HALF-LIFE 2

PN Review continued... Of course, most types of video and computer games have a very strictly defined structure. Just the term "game" implies that there are certain rules that have to be followed to play a particular game successfully. In good old Doom these might have been "explore this map, find the necessary keycards, kill all enemies". More than a decade later we've progressed to the following rules for Half-Life 2: "just keep walking, do whatever you're told, kill all enemies". Is this progress in interactive gaming? Is this still fun? Even in a run-of-the-mill Doom map you often had a choice about going left or right down those gloomy corridors and backtracking to find secret rooms. Not in Half-Life 2, where dead-ends and blocked-off areas constantly force you onward in certain directions to do specific things. Its like the haunted mansion at Disney World which you can explore safely strapped in a buggy on rails, but not on foot. If this is the future of gaming, I think I'll just keep playing the collection of old FPS classics I've built up over the years - at least those ARE still good fun. Half-Life 2 takes players for a hands-free ride. So, accepting the fact that Half-Life 2 is mostly a passive funhouse ride rather than a stimulating challenge, how does the whole experience shape up? Actually, it's not bad at all. It's at least as good as similarly structured games, such as the first Half-Life, the later Medal of Honor and the recent Call of Duty. I didn't find it as enjoyable as Doom 3, which is also quite linear and scripted, but has a compellingly immersive atmosphere as its trump card. Half-Life 2's story and mood was simply too lightweight to really engage me and hold my attention all the way. Here I have to make an important point which I'll try to explain systematically: The trend of single-player FPS games becoming more movie-like also seems to have shortened the total playing time they offer. So, these days a dozen hours is deemed acceptable, while 20 hours or more would be considered a long game. Forgotten are the days when something like System Shock (the 1994 original) required around 50 hours to complete! Modern games apparently want to trade quantity for quality: it's over quicker, but also more intense and hopefully more enjoyable. The idea then also seems to be that you complete the game in only a few days, maybe during a single weekend. Stretching the experience over a longer period, the player runs the risk of diluting the impact of e.g. action sequences meant to follow one another in quick succession. Or he might simply lose the all-important plot and have to get back into the storyline every time he sits down for a short gaming session. This means that players who complete a game in a day or two and others who take a few weeks to finish it might have radically different perceptions of the in-game plot progression, atmosphere, suspense and immersion. Walking along a beach is not as pleasant as in Far Cry... Now, Half-Life 2 apparently has a playing time of 15-20 hours on offer for the "average" gamer. Speedrunners could finish it within a single day, while people who have responsibilities in the real world might only play intermittently - and end up taking a month to play through it, like I did. Actually, I always tend to take my time when playing an FPS. It just seems such a shame to rush past all that beautiful digital scenery and not absorb all the effort the design team has put into everything. But my approach might work against the intentions of developers who want to create a non-stop thrill ride for you - just like continuously pressing the pause button while watching a nail-biting action movie is sure to destroy a lot of the tension and excitement. Maybe this is the reason why I don't quite "get" games like Call of Duty and Half-Life 2 the way most reviewers and other gamers do. Maybe I should drop the FPS genre and move on to stealth games... (incidentally, I already have Thief 3 installed on my PC, ready to go). But Far Cry has shown how playing at a slower pace makes a lot of sense, simply from a tactical point of view. In real life I wouldn't run around with guns blazing all the time - instead, I would carefully try to sum up potential confrontations, knowing my life is on the line. It doesn't make sense that an FPS game gives you realistic settings and situations and then expects you to play in unrealistically irresponsible ways in order to get the most out of the experience. But maybe Half-Life 2 did indeed NOT want me to take a walk along the beach (as I often did in Far Cry) and notice the lack of breaking waves, the static trees and motionless grass - I should have been in my buggy, recklessly speeding along toward the next Combine ambush, my guns at the ready. Next Page >

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

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