Sorry for the delay. I was eating sushi and reading "Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Fate of Atlantis." Oddly enough I started this series of blog entries because I had nothing else to say on Live Journal, and I'm now deliberately not blogging about certain real-life developments for fear of interrupting my cockamamie video game countdown nobody cares about.
Ain't that a hole in the boat?
This is a gaming experience that is somewhat more experience than game, I admit, but Half-Life 2 is just phenomenal in so many remarkable ways. I’m of the opinion that the first-person shooter genre lends itself more readily to mindlessness (and artlessness) than probably any other genre in gaming, which is certainly a biased opinion, but boy oh boy does it help the exceptional stuff to stand out.
Half-Life 2 is an absolutely perfect experiment in mood-gaming. It’s chilling, but doesn’t go for the easy scare. It’s dramatic, but doesn’t resort to pre-determined deaths of likeable party members. Its story is rich and brainy, but we aren’t subjected to elaborate histories or genealogies. It’s a game that feels, over and over again, as though it’s unfolding for the first time. It’s a game that so easily avoids the trappings of its own genre (and of others) simply by weaving an entire, coherent atmosphere out of suggestion and inference.
Much was made of the impressive physics boasted by this game, and they certainly deserve their accolades. But as “technically” impressive as the physics (and, of course, physics-based puzzles) were, they served their real purpose in bridging the gap between gaming and reality. Nobody ever questions Mario’s physics, or Sonic the Hedgehog’s, and that’s okay, because they occupy a realm we will never know. We enjoy our time spent in those games, but, ultimately, we get to return home, to a world where things function very differently. On the other hand, Half-Life 2’s creaky valves, rusty filings, floating barrels, cement blocks and abandoned vehicles have too much in common (how they look, how they move, how they react) with the world we know to be left entirely behind when we shut the game off.
Admittedly, the most effective atmosphere in Half-Life 2 is reappropriated from George Orwell’s 1984, but that’s more a result of inspiration than imitation. City 17 is its own unit with its own rules and its own distinctive flavor of dystopia. The game can start to feel slightly schizophrenic once the player escapes from City 17, but it’s the effectiveness of this schizophrenia (and the constant uncertainty regarding even what KIND of game we’ll be playing in the next chapter) that keeps us under its spell. From the frantic helicopter chase aboard the airboat to the survival-horror episode in Ravenholm to the brilliantly structured “standing ground” segments of Nova Prospekt, the game never lets you get too comfortable with any one strategy for long.
Half-Life 2 is precisely the kind of game I wish all first-person shooters could be. Every kill is satisfying, every chapter is a surprise, and every puzzle has a root in the same logic we use to make it through the day. It’d be a stretch to call it perfect...but not an entirely uncomfortable one.
Where can you play it now? Don't bother with retail (you'll have to download updates anyway). It's available for download from Steam on your PC, either alone or as part of The Orange Box. Buying it separately is somewhat foolish, as The Orange Box also includes two further installments of the Half-Life 2 saga, a universally-adored first-person puzzler called Portal, and multi-player killfest Team Fortress 2, which is probably fun for people who like that sort of thing. Oh, Half-Life 2 was also ported to the Xbox and PS3, whatever those are.
Additional: an online friend of mine points out that you Mac / Linux users can use Crossover Games to play Half-Life 2 and all sorts of other excellent Steam you're not supposed to be able to enjoy, without having to run a virtual machine. Now where the heck was he with this kind of advice when *I* was saddled with a Mac?
