Full Review: Half-Life (PC)

You know, I did not realize that I had started playing Half-Life almost two years, and I just recently finished the game after playing for roughly 20 hours, but more on that in a bit.  To get it out of the way, when I gave my first impressions, I felt just sort of "whelmed" and I can now say that that feeling lasted for most of the game and let me break it down for you in the only way I feel that I can without going into Full Review mode, but no promises.  (By the way, I lied, but you already knew that).

Gameplay

I got lost a lot in this game.  As in, I would have to look up walkthroughs on youtube because my brain turned me into stupid when I tried to read a walkthough on Gamefaqs.  Most of the time it was because I wasn't taking a ledge that I did not know existed so that I could get to the area that I was positive that I needed to get to.  I would say that becoming lost happened at least once a twice a chapter (there are 15 chapters).

Becoming lost aside, it was a pretty standard shooter with shooting guns at bad guys and what not.  There was even the conventional stock up on items and health right before entering a room that was obviously designed for a mini/boss fight;  or you know, a portal to another world/realm/dimension.

Health packs and ammo refills. . . I'm going up against a boss aren't I?

One thing that I was definitely not prepared for the first time was having to take down an attack helicopter despite just picking up a rocket launcher.  I think I wasted a rocket or two before realizing that you can direct the path of the rocket by using the laser sight on the rocket launcher.  It definitely took me longer than the six seconds it took AdamSpencer87 in the video.  I just felt mentally unprepared to think that shooting down a helicopter would be a thing in Half-Life.

Controls

I actually kind of liked the inventory system.  Having the types of weapons grouped together using the 1 - 5 keys or by using the scroll wheel on the mouse was nice too.  I like having options.  My biggest gripe though about the controls though was how Mr. Freeman moved.  Whenever I moved in any direction, Mr. Freeman (May I call him Gordon?) always seemed to slide forward an extra step.  Now this would not be a problem if there were not any platforming elements in this game.  There are platforming elements in Half-Life.  Even at the end of the game, I was still having issues with running, jumping (performing the long jump was its own struggle which resulted in another Gamefaqs lookup) and landing on a smallish platform and not falling off took a fair amount of patience.

These platforms are moving.  Fuck these platforms.

Another aspect of jumping that I found annoying was having to jump on boxes a number of times throughout the game.  Now I am not sure if it was just my poor jumping skills (it wasn't), but there were a number of times that the only time I could jump on said box, was to jump and while in the air, press the crouch button (left control) to bring my legs up high enough to be able to make it over/onto the box.  Now I know this makes sense in the real world, but when you have a character shooting a shotgun at an interdimensional multi-eyed sonic blasting dog creature while lugging around 184 lbs worth of gear, I do not think that the jumping mechanic needs to be on par with QWOP.

Oh, and god damn those ladders!  Almost every occurrence of a ladder demanded that I save, less I lose 20+ hp from falling damage.  I easily fell down I cannot count how many ladder-shafts trying to climb down a ladder.  Getting off of ladders took its own skill to accomplish on occasion, which more often than not resulted in launching off of the ladder a few feet before (hopefully) landing on the platform I was climbing towards.

Another thing that possibly caused me to like the game a lot less than a good portion of the internet feels that I should, was that I would often get motion sickness (on a very slight level) after about 30 minutes into playing.  If I played the game on a daily basis, by the middle of the week I felt that I could get by playing about an hour and only feel a little queasy.  I was also making sure to drink a lot of water.  What was odd though was that I didn't notice Mr. Gordon bouncing a lot when he ran/sprinted, although the non-firing gun animations got a little annoying when the gun covered the crosshair.

Story

Again, I was just sort of "meh" with the events in the story.  Part of me liked that the story was told in one long continuous string of scientists and aliens amidst a storm of bullets and guts while trying to either save the world or escape from all other violent sentient lifeforms.  Yeah, there was the break when Gordon was unconscious, but for the most part there were no breaks.  No chance to catch my breath.  I think the part of me that did not like this was this was the part that was feeling queasy from motion sickness and just wanted to have a moment between levels, but I guess that's what the pause/Esc button is for.

In my First Impressions article, I talked about ways the game broke immersion.  The biggest way this happened was with how often I reloaded from a previous save, which happened pretty frequently.  During the stages when I was fighting off military personnel and not crabheads, I found myself saving after nearly every kill, just in case I took what I thought was too much damage.  This was especially the case in the end game with whatever the hell those floating heads that shot fireballs were called (they're called Alien Controllers); the Half-Life equivalent of Doom's Chocolate Demon.

By the end of the game, I was a little bit more invested in the story, but that could also be because of that odd suited man who sounded like he could only talk while inhaling.

Yeah, that's the guy.  Somewhat reminiscent of the Smoking Man from X-Files, but only because he wore a suit and knew stuff that Dr. Mangor did not have fore knowledge of.

Graphics
You know, the quality of the graphics did not really ever bother me.  I could tell the general shape of the creatures that I was killing and basically guess at what they were.  The humans looked like humans, the headcrabs looked like headcrabs.  Sure the textures didn't look anything like a modded-up-the-rectum Skyrim, but having played nothing but GoldenEye 007 for six months straight back in 1997, I did not feel that I was playing something more akin to E.T.

I will say however that I was very impressed with the lighting effects, especially while shimmying through tunnels and air ducts.  The light would not illuminate all of the surrounding area, but instead would light the area where the beam was focused so often times you would have to point the flashlight closer to the ground or the wall to see what was around you.

Music & Sound

I honestly could not tell you anything about the music.  I know there is music in the game, partly because the soundtrack is available when you buy the game on Steam (one of the few times the soundtrack comes packaged with the base game) and there was music during the end credits.

The sound effects were pretty standard FPS game sounds.  There was different sounds based on the type of floor Mr. Gordman was running on.  The weapon sounds were weapon sounds and I think that is where my critique of the sounds in Half-Life shall end.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I am glad the game was finally over.  I really felt that I was trudging through most of the game not having a great time, even though I sunk 20 hours into the thing.  And I cannot tell you how long it actually took me to beat the game in in-game time (minus all of the times I reloaded or times I died or committed suicide just to spite the game.  The Internet tells me that it takes, on average 12 hours and I definitely was not going for a completionist time either.  I was going more for a survivalist/not dying time.

Now people have said that Half-Life 2 is really where the series picks up and that the game does not hold up very well.  My response is that it apparently held up well enough in 1998 to warrant all kinds of praise.  Oddly enough though, I just started Half-Life: Blue Shift, which is the same setting, but told through the eyes of one of the security personnel of Black Mesa Research Facility.  The controls and whatnot appears to have the exact same effect, which makes sense.  Maybe I will feel different about this shorter 3.25 hour story (read: 6 hours for me), knowing that ahead of time.

I do not know why I do this to myself.  Perhaps I found the story more interesting that I allow myself to believe.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

My Lovely Red Blood

P.S.  Because I couldn't find a suitable place for this picture but still wanting to include it, here it is:

Valve Headquarters?

Near the end and probably the last time I had 100 Health and 100 Armor.