Most weapons have made it into Half-Life 2 from the first game including the
crowbar, shotgun, and machine gun. New to Half-Life 2 is the gravity gun,
something that puts the game’s physics engine to good use. It can be used to
move objects, hurl things at the enemy, and figures into some of the game’s
puzzles as well. You’ll also get to wield a pulse rifle and a pheropod, which is
something that allows you to summon alien beasts to fight for you. Speaking of
doing some fighting for you, there will be occasions in the game in which you
will be fighting against the Combine alongside human allies. These sequences are
exciting as they broaden the scope of the conflict beyond a one man crusade to
wipe out the Combine. The AI is competent enough, although your comrades can be
quite annoying in cramped quarters as they seem to have a little trouble getting
out of your way.
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| The infamous Combine. |
Vehicles also come into play in the game, and you’ll spend some time behind
the wheel of an airboat and a speed buggy. The vehicle sequences can be a lot of
fun as the battles are high-speed and intense. Control is pretty easy and
responsive so you’ll be able to concentrate on your enemies and your route more
than on steering the vehicle.
Playing Half-Life 2 is a great experience, but it is not a perfect one. The
first problem comes with the installation of the game. The installation is very
time consuming and will fail about three quarters of the way through if you
elect not to install Counter Strike. Once it is installed, a new background
application is launch that will go out on the internet to enable your copy of
the game. Once this is completed, the game goes through a second installation
phase which takes a nice chunk of time to complete. Don’t expect to be playing
the game any time soon after you get it home. Also, you can’t do any of this
without an internet connection, so those of you who like to keep a gaming
machine free of all the trappings of internet use such as firewalls and virus
checkers are out of luck. Yes, I know of someone who returned the game because
he could not run it on his gaming computer without hooking it up to the
internet. The background process that installed itself with the game will load
every time you boot your computer and periodically check for patches or pop-up
messages from the game’s developer. I can understand developers’ desire to
prevent illegal copying of their games, but this is ridiculous. I’ve never seen
so intrusive a protection scheme that seems to punish legitimate users more than
it discourages pirates.
The game uses a checkpoint save system that saves your game at regular
intervals and serves to load the next level on the fly. This system works pretty
well in the saves department, but the on-the-fly loading could use some work.
Load times can be quite long and it seems to vary by system and is not a factor
of system speed. Some computers also experience audio stutter with the game.
Hopefully these issues will be corrected in an upcoming patch, because they
really detract from what is otherwise an amazingly immersive gaming experience.
Half-Life 2’s multiplayer component comes in the form of Counter Strike.
While this is a godsend to Counter Strike fans, it is disappointing to those of
us who would have liked to play multiplayer games in Half-Life 2’s universe.
Counter Strike also suffers a bit from the fact that it has a real hardcode
following. Gamers new to Counter Strike will be quickly frustrated when trying
to compete with players that know the ins and outs of the game and are familiar
with every square inch of the maps. However, this is not to knock the game
itself, which is an excellent team-based shooter pitting terrorists against
counterterrorist forces.
Half-Life 2 is as much an experience as it is an excellent first-person
shooter. It is certainly a worthy sequel to Half-Life, and its innovations,
atmosphere, and exciting gameplay make it one of the best games of the year …
and it will probably remain one of the best first-person shooters available for
quite some time.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
94%. If you want to lose yourself completely in a game or need a reminder of
why you enjoy gaming so much, Half-Life 2 is exactly what you need.
System Requirements: Pentium 1.6 GHz; 256 MB RAM;
128 MB
Video RAM; 4.5 GB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
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