Half Life 2 review

Half Life 2, quick review

Disclaimer: this is a review of the main game of Half Life 2, not its episodes.

The original Half Life was a gem that went beyond good and went straight through the awesomesphere. Starting off slow, the game drops you in to a train on the way to work. Gordon, your character, then proceeds to fuck everything up. Well, not him per se. Mister M.I.T. here did absofuckinglutely nothing but push a cart in to a beam and voila, he’s responsible for the end of the world. Same goes for this game where all he really did was flip a fucking switch and ran like a little bitch from point A to point B to point C. And they call him the great savior and shit. HAHAHAHA, Barney is more of a hero than Freeman.

At any rate, the game was amazing for its time and it gave us a rather unique experience that to this day is highly enjoyable. However, with the release of Half Life 2, I feel that the original game was done wrong.

What made the original game so great was that it kept going from one location to the next in a fairly rapid pace, giving you moments to breathe every now and them combined with a few jump scare moments. Slowly but surely the other dimension kept crawling in to the game until you finally changed the scenery completely. Not so in Half Life 2. Do you know those moments in games where there is a long level where things seem to quiet down for a long level or when the gameplay shifts for a level from one first person to driving stage? They normally only come once a game or maybe twice. But here, it’s all there is to it.

The levels are way too long and uninteresting, and when something interesting does happen, it’s over in ten minutes before we move on to a new set of boring levels. Vehicle levels are here as well and I have to say that … well, they’re really, really out of place. They are way too long, way too empty and unexciting.

Take for instance the infamous “We don’t go to Ravenholm.” Whilst it is a very good idea on its own, the level quickly begins to drag on as you go in to yet another street and then turn in to yet another building. Oh look, another puzzle, oh look another batch of enemies. I was so glad to have finally made it out of there, not because it was scary (like many people claim) but because it was going on way to long to be fun. Unfortunately, the game then went in to the level that is Highway 17, another vehicle mission that lasted way too long but was at least passable because of the parts where you needed to bypass an obstacle via the long way. The bridge for example. One moment in particular still bugs me. At one point I was supposed to help clear a bunch of troops coming via airship. The ships came in one at a time and the enemies left the vehicle one at a time. Easy pickings … The enemy didn’t even fire ONCE.

Luckily, this marked the halfway point as we then proceed on to Chapter 8: Sandtraps. The first chapter since the first one that is genuinely interesting. After this, things pick up for the better and the game truly becomes interesting and genuinely challenging! HUZZAH! It’s Half Life again! I haz a happie!

During the boring levels, the shit can really hit the fan hard when you find yourself yet another investigative puzzle. In the original Half Life, it was more along the lines of Obstacle Puzzles. As in: Shit’s in the way, how do I remove shit? Here it’s: Look ma, physics engine puzzle! That is all you need to know about the puzzles, really. Find shit to weigh something down, weigh it down, aaaaaaaaaaaaand Go! Nothing fancy to it. Of course, there are some obstacle puzzles as well and they’re as fun to solve like they were in the first game.

I’m going to save you all a lot of trouble here with one of the puzzles. During Highway 17 (I think some of you just figured out what puzzle I’m talking out) you come across an obvious trap. Sure enough, the trap is sprung, like you had another choice, and you fight off some bad guys. Next up, puzzle time to get you out of the trap area. There’s 3 batteries that you need to collect. Two are easy to spot but the third one is a real son of a bitch to find. And it’s a huge place with a lot of trash so I searched all over the place. Yeah, it was under the fucking tub. Who knew.

I’ve also heard a lot of people praise the story of Half Life 2. Yeah, no, what story? GO THERE! *went there* GO THERE! *Went there* Repeat this enough times and you have Half Life 2. They only slapped on a shell of a story to give a proper excuse for you to go to point B. It doesn’t say much when the only interesting things in this story are the appearance of Barney, the existence or LaMarr and the preacher.

I’m also still a bit flabbergasted by the fact people praise the fuck out of Alyx when all she did so far was act like a normal human being whilst at the same time looking like one too. Big fucking whoop.

And now for one of the most overrated pieces of shit every created. Whilst the rest of the guns are great (especially the Pheropod), the Gravity Gun is mostly pointless unless you manage to find a gas canister or something sharp. The one and only thing that this gun is good for is clearing garbage and furniture out of your way. Which I am fairly certain was placed there just because of the god damned gun.

What makes this game great you ask? The graphics (great for its time), the music (very chilly, but gets cut off unfortunately during a loading screen, kind of ruining the moment) and the controls (smooth and perfect). What’s also perfect in this game is the ammo placement. Sometimes ammo comes far between and you really need to start thinking in order to get passed the enemies. Again, just like in Half Life.

In the end, this game deserves a

7/10

Whilst certainly not great, it’s definitely worth a purchase. Especially since it’s currently in The Orange Box, which is like what? 20 bucks?

This has been Puddle Jumper with a quick review of Half Life 2.