A Half Life Retrospective

I am not a avid FPS player. But to step out of my comfort zone, I occasionally play them. It was a matter of time I would get my hands in a game as famous as Half-Life. I can easily say the game pleasantly suprised me.

The defining character of late 90s shooters were speed and chaos. I expected somehing similar. Make no mistake, the game feels certainly faster than an average military shooter but it encourages player to be methodical and  actually care about the environment. Even in easy difficulty I wasn't allowed to just run and gun everything in front of me. Each gun feels really different and the game make sures you feel each of them is neccesary. (except one of them maybe) The enemies are distinct with their designs and strategies to defeat them. These qualities along with it's cool soundtrack makes it more than a decent game to worth your time.

The cutting-edge visuals of 1997 might seem crude or funny to us today, but maybe because I was removed from that era enough that the graphics seems so strange to me and my standart of nice visuals doesn't mean realistic. I always find a different sense of aesthetics in PS1 era (or Quake 2 engine era) graphics. It actually goes very well when it comes to depicting dusty, industrial and fleshy, alien objects and structrues which Half-Life has plenty of those.  Even funny looking mouths and stiff bodies of the character models  doesn't seem that bad when they are placed all the other things. There is a certain quirk of later 90s 3D graphics, they can look very well in games like Quake, Starcraft and  Half-Life, but looks rather silly in games like Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall or Tomb Raider, which mostly consist outdoors and objects from natural environments. . If these graphics aren't definitely for you homever, luckily there is a remake called Black Mesa which looks very nice from what I saw from the screenshots.

Half-Life's greatest strengths are it's level design and atmosphere. The game is very good at showing your way without using map markers, flashy arrows or compasses. This is same for puzzles too, the game just gently hints you at solution. Although the puzzles aren't very diffucult, I still felt good after solving the puzzles and finding my way using my wits and paying attention to environment. It felt so refreshing playing a game that can show your way just with level design without too much visual output. Low visual output also helps game's atmosphere. 20 years later, this feature still somewhat of a rarity among games.
The story as a script is actually really light. Gordon Freeman, an engineer who works at a secret facility called Black Mesa comes to job like a regular day. Homever an experiment goes wrong and now he has to survive aganist both an alien invasion and the soldiers who is sent by a anxious government who tries to cover everyone up. There isn't really much characterization, at least in traditional sense and most dialogue is functional. Real main character homever, is the Black Mesa itself and the real story is the slowly escalating chaos.
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The designers really put a lot effort to make sure the corridors, the rooms, the hallways, the outskirts of the facilty feels coherent and realistic. This is one of the ways that made the game so revolutionary. Contemprory FPS games made very clear the levels you were in just video game levels. Half-Life on the other hand put real emphasis on feeling natural even in the puzzles and platforming sessions. This pays off very well. Combined with the sound design and good management of the game soundtrack, the game can feel eerily and even can give a lowkey surival-horror vibe. Walking around the halls, finding scientists who got shelter in a room, finding a security guard so you can be both safer for a while, witnessing the secret experiments, finding out miltary and aliens fighting each other, watching aliens tear apart hapless scientists is experiencing the real story of the game, with few words and no cutscenes.
One of the distinct features of Half-Life series is not using even one cutscene in the game. You are completely free to move around, jump, shoot, compeletely ignore the dialogue. Even most mundane activites such as driving a cart must be done a player and all the events are script based and happens in real time. This decision works brilliantly in Half-Life where the game is very light on dialogue and relies heavily on atmosphere. The respect of player's instincts and guidence is probably best aspect of the Half-Life's game design. This even extent to the character interactions where you can freely kill every person you encounter, save for the critical ones you need for completion, which you get a nice spoiler about what really is going on if you do so.
The game dramactically shifts the tone when you travel to the alien world where the gamey aspects of levels comes a bit forward. This shift happens very timely though, as Black Mesa just seemed to overstay it's welcome. Unlike Black Mesa homever, this alien world doesn't really have much character, it looks kind of generic and unintersting despite an outworldly bizzare place might sound otherwise. In a way, this kinda fits as it really feels like the last stretch of Gordan Freeman and the player. You fight a alien that looks like a big baby as the final boss in a puzzle battle. Then as the level completes its challenges to player, the alien world ends as well.

At the end, you encounter a mysteries figure you saw as a glimpse for several times throught the game, G-man, where he offers a choice. You can accept to work with him or he can send you back to alien world to be eaten by monsters.  You can see that this is mostly an easter egg and a convinient excuse to continue the Gordan Freeman's adventures. This is an nice ending that overall fits Half-Life, uncelebratory and lowkey in presentation and always trusts player to make the correct decision.
The content of Half-Life doesn't end here of course. Modding was really the thing that made series that much popular. A lot games such as Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike came from this mods. If you are into game mods, this game is a paradise for you.
Overall this game was worth my time and peaked my interest for other Valve games. When I want to play a FPS game again, I know where to look for...