Great fun to begin with but near the end it becomes very boring until the climatic ending
its sequel Half life 2 amazing and much better, not quite
this game will have you gagging at the beginning for its lush graphics, great sound and ace physics engine, but it is extremely over hyped, the game has nearly everything to make an award winner apart from one thing; it gets intensely boring later in the game, because the game constantly drags everything out, such as (spoiler) when Eli Vance is captured, you must venture out to Nova prospekt which takes up 4 levels out of 15 only to find out that he is not there and you must now trudge through city 17 to find your comrades and Alyx to save Eli, the game dosent hold enough interest to play through it solidly
The weapons are nothing to shout home about either, you have a standard pistol, assault rifle and shotgun, a magnum, crowbar, RPG(probably the worst ever in any videogame) a daft looking pulse rifle, a crossbow which fires glowing hot red metal bolts, Antlion pheromones which are useful for two levels out of the whole game and the overhyped Gravity Gun
these faults aside, the vehicle sequences are probably some of the best ever
the sounds are Ace and the grav gun can do some some funny stuff e.g fire circular saw blades a enemys, rather than using RPGs in the actul misssile launcher use them with the grav gun and the best bit is on the last level when the gun gets upgraded and you can shoot enemies with it and fire them across whole rooms
but