Note: This review has fistfuls of spoilers. If you haven’t played this game or have not finished it, you might want to come back later.

Let us dispense with the crap here and get down to brass tacks.  I feel we all know each other well enough now and can cut out the pleasantries and small talk bullshit.  Half-Life 2 represents the pinnacle of the highly scripted first person shooters.  All those stupid puzzles, scripted dialogue, dark corridor running, and one way paths exist in this game but the folks at Valve take them and give them so much painstaking attention and detail and keep the storyline moving along so well that you honestly don’t care that you are being lead by the nose down this game. 

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that any future first person shooter can do to surprise me or impress me after playing this game.  The entire first person shooter genre needs to reinvent itself since Half-Life 2 possesses all the glorious joy and the mind numbing retardation of the first person shooter genre.  Only by incorporating new elements can this genre hope to survive. 

There exist so many high points in this game that I must admit I was holding off on reviewing this game in order to keep my emotions in check and make as logical an argument as I can for why I liked this game.  Even more importantly, my site appears to be screwed for some reason and I have no clue when or if it will be fixed.  So, if you’re reading this, you might want to save it just in case my site blows up again. 

Now down to business.  The scripted sequences throughout Half-Life 2 define this game.  Forget the graphics, forget the weapons, and forget the Hazard Suit.  Scripting and tons of it gives Half-Life 2 its heart and soul.  The scripted sequences, whether it be dialog or the destruction of the surrounding environment gets your heart racing and your mind running.  For example, take a later point in the game.  You meet up with some other humans in an abandoned building outside the Combine HQ.  One of them runs up and hands you what can only be described as the second biggest rocket launcher, only surpassed by what you carried in Serious Sam. 

“Dr. Freeman, good to see you,” the soldier says, lips moving in perfect synch to the dialog. “You’re going to need this rocket launcher against the Striders. They’re all over the compound but a few shots should do the trick.”

Being a veteran of shooters it is a given that once you come into possession of the big guns that means big trouble and having the character say you will need a few shots to do the job does not make one expectant of a fun time.  But what’s a Strider, I wondered as I headed out into the courtyard.  After looking up into the sky I found myself looking straight at not just one but two massive four legged ticks spewing plasma bolts of death. The scripted sequence accomplished what no typed text or in game PDA could do. By hinting at what laid ahead it set me up but did not fully reveal the tenuous position that my armor and health would soon encounter. My only thought became a verbal utterance as I now ran as quickly as possible:  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.. Run damn you, run!” 

Don’t forget some of the scripting in Ravenhomme either.  Undoubtedly the most disturbing level in the game, Ravenhomme contains one-half “Undying” and one-half “Oops I crapped my pants in fear.”  Again, the scripting plays a crucial role in the the fear factor.  For example, you meet up with the Crazy Priest who offers to get you across a small ravine. You just need to wait there a second on the roof for him to get the small mining cart over to you.  Now, cynically, I at first stood on the roof scanning the sky for flying demons or looking behind me at the door that I came out from for the bad guys.  You know, like any standard shooter would do.  Then I heard a rattling to my left.  Then another rattling like metal against metal.  “Wait, why is that gutter I just noticed shaking?  Let me just look down here and --- OH SHIT, crazy muscle dogs!”  I screamed as if I was Hudson in Aliens. “We’re in some real fruity shit now, man!”

Also, the scripted sequences contain useful information and become enjoyable to watch.  The first example would be the television screens which are spewing forth propaganda which will make Orwell rise from his grave and give an approving nod.  The second example comes from inside the Combine base as you are transported through a complex which hums and clatters to it’s own cacophony of sound while massive Strider beasts and other automated machines move all around you as you travel. 

Admittedly, if all of this had been explained before as to why the Strider’s existed and what the Combine did for its business, these sequences might not possess the “wow” factor that they do. However, since the game gives no real foreshadowing or explanation for the events around you, it’s up to the scripted sequences to leave breadcrumbs or clues as to what is occurring and why.

I will in passing mention the textures and graphics. They’re awesome but I’d expect nothing less from a game that had been in development for over six years.  Elitist snobbery on my part?  Probably. Do I care if you think that? Definitely not.

