Review

I'm going to keep this short and sweet for two reasons: (1) I've rambled at length for my last two reviews (GTA 3 and Halo) and I just don't have the stomach right now to stir up another Texas-sized batch of bitch; and (2) I'm busily packing my bags for my impending new life within the Game Reviewer Relocation Plan, to which I will need to apply after saying what I'm about to say.

So here it is - I didn't like Half-Life. Yes, that Half-Life, the one by Valve, with Gordo Freeman and Barney and the crowbar and G-Man and headcrabs. Didn't like it. Didn't like the weapons, didn't like the enemies (except the military guys), didn't like the constant crate smashing, didn't like the jumping puzzles, and really REALLY didn't like the last 5 levels.

Here's the nicest thing I'm going to say, which may or may not be just a feeble attempt to bow out of this without a bounty on my head: Half-Life seems like great entertainment that simply isn't my cup of tea. I feel a bit like how I felt after attempting to play Conker's Bad Fur Day, but only in the sense of being nervous about not liking something that everybody is not only supposed to like, but which is also supposed to represent the high-water mark for interactive entertainment, a mold from which all future games should be cast. The difference between this and my CBFD experience is that I actually like playing shooters. I was able to deduce from CBFD that I don't like platformers. I'd never really had much of a good time playing them, and once I gave the genre's gold standard a try and didn't like it, well that sealed the deal. No hard feelings. The problem with Half-Life, however, is that I play a lot of shooters, and for the most part enjoy them. Truthfully, it's a love/hate relationship. I love the immersion, the visceral player reward, the low barrier to entry, the great graphics. I hate the typically bad AI, the typical lack of player freedom, the rote gameplay mechanics. So how do I reconcile my modest appreciation of the genre with my distaste for its poster-child, Half-Life?

The conclusion I'm inclined to draw is that Half-Life simply isn't all it's cracked up to be. The phrase you've probably heard frequently in the same breath as Half-Life is "more than the sum of its parts." I'll grant that. As a complete experience viewed in hindsight, it is more than the sum of its parts. I also think, however, that those parts themselves aren't much to write home about. And I also believe that this is the crux of why Half-Life doesn't work for me. I'm not one to get all doe-eyed and have my heart go pitter-patter for a game just because it happens to spin a good yarn and string together a few memorable scenes. I watch movies, I read books, I get tight narrative and emotional drama from multiple media sources. I'm not impressed by a game just because it doesn't fall flat on its face as it tries to pull me through a story-arc, anymore than I'm impressed by a child that succeeds in tying his shoes for the first time. Congratulations, welcome to the human race, such as it is.

I'm not saying that what Valve did wasn't hard work, just that it wasn't hard. Half-Life dropped on the scene when shooters were still in their relative infancy. The games had been busily learning how to walk, eat solid food, not poop their pants, render non-orthogonal walls, etc.. But by 1998 the training wheels were nearly gone, and the future of shooters was up for grabs. Then here comes Half-Life, which, let's not forget, had been in Valve's oven for over 2 years, and that after having been seeded with id's Quake engine. It was the proverbial peanut-butter and chocolate phenomenon. Gamers liked this new fangled peanut-butter (3D 1st-person action) and for thousands of years we'd gotten great cultural mileage out of chocolate (the dramatic narrative). It was only a matter of time before the two got sandwiched together, for better or worse. In fact, it was a very short period of time, and Half-Life was decidedly late to the party. Looking Glass's System Shock debuted a full four (4!) years before Half-Life, mixing the barely potty-trained state-of-the-art in 3D engines with a great story and complex character and environment interaction.

Though more than fashionably-late, Half-Life was nonetheless the belle of the ball, sporting a professional polish that had not been seen. It's siren song was that it not only disdainfully eschewed the pure arcade-action recipe of its predecessors (DooM, Quake, Duke Nukem) but that it was doing a damn fine job of it. Half-Life slowed the pace, made you listen to (admittedly short) conversations, cast you as a geeky technical MIT graduate instead of the muscle-bound hulk, and layered it all on top of a smoothly cohesive pair of narrative rails. More than all of that, though, I think Half-Life owes its allure to the fact that it was adult. It didn't have the flighty gratuitousness of the id games, nor the kitschy bawdiness of Duke Nukem, nor the connotatively juvenile fantasy backdrop of the RPG set. No, Half-Life was Blade Runner to the rest of the industry's Star Wars (not to imply that Half-Life is even in the same league as Blade Runner the movie). Half-Life was cool, and it was cool to like it. All those DooM gamers had graduated high-school and Half-Life was something that felt more mature, dare I say even 'artsy'. And in that sense, I commend Valve. Half-Life helped the genre specifically and the industry in general grow up a little.

There, see, I said some nice things after all. The point that goes along with that, though, is that Half-Life was the right thing at the right time to a lot of people, just not to me. For one, I wasn't neck deep in the hobby at the time, which I think might have predisposed me to be as infatuated with Half-Life as everyone else. Second, I came to Half-Life well after its release (the first time I played it was in 2001, I believe). That doesn't mean I'm comparing it directly to System Shock 2 and certainly not to even newer fare. It means that I'm not blinded by any bright light accompanying the game's over-hyped release, culminating a year of marketing foreplay. I put Half-Life up against some of the games in its immediate vacinity, and it loses. Again, I feel that's because I don't get grifted by the mere presence of a decent story and well-executed presentation. When I play a shooter, I don't spend the majority of the time experiencing the story, I spend it with the gameplay, and that's where Half-Life isn't as entertaining for me as other games I've played. The weapon set isn't that great, the level design is lackluster, and the game designers indulged entirely too much in the spawn-creatures-behind-the-player's-back gag. Last but certainly not least, the game gets completely derailed during the final quarter, with no special forces AI to keep the combat interesting and some of the worst boss monster scenarios I've ever had to endure. Honestly, fighting Gonarch was the definition of unfun. And jumping puzzles, are you fucking kidding me?

Summary

Is Half-Life fun? As always, that's up to you. After having played it twice, years apart, and being disappointed both times, I feel like saying that Half-Life is a 'had-to-be-there' game. It doesn't hold up well over time. In terms of gameplay, there were better games at the time and certainly better games since. In terms of story, I'll say the same thing I said in my Planescape review: I don't play games for a good story. Yes, it's important, but games are for playing. I shouldn't have to endure anything in a game just to get, say, good sci-fi. It's not like video games invented story-telling and can be excused for not getting it right while they works things out. Nor should they be held aloft as the pinnacle of game development achievement if they happen to do a decent job of it.

What Half-Life does have going for it is its presentation. Valve put together a good show; even I can appreciate that. Looking at the recently-released sequel, Half-Life 2, I feel somewhat vindicated in my comments here. Valve didn't spend the last 5 years working on a story for Half-Life 2, licensing the latest id engine in order to just keep up technically while they directed their next game/movie. No, they spent 5 years developing their own tech. At least one of the head honchos at Valve knew that they couldn't pull the same stunt twice. Gamers have gotten older (if not more mature) since 1998, and certainly more jaded. The novelty of Half-Life's combination of par-for-the-course action with above-average narrative has worn off, even if the nostalgia hasn't.