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Valve has come from behind with a game that, quite honestly, destroys all of the competition. Half Life, to me, was always "that other Quake 2 engine licensee". Everybody knew that SiN was coming from Ritual. I mean, with big name Internet talent like Levelord and Paradox, and regular updates on the game from .plan files, you had to know about their game. They had some impressive screenshots and, a few months back, even shipped a demo - before the game itself shipped! (This is something another first person shooter has yet to manage, but I still like their game.) Of course, with Quake Arena's first test shipping coming "sooner than you think" and Duke Nukem's jump in engines, our attention always seemed to be grabbed by something else. Even with Ion Storm swearing they had some games that they'd ship someday, it was pretty easy to forget those quiet guys in Seattle. Hell, the owners worked for Microsoft, what did they know about games?

But then a funny thing happened. Well, funny if you weren't a Valve or Sierra employee. This demo that wasn't a demo got out. Soon, everyone and their dog had the first 20% of Half Life, subtitled "Day One". It was never intended for public consumption - rather, it was to be a pack-in for some piece of hardware. What hardware? Who knows, people were too busy raving about just the first 20% of the game. Because that first 20% was 100% better than anything else that was out, and better than a lot of things that shipped after it. And that's gotta hurt. Somewhere along the line, the quiet little company from Seattle had cranked out the hands-down best first person shooter to date. It had everything. And when the full version came out, it just got better. I would have had to wait likely two weeks or so to get a review copy from Sierra -- the hell with that, I paid for the game the first time I saw it in a store. This is probably the best thing you can say about any game you review - you gladly paid for it because it was that good. Read on and see why.

Gameplay:

Wow. You've never played a first person shooter like this before. The plot is pretty simple. You are Gordon Freeman, a low level employee at a government research facility. Mind you, this is the Black Mesa top secret research facility. You have access to a very small part of the base and minimal involvment in what goes on. This will all change when a new sample mineral is exposed to experiments which play havoc with space. Soon, you find yourself between the government trying to "sanitize" the facilty (read: kill everyone inside, you included) and the alien lifeforms that keep popping into our world. The fact that the game has a plot is no small thing - it drives the entire game. Suffice it to say, the game comes to a climax you'll not soon forget and rates as one of the better and more original endings I've ever seen in any medium - book, movie, TV or video game.

Remember all the little interactive things to do in Duke Nukem? Remember the couple of scripted sequences in Unreal? Valve apparently did, because they're all over the place in Half Life. Unlike Duke, the interactive touches matter -- call down an airstrike to kill your enemies and conserve your own ammo. Scripted sequences? Half Life is like being part of a movie - aliens attacking soldiers, scientists trying to escape, the government trying to cover things up. And in the middle of all this is you, just trying to get out and survive. And if you can save a few of your fellow workers along the way, so much the better. Better because you'll have to save some if you want to continue - you'll have to work with the NPC characters to escape. They aren't mere window dressing.

Of course, you'll face all manner of enemies, from small crablike things (think of the face huggers in the Alien movies) to M1A1 Abrams battle tanks to Longbow Helicopters to giant alien war machines. The enemies don't flail blindly either. They will hunt you down, flush you out and kill you if given the chance. Grunts fight back with the same weapons you have for the most part. They have the tools to kill you and use them, and quite effectively at that. Simply ducking out of view will result in a few lobbed grenades that will either kill you or force you to move out from cover. Even though this is about the best AI I've seen in a game, it still wasn't all too hard even on hard level. Seeing things and people move like you would expect them too is quite an eye opener, however. Hearing a doomed grunt scream "Shit!" as a grenade comes down in his lap makes it all that much better. The levels are a real treat to run through - they're well constructed, and I never once thought "I have to find another damn key!?". In fact, there are no keys! Or keycards! Imagine that. Other more realistic elements drive the plot, like getting fuel and power to a rocket you need to fire, or insuring that a guard lives through a gauntlet of foes so he can open a door for you. Gone is the monotonous quest for another doodad to open another damn door. On the few times that you do backtrack through levels, you'll almost always run through an alernate route that wasn't available the first time.

The weapons at hand range from standard fare - pistol, machine gun, shotgun to the more interesting - the Egon, the alien hive gun and 3 types of explosives. Did I mention that where you shot is as important as what you shoot with? A shot to the head will ruin your enemies' days quite a bit more than if you shoot them in the foot. It all adds up to a unique playing experience that keeps you on the edge of your seat, and that hasn't happened since System Shock.

Longevity:

The game felt pretty long to me, I spent about a week playing a few hours a night to finish it. Even then, I'm going to play through single player a third time, I just need to squeeze in time with work, Fallout 2, Tomb Raider 3 and Heretic 2.

