What I've been playing now: Half-Life 2

So yet again, I allowed myself to be completely enveloped in a game. While this action is good for research and review, it also means that I've been absent from the blog! But now that I've finally been able to put down Half-Life having finished it in it's entirety, I'm here to talk about it. Yay! And as always, SPOILERS!

Why I never played this game before, I'm unsure. I know when it came out I didn't have a good enough computer nor an XBox to play it on. I definitely missed out, cause this is a rather addictive game.

The first Combine soldiers you encounter.

You are the man named Gordon Freeman.You start out in the dystopian City 17, a dilapidated  city of people who are clearly oppressed and miserable. You find out that an alien race called the Combine have taken over and are in control of the city (and most of the world you will be exploring). You meet up with the Lambda Resistance, a group of freedom fighters who are trying to defeat the Combine and free humanity from them. The resistance is made up of people who also worked at Black Mesa (a scientific corporation from the first Half-Life) and they are the main side characters you encounter. You end up escaping from City 17 and wandering the countryside until you get to the Resistance's base. From there, you adventure to various places usually to escape the Combine, fight the Combine, or rescue captured characters. You eventually defeat the main enemy, a human man named Dr. Wallace Breen who is in league with the Combine (he is apparently the go-between of the Combine and humanity). Half-Life 2: Episode 1 takes place right after the explosion from defeating Breen, and your goal becomes escaping City 17 with Alyx Vance as there is going to be an explosion that will destroy everything nearby.

When I first started out in the world of Half-Life 2, I honestly wasn't quite sure what to think of it. I liked the disturbing feeling of being in City 17 but as soon as you get out into the countryside, the game felt very different. The landscape doesn't feel as repressed and I felt like it was almost a different game for a short while. Then you get into Ravensholm. This was definitely one of my favorite parts of the game, most likely because I can see the beginnings of what would eventually be Left 4 Dead (also made by Valve, of course). This place is SCARY. An abandoned city teeming with head-crab zombies and creatures. You're all alone, and ammo is rather short. I had more then one jump-out-of-my-skin moments as I played through it. You eventually make it out and must go through an area infested with antlions, large bug-like creatures that are incredibly aggressive. At one point, you have to avoid stepping on areas of sand lest the antlions get riled up and attack you in mass. However, towards the end of this section of the game, you actually get to control the antlions. They end up aiding you in breaking into a Combine prison and rescuing Eli Vance, one of your allies. You eventually end up back in City 17 helping the resistance fight the Combine. You eventually defeat Dr. Breen and the Combine citadel, the alien structure which is the Combine's base of operations, and that ending leads into Half-Life 2:Episode 1. Overall, the story is well-written, very captivating and makes the gamer want to see it to the end.

The creepiness that is Ravensholm.

The graphics and details of this game are amazing. The designers clearly payed close attention to small little graphic details in the scenery, such as trash littering the simplistic apartments that the people of City 17 inhabit. Not only that, the faces of the NPC's you interact with are expressive and realistic (especially for the time that this game came out). While these are somewhat minor pieces of the game, they make the gaming experience that much better. The sounds of this game are also integral to the experience. The music is only played at certain times, but is well-crafted and fits with the futuristic feeling of the game. Also, the sound effects and noises of the enemies are well thought out. Most of the time, their sounds will help you prepare for what's coming, such as the Combine soldiers communicating on their radios or a head-crab making a little chittering noise. The scariest and most disturbing of these noises is the muffled screaming of a head-crab zombie. It is truly creepy and upsetting.
 The controls are easy to adapt to and the weapon system is fairly easy to navigate. I like that you can carry a full arsenal of weapons versus having to choose between only a few that you can carry at once. I also like that the game makes you use just about every gadget or weapon by placing certain obstacles or puzzles in your path. There was also more then one puzzle that had me stumped for at least a few minutes. However, one thing I have noticed and like about Valve games is that while they want to challenge you with their game puzzles, they don't make them so complicated that they are impossible to figure out. I never became overly frustrated with the obstacles I encountered in Half-Life 2.

If for some reason you've never played this game before, definitely make time to do so. And according to Speeder, now I know the pain of all Half-Life 2 fans in that after experiencing the cliff-hanger ending of Half-Life: Episode 2, I have to wait impatiently to see what happens next whenever Valve decides to release the next game.