Half-Life – PC
- New weapons; new levels; solve a variety of puzzles; first-person shooter
As Gordon Freeman, a young research associate in the Anomalous Materials Laboratory of the Black Mesa Federal Research Facility, your mission is to investigate a strange crystalline being. You find yourself battling not only the alien monsters but also the government troops sent in to keep the crisis under wraps. Sophisticated monsters and creative technologies make this game a winner.
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You play the star in this exceptional action ‘movie’,
Due to an experimental accident you become trapped in a fictional `Area 51′ type of underground facility. The experiment you were working on created a dimensional portal that damaged the base and unleashed hordes of repulsive aliens hell bent on destruction. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (like you have a choice!) is to get out of the base alive and get help. Unfortunately the military have other Ideas. The military brass wants the whole problem to go away, they want to kill the aliens and all the scientists too. Your only allies in your herculean task are a few intellectually challenged security guards and a few terrified scientists. Fortunately you have the use of an `Earthworm Jim’ environmental suit and along the way you accumulate a devastating arsenal of weapons. The time to chew gum is over, the time to kick a$$ has begun.
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|Half-Life,
Few games transcend mediocrity and bash down the doors of greatness-Half-Life is one such game. Unlike Quake’s mindless corridor rampage, Half-Life is equal parts action and adventure. Ammo is limited, so you’ll have to find other ways to frag your foe. Also, there’s a fair amount of jumping and object manipulation, so über-fraggers may dislike Half-Life’s more adventurous spirit. You’ll have to mix up your attack strategies to survive-there are no Runes of Invulnerability or Quad Damages here.
As scientist Gordon Freeman working deep within the underground Black Mesa complex, your workday takes a hard right-turn into hell when top-secret experiments go awry, unleashing a blood-thirsty menagerie of nasty critters. Only your wits, stealth, and effective use of weapons and cover will save the day.
Fighting your way back to the surface is a bone-chilling affair, but the scenery makes it all worthwhile, thanks to Valve’s choice of 3D-polygon engine. Half-Life took the best that Quake and QuakeWorld had to offer and taught it a thing or three, with a staggering list of tweaks and optimizations. For starters, Half-Life is the only Quake-tech game to support both OpenGL and Direct3D. For peak performance, we recommend the OpenGL option (with its multitextured lighting), although the D3D isn’t shabby. Either way, Half-Life packs all the expected visual tricks, including alpha-blended water and glass, procedural texturing for blood-splattering effects, and even cool spark effects. Unfortunately, the clean, bright, and varied textures are limited to 256×256. But they do run in either 16-bit or 24-bit depth for even crisper colors. Rather than traditional multipiece polygon models, Half-Life’s models are made up of a single mesh. This is then wrapped in a single texture and animated via skeletal mapping for realistic motion with no visible seams or joints. And each model has twice (roughly 400/800) the polygon count of a normal game, such as Quake. These beefier models sport animated facial expressions, long missing in first-person shooters. But these aren’t just animated textures-Half-Life’s mouth movements are fully animated polygons.
The arsenal, from the typical shotgun to the alien Hivehand spewing living projectiles, keep Half-Life fresh. But what good are all these delectable death-dealers without some moving targets? Enter Half-Life’s much-vaunted artificial intelligence.
Half-Life challenges the notion that a programmed AI is predictable and easy to beat. The virtual denizens react so lifelike, you’ll wonder whose brain is hooked up on the other end. Lob a grenade into a squad of soldiers and watch them scramble for cover. Likewise, a squad leader may yell “fire in the hole” as a grenade bounces into your lap. And if the humans weren’t bad enough, the extraterrestrials are even worse. Each species has its own traits-some retreat when confronted alone, but will turn around and attack with the proper reinforcements. Their sophisticated AI beats the stuffing out of Shogo’s anemic intelligence any day of the week.
To safely traverse these darkened corridors, you’ll need to keep a keen ear open for the soldiers’ radio chatter, gurgling alien noises, and ominous footsteps. A host-based reverb/echo combined with 3D positional support via A3D and EAX make Half-Life’s acoustics rock.
Start to finish, Half-Life is a cinematic gaming experience like no other. Forget [bad] pre-rendered FMV drivel-Half-Life uses the actual game engine to seamlessly move the story along, all from a first-person perspective.
At times, prescripted actions restrain your role to that of a hapless voyeur. As you try to piece together what the hell went wrong, you’ll stumble onto scenes of horrific carnage: fellow scientists being attacked by parasitic head-crabs, a guard’s mangled corpse being cut in two by a stray laser, elevators full of escapees plunging down deep shafts. But when you can intercede, you won’t have to adventure alone-Half-Life’s NPCs help out in your quest. Fellow scientists might be able to heal your wounds and security officers can be convinced to provide cover fire.
And ample cover can be found in the design of the Black Mesa complex, which is excellent, with catwalks and air vents spanning upcoming levels and environmental hazards that require traditional puzzle solving. And the lag between nodes within the game has been minimized so it doesn’t intrude on the action.
Is Half-Life perfect? No. For all the attention to detail in most areas, little details such as seeing the weapon while you climb ladders takes away from the immersion. And while the interaction in Half-Life is reminiscent of Duke Nukem 3D, with breakable soda machines, usable microwave ovens, and even a hand dryer, this interactivity dwindles as the game goes on. Also, you may encounter the once-in-a-blue-moon clipping problem and floating body. While we applaud Valve for its D3D implementation, lag plagued…
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