Watch out! I'm throwing Essentials blogs at your head!
TDL proves once again that he's among the premier game completers of our generation, finishing ANOTHER Essential to follow-up his completion of Snake Eater. This time around, he takes on the PC Classic, Half-Life. The conclusion of this entry may shock you, dear readers. Consider yourselves warned!
Half-Life, huh? What made you wanna tackle that one?
As I'm sure you know, GI hosted a Portal game club in June and since Portal is an incredibly short game, I decided to take part in the game club. When I finished Portal, I was struck with an immense urge to not only replay Portal 2, but play the Half-Life series. Once the Summer Steam sale came around, I bought all the Half Life games and started Half-Life shortly afterwards.
Since I know you, I know you haven't played Half-Life 2. When's that gonna happen?
Joke's on you, old man. I played roughly a third of Half Life 2 a few years ago with an older cousin of mine. After recalling that bit of playtime, I think that loving the portion I played of Half-Life 2 captured me. As for when I'll start Half-Life 2, I already have. Right when I finished Half-Life, I booted up Half-Life 2 and will probably play through either it or Halo: Combat Evolved in the time I have before Splatoon 2's release.
Did you enjoy Half-Life?
I did enjoy it! It's aged well and it gave me a glimpse into a different era of FPS design where conserving ammunition and health was something that the player had to do to survive the game.
What was your favorite thing about it?
My favorite thing about Half-Life was the weapon selection. I find that one of my main problems with current-day FPS games, like Destiny, is that once I find a set of weapons I like, I never go outside of my comfort zone. But by the end of the game, I was using all 14 of the weapons given to me and all 14 of these weapons were designed differently, had different uses, and I applied them in radically different scenarios. I appreciated how, with the enemy selection, the game ensured that you used all the weapons in your arsenal, even your crowbar. Beyond the weapon selection, I liked the health system. Nowadays, it seems like combat encounters in FPS games are isolated affairs since health regenerates after such a short amount of time. But having health packs and a system meter, each battle influences your future chances of success. Obviously, recent FPS games like DOOM are exceptions to this, but since I haven't played DOOM my experience is limited to FPS games like Destiny.
What was your least favorite thing?
In my opinion, Half-Life's biggest flaws are a lack of direction and a large amount of padding. While the game is linear, there were many times where I realized I had no idea what my objective was and instead just ran through the facility until I found something new to shoot at. This problem reinforces the other problem I had with the game: objectives drag on for far too long. The two other Valve games I've played, Portal 1&2, were the perfect length. Half-Life was far too elongated and by the time I finished the game, I was more than ready to be done.
The characters and story are legend, yet if you ask any casual gamer, they'd likely be unable to tell you the plot of Half-Life. Why do you think this is?
I think there are two reasons most don't know the plot of Half-Life: the story requires a a decent amount of interpretation of combat events and the story itself is very minimalistic. To fully understand the story of Half-Life, the player must think about what's happening in the combat encounters and why these things would be happening. Beyond putting the burden of understanding the story on the player, there's not much to grasp. Gordan Freeman opens a portal to an alien world, fights aliens that comes from said portal, and fights through Black Mesa to close the portal. There's not much to tell.
What were your favorite moments? Favorite characters?
Honestly, I think that my main gripe with Half-Life is the fact that the game doesn't really have any standout moments. Chapters tended to blend together and there were few moments in the game that stood out to me. However, there was one moment that I love: the moment when you acquire the Tau Cannon, one of the best weapons in the game. You find this immensely powerful gun after hearing some screams and explosions in the background. You pick up the gun, music kicks in, and you get an opportunity to test out your newest toy (and my favorite gun in the game). But other than that, there weren't many moments that stood out to me.
Is Half-Life Essential?
I think that Half-Life is not an essential video game. While the gunplay was satisfying, the game felt three hours too long and was lacking in distinctive moments. Half-Life is a game that was praised for its narrative, but I found the narrative to be unsatisfactory, especially when compared to the narrative behemoth Metal Gear Solid, which also released in 1998. Though I think Half-Life is not an essential title, I did enjoy my time with it and would recommend it, just not with the same fervor I would recommend "essential" titles.
See? You're shocked, aren't you? Half-Life NOT an Essential?! What do you people have to say about this blasphemy?!