Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed the game. I generally enjoy a good shooter that isn’t a real-world war simulator. For whatever reason, I’m not a huge fan of staring down cross-hairs when I’m just having a historically accurate version of my own world reflected back at me. I’m a fan of your Fallout, Halo, Bioshock, and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth style universes. The Half-Life series falls very neatly into this weird niche.

Now, as with many of my games, I have picked this one up and put it down several times over the past couple of years. I got it in a Steam sale with a slew of other titles, including the first Portal, and I was determined to play Half-Life 1 and Portal before delving into this later chapter in the life and times of Gordon Freeman. I’ve always been fascinated by this series. I was eager to jump in and get rolling with the meat of the narrative, but I felt that I should really do my homework first.

I have to say, first and foremost, upon firing up the game, I was really pleasantly surprised at how well the graphics held up. I mean, it’s not as though this is a game from the early 90s or something, but at the rate that graphical tech is improving these days, I was expecting to be thoroughly unimpressed. Contrary to my expectations, the game was a visual delight with great lighting, water effects, and an artful use of a broad color palette across a number of different and well-realized locales. The character models were well animated and, while not top of the line, they were definitely easy on the eyes.

The gameplay was really fun, but I wasn’t blown away by it. At first I put it down to the game’s age, telling myself that the game was seven years old, of COURSE these gameplay elements would feel outdated. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t so much that the gameplay was some prototypical version of a mechanic that’s been refined in more recent years, it was simply that the formula had been recycled so many times that I was having a hard time being surprised. I’m old, not the gameplay.

The gravity gun was an extremely cool piece of hardware, but it didn’t seem particularly novel to me because I’d played around with things like the Telekinesis power in Bioshock. It was interesting and had plenty of unique applications, it just didn’t quite have the “wow” factor that it must have possessed back in the day. I was also disappointed that it wasn’t used more for a puzzle solving mechanism. I mean, yes, there were a few instances where you had to unplug something from behind a barrier or clear a road for the buggy (dear lord, the buggy…), but having recently come off of Portal 2, I hungered for some puzzling utilizing the gravity gun.

Also, I know I’ve mentioned this before with respect to Valve’s design principles, but I have to say I was consistently impressed with the way in which they very carefully introduced new set-pieces such that you were never quite in over your head. Although, I have to say, as much fun as I have with shooters, I am utter shit at them, and this proved to be my undoing on multiple occasions. I died and died and died…and then I died some more. It was only through some lucky twist of fate that I survived several of the more grueling segments.

This stupid-assface part of the game made me painfully aware of just how bad I am at shooters when it comes right down to it. It took me two different days of concerted effort to get through that part. When it was finally over, I felt like I’d truly accomplished something. I felt like I had achieved some sort of rite of passage with respect to my shooter skills, and I moved on to the next area…where I promptly died from a shotgun blast to the face.

Ok, so quickly, while we’re on the subject of my lack of skills, let’s talk about that very very longsequence of driving around in the buggy. Am I to understand that this contraption makes a repeat appearance in Episodes 1 and/or 2? Please tell me that it is not so. Beyond the fact that I was not particularly enamored with it as a means of getting around the world, I found that the increase in speed only served to exacerbate my craptastic performance with regards to shooting things. I found myself just driving as fast as I could at Combine soldiers and antlions alike, trying to just hit them as hard as I could with my front bumper and just hoping for the best regarding collateral damage.

The only time I managed to not feel like an utter dolt while running around and shooting stuff was when you get the God-Mode Gravity Gun at the end. Holy crap was that satisfying!

All right, so I’ve been trying to not be too spoilery up until this point, but from here on out, I’m not going to be so careful. You’ve been warned!

So first up, I wanted to mention the use of the Gman in this entry in the series. His presence in this game was far less pronounced than in the first. In the first Half-Life, the Gman was a more consistent theme, appearing and disappearing through far away windows or wandering serenely through locked off rooms. Now I’m to understand that this occurred in Half-Life 2 as well, but I can’t recall seeing him but for a scant few times on computer monitors.

I liked how the game opened with him basically kicking you back out into the world for his own reasons. I hate the feeling of there being a yoke around the neck of Gordon, and the game did a great job of letting you off the leash of the over-arching storyline for long enough that you (or at least I did) completely forget about the Gman and his motivations until he pulls the same stunt at the end of this game that he did the last time around. I have to admit, I felt a sense of profound frustration when he just stopped time and popped in to snatch me from my moment of victory.

