Economy of Effort

HALF-LIFE REPLAY: 12.5% COMPLETE (1/8)

Finished the original Half-Life again. I was interested to see how it would stand up, 9 years after the first (and last) time I played the game.

The Good: Wonderful pacing through most of the game. Action sequences were broken up with some nice environmental puzzles. Many sections had good freedom of movement, allowing the player some flexibility as to how they approached an area, rather than funneling them down a tight and unforgiving path. The array of weapons was a highlight, I had forgotten about the Hive Hand (pictured right), which slowly but continuously replenished its own ammunition. The High Definition Pack replaced the MP5 submachine gun with an M4 carbine model, which was kind of interesting (though the weapon retained the same behavior, and felt more like an SMG than a carbine rifle). The AI, while not holding up well overall, still displayed some great characteristics. I particularly like that the soldiers had the chutzpah to throw grenades at the player (often completely blindly, and even into vents and crawlspaces).

The Bad: Some anachronisms, such as the spawning enemies, really stuck out like sore thumbs. The much-touted AI, while still great grenade lobbers, is pretty shaky compared to today’s games. Enemies got stuck trying to run through objects on more than one occasion. I found it somewhat annoying that the enemy soldiers could soak up an inhuman amount of damage before dying. Having to unload on aliens or even armored humans is one thing, but repeated headshots not taking a human enemy down just strikes a wrong chord. Xen, the alien homeworld, was just as poor as remembered, particularly the jumping on floating platforms “puzzles”.

Perhaps the biggest praise I can offer is that the game, on the whole, didn’t feel 9 years old. Games like Jedi Knight and Hexen II are only a year older, but feel ancient in comparison. Half-Life is clearly a model that shooters have followed over the past 9 years, and as a result, the original doesn’t feel quite as removed from today’s games as its age might indicate.

So, after completing HL2: Episode Two on the PC, I figured I would re-play through all of the Half-Life 2 Orange Box content on the Xbox 360 version. But before I did that, I decided I would read through some storyline recaps on the entire Half-Life saga. And upon doing that, I had the idea of playing through all of the Half-Life games, starting from the first.

The complete Half-Life collection of games:

Half-Life
Half-Life: Opposing Force
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Decay (*)
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two

The games/expansions in italics are titles that I have never played. Opposing Force and Blue Shift were expansions to the original game. Decay was an extra expansion that was only included with the PlayStation 2 port of Half-Life (and a mod team is working on porting it as a Half-Life 2 mod, releasing sometime this week on their project page). Lost Coast is an extra HL2 level that was cut from the final game, and later reworked into a tech demo / extra nugget of content.

The completion of the HL: Decay port project makes for fortuitous timing. I’m also using the High Definition Models Pack for the original Half-Life games (I am playing the original version of HL, not the Source-engine remake, although maybe I’ll play through both just to be a total completionist). I also plan to check out the Developer’s Commentary on the titles that have it (Lost Coast, Episode One, and Episode Two). I’ll play the 360 Orange Box versions of Half-Life 2 and the two Episodes as previously planned. The original HL, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift, I picked up through Steam. Lost Coast is a free Steam download for Half-Life 2 owners, and of course Decay I will get in the form of the mod once it’s released.

As someone who rarely replays games, I think this will be fun, and really, it’s an excuse to play through the stuff I’ve missed, in the contexts that they belong.

Here’s some October releases, as well as some games from the past couple of months that were overshadowed by BioShock/Team Fortress 2/Halo 3…

First up is Half Life 2: Episode Two, which released as part of The Orange Box with Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Episode One, and our next game, Portal. Episode Two continues the Half-Life 2 storyline, and brings some graphical upgrades to the aging (but still sharp) Source engine. For fans of the Half-Life franchise, it’s a no-brainer. There’s not much to talk about without going into storyline specifics, which would just be a big heap o’ spoilers. For console-only gamers, The Orange Box brings not only Episode Two, but the first appearance of Episode One and the first up-to-snuff appearance of Half-Life 2 proper to consoles – specifically the Xbox 360 and (next month) the PS3. If you don’t play PC games, or just missed these games the first time around, The Orange Box is the best $50-60 you’ll spend on entertainment this year.

The Half-Life 2 games are great, Team Fortress 2 is exceedingly great as described in the previous post, but the final piece of the Orange Box collection, Portal, is also brilliant. Portal is best described as a first-person puzzle game in which the player has a gun that creates, well, portals. As seen in the screenshot to the left, there’s a blue portal and an orange one. Go through one hole, and you come out the other. And since you have a gun that controls where these holes are, well, watch the video to get an idea as to the kind of things this allows you to do. The game is set in a cold, clinical testing environment, in which the player’s character is locked in and made an unwitting test subject. The player is spoken to by a female artificial voice, which alternates between lying, praising, and playing mind games with the player. The game does tie in to the Half-Life 2 universe through some story elements that you stumble upon. It’s not a shooter, but it would be best described as a puzzle game for shooter fans. It’s brief, and I don’t know that I’d pay a full $20 on Steam for it, but as part of the Orange Box collection, it adds a ton of value to a package that’s already more than worth the full price without it.

The PS3 is still a bit thin on quality games, particularly exclusives, but it picked up a pretty decent one with the release of Heavenly Sword. Though compared heavily to God of War before its release, Heavenly Sword doesn’t bear an exceedingly strong resemblance to that franchise. It lacks the intense and visceral combat of God of War, but instead has a good deal more variety, and a much stronger sense of presentation and narrative. Ironically, the plot itself isn’t all that interesting, but what is captivating is the brilliant character design. Regardless of one’s usual indifference to “sexy” video game characters, Nariko will set off at least a slight twinge in any red-blooded heterosexual male, especially ones who like redheads. If nothing else, Heavenly Sword stands as proof of how bogus (or, at least, overstated) the “uncanny valley” concept is. With games like Heavenly Sword, we have characters like Nariko who, if not yet indeterminable from real humans, are at least rapidly approaching the level of visual realism of a fashion model’s airbrushed image in a magazine. Anyway, visuals aside, the characters are extremely well voice-acted, and the cutscenes are among the most memorable in any game I’ve ever played.

Also coming out soon (or just now out):

* Everyday Shooter (PS3) – Take the music-based synesthesia of Rez and apply it to a twin-stick shooter like Geometry Wars, and draw it all with vector-based graphics, and you’ve got Everyday Shooter. I’ve only played 15 minutes so far, but I have a feeling I will get hooked next time I play.

* Ratchet & Clank Future (PS3) – The prolific action/adventure franchise makes its first appearance on the PS3, with a return to the more platform-based gameplay of earlier iterations. From all indications, it’s a great re-tweaking of the slightly tired franchise (if not a full-on reboot, maybe just a soft boot)

* Beautiful Katamari (360) – It may just be more of the same, but my wife loves Katamari, so it makes the list.

But seriously, finish BioShock and go play more Team Fortress 2.