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Even before it's release the gaming community was swooning for Half-Life. Advance hype like that is awfully hard to live up to, but the game delivers enough action, story and game play for even the most cynical gamer to say, "This game rocks!"
The Story
In most shooters you play the part of some sort of ultra-stud one man killing machine. The back story of Half-Life puts you in the shoes of one Gordon Freeman, an M.I.T. Ph.D. in physics. You've taken a job at the top secret government Black Mesa Research Facility. As the game begins you are heading in to work once again, but your experiment goes horribly wrong, to say the least, and aliens start popping up all over the place. And not just any aliens... seriously creepy aliens with bad attitudes. The game follows Dr. Freeman in his quest to get the heck out of the lab and at the same time figure out what is going on. Ready Doctor?
Game Play
Rather than set levels, wherein your task is to kill everyone and move on, the game is divided into sections that you can move between freely, more or less, at any time. There aren't briefings between levels or even any indication that you might be moving between areas. What this means is that the game models a large area and has broken it up into convenient chunks for performance reasons, but the story and game doesn't use artificial level boundaries to get in the way of suspension of disbelief. Cool.
The same philosophy is extended to weapons and power-ups. For the most part weapons are realistic with things like a crow bar, pistols, submachine gun and rocket launcher. But they aren't just laying all over the place, they exist in realistic places. Your best bet to find a weapon is on the corpse of a foe, the same with ammunition. Speaking of which, be prepared to reload baby. And not quickly either, it can take what seems like forever to switch weapons or reload in a fire fight, something that just makes the game that much more right.
While there are some esoteric alien and experimental weapons in the game, there isn't one that unbalances things. There is also a lot of variety. Rather than ten weapon slots, there are several weapon categories, each of which can have many different available weapons. I found this more realistic, although it can take a lot longer to select a weapon since you often have to press a key two or three times to pick the one you want. Still, it was a decent system and it meant that Valve could include a lot more mayhem producing weapons for both the single player and multiplayer game.
Overall the game is one of the better, if more difficult, first person shooters I've played. The creepy aliens combined with human foes do a good job of keeping things a challenge. Combined with some excellent, realistic early level design and a slowly revealed story and Half-Life is a true gem.
While some people seem to think that Half-Life invented the idea of a story driven shooter, that's not true. Sure, it does a great job of weaving the story with the action, but it isn't the first to do this well. Both Dark Forces and Jedi Knight did this... and a long time ago. That's not taking anything away from Half-Life, it just isn't the revolutionary game some people seem to think it is.
There are a few things I have to mention that annoyed me about the control interface. Ladders are nearly impossible to use effectively, I usually fell to my death or got stuck trying to get off of them. In addition, I found the default key mapping to be grossly unintuitive, completely different than the standard way and in no way better. Only different. Harumph. Fortunately you can remap everything, and once that was done life was better.
Artificial Intelligence
If you've played a lot of first person shooters you know that often the artificial intelligence of computer enemies is somewhat lacking. They tend to stand around until you shoot them or get within a certain distance. Rarely will they stalk you down or cooperate to mess you up. Until now.
If anything the computer AI is almost too good in parts of Half-Life. Sure, there are some dumb monsters that tend to charge you and attack, but then there are the intelligent ones. In major portions of the game you will be not only taking on the aliens, but government troops that are shooting first and asking questions later. These foes are seriously tough at times. They'll surround you, attack from ambush, and generally make life tough, especially on the highest difficulty level. There were parts of the game I had to replay many times to get through, it was that hard.
The difficulty level is a double edged sword though. For the hard core the challenge will really make the game last, a far cry from cruising through the game in a few short hours. For the more casual player, the difficulty level, even on the easy setting, may frustrate.
Internet and LAN Play
If Half-Life has any weak point, it would be multiplayer. Lag can be a serious problem in multiplayer games, even on very fast connections. Maps are uneven as well. Some are reasonably sized for 8-12 players, but several are simply huge. With a handful of people you'll spend more time hunting for each other than in the action which is a bit disappointing.
On the other hand, weapon balance is pretty good. The one shot kill weapons have very slow fire rates and extremely limited ammunition before reloads, so you can't just run around splattering rockets at people. Indeed, a man with a machine gun is likely to send you packing unless you get the drop on him, and with that laser targeting finder... well, he can see you coming!
So while this may not be the best multiplayer shooter, it can, for the most part, hold it's own. On the plus side, the massive popularity of the game means that you can find hundreds of servers running, most with people playing all the time. That makes finding someone to frag pretty easy which is a big advantage.
Graphics, Sound and Music
Half-Life was implemented using the Quake II graphics engine. And, while this may not be the most impressive engine visually any more, it more than gets the job done. Visual are convincing, and frame rate is excellent for the most part. The various levels do a good job of looking pretty realistic or suitably alien, depending on the locale. Blood splattered walls, damaged panels and controls all look good, though you often won't have time to admire the scenery as bad guys come at you with a vengeance.
Sonically the game is equally impressive. Sound effects are wonderful and the digitized speech of the various people is cool. No longer are computer enemies and allies mute or able to throw only a few taunts at you. They will often speak to you in realistic ways, building on the plot or talking among themselves. Nifty!
There isn't much in the way of music in the game, although it does appear at important moments in the story to add dramatic effect. This is in keeping with the game's attempt to really put you in the action. When was the last time that a soldier in the thick of combat really listened to Iron Maiden on his walkman after all?
The Verdict
If you are a fan of first person shooters, it is hard to beat Half-Life. With killer AI enemies, a solid story line, good graphics, and engaging level design it's 1998's best of breed
ofcourse the graphics are way outdated by now but its still great