ITS GOT TO GET SOME TROPHIES (Half Life (PC))

Member Name: pow1983

Product:	Half Life (PC)
Date:	23/02/01 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Everything

Disadvantages: None

Oh my god!! I wish I had bought the original Half-Life when it came out as I have been missing out on devilishly good action for so long!

The version of Half Life I am commenting on is from “Half-Life Generation”.
In this opinion I am going to take you through my experience of Half-Life from the second I put the CD into my CD ROM Drive.

I put the CD into my CDROM drive, the program Auto-Runs as you would expect, installation instructions are easy to follow, warning it does eat your hard – drive as you will need approximately 500MB for installation and a few level saves once your in the game. So Installation completed, excellent no manual or restart needed so far. Have at least Direct X 6. As I have the Half – Life generation edition I also have the latest Patch on CD which saves me having to download it.

Well lets start the game and see whats what. First you are shown with a menu that is easy to navigate round, there are many options to choose from and I highly recommend that you select the training mission, there are a few pointers, hints and tips that you will find useful, you can also set up the graphics and sound to make it look or run better on your machine as you go through the mission. The actual training mission is very good it helps to master your character and know what the controls are, if your like me who doesn’t have a manual (Generation edition) you will not have a list to look at. Once you complete the training mission its time to start for real. I started a new game and of course being a novice at the Game I chose ‘easy’.
“The intro to the Game is amazing!” It’s a tour of an amazingly large building and there are police and scientists standing around working making it realistic. By the way (BTW) you nor I as of yet know what this game is about, I certainly don’t as I have no manual but later on I’ll tell you what I think its all about.

>Eventually the tour of the building ends and you start the game. This is basically where the real fun starts. Once you’ve done the part of the game where the science experiment goes wrong your in for an amazing ride. You (now Known as Gordon) have to go and find help but on the way you find odd space creatures and an Army that wants all the science results who will try to kill you. You now ride trains, ride the air, kill the army, kill space creatures, and have a whale of a time!

Now for the Tech bits

The graphics in the Game are excellent, the 3D models only have a few polygons that don’t quite connect properly but other than that its amazing. You have a choice of running the game in Direct 3D or Open GL and I have to say Open GL is best on my machine running Windows 2000, but Direct 3D will probably be better on Windows 98 / ME. It is probably best that you have a 3D card, one is not required but I think it would look rubbish and run poorly. So I recommend that you have a 3D graphics card for this game.

Sound is amazing especially with Creative EAX surround. I have surround speakers and I can hear everything that goes on around me its brilliant. There is no performance loss when setting to a high quality sound setting. In some games this is nearly always the case.

I think that the storey to this game is basically a normal person going to work as he would every other day as a scientist, but an experiment goes wrong which means you have to kill the space monsters or just get out of the building and save yourself. Along the way you find these awesome weapons to help kill your enemy’s, in some parts of the game you will need to be able to control your character very skilfully getting in and out of things and jumping on to things at the right time. There is some stealth with this game. The thing that I like about this game is that you can use the mouse, and if you have Microsofts Game mouse with about 7-8 buttons y
ou will be able to play the game with ease.

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My personal Tips 'n Tricks
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If you play the game on 'easy' setting then there are only a few controls that you will need to change in order to play the game and win. If you play the game in Medium or Hard mode there are significantly more monsters to kill and you will need to be a lot quicker at moving and dodging fire. This means i highly recommend that you setup your controls so that you do not have to go to the other side of the keyboard to strafe (move left or right) for example. Also don't cheat on this game where you may have fun for an hour or so you will get board of the game pretty quickly after that because you will complete the game quickly.
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You should enjoy this game for hours on end and is an excellent Multiplayer game. I highly recommend that you buy this game just for the multiplayer part of it. You can test yourself against people from all over the world. This game is also addictive online so make sure you give yourself enough hours to play this on the net so you can have a real fun time playing it.

Whoever did not recommend this game is mad and should be seen by a Doctor immediately.

As for the Awards I think a physical award is better than just Magazine awards, dont get me wrong a magazine award is good but physical just makes you feel better.

Enjoy.

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