The end of the first Half-Life left you with a lot more questions than answers, and even fewer clues as to what was really happening at Black Mesa. Half-Life 2 isn’t much more forthcoming with the answers, but there are a cavalcade of colorful clues to mull over.

I really want to know what those shuffling greyish denizens of the final stages of the game have to do with everything. I have a feeling that they have a lot to do with the future of “humanity” that the combine seems to be so concerned with.

Dr. Breen was trying to talk an imprisoned Eli Vance into supporting his mad quest, and he mentions a race of highly evolved fungal beings that have learned the secrets of inter-dimensional travel. I was immediately reminded of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories involving the moon/people referred to as the Yuggoth or the Mi-Go. Lovecraft himself played a bit fast and loose with the facts surrounding this particular fictional race he’d created, and I’m curious to see how much of any of the varying interpretations of these beings find their way into the Half-Life 2 world. If you want to brush up on your fungoid Lovecraftian beings and draw your own parallels, check out The Fungi from Yuggoth and The Whisperer in Darkness.

Moving on from the more cosmic-horror related elements, I was utterly drawn into this world with its much wider cast of characters. In the first game, it was pretty much Gordon, the Gman, and some vortigons, with Barney and a few oddball scientists interspersed throughout. There really weren’t any interesting named characters that helped move along a nuanced central plot.

I have to admit, I always felt like I wanted to apologize to the vortigons for shotgunning the ever-loving crap out of so many of them in the first game! Turning them from a race of cycloptic, gun-toting, storm troopers into helpful, singing, Freeman-fans was quite a 180, and it took me a while to get used to seeing them as friends.

I also want to talk briefly about the “romance” between Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman. I’ve read a lot of reflective pieces where people poke fun at the fact that Alyx develops feelings for the stoic Gordon and we’re supposed to buy it, but I don’t think that the story would have worked with a comparable impact if the narrative had been done any other way. Again, I know this is a point that’s been made multiple times, but the generally held belief about the silent protagonist as a design choice is that a person is able to better invest themselves in a blank and silent cypher than if there were words put into the mouth of the player.

To my mind, that sounds a little weird. To say that someone is “investing themselves” in this way makes me think of some dude talking at the screen like he thinks he’s actually got Alyx there and responding to him. I don’t think that’s what actually happens when the silent protagonist works as a narrative function.

I think the silence of Freeman is important more for the purpose of not breaking the narrative cycle than anything else. I found that every time Alyx showed up, it was after some particularly grueling shootery set-piece, and her appearance meant the end of that particular spate of spastic shooting and flailing. She was the punctuation mark at the end of the toughest parts of the game, so the player comes to associate her with a sense of relief and temporary safety. I think that the psychological impact of that Pavlovian setup would have been significantly lessened by a talking Gordon. Everyone will have a different experience while playing the game, some will come through the various trials and tribulations relatively unscathed, some will stumble into the next chamber with no ammo and their health firmly in the red. No canned dialogue would be able to capture the entire spectrum of player experience. I mean, I know I would find it jarring if I, in one of my usual offerings, scraped by in a firefight, and then heard a bunch of cocky, Duke Nukem style bullshit coming out of Gordon’s mouth as he talked to Alyx or any other character. It would totally take me out of the moment. Gordon’s silence allows me to own the reactions that I have to Alyx and the other characters in the game without needing a give-and-take in the dialog. The brilliant execution of Gordon’s complete and utter non-rapport with Alyx is really the best example of why Dr. Freeman should keep his mouth shut.

All in all, the game was really great, and I’m looking forward to digging into Episodes 1 and 2.  Anyone else have any thoughts on the series?  Try not to spoil anything for me!

Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed the game. I generally enjoy a good shooter that isn’t a real-world war simulator. For whatever reason, I’m not a huge fan of staring down cross-hairs when I’m just having a historically accurate version of my own world reflected back at me. I’m a fan of your Fallout, Halo, Bioshock, and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth style universes. The Half-Life series falls very neatly into this weird niche.

