Half-Life

Release Date - November 19, 1998 (NA)
Developer - Valve
Publisher - Sierra Studios
Platform - PC

Life is full of surprises. Gordon Freeman, a young MIT graduate working at the Black Mesa research facility is on his way to work. He waits on the monorail that takes him into the complex, another daily commute. Routine. He’s the only one in the monorail car as it traverses through the vast underground complex. An automated female voice welcomes personnel to the facility, it’s already 8:47AM. That security guard seems to have forgotten his pass or something, he’s knocking on a door, seemingly locked out. Just one of those days. A helicopter is landing at the landing pad. Who’s that man in the black suit?

The automated voice reminds employees about mandatory drug testing. The monotone delivery rings out as you see industrial robots moving around machinery and radioactive waste to be disposed of safely. Please keep your limbs inside the train until it has come to a complete stop. Eventually a security guard opens the door and Gordon Freeman goes about his day, collecting his Hazardous Environment Suit (HEV) from the locker-room. Someone has their breakfast heating up in the break room’s microwave. During the first experiment for the day, a scientist decides to continue with the procedure despite some higher than expected energy readings. Suddenly, things aren’t so routine and mundane anymore.

Pick up that crowbar, Gordon.

Half-Life was designed with the explicit goal of not being a ‘shooting gallery’, but rather creating an immersive and genuine world. The excellent visual storytelling in the opening monorail ride became a benchmark for later games and contemporaries. The player is eased into the world of Half-Life without the use of traditional cut-scenes or any exposition from narrators. As you travel through the Black Mesa facility, you see a variety of industrial, scientific and even mundane activities going on all around you all while being in control to walk around and look where you please from within the monorail. This is the introduction to one of the features that makes Half-Life so immersive, the player is always in control of Gordon Freeman. The player is Gordon Freeman. The sense of chaos throughout the game is palpable, with scientists being pulled into air-vents by unseen enemies, machinery failing all around you and the other inhabitants of Black Mesa generally attempting to make their own escapes from the doomed facility, often independently of the player.

*You’re reminded of the destruction everywhere you go, and each new area provides a new challenge to overcome.*

Perhaps one of the first things to note about Half-Life is the incredible attention to detail in the game world. Very early on as you walk through the main entrance to find your locker, you’ll notice in-game signage of the kind you’d see in a real office building. Coloured lines along the walls direct you to your locker room. The kitchen has vending machines and the bathrooms have hand-dryers. When you finally get into the hazardous materials lab, the elevator that brings equipment in and out even has a safety cage around it! These are all small details that just make the game world feel living and real, and it goes a very long way to sucking you in and holding you there. This is all before you get into the game proper, after the chillingly casual commentary of a scientist announcing that the strange readings he’s seeing are ‘probably nothing’ and ‘well within the safety parameters’. Famous last words…

*Each area feels very distinct, with some fantastic aesthetic designs.*

Having waxed on about the immersion and excellent visual storytelling, we all know that these aspects alone aren’t enough to make a brilliant game. Thankfully, Half-Life has some amazing moments of adrenaline pumping action and clever level layouts that reward exploration to keep players engaged from start to finish. While the crowbar is the first and most iconic weapon Gordon gets his hands on, Half-Life contains a lot of fun and varied hardware to survive an invasion from another dimension. Starting off with some familiar guns (adding to the realistic aesthetic and grounding of the game), players will collect pistols, shotguns, and sub-machine guns, as well as a thoroughly satisfying magnum revolver. Further into the game, the weapons get a little more bizarre as Gordon gets to sample some extra-terrestrial items and some experimental weapons that Black Mesa were working on. Most of the guns even have a secondary firing ability, further adding to the game’s tool box for destruction. Even to the end of the game, you’ll have situations that call for specific weapons. Even the humble crowbar will be useful to the very end, after all, it's much better suited to breaking wooden barriers and opening air-vents than a shotgun.

*Weapons all have their own niche. For example, something that can fire underwater will come in very handy…*

All of your arsenal will be required too, with some very clever enemy designs meaning you’ll find uses for most everything you’re carrying. Tiny, yet annoying headcrabs may not require much power to put down, but they move fast and will come at you very fast. Despite being the first enemy you encounter, they pose a threat through the entire game thanks to some brilliant placement in surprising or confined areas. Zombie-like possessed humans are easy to outpace, but soak up a lot of damage, enemies that shoot electricity are much weaker but hit you from a long range. Eventually you’ll run into human enemies who have the capacity to ambush you and even try to flush you out of cover with explosives or set elaborate traps. You’ll need to use a variety of techniques and prioritise enemies according to your situation, and it makes for some very fun shootouts.

*Environmental storytelling is often quite gruesome.*

Through the course of the game, you’ll continue to be reminded that Black Mesa was a functioning and busy workplace. Meeting up with other survivors leads to brief but memorable encounters. Sometimes they’ll provide you some insight into the challenges ahead, and sometimes they’re just doing their best to survive by trying to hide or escape. Finding other survivors keeps the player immersed and also builds that desperate atmosphere. Despite being pretty simple in terms of AI and design, its not hard to grow attached to these characters, especially as they are usually very willing to help out where they can. Security guards will back you up with some additional firepower or let you into restricted areas, and scientists will treat your wounds if you’re looking injured. Sometimes their security clearance is essential for progress, so look after them!

