In the 3rd and last part of my gaming nostalgia trip I am going back to a game which wrote gaming history. It was was also my first FPS I've ever played and the intro is legendary...
What Is Half Life?
Half-Life is a computer game belonging to the first-person shooter genre. It was developed by Valve and published on October 31, 1998 by distribution partner Sierra. According to the manufacturer, over 9.3 million copies were sold in retail stores worldwide. The number of sales via the Steam distribution platform developed by Valve are unknown.
After several years of development, the Valve-authorized fan remake Black Mesa by the Crowbar Collective development team was released in March 2020.
In addition to its literal meaning, the title of the video game is an allusion to the technical term half-life from nuclear physics. The symbol for the game is a lambda (λ), the symbol for the decay constant in physics.
On the one hand, the title should aim at the science fiction component of the game, on the other hand, the developers wanted to break away from the shooting gallery game concept of other video games such as Quake, which was prevalent at the time, and focus on a more thought-provoking concept.
Story
The legendary start in the train going through the research faciliy
In Half-Life, the player takes on the role of Gordon Freeman, an MIT physicist who conducts top-secret research work in a fictional rocket test base called Black Mesa, which has been converted into a research complex, in the remote desert of the US state of New Mexico. When an experiment to develop a new energy source with crystals of extraterrestrial origin fails, the research facility is flooded with dimensional gates from a parallel world.
Those filthy head crabs and the famous crowbar
Gordon Freeman is not only confronted with hordes of strange creatures from another world, but also with U.S. Marines charged with killing anyone who wants to leave the compound. Since the Marines are unable to cope with this situation, the Black Ops Special Command is sent on. Its orders are to wipe out all living things in Black Mesa without exception. The game is mainly solved with the help of real, but also fictional weapons (such as the Gauss rifle). Again and again on his way out of Black Mesa, Freeman encounters the mysterious G-Man, a stranger who apparently wants to test Freeman and offers him a job at the end of the game.
Valve hired horror writer Marc Laidlaw to develop the game's story. It was groundbreaking that the development of the plot was viewed completely from the perspective of the player, so that no cutscenes interrupted the flow of the game. For this purpose, many events in the game world were scripted and triggered when the player arrived at a certain location (so-called script sequences).
Although Half-Life was technically based on a typical first-person shooter engine, the game set new standards with the addition of elements from the Adventure and Jump ’n’ Run genres. For example, in many situations the player must skillfully overcome obstacles such as power cables, fans, deep chasms or toxic sewage. In other game scenes, for example, movable boxes have to be correctly positioned in order to reach higher positions or to bypass the triggers of sticky mines. The game also includes computer-controlled characters in the role of guards and scientists who are necessary for the player's progress (for example, by opening doors) or helping the player with firepower or medical assistance.
Half-Life is divided into 17 chapters, which in turn contain small sections that make the game appear coherent without major pauses in loading and thus maintain the tension.
In most chapters boss monsters await you at the end which have to be defeated before beeing able to move to the next area.
The last part of the game takes the player to the alien world "Xen".
In the strange, organic world the player gets to see many well-known aliens and sees - scattered everywhere - dead scientists in HEV suits who were exploring Xen before.
The player can use those bugs on steroids who were fed with anger as weapon by throwing them at the enemy
The Half Life Universe
Driven by the huge success Half Life got a bunch of addons and sequels. Some lead you through the same story from a different perspective (e.g. as Barney, the guard in "Half Life: Blue Shift" or as a Marine in "Half Life: Opposing Force")
The sequel Half-Life 2 was released on November 16, 2004. Half-Life (1998) and Half-Life 2 (2004) are full-length video games, while Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) and Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007) are shorter episodic video games. A third episode, Half-Life 2: Episode Three, was slated for Christmas 2007, but remained unfinished.
Valve announced the virtual reality shooter Half-Life: Alyx in November 2019, which was released on March 23, 2020.
Half Life 2 set a new milestone in graphics and gameplay
Conclusion
Half-Life was named "Game of the Year" by the German computer game magazine PC Games in 1998 and rated it 91%. GameStar magazine gave the game a 92% rating.
Half-Life also received high ratings from other magazines around the world: IGN rated the game with 95% and Gamespot with 94%.
Half-Life was named “Game of the Year” more than 50 times, leaving its genre competitor Unreal from the same year behind.
Half-Life's metascore is 96 out of a possible 100 points, making the game one of the highest rated first-person shooters.
If you have never played it, but don't want to deal with retro graphics, I highly recommend to take a look at Black Mesa on Steam. The official and highly polished fan remake of the original Half Life.
And last but not least, since this is my last post this year: A HAPPY NEW YEAR 🥂