Now, as with many of my games, I have picked this one up and put it down several times over the past couple of years. I got it in a Steam sale with a slew of other titles, including the first Portal, and I was determined to play Half-Life 1 and Portal before delving into this later chapter in the life and times of Gordon Freeman. I’ve always been fascinated by this series. I was eager to jump in and get rolling with the meat of the narrative, but I felt that I should really do my homework first.

I have to say, first and foremost, upon firing up the game, I was really pleasantly surprised at how well the graphics held up. I mean, it’s not as though this is a game from the early 90s or something, but at the rate that graphical tech is improving these days, I was expecting to be thoroughly unimpressed. Contrary to my expectations, the game was a visual delight with great lighting, water effects, and an artful use of a broad color palette across a number of different and well-realized locales. The character models were well animated and, while not top of the line, they were definitely easy on the eyes.

The gameplay was really fun, but I wasn’t blown away by it. At first I put it down to the game’s age, telling myself that the game was seven years old, of COURSE these gameplay elements would feel outdated. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t so much that the gameplay was some prototypical version of a mechanic that’s been refined in more recent years, it was simply that the formula had been recycled so many times that I was having a hard time being surprised. I’m old, not the gameplay.

The gravity gun was an extremely cool piece of hardware, but it didn’t seem particularly novel to me because I’d played around with things like the Telekinesis power in Bioshock. It was interesting and had plenty of unique applications, it just didn’t quite have the “wow” factor that it must have possessed back in the day. I was also disappointed that it wasn’t used more for a puzzle solving mechanism. I mean, yes, there were a few instances where you had to unplug something from behind a barrier or clear a road for the buggy (dear lord, the buggy…), but having recently come off of Portal 2, I hungered for some puzzling utilizing the gravity gun.

Also, I know I’ve mentioned this before with respect to Valve’s design principles, but I have to say I was consistently impressed with the way in which they very carefully introduced new set-pieces such that you were never quite in over your head. Although, I have to say, as much fun as I have with shooters, I am utter shit at them, and this proved to be my undoing on multiple occasions. I died and died and died…and then I died some more. It was only through some lucky twist of fate that I survived several of the more grueling segments.

This stupid-assface part of the game made me painfully aware of just how bad I am at shooters when it comes right down to it. It took me two different days of concerted effort to get through that part. When it was finally over, I felt like I’d truly accomplished something. I felt like I had achieved some sort of rite of passage with respect to my shooter skills, and I moved on to the next area…where I promptly died from a shotgun blast to the face.

Ok, so quickly, while we’re on the subject of my lack of skills, let’s talk about that very very longsequence of driving around in the buggy. Am I to understand that this contraption makes a repeat appearance in Episodes 1 and/or 2? Please tell me that it is not so. Beyond the fact that I was not particularly enamored with it as a means of getting around the world, I found that the increase in speed only served to exacerbate my craptastic performance with regards to shooting things. I found myself just driving as fast as I could at Combine soldiers and antlions alike, trying to just hit them as hard as I could with my front bumper and just hoping for the best regarding collateral damage.

The only time I managed to not feel like an utter dolt while running around and shooting stuff was when you get the God-Mode Gravity Gun at the end. Holy crap was that satisfying!

All right, so I’ve been trying to not be too spoilery up until this point, but from here on out, I’m not going to be so careful. You’ve been warned!

So first up, I wanted to mention the use of the Gman in this entry in the series. His presence in this game was far less pronounced than in the first. In the first Half-Life, the Gman was a more consistent theme, appearing and disappearing through far away windows or wandering serenely through locked off rooms. Now I’m to understand that this occurred in Half-Life 2 as well, but I can’t recall seeing him but for a scant few times on computer monitors.

I liked how the game opened with him basically kicking you back out into the world for his own reasons. I hate the feeling of there being a yoke around the neck of Gordon, and the game did a great job of letting you off the leash of the over-arching storyline for long enough that you (or at least I did) completely forget about the Gman and his motivations until he pulls the same stunt at the end of this game that he did the last time around. I have to admit, I felt a sense of profound frustration when he just stopped time and popped in to snatch me from my moment of victory.

The end of the first Half-Life left you with a lot more questions than answers, and even fewer clues as to what was really happening at Black Mesa. Half-Life 2 isn’t much more forthcoming with the answers, but there are a cavalcade of colorful clues to mull over.

I really want to know what those shuffling greyish denizens of the final stages of the game have to do with everything. I have a feeling that they have a lot to do with the future of “humanity” that the combine seems to be so concerned with.

