Despite the fact that Half Life was released way back in 1998 it still remains very playable today. In the single player campaign you assume the role of Gordon Freeman, a physicist in the Black Mesa Research facility, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The game opens with you riding a train in to work, running late to help perform an experiment. Once you've grabbed your HEV ( hazardous environment suit ) you're ready to join your fellow scientists. The experiment involves pushing a unique specimen in to a machine, and this causes a resonance cascade and opens up a portal to an alien world. The rest of the campaign involves you trying to repel the alien invasion whilst also trying to fend of the government troops hell bent on covering up the disaster. Graphically, the game remains fairly solid, with well designed environments, although it is a slight let down that all the scientists and security guards are almost identical. During combat the game plays very well, with the controls feeling very tight. The enemy AI offers a resonable challenge, enemies will run away and group up on you and are overall, resonably intelligent. There is a nice variety of weapons, although they are mostly pretty standard for the FPS genre. A nice touch however, is the health and HEV chargers that you can use to restore your health and armour. Little touches like these help to make the world that valve have created seem more realistic. Ammo can be fairly scarce later in the game, so you are required to try and save your bigger guns for when you really need them. A major downside to the game however are the tedious platform sections, that appear with greater frequency towards the end of the game. Here the controls feel a little loose and more than once you'll find yourself falling to your death whilst trying to jump about. The in game sound is well executed and certainly adds to the immersion of the game. Especially good is the way that the enemy squads talk tactics with each other, and when the action heats up, the music really adds to the tension. Another excellent feature of Half-Life is that it does away with the traditional level structure of most FPS games and although it is broken down in to chapters, the game moves from one to the next with minimum loading times without disrupting the flow of the game play and instead of using cutscenes, in game events are displayed through a series of scripted events. Half-Life is still a very good game and if i'd been writing this review 13 years ago, i would no doubt have scored it higher. However in recent years the bar for FPS games has been raised higher by other notable games (including the excellent Half-Life 2.) To conclude, it's a good solid action game by todays standards although some parts can become frustrating due to poorly executed platform sections and is definately worth picking up and playing through at least once.
Gameplay: 10 Graphics: 9 Storyline: 10 Sounds: 10 Multiplayer: - Impression: 10 Score: 9.8 GS Score: 10 *Because I played only a bit of its multiplayer, I won't be bothering giving a score for the multiplayer... Read Full Review
These days, first person shooters clutter the gaming world with unoriginal gameplay and very thin storylines. The announcement or release of a FPS is generally met with the words "Ugh... Not again!" by the gaming commun... Read Full Review
