User Rating: 9.3 | Half-Life PC
Half-Life has given us many mods to play with, such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Firearms, and all of them are very good mods. But try to imagine...without Half-Life, none of those mods would even exist. Without Half-Life, Counter-Strike would be nothing. Without Half-Life, people wouldn't even be playing and having fun with Team Fortress Classic. Without Half-Life, the FPS genre wouldn't have taken the "revolutionary step." That is right, Half-Life is the only game to take such a step towards the right direction. Many FPS publishers and developers will learn alot from Half-Life. Released back in 1998, Half-Life wasn't just another FPS. It was more than an FPS. It was an all-out deathmatch action FPS, along with some puzzles and strategies that you needed to solve and do using your logical mind. Those aspects made Half-Life, and one of the trillions of reasons why it was so revolutionary for FPS's. If you played the game on any edition besides the Steam edition, the graphics hurt Half-Life the most. They are completely outdated and do not give Half-Life the "feel" it needed to be so successful in graphics. Back then, everyone moved up into the more realistic graphic feel, and not the outdated kind. With that said, Half-Life goes to show you that it is also scary too, so don't expect some simple monsters just popping out of places...because they pop out of places you wouldn't even imagine them popping out, so you need to be ready if you don't want to get scared. Half-Life also has online multi-player deathmatch, much like Counter-Strike, but with no objectives. From there, your put into a level from whatever server you join, and you continue playing killing pretty much whoever you see. It can sometimes get havoc, but that's how deathmatch works. I strongly suggest that you get through the single-player first, before thinking about playing people online. Half-Life also comes with mods that you can be able to download without any problem. There are official created mods, and un-official created mods made by fans of the genre or whatever. You can download them at no cost if you have Half-Life, or you can just continue playing Half-Life deathmatch. The enemy A.I. in the single-player mode are extremely smart. Human opponents such as the marines actually take cover behind objects. They also logically throw grenades at corners you get stuck in. They also call for back-up when in trouble, and use whatever they can to defeat you. Other enemies such as aliens and so forth also try to attack you, and use their powers against you. They're not as smart as the human enemies, but they still provide a challenge when put on "Hard" mode. Overall, Half-Life isn't just another FPS, it is one of the best to come in quite a while. Not only that, it does have the qualifications to become one of the greatest games of all-time. It has that much potential and does exactly what you need it to do. The graphics are surely outdated, and the single-player probably won't be played once you beat it the first time, but it is truly enjoyable of what it has to offer.
