shift, which is about $5 cheaper than the pack. Not much, I know, but don't think you're getting a great deal and then learn this after you buy it. And if you buy the normal games you get a better, more indepth manual (the one for Half-Life has a bit of back story, like a letter from Freeman's professor, never seen the real Blue Shift Manual, so I cannot comment on that). So definitely buy Half-Life and Blue Shift, not this pack.

half life is without a doubt the best fps i have played. i currently own half life, half life 2 and half life 2: episode one. while the sequels are fantastic, playing the first of the series will not only give you all the background for half life 2 but also give you a great gaming experience.

in half life you are gordon freeman, a theoretical physicist working in the black mesa complex. you start out walking around, making your way to the anomolous materials lab to conduct an experiment your team has been working on for a while. there is a lot of forshadowing, not only because you know you are supposed to kill aliens, but from all the scientist mentioning a "resonance cascade", meaning a disruption in the experiment. and of course a cascade is created, tearing a hole in space creating a portal to a world called "xen". the main objective, however, is to get out of the complex, which is easier said than done. black mesa is ENORMOUS, and has many side areas to explore with traps and bad guys galore. during the first part of the game you spend a lot of your time killing things with a crowbar and a pistol, discovering the depth of the damage caused by the cascade. you then hear of a rescue operation involving the military where the main objective is to get to the surface to be saved. soon you find out that the "rescue op" turns out to be a clean up where all evidence is dto be destroyed, including witnesses. with all hell against you, you need to find out what happened, how to fix it and stay alive through it all.

the story of the game is very captivating, with no cutscenes and no long drawn out monologues it is a perfect way to keep the action going while keeping the player informed. the graphics, while seemingly dated now, are still good and can be better when used with the blue shift upgrade. the weapons are well balanced, having a great selection of close, mid and long ranged guns and a couple wild cards that can get you out of tight spots, including a experimental weapon that can take down helicopters with a charged shot.

another great thing about this game is that there is no one strategy that will take you through the game. some places require a run and gun tactic where there are too many to kill and you need to just take out as many as you can as you sprint towards a door so you can lock them out. at other times there are slower parts where ducking and hiding behind barriers is the best way to get through an area. throw some puzzle areas and insane detours, this make for an incredible and satisfying experience. and this game will not be 4 or 5 hours. i have beaten the game many times and even with knowing all the tricks and shortcuts it takes me a good 12 to 15 hours if i'm rushing through.

the other games in this package are just as entertaining. opposing force puts you in the role of one of the soldiers that are to "clean up" the situation. giving you weapons not found in the original half life, including alien weapons raning from an animal that spits out grenades to an alien with a tongue that acts like the hookshot in zelda, opposing force itself is a rather long and satisfying game. blue shift is the black mesa disaster through the eyes of a black mesa security guard. while significantly shorter than the other two the game is once again just as satisfying. the half life games are a must to anyone who is a fan of shooters. if you have played half life 2 without playing this game then i would still suggest it to you, while the graphics aren't as good the story and action is still as intense and you will be in for a longer game. and like a good movie, you will want to play this game again and again, just to get all the details of the story that you might have missed before.

Half Life is truly one of the best games ever made, in my opinion, second only to Half Life 2. I won't reiterate the details which have been so well advertised; I'll just confirm them.

But that's not all; they're throwing in the best mods made for it. I strongly recommend playing Opposing Force and Blue Shift to see more than one side of the Black Mesa incident.

$20? Definitely a deal.

Note that the CD keys in this package can also be used with a Steam account.

My GOD!!! this game is all you need to play, the gameplay is fantastic, the graphics awesome, the sound terrific, and the best: the continued relasing of hundreds of mods over the internet.

The only complain is that doesn't include Condition Zero (2 disc) that's why I give it 4 stras to the overall, maybe Valve should make a DVD edition of this pack, yeah! the PLAT. COLL. 3rd EDITION

But this game is best of the bests!!!