Half-Life 2 Review

The enemy soldiers almost don't feel like active participants. They are there for you to keep yourself busy with, while many other things are happening on screen. Granted, when they show up in large numbers and with much more powerful weapons in their hands later on, they will present quite a challenge. I almost get the impression that Valve toned down the difficulty on purpose, so that they would achieve the right balance between having the player focus on the enemies and anything else that might be going on. Maybe that's why the game defaults on the 'Easy' level of difficulty. I only caught this 'default difficulty setting' on the start of the second mission and had to replay the game from the beginning for reviewing purposes. Some might suggest that the weapons in game are too powerful, but that is really not the case. You only need to play the later stages to realize you'll get quite a challenge from it. That is when Valve WANTS to challenge you. That's the key here: good directing. Every level of the game is carefully directed so that you are playing at the exact pace that Valve wants you to play; at least that's the impression that I got.

Seeing how the Source engine works so smoothly on both my NVIDIA and ATI-based rigs it's clear that something had to give here. In this case, it's the annoying load times between segments of the levels. Usually I'm not so particular about this and consider it a minor annoyance, but in Half-Life 2, inter-level loading times really killed the suspension of disbelief a couple of times for me.

Besides the aforementioned problems, the game is marred with a number of bugs ... and not of the alien kind either. These mostly include sound bugs and there are a number of reports that some people are even experiencing crash bugs. I have experienced a reoccurring sound bug whenever I would walk in shallow water, but other than that, I've had no crashes or anything major happen that would thwart my enjoyment of the game.

Generally speaking, there is no question whether or not you should buy this game. I guess the real question here is whether Half-Life 2 deserves the status of a classic, and that is really a matter of your personal preferences and your current frame of mind. My initial thoughts would be that Half-Life 2 indeed pushes the bar like no other shooter this year. Far Cry comes close, but if you step away for a second and think rationally, you'll realize that it doesn't raise the bar quite like Valve's sequel. However, Half-Life 2 is not perfect. The bizarre decision to include teammates in the way that Valve has, as well as the many and annoying loading times can actually diminish some of the fun factor. That said, this is still a game you don't want to miss. I guess this is forty million well spent for Valve.

Oh yeah, and another thing: since Gordon wouldn't talk, I decided I would carry on my own conversations with the chicks from the game.

"Take your clothes off, Alyx. Take them off! Please, look, you obviously like me and these might be our final minutes on this earth. We can use the gravity gun! I tried it on myself, it's quite a rush!"

What can I say I have a one-track mind: in my head, everything is a porn movie. I am sorry, Valve, you should've just let Gordon speak.

Closing comments by Matt "SixShooter" Leyendecker: Hype is a very dangerous thing. Enough hype can make a bad game marketable, and lack of hype can make a great game go unnoticed. It is a necessary evil of our business - without hype, there would be no anticipation of great games. There are certain instances where hype can be overused, most notably with Daika--(If you say the D-word, I'm going to hit you - 2Lions)--tana (*THWACK* - 2L)... ow...that hype truly bad games that completely miss the mark, but when a great game comes down the pipe, there needs to be some serious crying from the mountaintops about how great the game truly is. Half-Life 2 is one of those games. Valve took extra time to make sure they did the job right (not perfectly, mind you), and it shows. The game holds true to the original HL formula, and when that formula gives you the greatest FPS of all time, there's no need to fuck with it. The game is gripping, gritty, and the physics effects are fantastic. We had to wait six years for this game, and it was time well spent.

Lets hope their next project doesn't take as long.