Half-Life 2: My Take

Immersion. If some one put a gun to my head and demanded to know why I thought Half-Life 2 was the greatest game ever, in one word, that would be my answer. The feeling of total immersion is what set the original Half-Life apart from every other shooter. Every little thing in the game contributed to this sense. From the first-person only, to the fact that there were no cutscenes to break up the action, to the completely continuous level design, where each level is just a continuation of the previous. These all helped Half-Life acheive the feeling that it was you in the room with the monsters jumping at you, and not some person whom you were watching and controlling from the other side of a screen. Now Half-Life 2 takes the immersion ball and runs with it.

If I had to point to one factor in Half-Life 2 that added more to that immersion feeling created in the original Half-Life than anything else, it would have to be the physics system. Games have been experimenting with physics for a while now. Ragdoll physics for dead bodies became the "in thing" a couple years ago. Max Payne 2 took physics a step further and had debris littered through the levels. If you shot some one and he fell backwards into a shelf, he would knock it over and all the boxes on the shelf would go flying. This all helped towards the immersion feeling, making it seem that you were running around in a real place, rather than in a defined box of immovable and un-interactable polygons. But Half-Life 2 goes a step further. It makes the physics an inseperable part of the game play. In Max Payne, it didn't really matter if the chair was knocked over when you bumped into it, but it added to the experience. In Half-Life 2, there are parts you could not pass, were it not for the physics system. A puzzle early on in the game has a large board balanced on a circular tube, in see-saw fashion. In order to reach a ledge, you need to raise the side that is down, in essence, changing the direction of the ramp. You do this by picking up the bricks that are scattered around the room and placing them on the side that is up. When you get enough bricks, the see-saw tips the opposite way. Just a short ways later, you repeat this, only opposite. A ramp is floating in the water, but is not high enough for you to make a jump on your vehicle. It has a cage submerged underneath it, and there are floating barrels around. You need to place the barrels in the cage to cause the ramp to float a little higher. It's things like this that make the world feel real. In too many other games, I tend to think "well, if this were real life I would just..." when faced with a problem situation. In Half-Life 2, it practically is real life, and guaranteed, you can use whatever solution you think of.

Another of the ways Half-Life 2 feels real is in the other characters. In most other games, the characters are stiff set pieces, there to provide some dialog to move the plot forward. This isn't always a problem since, in the immortal words of John Carmack, "story in a video game is like plot in a porno. You expect it to be there, but it really isn't necessary." In Half-Life 2, the characters feel like real people, and can act better than many Hollywood stars (insert Keanu Reeves joke here). The facial expressions are quite literally the most convincing to date, and the argument could be made that they even rival WETA's work on Gollum. From the look of disgust Alyx gives Dr. Mossman when Mossman insinuates that Alyx made a computational error, to the look of seething hatred, when Alyx discovers a resitance member is in fact working for the Combine, to the look of embarassment she gives when her father, Eli Vance, insinuates that there might be something between Gordon and Alyx, right down to the wink that Eli gives Gordon when Alyx turns her back (not a fake wink in which the "eye" texture is just replaced with an "eyelid" texture, mind you; this is a real wink; the eyebrow shifts, the cheek compresses, the corner of his mouth stretches to the side...) all contribute to the overwhelming sense that these are real people, and when you're fighting along side them, your not just trying to fulfill the games mission goals, but you actually want to genuinely help them.

Half-Life 2 is probably one of the first games where the characters move their eyes, rather than just turning their head. Alyx sometimes shoots you a sideways glance when talking to Dr. Kleiner. And this is definitely the first to game to calculate specular highlighting, based on the light sources in the rooms, off the eyeball. When I first heard in the E3 demo that this was one of the features of the Source engine, I thought "why would Valve waste processor cycles computing such an insignificant and un-noticable detail?" But it's because it's so small that it works so well. Your brain picks it up on a sub-conscious level, but it goes a long ways towards making the eye look real, like there's a thin layer of moisture on top of it, and that in turn makes the character feel like he's looking through the screen at you, the player.

