| Product: |
Half-Life 2 (PC) |
| Date: |
09/03/05 (229 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Gordon is finally back, Kind on Hardware for the graphical splendour it has, Here kitty kitty (squeeze squeak squeak)
Disadvantages: Too late, Internet connection needed
Introduction
2004 was the year where the world not only saw Alien vs. Predator but for me it was also the year of Halflife2 vs. FarCry, and thus the year where hero Gordon Freeman found himself walking the beaten trail of Jack Carver and didn't come away unscathed.
It may be onorthodox here but I'll try to compare in this one review the two PC First Person Shooter games I played last year.(A First Person Shooter game is a game you play from the viewpoint of the main character, looking through his eyes at the world as it were). And coincidence or not both games were contenders for the 2004 Game of the Year award. Together with Doom3 (which I didn't play), Halflife and Farcry were games that really set out new boundaries for graphical performance.
Whilst FarCry and Doom3 are games that really put and still put all performance hardware to the test Halflife 2 seems to be much kinder to it. But I do think the minimum sytem specifications given by Valve (the game developer) seem wildly optimistic, I makes me wonder if anyone actually tried to play the game on such a system :
System Configuration
Minimum / Preferred
1.2 GHz Processor / 2.4 GHz Processor
256MB RAM / 512MB RAM
DirectX 7 capable graphics card / DirectX 9 capable graphics card
Windows 2000/XP/ME/98
Mouse
Keyboard
Internet Connection **
CD or DVD rom drive (retail version only) *
My system :
2,43 Ghz Intel P4 Processor (Northwood)
1 Gig RAM
Geforce 4200 128 Mb videocard (not DirectX 9 capable)
WindowsXP Pro
Which situates it (apart from memory) below the preferred system. And there is a reason for this : If you have to go almost every year through an expensive upgrade of your hardware just to be able to play these games it is perhaps time to stop and think if you wouldn't be better off buying a game console. Because although the games themselves are roughly as expensive for all platforms (PC or console), with what you pay for one of the top consoles (X-Box, PlayStation2 or Nintendo GameCube) you can't even buy one of today's midrange videocards, let alone a complete system upgrade which would consist of motherboard, processor, memory and videocard, and then not just some entry-level stuff but the faster (read : the more expensive) the better.
**Internet
Halflife2 needs an internet connection to validate and activate your game installation. Without a connection to Valve's "steam" server nothing goes. I know a person without it who discovered the game under the Christmas tree and thus found himself with an expensive but useless shiny disk. In its arrogance Valve seems to think that everyone on this planet now has an internet connection, but I think I can safely deny this. Correct me if I'm wrong but surely not 100% of people owning a PC have an internet connection ?
*Installation
You can buy the game on disk (one DVD or multiple CDs) or you can download the entire thing directly from the said Steam server. Obviously this download route is only open to people with broadband internet connections. And then still broadband without stringent traffic limitation as the game installation is quite hefty taking up several gigabytes of diskspace on your harddisk. But if you have the required internet connection you should have no trouble activating your account, some people seemed to have reported trouble with this but those were the exceptions. Others having bought the CD version also complained about one of the CDs not wanting to load correctly.
The Game
By now everyone has heard about the sad series of events that caused the game to arrive late, very very late even. Six years after the original Halflife game is indeed a very long time to wait for us punters. The delay was caused by the fact that Valve decided to create its own game engine called "Source", the fact that their servers were hacked and the miscalculation of the time it would take them to finish the game.
But now it is here and yes Gordon Freeman, the G-man and the mythical crowbar are back. But a lot has happened in the gameworld since Gordon's first appearance. Other game developers have pushed the boundaries of graphical effects, image detail, storyline and vehicle control. If Valve had managed to stick to its initial release date of September 2003 the game would have won without the shadow of a doubt even more awards than the initial Halflife game. The extra year it took to publish took its toll, games like Max Payne (1&2), The Medal of Honour series, Batllefield 1942 have taken the First Person Shooter (FPS) game to a level that would be hard to surpass by even the most gifted game developper.
