If you can get past the dated presentation, this is a game everybody needs to play. Even on the PS2.
Epic:
• Simple, tightly-woven story
• Fantastic atmosphere
• Excellent level and enemy design
• Balanced arsenal means each weapon is useful
• Set-pieces are still cool today (Blast Pit, anybody?)
• Trooper AI is still competitive with many of today's shooters
• Quick-save on the PS2; why don't more console games have this?
Fail:
• Audiovisual presentation is dated
• Has all the Quake Engine's sticky physics and occasionally clunky collision detection
• Last hours of the game are a jumble of massively missed opportunities and confusing design decisions
I'm going to make a confession, and that is the grim reality that only a few months ago I loathed first-person shooters. That is not to say I never gave them a chance-I was determined to find something to enjoy in this genre, and tried many well-reviewed console shooters (my PC could run no games at the time; it had a CPU problem that made it overheat on StarCraft). Out of the myriad of rented and returned titles, only one did I ever somewhat enjoy. But TimeSplitters 2 did not change my mind. I had given up on the FPS world.
If you'd like to skip to the direct review of this game, hop down to the "Best tenner ever spent" bit. If you would prefer to hear just why I find Half-Life to be one of the greatest games of all time even though I did not play it until eleven years after its release, stay where you're at.
Growing up, I had minimal experience with video games, and the only 3D games I played until I was 8 or so were the original DOS Descent games. I became accustomed to moving in any direction, fending off assaults from every possible angle, strafing with three buttons at once to achieve maximum velocity, and afterburning through corridors at speeds that slammed enemies into walls. Years passed. I never owned any other FPS games, and when I finally did play one, Quake II at the request of a friend, I was dumbfounded. It had only one essential plane of movement. There was gravity that made me stay on the ground. I struggled with the controls for a while, instincts screaming for every maneuver I could execute in Descent, until I became stuck in a corner, died from some cause I still am not sure of (possibly an Iron Maiden), and decided I hated shooters. To me, a person who did not know how to play a conventional FPS, they were something impossible to understand.
The less conventional Metroid Prime games convinced me to give ground-based FPS's another chance. Hence the experience of renting game after game that did nothing to convince me otherwise of my opinion. After probably a dozen very well-respected titles failed to change my mind, I found a PS2 version of Half-Life in a bargain bin. I had never thought much about the game since it was PC native, and hence something I couldn't play. For some reason, I bought it, with next to no knowledge of its storyline outside of the fact that it involves a scientist named Gordon Freeman who fights aliens with a crowbar.
Best. Tenner. Ever. Spent.
The plot begins with next to no background information outside of the fact that you are Doctor Freeman, you work at the Black Mesa Research Facility, and you regularly deal with hazardous materials and state-of-the-art experimental machinery. With no cutscenes, the story advances by way of scripted sequences and conversations with NPCs, who can be effectively ignored by walking away from them. This seemingly simple quirk actually does just that much more to immerse you in the game, even beginning the whole experience with a five-minute train ride that many less patient gamers will hate. Their loss.
The game paints a scene of normalness; your first tasks as Mr. Freeman are to check your locker and obtain a Hazardous Environment Suit for the latest experiment whilst colleagues and security guards meander around the facility. There is a comfort in normalcy, which makes it all the more jarring when the ordinary is rudely defenestrated by a dreadful disaster in which the experiment takes a turn for the unexpected and all hell breaks loose. In fact, the general arc of the plot is similar to Doom, except executed far more elegantly, with more attention to detail, and aliens instead of demons.
After all hell does break loose, you fall into what has now become the familiar Half-Life formula of running around killing things, solving environmental hazards, and trying to achieve some ultimate goal. As opposed to Half-Life 2 which basically shuttled Gordon Freeman all over a world in order to rendezvous with random people over and over, the underlying mission of Half-Life is just to escape. You occasionally have a chat with panicked scientists or helpful security guards, but your goal never, ever changes. There is a fantastic sense of urgency to this as alien attacks increase and become far more devastating.
