November 30th

Half-Life Review

The nature of any software review is that it’s somewhat subjective, but in the case of Sierra Studios and Valve Software’s Half-Life, there is one indisputable fact: I played this game for four days straight; I was enraptured by the experience, deaf to the rest of the world, my emotions and senses honed in on the computer screen for umpteen hours on end. A review can be laced with superlative-frill to the ying yang, nit-picking the tinniest of pitfalls and aggrandizing idiosyncratic creative accents, but what’s really important is the indescribable play experience – The pace, depth, uniqueness, and excitement that is ceded from the game to the player during their time together. Half-Life has an incredible play experience. That fact is indisputable.

The last time I was really taken by a game was on December 10, 1993 – I even remember the date – when the Doom shareware was released. I still have memories of playing those seven shareware levels time and again almost 5 years ago. There was just a raw element of the game experience that caught me. For whatever reasons, Half-Life caught me again. And yes, it probably wasn’t as much as a visual eye-opener as Doom was, but Half-Life’s single player experience has an uncanny depth to it that just drew me in.

Sure, there have been other games that caught my fancy for a day or two but seldom do I ever see a product that pulls you in so dramatically. I never lost sleep over games like Quake or Unreal. I did lose sleep over Half-Life. It just does something different than other games.

And what does it do differently? Half-Life is not particularly incredible in any one facet; it’s focus is plural, which no doubt has lead to its success. It doesn’t have the best graphics, the most mind-twisting plot, or the most incredibly interactive playground within the levels. What it does have is a organic cohesion between all these elements; a synergy of sorts that ripens the game into a juicy and delectable interactive experience that takes you prisoner and never yields itself to prior conventions of what 3D games used to be all about.

Yet let’s get one thing clear: Contrary to what you might believe the formula for Half-Life isn’t rocket science. The idea of adding a plot and characters to a 3D action game is nothing new; The aim to have great artificial intelligence is old school; The concept of creating game environments that mirror real-life edifices has been done before. But when you pile all these things up together, and make them work – which is no easy task – the result is a living and breathing game environment. You’re no longer a walking-weapon peering around 90-deree angled walls draped in muddy brown textures. The game is about more than that…much more than that.

Half-Life is about balance. It’s about precision and design. The game is an immaculate blend between action and adventure. The levels are filled with enemies and traps that keep you guessing, yet there are slower moments of discovery and exploration too. And then there are the elements which just can’t be created by a simplistic blueprint – the sense of wanting to find out what’s just around the corner. Far too many 3D-action games offer more-of-the-same after the first 3 or 4 levels. You never feel like Half-Life has ever shown you all its cards. The suspense pulls you through the game: Valve latches you onto a leash and tows you through so many new areas early on you sit at your PC panting for the next new enemy, level, or weapon.

There are great technical feats too – the talking characters, the quick level loading, skeletal animation, and the one-click multiplayer -- but to me, the most impressive technical element is the artificial intelligence. I’ve never really felt computerized opponents have ever advanced past the run-and-zig-zag phase of Wolfenstein 3D. Everyone thinks of enemy intelligence as only needing to be defensive, but Valve has introduced characters (namely the female assassins) that are swift and offensive in their attacks. In most 3D-action games you can avoid an enemy by just going around a corner and grabbing more heath – there was no fear they would follow you. In Half-Life, if you flee, there will be a grenade landing at your feet within seconds. Putting the player on the edge of his or her seat is not an easy thing to do – there’s no "Creating an Addicting Game for Dummies" on the shelf at the local Barnes and Noble. In many ways, the success of some games is by fluke – things just happen to jell together in the right way. However, the depth of the Half-Life experience suggests it’s success isn’t all luck or happenstance. Elements such as creating offensive AI just boils down to really hard work.

Without question, there are areas of the game that do need work: Namely, the characters in the environment lack any individual personality (it’s disheartening to come up to the 30^th scientists who looks, speaks, and motions the same as the last 29). The other nit-pick I have with the game is the constant need to quicksave and load. Maybe the enemies are too tough, but even on the easy difficulty setting, you have to re-load your game hundreds of times. Designers need to figure out how to keep the player at 5 health for a long-period of time within the game, because it creates much more tension than quick-loading the game with 100% health and playing again. You want to feel like one shot from an enemy can take you down for the count. Finally, the Internet play 56k modem is lag-ridden and unplayable at this point. Luckily, this doesn’t influence the single-player experience.

But overall, Half-Life is cohesive: a world instead of a collage of mis-matched levels. The story develops in nugget-form throughout the game and not in some epic and boring introduction and ending cinematic. The environment is alive and breathing, and this makes you want to explore the darkest crevasses of every level. And overall, there’s just an intrinsic balance between all the elements -- it’s a sign that the game was kneaded through development and fine-tuned to the nth degree right up until release.

Half-Life is the game of the year – there’s no question about it. For me, it’s running neck and neck with Doom as being the action game of the decade. It’s lofty praise, I know, but there’s just nothing else that has even come close to the balance and intimacy of playing the game. Half-Life deserves to be celebrated because it takes regular conventions of what we expect from a 3D action game and shows that there’s a different way to design such a game; I’d argue a better way. It has a plural focus in its design that will cause future products that only concentrate on one element to fail in the marketplace. It’s no longer good enough to "just have" certain elements. It all has to be there, and it has to be balanced.

Half-Life is epic, it’s visceral, and it’s the kind of game that just makes you want to keep tapping the walk-forward button time and again. It’s a sign of what’s to come for gaming during the next few years.   Half-Life is the standard, the bar, and the prophecy of what’s to come for 3D action game experiences. You just can’t let this game pass you by.

Note: I've received hundreds of messages on my Blood 2 editorial from last week.  Thanks for your comments.  I'll post a selection of them in the next week.

Also, make sure to check out my behind-the-scenes story on the final hours of Half-Life's development as part of a collaboration with GameSpot.   The story of how Half-Life was made is a fantastic tale, and I urge you to check it out here.

Sincerely,

Geoff Keighley
Editor-in-Chief
GameSlice

Feedback on this editorial or a suggestion for a future topic?  E-mail: feedback@gameslice.com

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