| Product: |
Half-Life 2 (PC) |
| Date: |
22/05/05 (123 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: great looks, great gameplay, the gravity gun
Disadvantages: steam, steam, steam
Okay, shes gone, of course I was forced into this title after the doom3 “incident” that resulted in me eating pizza and sleeping on the couch for a week. It appear someone on DY emailed Mrs. Deets about the comments in the last op and she wasn’t best pleased… I think I know who it was , so watch your back…
Anyway, ill be dumping her soon as I have my eyes on someone else ;)
Right, enough of that crap, onto Half-Life 2.
Can I just start by saying that if you are into computer games and don’t own HL2, then someone has gone seriously wrong, maybe you fell down a hole for 10 months. I am sure the vast majority of PC owning gamers will have this in their collection. It’s the game of the year, no, it’s the game of the decade. Scratch that, its beauty was the reason god gave me eyes in the first place, its delicate control the real reason we have opposable thumbs.
I really do come out with some crap don’t eye, “YES” scream the crowd.
Okay, well HL2, like Doom3, has been out for ages now. Again, I have finally completed the game, so its time to put fingers to keys and share the experience with my dear friends on DY.
The Game and stuff
*** *** ***
So, its been year since Half-Life 1 was out, literally years. The benchmark that HL1 set was always going to be hard to beat, but the project seemed to be a labour of love, so we had some hope. To be honest, I never actually finished HL1, this ranks as the biggest regret of my 29 years on this lump of metal. I don’t actually know how it ended, and although I went back to try and complete it when I got steam (more later), I never quite did the final level on a floaty platform thing. SO, I don’t actually know what happened at the end of HL1, something to do with that weird guy im guessing. Ah who cares.
So your back, playing through the eyes of Gordon Freeman, all round uber human. You survived the nightmare of the black mesa labs, and now your back for another helping of killing and trying to stay alive.
You start off on a train, heading into city 17. A little like the first game. This time though your enemy are the combine soldiers under the control of Dr breen. Wow, I actually remember some of the plot! So that’s about that, you have to battle your way through many level to find and kill the evil Dr Breen destroy all the evil structure setup to oppress and control the masses.
I liked how it went with doom3, so next will be the good and bad about the game….
The good (not just good mind you..)
*** *** ***
Oh, where do I start. It realty is no exaggeration to say this game is one of the most complete games I have ever played. It has it all, beauty, depth, the game physics, fun (in buckets) and a level of detail I have never seen before.
As soon as you load up the game and wander about, you know your in a living breathing world that does actually exist somewhere. Its amazing, the quality of the graphics and the textures on all the levels just work so well. Unlike doom3, there is a lot of variation. From the bleak homes of the oppressed to the industrial beauty of the final levels. There are water levels, prison levels, tunnel levels, beach levels, city levels and probably many more.
Not that any of this would mean anything, but the rest of the game works so well. It really does feel like every tiny element of the game has been tweaked and balanced to work so well. The levels all feel different and have their own character. The enemies, from the columbine soldiers to the zombies are all well produced and have pretty good AI.
It’s a pretty long game, so expect it to take a while to complete, but its not chore. In fact I had to reinstall and when I went to my steam back ups, I found they were corrupt, but I was actually pleased I had to start all over again. I still load up the game to fire the odd blade through a zombie using the G gun!
Yep, the gravity gun. A device like no other ive seen. IT lets your pick up things and fire them at your enemy. Not that great if you pick up a pot of paint, but takes on an interesting twist when you pick up large saw mill blades or highly explosive gas canisters. The joy! The gravity gun really does show off the amazing physics in this game, another standard setter. It’s a joy to pick up a box and fling it into the air watching it bounce off the roofs realistically.
So that will do for the good stuff, don’t want to bore you anymore than we have to ;)
The bad (gonna be short…)
*** *** ***
Hmm, so what is wrong with the game? Well as to the game itself, not much. You could probably argue that the water levels go on a little long, but in hindsight I did find myself enjoying them, I think I just wanted to get onto exploring more of the world.
Steam is also one of the biggest complaints about the game. Steam is an online content delivery system. Its run by the games maker, valve, and is a way of delivering the entire game over the net and any updates that need to delivered. I bought the game via steam as it worked out cheaper, but it still took a while to download. I have 3mb NTL connection, but it never tops the connection out, not even close, so I am left waiting ages for the patches…
Not really a fault of the game, but valve and HL2 live hand in hand, so cant be ignored 
Apart from that, there isn’t really much to complain about. It ran very fluidly on my older radeon 9800 pro, which was a great at 1280x1024…
To conclude
*** ***
What can I say, own a PC, go get this game! You really will be glad you did, it’s a joy and you will go back and play it all again. A deets promise of satisfaction, if your not happy, come back and ill refund you 130% of the price (I wont actually, but it looks good).
Even the current Mrs. Deets enjoys playing the game, lets hope she gets to complete it before I give her the boot
;)
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