Half Life 2 First Impressions
November 18th, 2004
[DDB]
Right off the bat Half Life 2 is immersive, atmospheric, and engaging. The graphics and Havoc physics-engine implementations are both industry leading, and unlike Doom 3, they go well beyond standard room rendering and create a gameworld that’s a much more lively and enjoyable for a romp around in.
You start the game on a train that arrives at the fictitious City 17, an eastern european styled city that’s under under martial law by an unknown paramiltary police force. After meeting up with friends from the Half Life gang, you find your arrival was unannounced and meant to be covert. As you must make your way through the city you must circumvent checkpoints, run through tenements, and hide in back alleys. Unfortunately the city’s overseers soon learn of your arrival (and for some reason they’re not not happy about it). Since their city-land security checkpoints prove useless in catching you they begin a more proactive search amongst the city’s residential sections. Through a series of extremely well scripted events the policing force soon flushes you out and chases you across rooftops and through the sewers, beneath armed guards and .. other things. Eventually you reach the various offices of an underground organization of freedom fighters, and from there the action only escalates further.
Throughout my 3 hours of playing I’ve had an ongoing question of “What the hell is going on here at city 17?”. It doesn’t take long to realize the paramilitary organization uses technology not entirely of human origin. Has there been mutual pact between the policing force and the other-dimension critters from Black Mesa? Why are the citizens living in such poor conditions… and is the military presence meant to police or occupy? What’s up with that giant living building in the center of the city?
The plot unfolds through the dialog of various friendly characters (the dynamic facial expressions and lip syncing is nothing short of amazing). Though I haven’t yet determined exactly what’s going on each segment does provide interesting information, and then throws a monkey wrench to open up even more questions. The scope of the game is huge - don’t expect levels to be self contained or the plot to be distinctly episodic . After almost three hours I’ve travelled _miles_ and I’m still frenetically heading towards my original destination.
The physics engine is used remarkably well and the level design ebraces it fully. There are environmental puzzles to solve while you’re taking fire in gun fights, and then there are also more involved mechanical puzzles that force you stop, catch your breath, and use some constructive thought to solve. Most puzzles involve moving objects to take advantage of their weight or buoyancy. Almost every object in the game can be picked up or moved, thrown, rolled or dropped. Boards, barrels, boxes, swing sets, everything from cinder blocks to baby dolls can be picked up and used as tools in getting to new areas of the game. In some ways these puzzles are slightly reminiscent of the mini Myst puzzles, though thankfully they’re not nearly as complex or obtuse. I often find myself taking breaks admist solving them simply to take in the scenery. This is one absolutely gorgeous game (running on an x800 pro) and though the ambient sounds aren’t Myst quality (but yet very very good) I have easily lost myself studying a flowing river, smoke stacks in the distance, or anything that makes me appreciate the quality of art and graphic design. This game looks just about as real as anything Ive ever played.
One of the major sequences early-on takes place in a winding river bed. Various forms of vehicles adorn the banks and open fire at your approach. You’re forced to push your way through as quickly as you can in hopes to reach the safety of sewers, tunnels, and the like, which creates an extremely frantic chase scene. In its essence (IMHO) this plays like those arcade/early console shooter games I grew up loving. Missiles track you till the very last second, letting you effectively “double-jump” ( or in this case, juke your vehicle) out of the way just in time. Meanwhile you must aim for ramps that launch you over roadblocks, mines, machine gun nests, etc. There is also a “boss” near the end of this sequence that has two major modes of attack: dropping bombs or spraying you with bullets. As I dodged fire and hid behind cover to escape particular attacks, my mind was thrown back to playing Rambo III and Contra on the Gensis/NES -. This time around, though, the battle takes place in a realistic 3D environment with incredible sounds ( turn up your headphones for the explosions). The arcade mechanics and the realistic gameworld meld perfectly for me and this has become one of gaming’s more scenic confrontations that I’m sure I’ll remember for years.
And this three hour action-fest is effectively the game’s first level. I’m very much into Half-Life 2 right now - the scifi theme and explosive combat sucked me in from the start. The game doesn’t seem short, either - my friend literally played game for two days straight now. Ina ll it’s taken him more than thirty hours before he finaly finished the game. The exciting thing is - he says it gets even better from where I am. 
There are few things that I’m a bit disappointed with. Explosions send soldiers flying through the air to land in a tangle of limbs - all very impressive stuff. However, the soldiers go limp immediately when the explosion occurs. I would have liked to see some flailing arms (ala A-Team) or hear a shout of anguish during these sequences. On the lighter side you can hear their comm-link go dead in the soldiers helmet, and then listen as the operator on the other side tries to restablish contact with the dead marine.
Also - you cant harm allied soldiers. I realize that dead allies would make gameplay difficult for the developers, but I enjoy going ballastic on AI friends just to see the “Brutus..??” look in their eyes. Oh well… I’m sure they’ll be a mod at somepoint.
Preliminary opinion - HL2 is the most impressive sequel amongst the big three this year (the other two being Doom3 and Halo 2 ) and it’s sure the win game of the year awards from many magazines, (and in one of the biggest years ever in PC Gaming history, too) .. but uh, that opinion is just preliminary. So far it’s easily worthy sequel to the original.
PS. The biologic weapondry used by the city on the citizens is fantastic and ingenious.
