There are few games out there with a reputation quite as strong as Half-Life, and as a result, it was one of the few games that, until I had recently started playing this remake, I actively avoided anything that could possibly be perceived as a spoiler. I knew that the player character's name was Gordon Freeman. I knew the game was an FPS that featured 3D platforming. I knew the game had a sequel that left the story unfinished, and I knew that a gravity gun was involved somewhere in the series. That's it. That's all I knew going in. From what I've read online this game does an excellent job of remaining faithful to the original, so I will be moving forward from here assuming as much. Having now finished the game I can see why the original made such a big splash in the pre-halo landscape. That said, my own time here was decidedly mixed to put it mildly. The gunplay bothered me the whole time. The built-in aiming mechanic was basically useless and hip-firing was a gamble even at the best of times, which wouldn't have been so bad if the levels weren't so ridiculously long. I used to think Halo's the Ark or the Covenant were long, but those are nothing compared to some of the levels here. And then, of course, it wouldn't be a PC gaming experience with the thing that really dragged out the whole process of playing the game: performance issues. The game crashed on me constantly in every chapter. Usually it would just close the game window and boot me to the desktop, but there were a couple of times it locked up my entire computer to the point that I had to manually shut it down. One such instance occurred at the tail end of chapter 17. Only this time, I got a bonus surprise. All the saves I'd had stored for safety purposes for the last 4 chapters were gone except for the two most recent ones, which were corrupted and unusable. I did my best to play fair, but when the game goes and deletes my saves I have no issue using console commands to get back to where I was before, which is what I did in this case. I can honestly say that without that I would've dropped the game. It's mildly interesting to a point. I like the ideas behind its level design and the story is at least somewhat interesting. I still plan on continuing on with the series as a whole, but I seriously doubt I'll be returning to this entry.