Dr. Breen was trying to talk an imprisoned Eli Vance into supporting his mad quest, and he mentions a race of highly evolved fungal beings that have learned the secrets of inter-dimensional travel. I was immediately reminded of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories involving the moon/people referred to as the Yuggoth or the Mi-Go. Lovecraft himself played a bit fast and loose with the facts surrounding this particular fictional race he’d created, and I’m curious to see how much of any of the varying interpretations of these beings find their way into the Half-Life 2 world. If you want to brush up on your fungoid Lovecraftian beings and draw your own parallels, check out The Fungi from Yuggoth and The Whisperer in Darkness.

Moving on from the more cosmic-horror related elements, I was utterly drawn into this world with its much wider cast of characters. In the first game, it was pretty much Gordon, the Gman, and some vortigons, with Barney and a few oddball scientists interspersed throughout. There really weren’t any interesting named characters that helped move along a nuanced central plot.

I have to admit, I always felt like I wanted to apologize to the vortigons for shotgunning the ever-loving crap out of so many of them in the first game! Turning them from a race of cycloptic, gun-toting, storm troopers into helpful, singing, Freeman-fans was quite a 180, and it took me a while to get used to seeing them as friends.

I also want to talk briefly about the “romance” between Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman. I’ve read a lot of reflective pieces where people poke fun at the fact that Alyx develops feelings for the stoic Gordon and we’re supposed to buy it, but I don’t think that the story would have worked with a comparable impact if the narrative had been done any other way. Again, I know this is a point that’s been made multiple times, but the generally held belief about the silent protagonist as a design choice is that a person is able to better invest themselves in a blank and silent cypher than if there were words put into the mouth of the player.

To my mind, that sounds a little weird. To say that someone is “investing themselves” in this way makes me think of some dude talking at the screen like he thinks he’s actually got Alyx there and responding to him. I don’t think that’s what actually happens when the silent protagonist works as a narrative function.

I think the silence of Freeman is important more for the purpose of not breaking the narrative cycle than anything else. I found that every time Alyx showed up, it was after some particularly grueling shootery set-piece, and her appearance meant the end of that particular spate of spastic shooting and flailing. She was the punctuation mark at the end of the toughest parts of the game, so the player comes to associate her with a sense of relief and temporary safety. I think that the psychological impact of that Pavlovian setup would have been significantly lessened by a talking Gordon. Everyone will have a different experience while playing the game, some will come through the various trials and tribulations relatively unscathed, some will stumble into the next chamber with no ammo and their health firmly in the red. No canned dialogue would be able to capture the entire spectrum of player experience. I mean, I know I would find it jarring if I, in one of my usual offerings, scraped by in a firefight, and then heard a bunch of cocky, Duke Nukem style bullshit coming out of Gordon’s mouth as he talked to Alyx or any other character. It would totally take me out of the moment. Gordon’s silence allows me to own the reactions that I have to Alyx and the other characters in the game without needing a give-and-take in the dialog. The brilliant execution of Gordon’s complete and utter non-rapport with Alyx is really the best example of why Dr. Freeman should keep his mouth shut.

All in all, the game was really great, and I’m looking forward to digging into Episodes 1 and 2.  Anyone else have any thoughts on the series?  Try not to spoil anything for me!

Does anyone remember the part where you set up the little turrets that Alyx hacks for you in that large two-tiered hallway, and baddies just keep coming in wave after wave?

The first time I played Half Life 2 this part of the game almost made me quit. I died over and over. After failing miserably, I took a break and came back to try again the next day. Finally, I survived by hiding in one of the cells with gun turrets at and around the door. I felt more relief than accomplishment.

Reading the Half Life wiki was more fun than playing Half Life 2 for me. 
I thought the weapons were a big meh along with the enemies, but that world is fascinating.

Dude, just wait till you play episodes 1 and 2. Without going into spoilers, stuff happens. Awesome, awesome stuff.

It's interesting contrasting your opinions with mine (although we seem to agree on most everything) as someone who played and beat HL2 the day it came out.

A buggy shows up for most of Episode 2, but I never found it as bad as it was in the original.

The Gman = nyarlathotep.

@Resident4t said:

@Claude: I remember that part, I didn't find it hard though, just extremely boring and I almost did quit the game after that.

