Half-Life 2 review ~ All Things Listed

This is my first video-game review, so I'll make it special. Just so you know, I'm going to review more recent games, but as I said, this is a special occasion, and it's not the last time I'm going to review something old like this. So what can I say about Half-Life 2? Personally, I consider it to be one of the greatest video-games ever created. In a year like 2004, where we had such explosive and breathtaking games like Doom 3, Unreal Tournament, FarCry and GTA: San Andreas, this frantic FPS created by independent developer Valve was able to kick all of these games in the balls and run away with it. What Valve delivers with this game is constant first person action that shooter lovers will admire, followed by excellent puzzle sequences, all combined with a perfectly well-designed plot and a brilliant pacing that will keep you on your toes for hours. The review will follow the typical structure, whereby the game will be reviewed in certain aspects like its graphics sound, gameplay, and lasting appeal.

Graphics

Wow. Just wow. Even now the game only looks mildly dated. The texture work is over the top, and the shaders and effects are an absolute spectacle. Red barrels explode with gorgeous violence, crates break into dozens of pieces and scatter around the floor, and water sparkles clean, reflecting all around it. Frankly, this game, at its age, could not look better. It's already eight years old, damn it, and it still looks great. Moreover, the game runs incredibly well. You can run it on a 256 mb card all at medium effortlessly, which I haven't been able to achieve with Doom 3 at the moment. This means not only that the game looks astonishing, but it also plays fluidly. I have to add as well, that the quality of the environments is impressive. You go from a victorian/futuristic city onto the outskirts and into the urbanized sewage area, then finding yourself in a place completely occupied by water, and then stranded in a desert fighting off crab-like arachnids. If you played this in 2004, I'm sure it blowed your brains out as much as me in 2008. And just so you know, I didn't even mention the artwork...

Wow, just wow.

Sound

Again, wow. So much work was put into the sound that you actually believe that you're in a futuristic environment. During shootouts, you hear the sound of bullets hitting concrete, metal, wood, water; every material sounds differently and reacts differently. When you're out of those hostile situations, and the argument is being explained in form of dialogue, the acting is impressive, followed by a flawless voice quality. Some times you're hearing the flapping of the wings from nearby sand arachnids, other times you're attacked by flesh-eating zombies, hearing their desperate screams and desolating howls. You get the feeling that you're never alone in this game, and that's thanks to the amazing sound work put into this game, because you can hear anything creeping around, or screaming commands, or growling, howling, screeching...

Gameplay

This is another mind-blowing aspect of the game. There is such a brilliant pace in this game. It presses so many right buttons and delivers such a great experience. It's a shooter, but it also borrows from other gaming genres like strategy games or puzzle games, in this case, thanks to Valve's physics engine. You are also constantly rewarded with new weapons to experiment with, new vehicles to travel on, and in so many different environments that you find yourself trapped in the world. It's like a very good book, which is so good that makes you want to read it more and more, but then in the end you progressively start slowing your pace because you never want it to end. However, the icing on the cake is the story. It doesn't force you to pay attention to it, or to be aware of what is happening by throwing unskippable cutscenes at you. Instead, it fits in little pieces of dialogue between the shooting parts with characters that offer you brief information of the events. If you are just a hardcore FPS fan, you'll probably ignore this -but if you like good stories, I suggest paying attention to this one. It's not a game that simply gives you random enemies and weapons to kill them with; it gives you a reason to kill them, it tells you why you're doing such a dangerous task and why you are put in these situations constantly. Sometimes the argument will get too confusing and you'll get lost, but you'll make your own conclusions, and will develop sympathetic links between certain people like Alyx or Dr. Kleiner.

Some excellent character development right here

Lasting Appeal

When you finish the game, the first thing that comes up to your mind is: Is that it? The experience is so rewarding, so addictive, and so immersive you hardly believe how much time you have dedicated to it. But then you look back at the places you've visited: You've travelled to a futuristic victorian era where humanity is threatened by masked entities that control the whole city. You've crawled through the claustrophobic sewers of that same city and opened your way through a water canal with the help of a tiny hovercraft. You've visited the lost city of Ravenholm and emerged victorious. You've driven through beaches full of mutant arachnids only to find yourself controlling and entire army of them to conquer a prison. And then you've returned to that same victorian city just to find yourself in the middle of a conflict between humans and aliens; hell, you've even lead the human army to victory! The game looks endless from this point of view, and the thing is that so much thought is put into it, so much effort, that you actually think that all these things have happened to you. It's an experience only games like these can create.

In conclusion, this game is titanic. Valve successfully delivers a game that has been a major improvement to the gaming industry. Not only graphically, but in terms of storytelling, pacing, and sound. Many games have learned from this, and Valve's contribution will never be forgotten. This game will always be known as THE game. The PC gamer's valhalla, must we say.