And then, in the beginning of 2004, there was Farcry, a FPS game that baffled everyone with first and for all its amazing graphical detail and effects in its vast tropical landscapes, the advanced lighting effects, and also the possibility to interact with almost every object in the game, kicking it, shooting it. And then there was the control of vehicles, the novel artificial intelligence of the opponents which duck, hide and regroup. And with every element in the game, the possibility of multiple approaches or ways of reaching your objectives. The major flaw of this game was maybe its storyline, which involved an uninspired mad scientist and hordes of mutants and there was also the high toll on computer hardware. FarCry really brought my computer to its knees, whilst HL2 on medium settings stayed playable throughout.
Since Halflife for me looses out to Farcry in the graphical and effects department it had to score in storyline. Valve needed to recreate the warm Halflife feeling people had when they first took control of Gordon Freeman in the Black Mesa facility. Well people, let me give to you straight : Gordon Freeman didn't do it for me here. It's true that Valve did a tremendous effort to give depth and meaning to characters that were simple but surprising sidekicks in the first Halflife game: e.g. Barry the security guard and lab scientist Dr. Kleiner, they even invented a new main character in the form of, Dr. Eli Vance's daughter Alyx. And yes, all these have come alive with their expressive faces and approach real humans in nature with serious voice actors hired in to make them even more lifelike. At different stages in the game they talk to Gordon, explaining things helping him and giving directions, but what's the point ? The storyline is straight, there aren't different scenarios you can follow, and the most frustrating of it all is that you can never talk back to them. You just stand there and listen, like a little schoolboy, what's the fun in that ? Especially if you are supposed to be Gordon The FREE Man, the big hero of all times. They even start sneering at you if you don't go about your business quickly enough after they had their say. Most sympathetic. Almost makes you wish you could shoot them too.
So is the game all bad ? Not by a long shot because the fun doesn't come from the "human" input, it comes from driving around fun vehicles in a fun surrounding, running through the houses and streets of City 17 and the scary ghosttown Ravensholm, crawling through tunnels, scooting through sewers, exploring coastlines and solving litle puzzles to be able to continue your journey. And the source game engine does have all the capabilities found in today's games to create graphical splendour, but it rivals them, it never surpasses them and for me, on many occasions, the FarCry Sandbox game engine wins hands down, be with the said high toll on hardware.
Weapons
If the original Freeman struggling to get out of the Black Mesa lab and getting unexpected help under way brought a warm feeling to your heart, in this game for me the warm feeling and all my sympathy went to the non-human helpers. They were the biggest surprise in the game and I can't reveal too much about them, without spoiling things, but once they were on Gordon's side I loved them to bits and dearly missed them further down the game when apparently for the game designers they had served their purpose. Many were the times that during the calmer moments of the game I used their callsign out of pure nostalgia and it felt almost as mourning over a lost pet.
Besides this all weapons in the game are pretty straightforward and as you progress through it your choice of arms widens with pistol, grenade, shotgun, crossbow, grenade launcher, leading up to the ultimate weapon which is the Gravity Gun. But this last one is so powerful that it disturbs the balance in the game, because with it you can toss opponents around as if they were puppets or launch about every moveable object at them. In fact from the moment the game reached its grand finale and after having recovered the gravity gun after your brief capture by the evil Admnistrator, with the Gravity Gun at its full capacity, the game seemed like a bowling alley with Gordon launching energy balls recovered with the help of the gravity gun with enough curve to toggle hordes of opponents.
Lots of applause came when Valve first demonstrated this weapon a while back, but you know us gamers are easily spoilt and quickly take such novelties for granted.
Difficulty
It is at this stage that I regretted even more that I had put the game on its medium difficulty setting. Even before the advent of the gravity gun I wasn't too much challenged by the opponents but with it the game was like a walk through the (ball)park.
Final Verdict
Because the game took way too long to come out Valve put itself already in a situation that was unnecessarily difficult ; but the appearance of Farcry, and then Doom3, before Halflife2's release date really necked the impact the Source game engine could have made in the gamersworld.
So as now all the weight was shifted the storyline and the reviving of the Gordon 'Hero' Freeman myth I regret having to say that where Valve put much of its time, the developement and animation of the cartonboard characters found in the original game, didn't do it for me. But the vehicle driving is simply brilliant for a First Person Shooter game and all my sympathy goes to Gordon's unexpected little helpers. Gamesites giving it a score of 97/100 were however exagerating or have played it looking through the rosetinted goggles of the past.
Cheers,
ViK
Summary:
|
|