I wasn't bored just pissed. I remember yelling at my monitor. I cursed every person that worked on the game. I've finished Half Life 2 twice since then and believe it to be a great game.

Hey everybody! 
 
Holy crap, thanks for all the comments!  I just noticed this was up on the front page!   
 
@Freezer_Burn: Sweet Christ I hope it's not that bad. 
 
@august: mind = blown

I want to preface this by expressing that I am a huge fan of this series, I've absolutely loved every entry so far. That being said, I personally could never come up with a good counter-argument for Gordon remaining silent. I knew in my gut that is was the way the game and the narrative should be, but I couldn't come up with a concrete reason why. Your argument has finally given me a logical and perfectly acceptable reason for Gordon to remain silent, and as a fan that wishes that the Half-Life formula stay as it is, I thank you.

Gordon is just the avatar, Alyx is the main character. So he doesn't need to speak, just like he doesn't have a family or really anything going on in his life at all other than what Alyx happens to be nudging him to do any given moment. But asking why he was mute in the first game is kind of like asking why the soldier in Doom never talks. You can read poetry into it if you want but he didn't originally talk because nobody talked back then.

@ryanwho: As phiregsei mentioned in the article, Duke Nukem talked. Pretty sure that game was around when they made HL2. I don't think it's reading poetry into the game to see that they made a choice to not give Gordon a voice.

Interesting point that Gordon is not the main character because he doesn't emote. Who is the main character in Doom? I'm not saying you're wrong it's just an interesting discussion. Can an avatar be a main character?

Either way I'm pretty sure that Gordon has been purposely designed as mute - and the game built around that. It IS an important design choice and I'm pretty sure that Valve made it. They didn't stumble in to making one of the best games of all time.

Half Life 2 was just a tad too long for me, it overstayed its welcome. Still fun, but could have been a bit tighter. 

I was just thinking about HL2 today, nice read.

Great read, and brilliant game as well. I didn't have the issues you had, even the buggy was ok, even though I understand why people hate that thing. You should really make another post when you get through EP1 and 2, they push the story and characters forward while improving on the gameplay in a multitude of ways.

I love the buggy. The beach scenes are some of my favorite parts of HL2.

The first time I played Half-Life 2, the part with the turrets drove me batshit crazy. Now that I think of it, I believe there was a sort of platforming section near the end as well that drove me absolutely made as well.

When I replayed it several months later--and the time after that--I breezed through it.

And just a heads-up, you are gonna love the parking lot in episode one. And by love I mean cuss up a storm :D

Great read.  I can't wait to see what you think of episode 1 and 2. 
 
As for the turret section.  I set up the turrets, each facing a door, then I crouched in one of the turret cells like a scared child and I still died a couple of times.

About the graphics, as Valve kept improving their Source engine, some of the changes were retroactively incorporated to older games. So altough HDR lighting showed up for the first time on that Lost Coast tech demo, if you play the up-to-date version of Half-Life 2 today, it is there. That helps keeping it looking good.

Interesting read. I never really had a problem will the turret section, for me the parts that made me want to break the disk were the parts where you cross the bridge (I never have a good time platforming in a first person game) and the strider fights at the end because I couldn't figure out how to dole out a trio of rockets without losing 50-80% health.
 
As far as the story, I wish the explanation for the alien discovery and occupation of Earth wasn't reduced to "portal storms." How am I supposed to know what that means? Also, I wish I could see the lower half of Freeman's body in the field of view when I look down because it's lame when all I see is a floating hand.

Your point about the silent protagonist is EXACTLY why I'm uncomfortable with the speaking main character in Bioshock Infinite.

Great read. I'm also playing Half-Life 2 now! I've played Half-Life back in the day but I never got to play 2 until now. It holds up after all these years and it's so much fun and so much better than most of the games that came out recently. I'm now on chapter 11 and I havent had trouble with the turret sequence. Where I've had trouble was killing those two gunships before entering Nova Prospekt because..and I'm ashamed of this, I didn't know how to use the RPG! Really..the first time I wasn't paying attention so I just spammed the thing and I got lucky. But that sequence with the 2 gunships..oh man, I struggled through that until I finally realized that the missile was following anywhere I pointed! I've never played a game with that mechanic on a gun as I can remember.. Its awesome! I'm going to finish the game and I'm really looking forward to episode 1 and 2, I've already bought them all on steam!