But, the best dress on an average looking girl still won’t make her the queen of the prom.  True, all other shooters appear to be inbred midwives compared to Half-Life 2 but not even the best scripted game elements can hide the flaws of most any shooter.  HL2 also contains a few narcissistic tendencies in the way it shows off it’s physics engine.

Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does,” and that’s very true for shooters and HL2 can’t shake its roots.  First, there exist crates. Tons of crates. They could pay for the entire production cost of this game if they simply went up to UPS or FedEX and offered to put their name on some of these crates for a small fee. Say, $1 a crate.  Heck, take that further and offer to sell the crate sides to people or clans!  Boom, they’re making millions before one copy is sold. Who's Big Pimpin' spendin' Gs now Jay-z?

But not only are there crates, you get to do stuff with the crates or barrels. No sir haven’t seen that before.  Barrels that explode? Are you kidding me! G’damn brilliant!

Second, there is the “playing on rails syndrome.”  Forget a completely open ended environment like Grand Theft Auto or maybe a branching system of choices like Knights of Old Republic. “No sir,” the developers said as they looked at us from up high on their piles of cash, “We can’t have you wander too far from our lofty goals.  You must go down that corridor and you must shoot that soldier.  Sure go ahead and take a left but you know what it will lead you right back to where you were. Now get back on the trail and do as we want you to do.”  It's insulting to gamers

Sure, back in the days of Doom where you had to put a game on three thousand 720K floppies or download it from a BBS at 9600 baud from your machine running 16Megs of RAM, a highly scripted environment was needed to ensure some level of manageability. But now when computers possess nearly a gig of RAM standard, a video cards with their own 256Megs of RAM, DVD-ROMs which can hold almost 7 gigs of data, hard drives with more than 200 Gigs of storage and CPU processors whose surface temperature rivals that of a burning Humvee in Iraq, why can’t the games be more open and varied?  The only explanation I can think of is the need for expansions to milk this cow for all it’s worth (*cough* Blue Shift 2 anyone?) Even if the graphics have to take a bit of a hit that wouldn't bother me.  "Oh no, you mean the graphics will look like RtCW and not HL2 but I'll get about 100 more hours of playing time and twice as much area to explore?  Oh don't do that to me Mr. GamePublisher!  Please give me more triteful games and another Madden game instead."

Finally, I want to talk about the physics engine. Yes, it’s interesting but there’s no damn need to rub my nose in it or thump your chest and boast of it like some frat guy who just lost his virginity at the kegger. It was interesting in Painkiller too but they didn't necessarily brag about it in the design. 

For example, at one point you come across some sand with critters in them. You’re told not to step on the sand or you’ll wake them up.  The only plausible way to get across the sand without waking them is by using the gravity gun to manipulate debris on the ground.  Now personally, I hate puzzles and I sure as hell didn’t want to sit around for 15-20 minutes playing Jenga on my PC since there were more aliens to kill and a story to learn more about.  Rather than fall prey to this gravitational puzzle, I simply flew a few objects in the general direction I wanted to go and started jumping and let Mr. Shotgun handle any bad guys that popped up out of the sand. Puzzles slowed this game down and trying to force me to use the gravity gun to solve those puzzles was ridiculous.  Now the super gravity gun, however presented a brilliant tool for handling those pesky guards.

Finally, the last piece that irks me and probably everyone else on the entire planet is the Steam engine.  To articulate what I think about Steam and how it affects the Half-Life 2 experience I had, please do this.  Go to a restaurant and order a huge steak but before you eat the steak get a small plate and take a dump in it.  That is your appetizer. Eat the pile of poo then the steak. Then throw up the entire dinner and what sits in your toilet festering is Counter-Strike: Source.  

Yup, I'm even a snob when it comes to my multiplayer shooters.  But you all know that by now.

So, that's it I suppose. Half-Life 2 is the best single player first person shooter ever.  Now it's time to reinvent the genre rather than polish what already works. So get to work Valve and we might see you in another six years or so. 

- Sphinx