Multiplayer is great fun - no one weapon truly controls the game, although the Egon comes close. All the weapons have their strengths and weaknesses. Of course, tapping someone in the head with a .357 and instantly killing them is personally my current favourite. My only question is, whatever happened to the smoothness of Quakeworld? Quake 2 and the derivative games have well, sucky networking. And I'm on a cable modem! Well, at 7 to 50 ms ping, it's ok. But I doubt that most of you have cable or ADSL. Something that I've noticed with both SiN and Half Life is the tendency to simply stop in mid game -- quite irritating. With a little luck, there'll be a patch soon. It's too bad that I have to add that line to every game I review. The first patch is out, so hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

If you get tired of playing with the supplied levels, you can fire up the level editor shipped with the game - Worldcraft 2.0 - a popular quake engine based level editing utility. This is supplied as is - don't go to Sierra for help. There are, however, many pages on the web that will help out struggling would-be designers. Valve has or is currently making available a set of tools to help designers work with the Half Life "world". Already, a plugin has been released that lets you play as a Barney - a Black Mesa security guard. There's a tiny preview of Teamfortress, what many consider THE Quake mod that Valve has "assimilated" and will be, well, I'm not entirely sure if it's a free download or a new purchase, (Free download! Free download! Chant it like a mantra!) but either way it will extend the installed lifetime of this game for a few months.

Controls:

Controls are set up much like all the other first person shooters -- you can assign what you want to whatever controllers you have. As Half-Life uses the Quake 2 engine, it's simple and easy to bind keys from a menu. Advanced users can implement scripts for more involved controls such as firing a rocket and toggling back to the last weapon used, all with a mouse click. The interface is simple and easy to navigate. Internet gaming is a few clicks away - the game will look for games that are currently running, and you can rank them by name, ping time, players present, or level played. Just a double click and you're on your way.

Graphics:

*Plot spoilers*

Wow, it isn't brown! After all the grief handed to Quake, Quake 2 was well, less brown at least. Then the mission packs came out and we were plunged into a brown world all over again. Half Life will introduce you to some of the best level design currently offered. Everything looks like you would imagine it to, and in a plethora of colours. Attention to detail borders on fanatical. How many games let you blow up someone's lunch in the lunch room microwave?

Later in the game, I was somewhat disappointed with the design of the alien world. It sure looked alien enough, but just the same, it wasn't my cup of tea. I would have preferred a terrestrial setting all the way through, but that's my personal preference. I wasn't too keen on Quake's disparate worlds to travel through either.

The models are excellent -- Valve has implemented a special skeletal animation system, which means things move the way they should. Talk to a scientist and his mouth opens and closes as he speaks! Move to one side or the other and his head will track you. If you pay close attention in multiplayer, people hold weapons accurately and, even better, look where they're firing, be it up, down or straight ahead. Models look great and the artwork (not all brown, holy cow!) is really quite nice. The weapon effects are a nice touch - the rocket exhaust trails look the way you would expect and fade slowly. Machine guns fire tracers that you can see zoom into their targets. The final weapon of the game, the Egon (A tip of the hat to Egon, creator of the Ghostbusters' weapons I'll wager) looks excellent! Best of all, when you hit something or blow something up, it scars the environment - you can quite honestly paint a room red with your enemies blood - or yellow if they don't hail from our neighbourhood. Hit a wall with a rocket? Expect to see some damage.

Sound:

Sounds great! Too bad it only supports A3D 2.0 and EAX for 3D sound - my A3D 1.0 card is out of luck. God bless progress, sort of. The sounds of the game are quite good, with a lot of attention paid to the various ambient noises - gunfire in the distance, grunts screaming for medics when hit, and the droning of machinery. Some of the CD Audio soundtrack struck me as a little odd, but for the most part, the music is understated and moody.

Installation:

It's a game installer like every other. Good thing hard drives are cheap - Half Life wants 364mb if you're under FAT32. The Sierra utilities auto install, regardless of whether you want them or not. I don't like that, and I don't want them. Bad! Make that go away, Sierra. DirectX 6 will be installed if you need it; if not it tells you as much and skips that. I've sucessfully uninstalled the game without any problems and reinstalled it. I had heard rumors that said there were troubles uninstalling the game. Not my version. Patches can be grabbed online from within the game, which is pretty handy. The first patch is already out and fixes some problems like the inability to play local LAN games without a net connection.

You will be required to type in a number from the back of the CD jewel case - a key of sorts that will allow you to play - you're only prompted the first time you run Half Life. Much better than typing in a line of text from a manual from the Commodore 64 days. People have whined about this as a problem - too bad, get over it. Copy protection is still needed - CDRs are commonplace nowadays, so shipping a product on CD is no longer protection enough. Everytime you play on the Internet, the game servers will verify your key against a central database to insure that you have a legitimate key. Be sure when you buy a copy that the package is sealed - if someone else gets your key number, it will be trouble. (Conversely, don't give the key number out.) Blizzard has used this method with some success for Starcraft. People can whine all they want, but simply said this is about the best form of copy protection, and given how rampant piracy is...

Overall:

I paid for it! With my hard earned money! What more do you want me to say? Half Life has really raised the bar on first person shooters. I'd bet good money that when Quake Arena comes out, although technically superior, the single player experience as compared to that in Half Life will be like comparing a Yugo to a Ferrari. If you can afford only one action game this Christmas, it has to be Half Life, no question about it. Actually, nevermind waiting till Christmas, just go get it now. You won't be disappointed - unless you're developing a competing product.