See What Started It All.
Welcome to the Black Mesa Research Facility. With that one sentence, the entire world of video gaming as we knew it changed forever. Gordon Freeman became something of gaming legend. Everyone knows at least one aspect or another of his historical journey to the surface and beyond. The game of course is Half-Life, and it is quite hard to forget. Through its ingenious use of imagination, creativity, and programming, this game has left its mark in every first person shooter to date. This game is at the same level as Doom for breakthrough performances.
Like most gamers, you would think of Half-Life as a PC game, and by all means, it is, but some people prefer consoles rather then a PC. Therefore this wont be a comparison between the two, this is strictly a review of the PlayStation2 version as if it wasn’t a PC game at all. That being said, lets get started.
This game has one incredible story. As the game starts out, you play as the sub-level scientist Gordon Freeman working in an underground research facility. You begin the day as ordinary as any other with an analysis of some strange mineral samples. That is where the ordinary comes to a screeching halt. Something goes terribly wrong and you find yourself as the only person with enough sanity left to piece together just what exactly happened and try to put things back together. Through countless layer upon layer, you slowly work your way to the surface to uncover exactly what is going on. From the revolutionary intro sequence, to the creepy government agent guy, and through to the heart pounding end, this game delivers on all fronts. It is excellent to the fullest extent of the word and you would be hard pressed to find someone who says otherwise.
The actual game play isn’t half bad. The control scheme, as with most console FPS, takes some getting used to. Once you have mastered the aim timing and movement sensitivity, you are pretty much good to go. The main thing that becomes almost immediately annoying is the brief but constant load times between sequences. You won’t be sitting there for long but right when you are getting into the game, or hurrying to find health and recover, which you will be doing constantly, you get this polite little Loading message. But with the given technology you can’t expect much in that regard, it doesn’t really take much away from the experience anyways. It is just something worth mentioning. Throughout the game you will battle many different types of foes to get to your overall objective, which changes as the story progresses. After completing the game you have the opportunity to play through another sequence of events characterized with the game’s second main mode, coop. This is an awesome addition to the game since the main story itself is worth getting, but to also get this extra little game mode, well that is just to good to pass up. This works in a series of level like sequences where you and your buddy get rated as to how well you do overall. The main story is long, about 30 maybe 40 hours of straight playing time, and the coop, though it isn’t very long has good replay value. All in all that gives the game a pretty decent appeal all things considered.
I would try to put something negative about the game down but frankly, there just isn’t anything bad about it. This game is spectacular! Everyone should play though it at least once even if they don’t buy it for themselves. The game gets a perfect 10 out of 10 from my scale, which puts it at “Revolutionary.” Truly a title that few ever achieve on my list, but this game, even though it may not be the “grand daddy” of all shooters (I suspect Doom would have that honor,) it definitely lifts and defines the bar for what a FPS could and should look like. Bottom line: get it. This game deserves to be in everyone’s collection.