HALF-LIFE 2

PN Review continued... If I'm sounding a bit peeved in concocting all these conspiracy theories about Half-Life 2's grab of all the gaming Oscars, it's because I am indeed feeling pissed off by this farce. Half-Life 2 does NOT deserve all the praise that's been and being heaped on it - it simply isn't that great a game. It's good, but not THAT good or innovative. What we have here is a kind of self-hypnosis and mass denial: people declaring a game to be a monumental masterpiece because they so dearly wanted it to be one. For now, the actual reality will do little to change their minds. As far as I'm concerned, to really justify such an amount of excitement as Half-Life 2 has by now generated, a game would have to be as revolutionary today as the first Doom was in 1993 - not merely as evolutionary as the original Half-Life was in 1998. Reviewers and fans alike have clearly allowed themselves to be fooled, judging by all the little things they overlooked as they eagerly jumped on the pro-Half-Life 2 bandwagon. In the following sections I'll be discussing some specific game aspects to back up my claim. First, though, I need to address one more issue related to Half-Life 2 that's really bugging me: the mainstream and gaming media's seeming obsession with scoring and ranking games. Declaring any game to be the "best" or awarding it the equivalent of a 100% score in a review is to my mind not very helpful or even appropriate in evaluating the overall merits of individual computer & video games. It is simply not possible to objectively make these kinds of assessments, since in modern games we are dealing with a creative medium and a range of themes so broad as to make direct comparisons and even competitive rankings between games virtually meaningless. Things like a player's prior gaming experiences & expectations, personal taste & preferences, media exposure & promotion of specific games, gameplay style and storylines are all an influence in determining how any single person will evaluate the games he plays. The game's action ranges from war-like battles... Gamers today are already the second, even third generation to be exposed to the phenomena of digital entertainment from a young age. The fact that I played the proto-FPS Gyron back in 1986 will cause me to look at a game like Half-Life 2 differently than a younger guy who grew up on a diet of Quake multiplayer games, or someone whose first major gaming experience might have been with the original Half-Life. Because gaming technology is still developing rapidly, the context of release date and technical limitations is also an important aspect to keep in mind here. Doom was hailed as the best game ever back in 1993, and the same is being said about Half-Life 2 now - but how can these two games be compared head-to-head and an ultimate winner be chosen from the two? Even though both are FPS games, there is such a great divide between them in terms of time and tech, that they can only really be judged as individual entities on their own intrinsic merits. In trying to compare and categorize games in definite terms we are really dealing with a moving target and the exercise is ultimately pointless, its biggest value probably lying in the potential use of a review score as a temporary marketing tool. A "Voted Best Game of the Year" sticker does look impressive on the box, after all - but a few years from now it will mean little to gamers who are accustomed to yet higher standards and gaming innovations that will have appeared in the interim. A game like Doom was a milestone a decade ago and still packs a lot of entertainment punch today (for older gamers like me, at least), but it's an icon that's had its time and cannot directly compete with the modern FPS titles. ...to creepy "survival horror"-style encounters. All games, no matter how great - are destined to go this route of gradual downgrading as more polished titles appear and electronic entertainment as a whole develops further. The fact that a majority of people are raving about a particular game is of little consequence to all those who prefer to play other games now or the millions of gamers who enjoyed older games in the past. In light of the continual flux in the field of gaming, on-going attempts by "official" reviewers and game "experts" to devise or update all-encompassing lists which rank games numerically is just silly. Of course, individuals will have their personal favourites - and lists of worthwhile games can also be compiled for specific interest groups, provided a set of evaluation criteria can be agreed on by everyone involved. But deciding that a game gets, say, a score of 96% or is ranked second after Half-Life 2 is not a scientific process - it's ultimately still a personal opinion, no matter how many other people share similar views about that particular game. Some aspects of a title can obviously be evaluated on their own merits or in context of the game's theme and relationship to other games (as I'll be doing below) - but subjective criteria will in the end always be a deciding factor. With all that out of the way, I'm finally ready to look at Half-Life 2 itself in more specific detail. If the following seems to contain a lot of negative criticism, it's less about simply knocking the game and more about showing how misguided those reviewers were who awarded Half-Life 2 one perfect score after another, while ignoring flaws that should be obvious to any serious FPS gamer. Enough positive things have been said about Half-Life 2 - it's time someone also pointed out some of the game's less-than-perfect characteristics. Next Page >

PN Game Reviews: Half-Life 2 > 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

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