"Lives up to its reputation"

Half-Life is the giant powerhouse of the 90's generation, redefining the stale FPS genre and combining the best elements together into a solid package.

STORY:
You are Gordon Freeman, a physicist working at the Black Mesa Research facility. During a test on a mysterious sample, you cause what the game calls a "resonance cascade", opening up a portal and allowing alien creatures to pour in and invade Earth. Freeman must scramble to survive and make it out of the facility alive.

The story is told completely from the player's perspective, through interaction with other characters and from inference of story details from the game's events. This is the first FPS game I can remember where you can converse and interact with other characters, and they'll relay important bits of information to you.
Score: 9/10

GRAPHICS:
Obviously, the game engine hasn't aged all too well since its inception, but it looked fantastic for it's day. Using a modified Quake engine with elements of Quake II, Valve managed to create a fantastic looking and very detailed game back in the day. Characters moved, talked and in general animated fluidly. NPCs are used repeatedly, and you'll often find 5 or 6 of the same models in the same room. Enemy designs are very creative, as far as aliens go, with the trademark headcrab which is now synonymous with Half-Life. Half-Life had transparent glass, something I remember not a lot of games of that day having. It still looks passable today, but it's noticeably old.
Score: 7/10

SOUND:
Half-Life has plenty of voice acting as well as music tracks and plenty of good sound effects. Pretty much every NPC has several lines of dialogue, and the music is standard techno. The sound effects are pretty good, too, and they seem fairly life-like. Half-Life doesn't particularly shine in the audio department, though.
Score: 7/10

GAMEPLAY:
The first thing you'll notice about Half-Life is that it doesn't start off like most FPSes do. You're not plopped into the first level armed with a tiny gun, fighting enemies immediately with Rambo-sized arsenals. No, you start off on a tram ride to work, getting your uniform and heading off to do a test on a mysterious crystal sample. Once the alien invasion begins, you'll be fighting for your life. You start off with a crowbar, and for the first several levels you won't find much in the way of guns or ammunition. Of course, when your arsenal does start to expand, it contains a variety of useful weapons. Your standard 9mm pistol can be fired slowly and more accurately, or rapidly, sacrificing accuracy. You get a 9mm sub machine gun that's able to fire grenades, as well as a laser-guided rocket propelled grenade launcher, a silent and deadly crossbow that serves as a sniper's weapon, an alien Hornet gun and alien creatures called Snarks that will attack enemies as soon as you release them.

Alien enemies in the game range from lowly headcrabs to vortiguants, which fire electric shocks, alien controllers that resemble the Octa-Brains from Duke Nukem and giant, bullet-proof creatures aptly named Gargantuas. Human enemies come in the form of the military, which also includes tanks and helicopter gunships, and even ninjas. There are friendly humans in the game too, such as scientists and security guards, all of which are named Barney.

The game features plenty of creative puzzles and well designed levels, ranging from offices to waste storage areas, the exterior of the Black Mesa complex, a dam and even the alien world of Xen, where the creatures originate from. Half-Life, despite being a first person shooter, contains a lot of exploration and puzzle solving not previously seen in other FPS games. A few times you'll get to ride the tram again, or have to figure out how to destroy a hydra-like creature, or get past government-authorized military clean-up squads. There's a lot to say, but not much that can't be said without completely spoiling the game for you, although you'll probably be familiar with some of it anyway.

Once you've completed the epic singleplayer campaign, you can move onto Half-Life's multiplayer, which is just plain deathmatch. The weapons are pretty balanced though, and multiplayer is slower-paced compared to other FPS games. All of the maps are pretty much taken directly from or inspired by parts of the singleplayer game.

The greatest strength Half-Life has in terms of replayability comes from its massive community, which produces tons of free content. With the release of the sequel, Half-Life's modding community has started to fade, but a lot has already been produced. Giant mods, such as Team Fortress Classic, Deathmatch Classic and Counter-Strike became insanely popular and have become part of Valve's Half-Life library. Other mods, such as The Specialists, They Hunger, Poke646 and Firearms also made big splashes in the Half-Life community.
Score: 10/10

OVERALL:
Pros:
+ Great story
+ Excellent level design
+ FPS combined with adventure/exploration/puzzle elements
+ HUGE modding scene with tons of new content
Cons:
- The game has a slow start
- At a few points it its singleplayer campaign it loses some steam
- Its original multiplayer modes aren't that spectacular

FINAL SCORE: 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/07