This review contains spoilers
I have to say, Half-Life was quite the interesting experience. I've heard many people talk about how good the series is, but I never played it before this year. As of typing this review, I have just finished Half-Life with 32 hours put into it on Steam. My time was a little inflated by the time I left the game on while I was doing something else, but, for the most part, this is accurate. I admit to using various outside sources for walkthroughs often, I had a difficult time understanding the ways this game tells you what to do or where to go next. I also save scummed quite frequently, but I don't feel this is discouraged by the game so I didn't feel bad about it. Nonetheless, I feel satisfied by my experience and I feel I still completed the game fairly. I did not use any of the cheat commands, for instance, like no-clip and whatnot.
Half-Life is one of the progenitors of fully 3D first person shooters, and, while its age can be felt in some areas, I feel the gameplay itself has aged well. The controls are responsive if not a little oversensitive (maybe there's a way to fix that in the options that I didn't see), I didn't have to fight with the physics to get where I needed to go, all the guns are enjoyable to use, there is a good variety of weaponry available...it's just a very solid time overall. Maybe I shouldn't be so impressed with all that, but I wasn't expecting this game to feel as nice to play as it does.
As for the story in this game, there isn't a whole lot of it from what I understood in playing it, but it has nice bits of lore and leaves you with a bunch of questions after playing it. There are a few NPCs you talk to in the game that give you information about where you need to go, but there are also some NPCs that give you some lore about this world and that's pretty neat. The G-Man gives you a little speech in the last chapter of the game that was cool, it was likely meant to be a big twist but I had a basic idea of who the G-Man was before playing this game since he's such a popular character even outside of the Half-Life fandom. The mere existence of the various aliens you have to kill, their home planet Xen, the Nihilanth (the final boss), and various other strange aspects of Half-Life add an eerie atmosphere to things that I think was pulled off well. There seems to be a lot of subtext and theories about this game, but, in all honesty, I don't think the plot of this game interested me that much for me to look into every detail and all the lore about it. Nonetheless, I did still enjoy this aspect of the game.
Something I find odd but interesting about Half-Life is that music is pretty sparse. Most of the game is silent when it comes to music and typically music only comes in whenever you reach an important location or some major event happens in the mission. I think this makes it to where the music in the game is more memorable and adds to the atmosphere. This isn't something I see much in games, but it works very well for Half-Life in my opinion.
Overall I am surprised and impressed by my experience with this game. Although I felt kind of dumb and confused by the design sometimes, I enjoyed my time with Half-Life. Maybe I'll visit Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Decay, as well as Half-Life 2 and its two episodes sometime soon.
Half-Life is one of the progenitors of fully 3D first person shooters, and, while its age can be felt in some areas, I feel the gameplay itself has aged well. The controls are responsive if not a little oversensitive (maybe there's a way to fix that in the options that I didn't see), I didn't have to fight with the physics to get where I needed to go, all the guns are enjoyable to use, there is a good variety of weaponry available...it's just a very solid time overall. Maybe I shouldn't be so impressed with all that, but I wasn't expecting this game to feel as nice to play as it does.
As for the story in this game, there isn't a whole lot of it from what I understood in playing it, but it has nice bits of lore and leaves you with a bunch of questions after playing it. There are a few NPCs you talk to in the game that give you information about where you need to go, but there are also some NPCs that give you some lore about this world and that's pretty neat. The G-Man gives you a little speech in the last chapter of the game that was cool, it was likely meant to be a big twist but I had a basic idea of who the G-Man was before playing this game since he's such a popular character even outside of the Half-Life fandom. The mere existence of the various aliens you have to kill, their home planet Xen, the Nihilanth (the final boss), and various other strange aspects of Half-Life add an eerie atmosphere to things that I think was pulled off well. There seems to be a lot of subtext and theories about this game, but, in all honesty, I don't think the plot of this game interested me that much for me to look into every detail and all the lore about it. Nonetheless, I did still enjoy this aspect of the game.
Something I find odd but interesting about Half-Life is that music is pretty sparse. Most of the game is silent when it comes to music and typically music only comes in whenever you reach an important location or some major event happens in the mission. I think this makes it to where the music in the game is more memorable and adds to the atmosphere. This isn't something I see much in games, but it works very well for Half-Life in my opinion.
Overall I am surprised and impressed by my experience with this game. Although I felt kind of dumb and confused by the design sometimes, I enjoyed my time with Half-Life. Maybe I'll visit Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Decay, as well as Half-Life 2 and its two episodes sometime soon.