And then the military show up. Half-Life is the only game I have ever played in which I fear a humanoid enemy more than an alien one. The soldiers are tough, well-armed, and most of all intelligent even on the lowest difficulty settings, generally making your day difficult and intensely fun. You will probably never forget the moment in the game you first encounter them, and each fight afterwards is something memorable. I recall a bit when I was sniping soldiers in a watery series of-drainage ditches? Flooded alleys? Reservoirs?-with the game's awesome sniper crossbow from the safety of a pipe system. I had been running from one end of the pipe to the other in order to avoid them, but they seemed to grow wise to the trick, and a grenade hurtled down the pipe towards me. Upon my dashing to the other end while praising my own amazing cleverness, I found a second live grenade, and promptly exploded me into a lot of Gordon-flavored giblets. It was awesome.
More moments like these: Running up a hallway away from a massive beast in order to fry it with lightning in a room just ahead. Playing hide and seek with an Apache chopper. The "Blast Pit" has to be one of my favorite levels. Oh, and "Office Complex." And "Surface Tension", the greatest FPS level every created ever in the history of everything. In fact, the only dud level I found in Black Mesa was a bit eerily reminiscent of the obscenely long buggy segment in Half-Life 2, except with a rail car and horribly nonsensical level design complete with electrified water. The final two main levels ("Interloper" and "Xen") also suffer from bad design, as they reminded me far too much of playing Quake II. The enemies are stupid, and the goals of the levels are often obtuse, ruining the eerie alien atmosphere. "Am I supposed to use all this enormous scenery? This section of the level is entirely superfluous! Why is this monster here, it can't even hit me? Is it scenery now? Oh, I can ignore all those platforms and just use the seemingly untested and glitchy long jump to get to that place you wanted me to access? Sure, thanks, into the next level. Boring tunnels, boring baddies, boss time! Wait, the boss glitched and isn't appearing? I'm stuck in here?" Quickload. The last two levels' visuals capture an amount of wonder and thrill like few others, but they certainly are frustrating and get very tedious by the end.
I hate to, but I've really got to put these bits in, because Half-Life is far from a perfect game. For one thing, the Quake engine is quite crap by today's standards, and the sticky ladders and glitchy physics are all here in full force. Box puzzles are infuriating due to crates' tendencies to scoot a few feet at the slightest touch, and fly off of ledges at anything more. Another weird moment I found involved trip-mine laser traps on a staircase. Gordon has a slippery run as though he is on roller blades, and while the controls are slick and fast, the physics are not. I just kept sliding into the lasers over and over. Once I figured out just how many microseconds to push the analogue stick, I was okay. It just feels fiddly at times. I did manage to finish the game with no cheats activated, so it can't be all that difficult, just challenging, if a total FPS newbie managed it.
Fiddliness aside, Half-Life's gunplay is still visceral, brutal, and satisfying. Unlike many FPS games in which one weapon can serve you for the entire game, pretty much every gun here has a use. I was still using the pistol at the end of the game. The worst weapon is probably the MP5, though its secondary-fire grenade function is very useful. My favorite gun is the Spas-12, whose devastating double-barrel blast can take out almost anything your size in one go. It's the one weapon which made the soldiers fight-able. Luring them around a corner with a sound in order to empty both barrels into their face before they can dump a clip of MP5 into yours is an unforgettable experience. Especially since shottie ammo is only found on soldiers and in supply rooms, and is suitably scarce.
You should play Half-Life for the multitude of moments like the ones I've described, because outside of its gameplay and fantastic art style it has no other aspects that will stand out today. Its graphics, while benefitting from the high-def pack and additional updates, are about on par with Unreal Tournament (though the Magnum and the glossy Grunt armor is oddly pretty). The sound is tinny outside of the creepy music; human allies sound especially compressed and ugly. Some of the level design harks back to the age-old "look for a button to open a gate" FPS philosophy, or has a maze-like quality that evokes not-so-fond memories of playing later Descent levels, minus the disorientation.
But the way everything is melded together is second-to-none, not surpassed even in its prettier sequel. Overall, Half-Life provided me with more excellent scare moments and memories than practically any new video game out today. If you can get past the dated presentation, this is a game everybody needs to play. I guess I never mentioned the nuances of the PS2 port, but that honestly doesn't matter (it controls like any good dual-stick shooter, and has a lock-on besides). The game is darn fine any way you play it, providing you don't take into account how it looks. Think of it like a guy/girl with a lot of rough edges, who's downright fantastic if you get past the first impression.
Oh, and you get to kill a giant chanting space-fetus. What's not to love?