"Best game ever made? No way! One of the best? Of course!"

Foreword:

Let me start by saying is my fourth favorite game of all time. The reason I think this is impressive is because I don't even like FPSs. But still, this game delivers an awesome gaming experience like no other.

Gameplay

The gameplay of this game is the most innovative for a FPS since Half-Life. Half-Life strayed away from the run-and-gun techniques used by most FPSs to ensnare people with high testosterone levels. It delivered puzzles and parts where it was a good idea to actually plan an attack. I have never had to do this in an FPS before. To have to formulate your next move before jumping out in the open added a TON of depth to normally bland gameplay. Also, the variety of weapons in this game is amazing. You get everything from shotguns to magnums to machine guns to rocket launchers to detonation packs and other real-life weapons. It also had a couple very cool sc-fi-ish weapons like the gluon gun and little walking grenade-like bugs. I'm happy to say that most of Half-Life's awesomeness carries over to Half-Life 2.

Half-Life 2 has one major advance in gameplay that no other game has ever had before, not even Half-Life: the gravity gun. This is the single coolest weapon in any game, EVER. You can pick up anything of reasonable size and use it as a projectile, or to solve a puzzle. Valve saw the perfect way to show off the shnazy physics engine and ran with it. You can do everything from picking up metal barrels to use as a shield against bullets to firing saw blades to slice a zombie in half. You can also pick up explosive barrels and such to launch like shells. The one thing wrong with this spiffy weapon is that it can get a little twitchy. Sometimes, if you are trying to carry something along a narrow path, a random spaz can throw you right off the cliff like a sack of potatoes. This is a minor complaint though, since it happens not so often. One thing has sadly diminished from the original: the amount and variety of weapons has dropped. The original had a total of 14 weapons. Half-Life 2 has 11. No more gluon gun, exploding buggy things, detonation packs, trip mines, or gauss cannon. They did add the oh-so-cool gravity gun, the pulse rifle which is basically just an alternative to the machine gun that shoots less plentiful but stronger shots that you will only use when you run out of machine gun ammo, and the therapods, little balls that you toss around to command the antlion hoards. Sadly, the therapods are only in use for a half-an hour or so. Another complaint is that while there are puzzles, they generally involve pressing a button or flipping something over to find something. They aren't very hard, but the ones that require the use of the gravity gun are really cool. And I've yet to mention the vehicle parts. These are some of the best parts of the game. They are full of cool moments like bursting through a window and continuing on at top speed while shards of your destruction fly all over the place. I give the gameplay:

8/10

Story

This game features a seemingly boring story line that evolves into a movie-like experience with an amazing cast of characters and really cool moments. This is how it goes:

The game starts with the G-Man waking Gordon Freeman from his sleep with the following lines: "Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman. Rise and, shine. Not that I wish to imply that you have been sleeping on, the job. No one is more deserving of a rest, and all the effort in, the world would have gone to waste until... well, let's just say that your hour has, come again. The right man in the wrong place, can make all the diff-er-ence in the world. So, wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and, smell the ashes". You are not likely to understand this unless you've beaten the first game, so don't try to make sense of it if you haven't. From there on, you discover that you have been inserted into a city called City 17. You also find out that, somehow over the course of time that you were trapped in the G-Man's void, a race called the Combine has taken over earth. All people live in fear of these captors, with the exception of Dr. Breen. Dr. Breen was the administrator of Black Mesa in the first Half-Life, and now he is at the head of the Combine forces for reasons unknown. You are soon reunited with Barney, Gordon's old security guard friend from Black Mesa. You later meet Alyx, the daughter of one of your old co-workers from Black Mesa named Eli Vance. She leads you to the lab of Dr. Kleiner, another co-worker of yours from Black Mesa. Alyx, Kleiner, and Eli have all been working on a teleportation device to help move resistance members from City 17 to Eli's labs in a partially-repaired Black Mesa. The teleporter goes haywire when it's your turn for teleportation, causing you to appear not in Black Mesa, but outside Kleiner's lab. You now have to continue on foot to Black Mesa, making use of an old airboat. Throughout the game, you visit levels ranging from a zombie-infested city to the war-ravaged streets of City 17. The game finishes with an action packed conclusion in the Combine's main HQ, the massive Citadel. I give the story:

10/10

Graphics

The original Half-Life had ground breaking graphics for it's time, and Half-Life 2 follows up nicely with this gaming era. Everything in this game has an insane amount of detail in it. Every building, baddie, and bathtub you see will look almost like it should in real life. The first thing you notice is how beat up everything in City 17 is. The walls are chipped and have had the molding torn out. Every piece of metal has dents and scratches. Characters have detail such as scars and freckles. The water looks absolutely beautiful. Almost everything about the graphics are perfect. The keyword there is "almost". There are some flaws. For a game that has as a physics system as good as Half-Life 2 does, you'll be surprised to see how often headcrab corpses pass partially into the floors and walls. Also, Valve got lazy and only animated a couple hand motions for each character. You'll see the same characters do the same things over and over again. It can get to be pretty awkward looking. Also surprising for a game with such a revolutionary physics system, the zombies always get sliced in the same places. You can hit them in the legs and they'll seperate at the waist. This would be perfectly acceptable in any other game, but with the degree of realism you experience during most of the game, you'll be taken out of it to see these flaws. Overall, I give the graphics:

8/10

Sound:

Valve did an amazing job on the sound, but they once again got lazy at parts. The echo effects in this game are wonderful. The music in this game is wonderful when it's there. Some people are upset they only have a little music in this game. I'm actually upset it had as much as it did. Throughout most of the game, you'll be in complete silence besides the sound of weapons and enemy cries. It gives you an incredible feeling of being isolated and on the run, which is true for most of the game. The voice-overs are magnificent as well. They are full of emotion and the recordings themselves are great. One of my favorite things in this game are the sounds the Striders make. They have this cool whale-type thing going on. It's sounds very unique, like the TIE Fighter sound from Star Wars. There's nothing else like it. Probably the best example of how amazing the sound is is at the end when you return to City 17. The entire city has basically been devastated, and the war between the outnumbered rebellion and the masses of Combine is raging like there's no manana. As you and your devoted commando squad rampage towards the Citadel, the battles in the distance get more... well, distant-sounding, and you can here quiet, echoing pops from the firing weapons way off behind you. As most of this game is, the sound effects are very impressive. However, as I said before Valve decided to save a couple bucks and a couple hours by taking some sound effects straight out of Half-Life and plopping them into the sequel. That's a big no-no. I'll be running along and I think I'm playing Half-Life since I'm hearing the same footstep sounds from six years ago. I don't know why Valve was so lazy with this, but the sound still gets an awesome:

9/10

Overall:

This is one of the best PC games of all time. No doubts about it. Probably second only to it's predecessor and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Should you rent it? Should you buy it? Well, you can't rent it, so forget it. But if you have $50 bucks at home and a very good PC, get Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Then get Half-Life Platinum Collection. Then get Half-Life 2. You won't be sorry. The final score for this game is a highly respectable:

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/05