Jonny tries his hardest to hate the best game he's played all year.
What could I do in three and a half hours? I could fly to the south of Spain, slow roast a medium-sized chicken, watch half of the first season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or write a sonnet to the girl of my dreams. What I don't want to do for three and a half hours of my already-much-wasted life is stare at a computer screen in exasperated fury as the game I have waited six years to play, and which I have now purchased from a reputable online store, refuses to let me play the bloody thing.
What I won't do, is dwell on the matter. You may well have experienced similar problems getting the game running so you'll know what I'm talking about (fret not, they have apparently been ironed out now). But darn it all - as much as that wasted evening wanted me to hate Half-Life 2, I couldn't.
Half-Life 2 is the first game I've played in a long time which has felt like something new. The last time any game made me feel I was playing something that was breaking this much territory was six years ago - Half-Life itself.
As a game, and as a shooter, Half-Life has been considerably outclassed since it's release, notably by Halo. But in terms of the jump it represented and the sheer thrall it held over entranced first-time players, nothing since has come close.
There's one way in which it hasn't been outclassed, and that's in terms of its narrative. What Valve did with the first game wasn't only breaking new ground for videogames, but for storytelling itself, creating a fully believable alternate universe for the first time - a universe which you could interact with (but didn't necessarily understand). All you knew in Half-Life was that you had to keep going.
It was unlike other games in that nothing existed to that Universe beyond what you experienced in the game. There was no beefing up of the story in the manual, no novels, no clue as to what was happening and why.
Some extremely clever expansion packs which saw you living through the Black Mesa experience from other perpectives (a grunt soldier and Barney the Security Guard) managed themselves to have hugely entertaining narratives without filling us in on the really important stuff.
Half-Life 2 does much the same thing, though it ups the ante considerably. You begin the game hearing the voice of the man whose harsh tones ended your first experience in the Half-Life universe. Beyond knowing that that elusive be-suited guy is possibly your boss, that you're called Gordon Freeman, you know very little, if anything.
After that all you know is what you see. You know that there's something weird going on. You know that the Earth has changed considerably and appears to be in the control of an oppressive alien race. You know that some really quite frightening Nazi-like dudes are chasing you over that rooftop. You know that you never tire of the radio static and distress call that goes out from every Metrocop you take down. You know that the drainpipe rattling means one of those horrible "fast zombie" things is coming up after you. You know that your 12 foot, indestructible robot war puppy of doom is the coolest thing in the world ever.
But what you don't know is what is going on. What is Breen up to? Where have you been for the last however long (apparently it's been 15 years)? What about your boss, the G-Man, what on Earth is he all about? And where do the Combine, the aliens, the zombies, fit into all of this? Are you even fighting on the right side?
Do not expect to have the storyline explained. Because, frankly, it isn't. This has caused concern amongst some fans but personally I think they're missing the point. As much as I'd love to have an explanation I'm quite happy to wait for it - or even not get one, because what the game does by not explaining everything is the more powerful experience - kind of like the film director that cuts away from the grisly death so you can imagine your worst. If Valve ever ties the ends up we'd be very lucky if the result was as amazing as we're thinking it will be.
So you're confused. That's fine. After all, you're Gordon Freeman - so think how he feels. One minute he's on an underground monorail to start a new job. Next minute he's teleporting in and out of an alien dimension. And now this. That's the point to the Half-Life experience. There is simply no more to Gordon Freeman than what you bring to him. He is a tabula rasa for your fantasy adventures . He is you, you are him...
Woah - cool!
The great thing is that despite being healthily confusing, the storyline isn't exactly complex. You know where you gotta go and what you gotta do - maybe that's all the information you're supposed to have - how often do operatives of any type know the bigger picture? What matters is that it's moving, involving, believable.
A lot of why it's so believable is the way it looks. I tend now to avoid talking about graphics in reviews, as they have become a bit of a moot point. Practically every game that comes out nowadays is aesthetically beautiful in its own way. Now, I'm not a technical man, but I think it's fair to say that Half-Life 2 does absolutely nothing new in terms of it's visuals. But, at the same time, technology, artistic sensibilities and pure imagination conspire to make it, as a whole, the most breathtakingly good-looking game in existence. And this from a man who'll take the punk art sensibilities of Viewtiful Joe or Ico over realism any day of the week.
Every environment is so alive, so real. Which is only helped by the most believable physics simulation in gaming. Everything acts exactly how you'd expect it to. Bottles smash into shards when you throw them at the heads of the gestapo-like Combine cops (not wise at the start of the game when you're otherwise unarmed...but you'll do it anyway). Shards that can then be picked up. Televisions can be defenestrated (look it up, trust me, it's a word well worth knowing). Wood floats in water. Barrels roll. Sawblades when thrown will cut whatever they hit, in twain. Radiators, flung with enough force, can take down an entire enemy squad.
Flinging things with enough force will not be a problem once you get hold of the gravity gun, which allows you to blast objects out of the way, or drag them towards you, or, you know, fling them with plenty of force. It's a great idea, and one that allows for some new types of gameplay, new types of puzzle-solving, new types of combat - knocking out the right support strut here or there for example, can have painful, but always hilarious consequences for your enemies.
One of the main reasons Half-Life 2 is so believable is the eerily accurate portrayal of other people in the game. The animations, in particular the facial animations are spot on, to the point where it can often be pretty spooky. Voice acting too is top notch, as you'd expect, and you grow such a bond with some characters (such as Barney - who seems to have turned into The Gillette Man) that you're elated to get to catch up with them later in the game.
I'm going to have to start thinking about wrapping this up soon. I mean, my fingers are going to drop off, and you're probably itching to get on and order the game. So I won't have the space to talk about how the music, which is sadly heard only rarely, is in a league of its own, about how much fun it is storming a heavily guarded prison with only an army of man-eating bugs for back-up, about how cool your airboat is, or about how difficult but enjoyable it is taking down huge three-legged war machines or heavily-armed gunships.
Believe it or not, reviewing good games isn't very easy - it's more fun to be critical. And of course it's hard to sound genuine - especially as superlatives don't give a huge amount of range for expression. Sometimes it must seem that every other game is the "best" this or that, and sure, there are a lot of great games out there. But this, this is new.
Half-Life 2 is the summation of everything about gaming that has been great up until now, rolled into a sweet 4 gig bundle of joy. If you had to choose a game to demonstrate just how far games had come in every respect, how developers have learned to engage players on an emotional, even primal level, and how immersive and believable games have become, this would be it.
Simply put, Half-Life 2 is the flagship of the videogame form. There are lots of games coming out in the future that I am very excited about, but if anything comes along in the next five years which outclasses the experience on offer here I would be extremely surprised. Besides, the way this game puts you through the ringer, you'll probably need that long to recover.
Jonny Austin