Half-Life 2
November 16,2005 - When Half-Life 2 came out last year it was expected to be an instant classic. The hype and expectations surrounding the game were so great that it almost hurt the game for a while given all of the delays and hiccups they happened across throughout its lengthy development life. Thankfully, when it finally released last November it wasn’t just as good as the first Half-Life, it was in many ways much better. Half-Life 2 for the PC was one of the greatest action games of all time and it was also IGO’s 2004 Game of the Year, and is still one of our favorite games even a year later. Though it’s all good and gravy on the PC, the Xbox version of Half-Life 2 seemed to go wayward and lose its way, that is, until now. A year later, Xbox gamers finally get a chance to experience Half-Life 2, even if it’s not quite as good as the PC version.

Streaming Video

The E3 2004 demonstration of the game.

When Half-Life first came out it was hailed as one of the most revolutionary action games of its time. It was the first game to offer the widespread use of scripted events--in-game events that forward the action or story through your vantage point rather than in a cutscene that would alienate you from the actual gameplay--and it was just flat-out one of the most compelling, thrilling, and downright amazingly crafted computer games around. Though it was outclassed several times after its release, Half-Life remained a mainstay in the online market with Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. Now that Half-Life 2 has been out for a while, though, there’s really no reason to turn back to the first one unless you're hellbent on experiencing it for the story and atmosphere. Half-Life 2 for the Xbox is an amazing feat for the system; it’s certainly one of, if not the, single best looking games on the system. However, it’s not without some serious technical flaws. All of the original gameplay from the single-player is here, and it suffices well enough to make Half-Life 2 a must-own for action fans who own an Xbox, however, if you’re trying to debate between which version to buy (which there really shouldn’t have been any reason to do so), the PC one is undoubtedly the superior.

The story of Half-Life 2 picks up where the first one left off, or at least it makes you think. The G-Man who offered you a job at the end of the first game awakens you from your hibernating slumber to send you on a mission to free an otherwise oppressed human race from the alien Combine. The story itself, as they tell it, is a little weak, but if you dig into the game and look for unmentioned tidbits, such as newspaper clippings, or radio broadcasts, you’ll find a heck of a lot more to the story than what at first meets the eye. Despite having an extremely strange and bold ending, the story is actually one of Half-Life 2's greatest aspects. Once again you play as Gordon Freeman, the ever-lovable geeky scientist who somehow is smart enough--and strong enough thanks to his suit--to save the world. The game isn’t about its story, though. It’s definitely about the presentation and how you as the gamer experience it.

Scripted sequences, as mentioned before, are how you play the game out. You need never sit back and watch your television with your controller on the ground unattended, because Half-Life 2 never takes you out of the game. It’s not separated by levels, it’s not separate by cutscenes, and it’s hardly separate by unnecessary dialog that no one really needs to hear. Instead, it’s separated by long loading times. Unfortunately, and not surprising in the slightest, the horribly long loading times from the PC version did not widdle their way out of the game in the translation to the Xbox, but that was to be expected.

Half-Life 2 only offers a single player campaign on the Xbox. There’s no multiplayer or online play; essentially there's nothing outside of the campaign, but is it worth it? The answer is yes, it absolutely is. Half-Life 2 on the PC may have had some added value with the addition of Counter-Strike Source and it’s own proprietary deathmatch, but even without it, it would have been more than just a stellar game in its own right, it would have probably still have been our Game of the Year. The single player campaign is bar none one of the best in any game and any fan of the action genre, or any fan of excellent games in general should be in their cars right now on their way to buy it (assuming you haven’t already!) instead of reading this review. Half-Life 2 has the kind of campaign that starts off amazing and approaches near perfection by the time it’s finished. Once this thrill ride starts it never stops, even for a second, until the game ends.

There are so many times in the game that will just leave you in awe, no matter what platform you’re playing it on. Some of the best scenes in the genre’s short history appear in this game, and that’s not even close to an overstatement. The Nova Prospekt level in which you control ant lions to fight off the Combine, the highway level where you’re driving a dune buggy with a tacked on machine gun mowing down your opponents, or even the best parts when you’re back where you start in City 17 going about some serious urban combat. Needless to say, it’s an amazing campaign from start to finish.

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