DIGITISER
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ

OLD GAME: HERE - HALF-LIFE 2

17/11/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
 
I can’t pretend I knew it was the tenth anniversary of Half-Life 2. Well, I can pretend – that would be really easy. I’d just go, like, “Pfft… I totally knew it was the tenth anniversary of Half-Life 2”, and you wouldn’t be any the wiser. But I’m not going to. Many thanks to Kotaku, Games Radar, and that, for alerting me to this important date.

Weirdly, despite being oblivious, it was only last week that a mate asked me what my favourite game was. “Half-Life 2” I erupted, in a bizarre, shrill, squawk, before going on to bore him with its merits. Aside from Super Mario World, it’s the only game I’ve played through more than twice.

There was something magic about it. Something that went beyond the in-your-face genius of the gravity gun, or Dog. It was years ahead of the curve in terms of characterisation and world building. It was immersive in a way that no other game ever really has been. There was a sublime consistency. An eerie quiet. A confidence.

You can see its influence today in the The Last of Us – how similar are those opening scenes to wandering around City 17? Answer: very similar, right down to the locked doors of the abandoned tenements, and over-zealous militia. It was also there in the moments of heavy silence, where the game trusts the player not to need something to shoot at every ten seconds. Where it just allowed the experience to breathe.

And yet, much as I love The Last of Us – and it’s in my top five – you’re given everything. Your character. The story. The world. Half-Life 2 held back, and let the player fill in the gaps, while assaulting them with one clever idea after another. It wasn’t a game of Michael Bay’s Whack-A-Mole, as so many shooters are these days, but instead cautiously rationed out the action.

When was the last time you played a first-person shooter that balanced shooting, puzzle-solving and physics, and placed it within an utterly convincing and compelling universe? For a game set so clearly outside of the real world, there was a convincing weight to it. It felt real.

Take Destiny as a comparison. It’s not exactly comparing like for like – lest we forget, Destiny is an “MMO”, apparently – but I’ve found it to be a hollow, tedious experience. I can't stand how artificial its world feels. It’s unquestionably a beautiful game, but more like a theme park ride with guns than anything else – like wandering around Pirates of the Caribbean, shooting at the animatronic pirates with an infra-red flintlock. Nothing feels like it has any consequence, because you know that the second you disappear around the corner your defeated enemies will just pop up again to rattle their cutlasses at the next guests on the boat ride.

I get slightly annoyed by games that kind of unnaturally graft a single player campaign onto what is essentially a multiplayer proposition. If you can’t be bothered, why go to the effort of hiring Peter Dinklage to phone-in a voice-over? It feels a bit like an insult. Like ordering a Big Mac Meal, and only getting three chips, and the guy behind the counter shrugging and saying “We never said how many chips it came with… And yeah, I did fart on them, but nowhere did it say I wouldn’t fart on them”.  

Titanfall steps into a similar trap, trying to pass off deathmatches-with-bots as some sort of single-player experience. But I think Titanfall manages a better job of balancing it out. There’s just no sense of consequence to Destiny’s gameplay, even if you do feel there’s scant parallel between it and Half-Life 2.


So. Yeah. I still love it, as much as I did ten years ago. I never stopped loving those hours spent discovering its strangeness, unwrapping its otherness. I love how grown-up it all still feels. I love that it managed to package a sandbox inside a linear experience.

I also love the fact we're still waiting on a sequel. We can only speculate as to whether Half-Life 3 is any closer to release than it was ten years ago. But if they can't better it, or catch lightning in a net all over again, then I want them to leave the series be. 

Some things should be left to nostalgia, blooming like flowers on a grave.

Right, kids...?

Picture
2 Comments
AlmightyCasual link
17/11/2014 11:37:26 am

I loved HL2. It was the first proper PC game I ever played.

As you say with your lopsided cockney banter, the moments of quiet elevated the game away from its peers, like a lottery winner having an escalator built into his council house.

I loved the multiplayer area, too.

The gravity gun was unimaginably clever when applied to that sort of thing, I thought.

Nothing quite like bashing a Frenchman in the face with a flying toilet, which has been so encrusted in foetid waste it has started to resemble a mammoth, dirty Fabergé egg.

HL2 is so impressive in terms of pacing and atmosphere that it still manages to belittle other newer titles, but I guess that is because it was made before Youtube, Reddit and affordable broadband destroyed everything that was ever any good about games.

Harrumph.

I loved HL2.





Reply
adam ant
21/11/2014 04:54:48 pm

half-life 2 was da bomb

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    This section will not be visible in live published website. Below are your current settings:


    Current Number Of Columns are = 2

    Expand Posts Area =

    Gap/Space Between Posts = 12px

    Blog Post Style = card

    Use of custom card colors instead of default colors = 1

    Blog Post Card Background Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Shadow Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Border Color = current color

    Publish the website and visit your blog page to see the results

    Picture
    Support Me on Ko-fi
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    RSS Feed Widget
    Picture

    Picture
    Tweets by @mrbiffo
    Picture
    Follow us on The Facebook

    Picture

    Archives

    June 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    May 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014


    RSS Feed

Picture
This site Copyright Paul Rose 2016 - All images Copyright respective copyright holders
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