Half-Life: Surprisingly Tasty

I've just finished playing the old-time classic Half-Life. The game follows the likes of Gordan Freeman, a theoretical physicist, and his trusty crowbar, shotgun, .357 magnum, and some crazy alien rocket launcher arm thing. Freeman and his pals find themselves in a predicament when Freeman's smart ass superiors accidentally tear open a rift to another dimension full of aggressive aliens who want to obliterate planet earth.

Now initially, I had started playing Half-Life 2. Then I got curious about the origins of Half-Life 2's story, which tempted me to look up Half-Life on Wikipedia(best tool in the world). It was at this point that I realized that I had bought Half-Life years ago to play Counter-Strike with. I decided to install the game and play it in one night. But that was a fail because my ass got tired at 4am, so I decided to make it two nights instead. Nevertheless, I had a surprisingly good time playing this game over such a short span of time. To be honest, I didn't think such an old game could entertain me at this point in my life, but all the elements were there. The story was solid and original, the gameplay kept me interested and alert, and the graphics were not bad, given the fact that the game was made in 1998.

I think for certain games like BioShock, Oblivion, God of War, or Half-Life, the story is an important, if not the most important, aspect of the game. Without an interesting story, you might as well be slashing and gunning your way through endless pixels for no good reason. You may think, "But isn't the story always important to a game?" Not necessarily. There are a lot of good games that do not really have a great story to tell, such as, oh, every single military first person shooter out there. The story is usually generic or unoriginal, but the gameplay is usually phenomenal due to the fact that developers spend the time they would have been working on the story, working on the gameplay. But before I go off on a tangent, let me make a point. Half-Life has a great original story to tell. In fact, if it didn't have such an original story I probably would have shut it off mid way through. It's about an MIT graduate nerd guy, who somehow turns out to be a bad ass who's good with a gun. It's about supernatural space-time rifts and shooting BAMF aliens with BAMF guns. Real Stephen King type shit(the game actually took aspects from "The Mist," a short story by Stephen King and one of my favorites). You may have heard of all this space-time continuum stuff before, but Half-Life was one of the original tellers of this idea. You gotta respect that.

The story isn't the only great thing about this game. The gameplay is redonk. Instead of just grabbing a gun and shooting everything all hunky-dory, the game requires players to solve puzzles, navigate rat mazes, and bounce around obstacle courses in every single level. Some mazes lead to rewards like power ups for Freeman's suit, health kits in case the player is running low on health (and health kits mean a lot in this game, get it? "Half-Life?"), and ammo or new guns. I may have gotten frustrated once in a while by all the mazes, but I was never bored.

Graphics. Let me just say, I've never seen such a beautiful pre-2k alien world as I have in Half-Life. This thing looks like the Aurora Borealis or something. Obviously, the graphics can't compare to any other game by today's standards, but I'm certainly sure it was impressive way back when.



Lastly, because I'm getting really tired, I'd like to say a few words about glitches. This game has A LOT. I can't even count how many times I took a leisurely elevator ride down to the fuel and oxygen chambers only to be smashed upwards into the ceiling by the elevator. Or how about sneaking into a vent and getting stuck in between two invisible walls. Or even smashing a crate and having the game crash. Yeah, just a few of the problems I had while playing Half-Life. Regardless of the glitches though, I'd say this is a must play. I'll start playing Half-Life 2 tomorrow.