Graphics
At least some of the hype around Half-Life 2 is based on the fact that it features Valve's new Source engine - and the resulting 3D imagery indeed looks pretty much stunning. Of course, the presence of flashy images is not enough to warrant calling an entire game "great" - but visuals are an important part of any FPS gaming experience, and can contribute greatly to atmosphere, immersion and gameplay. Graphics can also make a good or bad initial impression, and here Half-Life 2 lacks a bit in the "gosh-wow" department - especially if one has already seen games like Far Cry, Doom 3 and even a recent title like Painkiller. Half-Life 2's initial impact is rather subtle, its more stunning eye-candy only appearing later in the game - e.g. you finish off a helicopter boss in a beautiful sunset scene, shortly before venturing into a creepy and moonlit village overrun with hordes of zombies.
Even so, though, I felt Half-Life 2 doesn't look as good as Far Cry and is certainly no match for Doom 3 if realism of the environment and lighting effects are the main criteria. However, let me be quick to admit that I did not see Half-Life 2 quite as it was intended, since my GeForce FX 5700 card is not entirely DirectX 9 compliant - instead, the DX 8.1 hardware mode was selected by the game settings themselves when I started the game. So, effectively, I was not playing Half-Life 2 at its highest possible video settings - but neither could I do this with Far Cry and Doom 3 and still get decent frame rates. The bottom line is that I played Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 on the same mid-spec rig with their graphic settings in the higher but not quite maximum range. Therefore, I think I can compare the quality of the visuals I saw in these three games more or less directly. So, what impressed me in Half-Life 2 and what didn't?
Weather effects look more impressive in Doom 3.
Well, to be honest, I was expecting more. Half-Life 2 looks good most of the time, great some of the time - and disappointing at other times. I can best describe the game by saying that it is visually uneven, at least as it ran on the system and settings I used. What I saw included some pretty bland settings lacking in visual variety, "natural" terrain that often seemed quite geometric, and scenery elements like grass and cliffs suddenly popping in and out of view as I changed my distance from them or altered my viewing angle. These are the kinds of graphical stylizations and quirks I'd expect in older games, but not in the state-of-the-art title we're supposedly dealing with here... One thing that bothered me particularly was how ground-level details deteriorated quite drastically just a short distance away from my player position, causing things like rail tracks and road markings to flatten into an unrealistic blur. The transition from crisp to indistinct textures seemed very abrupt and I kept noticing this phenomenon until I set a high degree of Anisotropic Filtering - the results using "only" Trilinear Filtering just looked like total crap.
I have to admit, though, that Half-Life 2 does have a few impressive effects up its sleeve. Especially the water looks very good - but so did Far Cry's gently lapping surf and shimmering reflections. Trying an unofficial Half-Life 2 patch recently I was even able to see some DX 9 quality reflections - the mirror-like quality of which, oddly enough, was not necessarily more realistic than the simple reflections I saw while playing through the game in DX 8.1 mode. But nice water was not enough to make me fall in love with Half-Life 2's visual presentation to the extent I did with Far Cry, Doom 3 and Painkiller's stunning settings. The washed-out colours and lack of "props" (especially in outdoor areas) may have been a deliberate decision of the game's art directors in creating the proper impression of deteriorating urban settings, but looking beyond that I saw other things that cannot easily be rationalized: Airwaves of passing alien craft caused overhead cables to sway to and fro, but none of the plantlife that I saw showed any kind of animation effects. Trees stood rock-steady like sculptures and grass remained as rigid as steel wool - despite a howling coastal wind in many of the scenes. Even the relatively old FPS Medal of Honor had trees that gently moved in the breeze, achieving this effect with the even older Quake 3 engine. Far Cry positively brimmed with an abundance of convincingly animated vegetation, from rustling grass to swaying trees.
Trees sway in Far Cry but are motionless in Half-Life 2.
There's more: Whenever I drove or walked through a dark tunnel, I would usually notice bright seams, as if the tunnel were made of cardboard and sunlight was filtering through from outside. I don't recall too many such glitches in Far Cry and certainly saw nothing of the kind in Doom 3 (which features a LOT of dark corridors and tunnels). Then, whenever I looked over the edge of a seaside cliff in Half-Life 2 I was usually greeted with rather underwhelming scenery composed of blocky shapes and repetitive texture patterns akin to something from much earlier FPS games. Glancing up at the sky or zooming in on the brooding Citadel tower, I never noticed any moving clouds, wafting fog or drizzling rain - things we've already seen crudely done in the original Quake years ago, featured to some extent in the Medal of Honor series, and stunningly showcased through both Painkiller and Doom 3's weather effects. Half-Life 2's Ravenholm level did have at least one instance of drifting mist - but that rooftop stage also allowed me to look down on flame animations and notice that they were as 2D as Doom character sprites...
Then how about this: main character Gordon Freeman's hand and lower arm are clearly seen holding various weapons, but not once do his appendages appear when grabbing hold of other physical objects in the game world. Barrels and bottles levitate in front of the player, the buggy's steering wheel seems to turn itself and doors are apparently opened by telekinesis. Freeman's shadow is also never seen against a wall, his reflection never spotted in a mirror. Of course, we're used to this kind of disembodied presence in FPS games, the player's visual representation traditionally being nothing more than a hand holding a gun. But Half-Life 2 is supposed to be revolutionary. And if Duke Nukem 3D could give us a crude mirror reflection of that game's main hero, surely something more realistic is possible almost a decade later. If modern games like Thief 3 and Chronicles of Riddick can show you your own shadow and parts of your virtual body as you rotate your view downwards, why hasn't Half-Life 2 attempted this as well?
Most tunnel interiors show unrealistic "seams"...
And was everyone too mesmerized by the gravity gun's capabilities to realize that just picking something up manually shouldn't look like "gravity gun lite", floating objects and all? Were all the fanboys too enraptured by Alyx's nice facial animations and cute butt to notice that Valve's designers had skimped on other "small details" that could have greatly enhanced the game's sense of reality and immersion? I'm surprised that not a single reviewer I've come across has pointed out these glaring omissions - in sharp contrast to other aspects of Half-Life 2 that are being held up as supreme examples of visual realism...
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