In 1998, Half-Life turned the first-person shooter world upside down. Founded by two former Microsoft Employees, VALVe took the then-senselessly-bloated Quake 2 engine, combined elements from Quake, and nearly rewrote the entire engine (to date, it's said that only about 20% of the engine is still from Quake 2 - the rest being VALVe's doing), came together one of the most powerful impacts to the FPS genre in years, standing the test of time even now. Where previous shooters were focused on providing brainless fun (not that that was a bad thing entirely, but there were its limits), HL introduced what we now know as the "thinking man's shooter" before there was ever such a thing. If you have been living under a rock these past years, you'd know that the sequel of the game has already come out to much fanfare. But still that does not diminish the value of this fine collection. Half-Life Platinum features: - Half-Life: Game of the Year Edition - Half-Life: Opposing Forces - Team Fortress Classic - CounterStrike - Half-Life: Blue Shift. Without going into too much about the original HL, allow me to focus on the others. Opposing forces would be one of the first modified versions of the game that was released since Half-Life. it primarily focuses from the viewpoint of one of the soldiers from the governement, sent in to "clean up" the mess that happened whence Gordon caused that resonance cascade. On its own, it's not much, but coupled with having played the original game, you will see that this one plays an important role in the form of fleshing out the main story with its different perspective. As the soldier, you gain various different weapons, and realize just how deep the experimentations that led up to the infamous accident were already. But without spoiling too much of it, let's move on... Team Fortress Classic is a rather popular team-based mod that came about, and was one of the first that came about since Half-Life's release. Based on the infamous Team Fortress mod released for Quake 1/2 (can't remember which), you play as one of various classes in a classic red vs. blue team deathmatch. Each of your team members must use its strengths to cooperate and perform their duties, either by capturing flags, defending or attacking capture points, heal your teammates, infiltrate enemy lines, and so on. There are also some of those rare missions in which one team must defend a single VIP and escort them into a designated capture point. Again, using the strengths and abilities of your team and working together is crucial in ensuring success, as is having a strong balance. in my experience, this is one great example of a party game, in which having a larger amount of players can make the game that much more exciting. CounterStrike is one that needs no introduction... it's simply terrorists vs. CounterTerrorists either for taking hostages, planting/defusing bombs, or again the "VIP escort." It's also the most cheater-laden online game in modern history. Finally, that leaves us Blue Shift, another single player-focused "mod" in which it plays from the perspective of the lovable security guard, Barney Calhoun. When the resonance cascade happens, it then becomes another trip for survival as you are then forced to find what few colleagues you can and have them help you along the way while you brave it against another level of the "clean up crew" and the occasional alien. Previously scheduled to be exclusive on the Sega Dreamcast edition of Half-Life, Blue Shift's other asset is the High Definition pack, which effectively doubles the graphical detail on all Half-Life-based games. Considering the large amount of available third-party mods for the series and the fact that some of these will want or need some files from the "non-steam" version of Half-Life, there is still very much value in picking up this collection if you haven't already. It's almost required purchasing if you are a first-person-shooter fan, just to see how the current generation of FPS gaming started.
Other Helpful Reviews for Half-Life: Platinum Collection
This is a very nice collection of Half Life games. You get the original Half Life, Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Counterstrike. This alone creates a lot of replay value. As for graphics, they ... Read Full Review
Alright first things first a little about where I cam coming from before everyone that views this review disagrees with me. I consider myself a diverse gamer who favours PC games over anything a console can produce. I ... Read Full Review
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