*Fellow scientists will help you out with a shot of adrenaline if you’re looking worse for wear.*

Each section of Black Mesa feels well thought out and unique, no mean feat for a game contained entirely within one location. Half-Life, unlike most of the game’s contemporaries, was not broken into ‘levels’. Rather, players would travel through the facility and each region would be built around a certain theme, challenge or set-piece that serves as a goal for the player to reach and overcome. These will range from combat challenges to non-violent solutions that require some thought and platforming, but all feel satisfying to overcome and add to the excitement of discovering what new location lies beyond. Jumping between different segments is seamless, and yet each different challenge feels very distinct and memorable. An unforgettable example is ‘Blast Pit’. Coming across a silo that’s inhabited by a particularly tough (seemingly invincible) creature, you quickly realise that guns and explosives are only enough to make the creature temporarily retreat into its hole. Blocking your exit to the underground, it’s going to take a LOT more firepower to kill this thing than you can carry. The goal then becomes to avoid this creature in the central shaft as best you can, and navigate the facility to prepare the fuel and ignition system to blast a test rocket directly into the creature’s face, allowing you to pass by safely. The sub-goals aren’t called out in an ‘objectives’ interface, and there’s no waypoint or map marker. This is all done via following signage in-game and exploring. The result is a supremely satisfying segment that is simultaneously perfectly self contained while remaining linked to the prior and later segments.

Half-Life is very well regarded for this kind of immersive and varied level design. There are areas where you’ll be repairing (and then riding) railway systems, searching for power generators, and even swimming through flooded segments of the crumbling Black Mesa lab. All in pursuit of your ultimate goal of getting to the surface to escape. All of these segments are notable for being equally taxing on your brain as they are on your trigger finger. The integration of ‘puzzles’ into the game is frankly brilliant. There are no marked ‘puzzles’ to complete but rather the player will find logically presented obstacles and solutions. A great example is a staircase that’s been covered with trip-lasers that will trigger an explosion if walked through. The game has a series of metal boxes that can be moved into position in a way that the player can jump on the boxes to get to the top of the stairs and bypass the trap. It’s not marked in any way, there is no dialogue telling you to avoid the lasers, and no highlights to move the boxes. The game is full of moments like this, forcing the player to examine their environment and figure out ways to progress.

Tying all the aspects of the game together is some truly excellent sound design. The HEV suit warns players of danger with cautionary tones and even some robotic, clinical voice lines. Perhaps most memorable is the ‘flatline’ sound of the in-built heart monitor when Gordon dies. Topping up your health or charging your suit at a charge station comes with an iconic and very industrial sounding noise, it has a very visceral effect on the player when you hear it run dry. Footsteps are present everywhere you (or your enemies) are walking, with different sound effects for different surfaces. The lack of music in most areas just means those footsteps become an eerie reminder that you’re usually on your own in this huge facility. Or worse, sometimes you’re not alone… enemies have distinct sounds they make, from the odd alien noises to the eerily gruff military radio chatter. You’ll learn to use your hearing as well as your sight to prepare for the next fight.

Half-Life manages to keep the environments fresh and varied throughout the entire journey.

Beyond the HEV suit, the guns all have some weight behind them, with distinct noises for each one and booming roars for explosions. The magnum revolver is distinct from your automatic pistol and if the grenades sound threatening, the satchel charges are terrifying, and the crossbow provides feedback with a satisfying ‘thunk’ sound when you hit your unfortunate target. A lot of the games from this era have fantastic sound design, and the fact that Half-Life stands out among even them really is high praise.

*The sound this thing makes is extremely comforting to anyone who’s played enough* Half-Life.

Half-Life was a critical success upon its release, and won multiple ‘Game of the Year’ awards. No small feat in a year that was packed with as much quality as 1998! Sales, likewise, were very positive; Half-Life was initially expected to sell a lifetime total of approximately 180,000 units. A good target for a first-time developer (indeed, Valve had trouble even finding a publisher until Sierra stepped in to release the game). By 1999 the game had surpassed this modest target and reached over 212,000 units sold. Over the next ten years the game had sold 9.3 million copies at retail, and held the Guineness Book of Records award for ‘Best Selling First Person Shooter of All Time’.

*Black Mesa feels HUGE. There are so many memorable locations to visit.*

Half-Life would eventually see two expansion packs adding to the original experience. Opposing Force released in 1999, and Blue Shift in 2001. Beyond these, one cannot talk about Half-Life and the influence it had without mentioning the mods that it spawned. Half-Life was very mod-friendly by design, with Valve wanting players to be able to create their own content and releasing tools to that effect. While Half-Life came with its own robust multiplayer ‘deathmatch’ mode, Valve would also develop and release Team Fortress Classic, and fully or partly independent modders would create further iconic mods-turned-games Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat.

It’s hard to quantify just how much impact Half-Life had on PC gaming and gaming in general, when taking into account the various sequels, mods and spin-offs that came from it, but one thing is for certain; to this day, the original is still a must-play experience and one of the best PC games money can buy.

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