Half-Life 1: Close but No Cigar
By Louis-Dominique. Filed in Media |
Rumblings and grumblings about Half-Life 1. Contrast with my earlier post about Half-Life 2: Half-Life 2: the Felicitous Marriage of Physics and Gameplay. I’m putting this up here mainly for the sake of comparison with that Hal-Life 2 post.
[As a followup to Half-Life 2: the Felicitous Marriage of Physics and Gameplay, I'm posting this. This little write up of Half-Life (Half-Life 1) was written about two-three years ago, I'd guess. I've edited it slightly before posting here.]
If you’re a die-hard FPS or Half-Life fan, reading this is a waste of your time. I’m not trying to convince you to change your mind. What follows is most appropriate for people who are not usually into FPS games and were wondering about Half-Life.
I’m not a die hard fan of first person shooters (FPS). I’ve played Doom and Doom II and probably some other ones I can’t remember. Blowing up virtual entities, per se, amuses me for maybe 5 minutes. So if a FPS contains only combat, it’s not for me. Now, I thought Half-Life could be the FPS that contains the right mix to keep me hooked. I was disappointed.
I’ve come across a lot of high praise for Half-Life on the web. According to most sources, it was a highly revolutionary game when it came out. The reason most often advanced for this is that it is an FPS with a story. I beg to differ.
The game is great up to (and including) the chapter titled “We’ve Got Hostiles”, from “Blast Pit” onwards, it becomes a chore. The opening sequence in the tram is just great. It establishes the location and the character you are playing in a masterful way. Placing you (quite literally) at the center of the catastrophe that gets the whole ball rolling is pure genius. This event and everything that follows successfully captures the sense of dread that the player should be confronted to. Everything that follows… until “Blast Pit”, that is.
Starting with “Blast Pit”, the atmosphere of dread is gone and the plot becomes thinner than paper. The impetus given at the very start of the game can only carry you so far. A plot that is not nourished at the necessary intervals and with sizeable portions eventually dies. This is what happens here: too little story stretched out for too long. In the end, the story gets thinned so much that it is almost as if there were no story at all. A step above Doom storywise but not a giant step, that’s for sure. (By the way, isn’t the whole “scientists opening up a portal to some parallel dimension and monsters pour out” a… erm… “borrowing” from Doom???)
There’s also an issue with the difficulty of the game. Combatwise, early levels are on the easy side. “Surface Tension” marks a noticeable increase in difficulty. “Gonarch’s Lair” marks a second noticeable increase and from that point on, things just get insane.
Half-Life up until “Blast Pit”: 9/10. Half-Life from “Blast Pit” onwards: 3/10.
Now, if you want a game with a good story all around, go with Deus Ex. If there’s any problem with Deus Ex, it is that there is maybe a little bit too much story. Not in terms of the size of the story but in terms of complexity. Now, I realize Deus Ex was released 2 years after Half-Life but that doesn’t excuse the storytelling problems of the latter. (Think of it: storytelling has been with us for millennia so Deus Ex had no advantage here.)