The list of characters extends beyond just humans. You run into the occasional Vortigon, which were enemies in the first Half-Life, but now help out the resistance. But in battle, you come to rely on the "Ant-Lions". When you first meet them, they are terrifying. They live in the sand, and come swarming when you walk on it (Tremors anyone?). This forces you to find things to jump to, or when there isn't anything, pick up an object to place on the sand to jump to (yet another way in which the physics system is used to solve problems; were it not for Source's physics system, I'd still be back on Highway 17, trying to figure out how to fight off 20 Ant-Lions with only 15 rounds of shotgun ammo). I couldn't help but think of the game "sand monster" I played when I was a kid. Eventually, a Vortigon gives you a pheromone that let's you control the Ant-Lions, and then they are terrifying, but as an ally. Still, it was always a little unnerving to turn around and see 4 big, ugly alien creatures following you closely, reacting to your every move. They are essentially cannon-fodder, but an unlimited supply of very deadly cannon fodder. It makes me think of the Achievement Demotivator from Despair.com; "You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor."

Perhaps one of my favorite non-human "characters" is Dr. Kleiner's pet "Lamar", a de-fanged head crab. It can be quite cute when it's not trying to gum your head. In its cutest moment in the game, Dr. Kleiner peeks around the doorway to find you and Alyx. At his feet is the head crab, peeking as well. It is then startled and runs off, just like a puppy-dog.

To say that Half-Life 2 is a pretty game is like saying Vladimir Horowitz could play the piano. Half-Life 2 was hit with the Pretty stick. Repeatedly. It is probably the most gorgeous game I have ever played. It doesn't accomplish this by overloading on polygons or calculating every ray of light from each of the dozen light sources in the room, the way Doom 3 does. Instead, the biggest contribution to Half-Life 2's high ogle-factor is the textures. It has some of the most detail ever. And then once the bump maps and shaders and all the pretty-fiers are applied, what you have is as close to photo-realism as has been achieved in a game. I noticed this early on when I was looking down a hallway in an apartment building in City 17. The floor was wooden. Parts of it were polished enough to be reflective. But others were scuffed, creating breaks and distortions in the reflections. When you looked at it at a shallow angle, the specular reflection wasn't quite straight. Instead it was dull and distorted, creating the illusion that the floor wasn't quite flat. Of course, the floor was one flat polygon, but you wouldn't know just from looking at it. It all made it seem like it was a real floor in a real slum apartment building, further adding to the immersion. I would also like to add that Half-Life 2 has the best-looking water effects of any game to date.

When it comes down to it, Half-Life 2 is a shooter, and in order to really be a great game, it has to be fun. Half-Life 2 delivers here with white-hot lead. It has some of the most diverse game play in a shooter ever. One level, you're navigating a zombie-infested apandoned ghost town. Another, you're driving an "air-boat" at break-neck speeds through Combine traps, and in yet another, you're ordering your squad through war-torn streets, trying to find some rocket ammo to take down the massive Striders. The last levels in the game make for some of the most intense FPS action ever, arguably on par with WW2 shooters like Call of Duty.

The game starts out in a paced manner. It's approximately 1 hour into the game before you finally get a weapon. That's not to say it's "slow" and it's definitely not saying it's "calm". One tense moment early on features Gordon fleeing from the Overwatch soldiers. He must navigate his way through an apartment building, up to the roof, and from there, a roof-top chase, dodging the bad guys all the way. This is a particularly effective action scene because 1) it's early in the game and you're not sure what's going on yet, and 2) you have no weapons.

Half-Life 2 has some seriously scary levels, too. Not "Doom 3" scary, but still getting there. Definitely more than I was expecting from Half-Life.

Probably one of my favorite sequences was the "air-boat". Over the course of several levels, you navigate what is essentially a hovercraft through canals, trying to get from City 17 to Black Mesa East, where Dr. Vance is located. The vehicle physics make for a fun ride, and some of the action sequences along the way are the best.

Half-Life 2 has tremendous level design. The levels are, for the most part, entirely linear (as in the first Half-Life), but remarkably, they don't feel that way. The designers did a very good job of herding you along a certain path without making it feel like you were even being guided. This is one area where a lot of shooter lose the sense of real life and an area where, as usual, Half-Life 2 excels.

Overall, Half-Life 2 doesn't feel so much like a game as it feels that for 20 hours or so, you become Gordon Freeman. You are dropped in City 17 with no explanation and in order to survive, you must battle your way through some of the most realistic environments ever assembled, against some of the most life-like enemies ever encountered, and make friends with some of the most human characters ever created on a computer. At times you almost forget they are just on a computer.

I can't wait to play through it again.