Half-Life 2

"Not as pretty as the PC, but still the best single player game on the xbox"

Let me start out by saying that I was tremendously underwhelmed by the first Half-Life on PC. It was lauded with so much praise that by the time I got around to playing it in the summer of 2005, I was pretty disappointed. Sure, it was pretty good, but it didn't change the way I viewed games in the same way that Starcraft, Goldeneye, and the first Halo did.

My experience with Half-Life 2 was quite a bit different than the first one. My PC is nowhere near capable of running the game, but I had played it at a friend's house and I had a great time with it. The Havok physics engine alone was like something I had never encountered before, and the fact that the game was drop dead gorgeous didn't hurt.

The Xbox version certainly doesn't look as good (but it still does a heck of a job) and there are weird framerate hiccups, but for all of it's quirks I had as much fun playing through on the little (okay, BULKY) green box than I did on my friend's nice Alienware rig.

Controls: This is always one of the biggest things for me. If I can't play the game, I don't care how it looks or sounds or anything like that. With HL2 I never had a problem. Valve has more than made up for the lack of a mouse and keyboard by using the (surprise, surprise) tried and true Halo dual stick control scheme. There is a noticeable amount of auto-aim, but you still have to get the crosshair pretty darn close before it helps you out at all. Overall it's a very natural feeling experience.

Graphics: Once again, it's not ridiculous-PC-rig quality, but Half-Life 2 definitely pushes the XBox to its limits, and it shows. There's a little bit of late rendering (a la the cutscenes in Halo 2) but it's not NEARLY as noticeable. Even with it's flaws the game still pulls off a strong showing as one of the most realistic games I've seen. Everything seems completely genuine, from the inside of a sewer pipe, to the skin on people's faces, to the dust clouds in a recently demolished building.

Sound: Not always the thing that I pay the most attention to, but sometimes HL2 makes you. A lot of games have you hear what's coming before you see it, but Half-Life 2 does it the best. I'd get through one firefight with a clip and a half left in my gun and hear the tell-tale radio chatter of another group of Combine soldiers around the corner. Yikes. It really pays off to listen in this game (from knowing there's an ambush coming, to the beeping of the grenade that was just dropped at your feet). Besides, it just sounds pretty too.

Gameplay: I said in the title that this is the best single player game on the XBox and I mean it. Halo 2 has better moments, but I've never been glued to my screen more than I have here. Even when I kept dying over and over again, I kept playing. I like the complete lack of cutscenes in the game. Everything that unfolds is seen through the eyes of Gordon Freeman. In the middle of a heated debate, you can decide to run across the room and examine the electronics on the wall. Granted there's a couple noticeable things that detract ever so slightly from the experience. Explosions and lots of physics interactions tend to make things chug a bit, but never more than a second, and NEVER causing player death or anything unfortunate like that. Secondly, just one little peeve I had (it only came up twice that I can recall) is that certain characters (Alyx, Dr. Vance, Barney) tend to push you aside if you stand in the predetermined path they're supposed to move in during cutscenes. The PC version did it too, though.

All in all, I can't think of another game that I can recommend more. You can find it at a bargain price ($19.99 isn't too shabby for something as hefty as this). If you're at all into first person shooters, or really just good games in general, you can't go wrong with picking this up.

I give it a 9/10, since there's no such thing as a perfect game. But this pushes the limits pretty darn close.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/06