Half-Life is the most important FPS ever made.
Half-Life is a First-Person Shooter developed by Valve and released for the PC in 1998. Half-Life is the game that started the boom of First-Person Shooter's on the PC, it is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most important videogames ever made and it's influence can still be seen in games to this day.
In Half-Life players take the role of Gordon Freeman, a Research Associate for the Black Mesa Research Facility who, accidentally, during an experiment opened a wormhole to another dimension, allowing creatures like human science has never known before to infiltrate their world. After these events, the Government sends in troops to fight the aliens, but they also have strict orders to kill any survivors to the incident so they can contain what's happened and stop the rest of the world finding out. Gordon's mission is, to firstly survive, and to get assistance for the scientists trapped in the Black Mesa facility.
Half-Life is a challenging game. For those of you who think gaming now-a-days is easy, like me, you have to get a copy of this game. It's what all First-Person Shooters should be like. The game itself is split into sort-of levels, but each level flows straight into the next without a load screen or without having to go back to a level select menu, which keeps the game flowing. Each levels objectives range from finding someone or activating certain machinery to just fighting your way through them, so the level objectives may be original, but the levels are so cleverly set-up and the enemies are quite dangerous so just doing the said things required isn't as straight forward as it may sound. Plus the large array of weapons open to Gordon Freeman to use are also a pleasure to use, whether you like blowing things up with grenades or tranquilizing things with the Cross Bow this game has a weapon you'll enjoy using.
But the game though does have some draw backs, like not be able to look down the sights of all the guns Gordon Freeman can use, and it's un-realistic in the way you can carry about 10 weapons, but the gameplay is fantastic and that alone should make you see past these shortcomings, but that's not the best thing about the game. For me the games Artificial Intelligence is phenomenal, easily the best of all the hundreds of games I've played. For instance, you could be in a fight with a bunch of soldiers, then one of them could walk under a Barnacle (a creature that is stationary on ceilings, but has a long tonge that can catch prey) and be caught and eaten up by it. Or you could turn a corner and witness a fight between a horde of aliens and a bunch of soldiers. And the way the games many friendly faces interact with you, and how they actually do contribute when they help you fight really shows, it's not always you verses the enemies, the people who help you actually do get kills themselves, and the A.I is that clever that they can actually shoot you by mistake sometimes. Black And White may be in the Guinness Book of World Records for the game having the best Artificial Intelligence ever, but Half-Life can't be much further behind it.
When it was released in 1998 it's fair to say that PC gaming was way behind console gaming, but Half-Life managed to bring a whole host of gamers over to the PC. In 1997, with the release of Goldeneye on the N64, First-Person Shooters became more popular, but Half-Life took the genre in a whole new direction. As brilliant as Goldeneye was, and still is, Half-Life managed to better it in every conceivable way, and showed the world that the home of the First-Person Shooter genre is the PC. While movement on Goldeneye was limited to one analogue stick for moving and one trigger button to aim, the keyboard and mouse used on the PC makes movements much more fluent. On Goldeneye to aim with the 'R' trigger you had to be stationary and the way the game got away with it's sticky controls was that the guns automatically aimed at enemies, but this was much different in Half-Life. While you can optionally still lock on, you can freely look around using the mouse while still moving with the keyboard and this was way of moving meant Half-Life's controls were much more precise than any of it's console rivals. Half-Life was also visually brilliant. A PC can produce better graphics than a console, and this really showed in Half-Life as it bettered it's nearest console rivals in this category also.
Half-Life is a brilliant game. Its importance to its own genre is there to be seen as it's been a massive influence to other First-Person Shooters that followed it. While it might not have been the first 'big' First-Person Shooter, and while it wasn't the game that made brought the genre to a wider audience, it certainly followed in the footsteps of its influences and expanded upon them making it game that is virtually flawless. If you haven't played this game, make your next purchase this game. If you never play this game, you cannot call yourself a gamer.
Review by: James Widdowson
