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Valve's Half Life 2 brings some new things to the First Person Shooter genre. In this sequel to the famous Half Life, you play (obviously) as Gordon Freeman. Gordon was a physicist employed at the Black Mesa researched facility, until something went terribly wrong. But that's Half Life, and this is a Half Life 2 review. It all starts off when Gordon is awoken by G-Man, his new ‘employer.' G-Man informs him that it is time, once again, to save the world.
This is where the game really picks up, and doesn't slow down much at all until the very end of the game. Half-Life 2 uses a rag-doll physics engine that is very entertaining, especially at the end of the game, but I won't ruin it for you. The lighting and environment effects are just one of the many things that make this game great. One moment you'll be cruising down the beach in your pimp ass go-kart, and the next minute you'll be hacking zombies in half via gravity gun. Yes, I did just say that. Gravity. Fucking. Gun. As you can imagine, with this gun, you can lift very heavy things and throw them great distances to obliterate your enemies. Or, you can make forts. Whatever tickles your fancy. The graphics and effects are phenomenal, so I suggest a powerful machine to run it on. Even if you don't have the most top of the line PC, you can still enjoy it on a lower setting; but if you do have the ability to play it on a high resolution, you're in for a treat.
Valve did a fantastic job of creating a seemingly hopeless environment, and actually making it believable. It's all about the size. The citadel in this game is, to say the least, intimidating as it towers over the city and dominates the skyline. Striders, one of the common enemies in Half-Life 2, are several stories tall, and none too happy with humanity. (Picture AT-STs from Star Wars, only much larger, and with tooth-pick legs. Yeah, it's frightening.) The citizens of City 17's lack of motivation and will to live also adds to this gloomy effect. You'll often see civilians being abused by combine soldiers, waiting in line to get their drab clothes cleaned, or huddling together in terror as the combine breaks down their doors.
The multiplayer is great to boot. The physics seem a bit clunkier than in the campaign, but it's nothing that should make you shy away from playing it. Multiplayer offers a plethora of player skins to choose from, as well as emblems to spray paint the walls after you coat them with your enemy's blood. Truly one of the greatest things about the multiplayer is the ability to edit the physics while in game via the console. You can modify small things like how many pellets a shot gun shoots out, or you can go for the bigger things and modify the gravity gun. By cranking up the gravity gun's power, you can lift up the largest of items; and by turning up its force, you can launch the items much harder and further. [There are few things as fun as multiplayer car fights. They're just like snowball fights, only with less crystallized water, and more tons of metal and glass. --Mark]
Half-Life 2 is also porting to the Xbox, with the planned release date of October 17, 2005. Most likely, the loading screens will be more frequent to deal with the lower RAM of the Xbox, and the graphics will probably be rougher. Valve hasn't shared plans of any special features with the Xbox port, but here's hoping.
If you're in the mood for an FPS with a compelling story line, great game play, tremendous replay value, entertaining multiplayer and big guns; I highly recommend Half-Life 2. It gets an Awesome/10. The multiplayer, in comparison, isn't quite as good. You still get some entertainment, but it just isn't quite as good as the story mode. Don't get me wrong, the multiplayer is fun, it just feels too much like Counter-Strike, which receives an Overrated/10. Buy this game. You won't regret it… unless of course you're a communist.
...You're not a communist, are you?
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