"A fantastic first half decays into a middling second half"

After just one game, the original Half-Life, Valve has earned a reputation, much like Blizzard's, of making games that aren't just good, but spectacular. This is true of the first half of Half-Life 2. Spectacular. Intense. Awesome. Halfway through, though, something else gives way. Maybe it's the low difficulty. Or maybe it's because Valve quit the atmosphere and intensity and cleverness of the first half. In the end, Half-Life 2 is nothing more than a spectacular run-of-the-mill run-and-gun shooter.

The Good:
+ The graphics engine
+ The intense first half
+ The gravity gun, Dog, the ant lions

The Bad:
— A little too easy
— Because of the above, boring
— The ending

The Ugly:
* There's nothing ugly in this game

Story—5/10

The story is basically a non-factor. It's never very clear what's going on. How does everyone know Gordon Freeman? What is this place? How did Gordon get there? Why? Valve doesn't care to answer the big questions that might hold this game together, which makes it difficult for the gamer to care about the story.

It begins nicely enough. You meet the game's key characters: Alyx, Barney, Dr. Kliener, Eli. The dialogue early on is nicely done, as are the scripted sequences. After a botched teleportation that should lead you to safety, you're fleeing the enemy, the Combine, with a pistol and your crowbar. Valve put a lot of thought into these beginning sequences. They're intense, sometimes funny, and always engaging. The botched teleportation sequence, for example, is all three. Watch it and you'll know what I mean.

Fairly early on, and this is a common practice among video game developers, Valve loses sight of the game's story. The enemy is chasing you, and then you meet up with Alyx again, and by this point, it sets in that Valve has allowed some major holes to leak into the plot. It's not clear how Alyx arrived at this point before you did, and it's also not clear why you're heading to this place in the first place. The only reason I can muster is that it's the only way the game will let you go. The sequences repeat themselves (split from Alyx, meet her, again and again) and the plot becomes more sparse. It always feels like the gamer is the last to know what's going on, if you ever know at all. It feels like a group of people are laughing at you, and when you ask why, they say, “It's nothing.” The gamer is left out of the loop.

And I think it's about time Gordon Freeman had a voice. As a first person character without a voice, he strikes me as creepy. Everyone reacts positively to him, so I can only imagine he gives encouraging, intelligent looks, but as far as I know he might be a complete dope or a pervert. He has no personality. I feel like a peeping tom when Alyx glows happily at him and he gives her no feedback. Does he have an interest in her, or does he just like staring at her butt? The time for voiceless video game heroes is long past.

Gameplay—8/10

Everything begins so magnificently. The first chase sequence starts off the intensity. You have no weapons and the Combine open fire on you. And then you have to fend them off with just your crowbar and a pistol. There are the nice vehicle sequences, one on a hover vehicle and the next on a four-wheeler. Easily the game's most intense moments take place in Ravenholm, a dark town where the only human survivor is a priest with a shotgun. In this scene, the gamer is introduced to a new enemy: a speedy, flailing zombie: easily the game's most frightening creature. It makes a cry that's sure to send you on the alert and attacks with such speed it's difficult to shoot it before it strikes you. After Ravenholm is Ant Lion territory. Glorious territory indeed.

After the Ant Lions, the game grows dull. There are some great moments in the dullness, such as a scene with Alyx's robot pet, Dog, and a powerful weapon you obtain in the game's final chapters. But Valve fails to thread the great moments with engaging firefights in between. Enemies and game sequences that should be cool or scary aren't cool or scary. The Striders come to mind. None of the enemies are nearly as frightening as the speedy zombies, even though they're far from the game's most powerful or largest enemies. They're just scary. In fact, fighting the Combine is a relief compared to fighting the zombies. As a side note, one breed of head crabs is largely under-utilized. When it bites you (or whatever it does) it brings you to one health, but there's never any other enemy around to finish you off, so these crabs are relatively harmless because they can't kill you themselves. But the zombies that carry them are quite a sight.

The Combine are way too easy. In the original Half-Life, each fight with the enemy soldiers was difficult. You had to take cover, your ammo supplies threatened to run out, and you were gasping for health. In this game, taking cover is hardly necessary, ammo is never a problem, and you're drowning in health. There were long stretches of the game where my health went barely below the maximum. Only a few moments prove to be challenging. Valve just doesn't punish the gamer for running and gunning, and because of that, the game is too easy and lacks intensity. In a very quick span of time I went from thrilled to bored. And the stretches of boredom were too long.

I do have to say that the graphics engine is great. Not only does the game look good, but Valve puts it to great use. The characters show a great variety of expression. Alyx expressed her thoughts and feeling by very complex facial expressions. She would frown and smile, and her eyes light up or darken to help emphasize her state of mind. It's easy for a game these days to look good, but for the developer to do something with that is another thing. This leads to another disappointment. Early on there's a puzzle involving a seesaw. In order to get to where you need to go, you have to raise one end of the seesaw to jump to the next platform. Because Gordon doesn't weigh enough, you have to stack one end of the seesaw with bricks. It's an easy puzzle, but it's fun because it's an innovative use of the game's engine. There's only one other puzzle that uses the engine in such a manner. I was hoping the two puzzles were just preliminaries to something far more complicated, but I was wrong. Unfortunately.

Longevity—7/10

The game lasts a decent 12 to15 hours, decent, at least, for a first person shooter. I don't feel compelled to play it again, but there is that option. It seems like it could have been a little longer. The ending is too abrupt. It obviously leaves room for a sequel, but that is no excuse for such an ending. There are newly released versions of this game in The Orange Box, which has some neat extras. It would be worth it to purchase this game in that set, if you haven't yet played it or wish to play it again. As for the Xbox or PC, this is worth a rental on the Xbox rather than a purchase, because once you finish it, there's not much else to do.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/05/08

Game Release: Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition (US, 09/15/05)