Once you play Half Life you won't Half a life!
The story is one of the best parts of the game. The story is that you play the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who worked in a secret underground complex called the Black Mesa Research Facility who one day was apart of a experience to see if they could pull stuff out of a other dimension. Apparently, the whole thing went hey wire. So then Gordon Freeman starts his adventure from there. Basically it's a Doom inspired plot. The game is completely in a first person perspective. It never gets out of it. The game just immerses in it's story. It never cuts you out. The games story is not done by cutscenes but rather scripted events. Things happen right in front of you. You will see NPCs talk to you,scientists fall , aliens appear, and soldiers come down from ropes. It is so cool. Half-Life may not have been the first of it's kind to do this but it surly does well with doing it. The games story is told through chapters like a story book rather than level through a all to perfect flow. You feel like you are in some kind of Stephen King Micheal Crichton horror sci fi story. It has the most amazing storytelling of it's time. It's so cool. It was like I was there. It feels like that because you feel like you are playing it in a real world. Like a actual place. For example, you start out as a genius gentleman on a tram to the facility experiencing it through the perspective of his every day life. It's so subtle, the only problem I had is that it was to subtle. There were no woman characters other than the spy women. It's also quite scary though. Which is forgiving.
The gameplay was great in half life. You had great weapons. They are great weapons. It's a wonder how Gordon could hold all these weapons. You have the iconic crowbar, a pistol, a shotgun, a M-16 that shoots grenades as a secondary fire, a rocket launcher, a colt pistol, grenades, satchel packs, a gluon gun inspired by ghost busters, a laser rifle, alien weapons, and more. I could go on about how many weapons you get. There is a lot of variety going on in this game. There is platforming, puzzle solving, and driving.
You have lots of things to do. The platforming is very hard to do at times. I had trouble jumping from place to place. For example, these crates I had to jump across were so hard jump. I fell a lot. It was very hard. Over time you will get hang of it. But very hard. You will still be immersed. You can talk to NPC's but you can only tell them to do things. It's not like in Deus Ex where you get to have long drawn out conversations that are super in depth. No Gordon Freeman is a mute character so he can only have the simplest of requests Some time there are glitches in the game since it runs off a old Quake engine that is updated. I got stuck on a wall so many times I had to commit suicide. The game has a variety of enemies. They are the creepiest creeps. Including the head crab and the head crab zombies. They jump at you and kill you. You kill soldiers, zombies, and aliens.
Over a period of time do to the games advantages you will get so good at it that it looses it's difficulty. That isn't to say that Half Life is a bad game. No it's a very good game. After playing it just 16 times there seems to be a lack of challenge. If you get tired of the game or get stuck. You can always try the remake or go to multiplayer. Multiplayer is no longer compatible with the CD game. You can only do it on steam. Which is disappointing. But no matter. Anyone who gets the game today is going to use steam. But multiplayer isn't the core of this highly story driven first person experience. The A.I. is quite smart even if the soldiers are like the college equivalent of a dumb bully.
The graphics were great for it's time. But now they are blocky and bland. They don't look good. Especially since Black Mesa is such a dull complex lacking in color. The animations are stiff. But for it's time this was quite well done. Even the monsters looks good and well designed today. The head crabs are detailed. No generic grays here. The weapons are still detailed. They look more high poly then any human in this game. The humans mostly look like clones. I mean put some chicks up in here.
The sound is good. I liked the music, it was eery or great military commercial inspired rock and roll. The soundtracks are nice. But most of the soundtracks were bland hipster ambiance. I would like more taste. Too vanilla. The sound effects were alright. They were just kind of muffled. But it didn't ruin the game. The voices were good. They sounded convincing enough.
Many games these days seem to have tried to clone Half Life's success. Over all Half Life is a amazing game. A great influential game.