If the article you see before you appears to take on an air of total disbelief, shock, or even an annoyingly euphoric attitude, then you’ll have to accept my apologies in advance, as I’m still recovering from what looks to be the most amazing singleplayer FPS gaming experience I’ve witnessed to date. I actually admit to initially having some doubts on if Half-Life 2 could match the sheer, awesome feeling I got from playing through the first game, but not only has the sequel managed to match its predecessor, it also bests it in several areas, making it one of the most impressive gaming experiences I’ve seen this in the FPS genre this year. Barely a month from the end of the year, Valve has instantly ensured their domination over the singleplayer gaming division for the time being – though it’s not like they’re ignoring the multiplayer potential behind the franchise either.

But the road to playing this game is somewhat bumpy, just as Valve’s path to getting the game out the door was also quite treacherous. Following an embarrassing missed release in September last year (and the unfortunate leak incident), Valve has been up in legal arms with publisher Vivendi over the release plans for the game. Apparently, Vivendi has a bug up its rear about Valve’s new “Steam” service, used for releasing the game online, and has entangled the self-sustaining developer in an ongoing legal battle. Fortunately, Vivendi didn’t make good on alleged threats to delay the game’s release by six months, offering much relief for Valve and gamers alike, but what of the online service that has been the source of so much debate? Valve’s plans called for releasing Half-Life 2 for gamers to download online – all they’d have to do is select one of three packages to buy with their credit cards, and they’d be on the road to automatically downloading, installing, and playing the game with incredible ease. Thanks to additional incentives like Half-Life: Source (a version of the original game upgraded using the new engine) and the impending updated Day of Defeat mod, there was quite a bit of good reason for gamers to spring for Steam’s premium packages, but the one reason to buy the game online that drew in the most players was the ability to “pre-load” the game’s data before release, effectively allowing everyone to finish installing the game and play it the moment it hit shelves without ever having to leave their chairs to run down to the store.

Sadly, thanks to the immense server load on release day, the concept of “download now, unlock later” suffered a backfire on Valve when the sheer demand effectively crashed Steam’s authentication servers. A huge number of pissed off players began storming various gaming sites, which promptly brought several popular community pages to their knees, as well as Valve’s own Steam support forums. Things got even worse when retail-bought copies started filtering into the system and also couldn’t be authenticated for use, resulting in even more annoyed gamers. Valve was quick and managed to get things up and running properly later on in the day, but it definitely made for quite a mess. After assessing the entire situation though, I definitely still have some concerns over the deployment of the Steam service. Foremost on my mind is the irritatingly overpowered copy protection, although this complaint only really applies to retail users (of which I’m a part of, thanks to the generous Collector’s Edition box I received). When I received my copy in the mail and went to install it, I had little trouble going through the initial setup process – but then learned that I would have to wait about ten extra minutes for Steam to “unlock” my copy of the game.

Had I downloaded it through Valve’s online service, this would be understandable, but why was I being forced to go through this process with a physical-media version of the game? After I had done all that and had my CD key registered online, things got a little smoother, but two more complications arose. One, I noticed that Steam absolutely had to be running and signed into my account (there’s an offline mode, but it’s buggy and difficult to access properly) in order for Half-Life 2 to even launch, and two, the game disc still had to be inserted into my drive for the game to run. What the hell? Combine all of this with the authentication problems that occurred on launch day, and it’s easy to see why so many people were throwing trashy comments around about the capabilities of Steam. Driving the final nail in the coffin was my attempt to take advantage of Steam’s dynamic online delivery system by loading the game onto another computer so I could play when my main system wasn’t available. The problem I had was that the other system in question lacked a DVD drive, so I could not load up my Collector’s Edition DVD and install the game. Okay, no problem, I’ll just navigate to the Steam website, download the client, sign in with my account, and use the integrated facilities to download the game like I’m supposed to be able to do, right? Well, everything was going smooth as butter, until the download finished and I attempted to launch the game. Even after successfully downloading it, I was still asked to insert the game disc, which, as I already said, was impossible for me to do, making me wonder what the point was in letting me ever download the game in the first place. Maybe I’m going a little rant-crazy here, but all of these measures haven’t even prevented the game from being cracked and pirated (there’s a release floating around), so what the hell is the point other than to grossly inconvenience the end user in any way possible?

Okay, sorry for dedicating such a large segment of this review to little more than ranting about the process of trying to get the game up and running, but I feel it’s important given Steam’s integration into almost every critical aspect of the game’s operation. In any case, let’s get onto the good stuff: ”Was Half-Life 2 worth waiting for?” It’s a damn good thing that my answer of “hell yes” effectively negates the above few paragraphs, because while this thing might have been a pain to actually get up and running, the experience, dare I say it, makes it all worth it. To get started, Half-Life 2’s story is incredibly detailed, but also presented in a somewhat vague manner, presented to the player in bits and pieces the further as he gets in the game. But this isn’t the bad kind of “vague” seen in some other games where the plot literally fails to make any kind of decent storytelling effort whatsoever – nay, Half-Life 2’s campaign is instead as thought-provoking as it is engrossing, and some clever storytelling has really made me want to turn my brain upside-down trying to figure out all the details of what’s going on. To spoil the finer details of the plot ahead of time would be a travesty, so I’ll just go over the basic introduction. A number of years (I think I heard “ten” thrown around as a valid number) have gone by since the horrific events occurred in Black Mesa that brought on a catastrophe of epic proportions. Dr. Gordon Freeman, having fought his way through to the alien “border world” of Xen by the skin of his teeth and managing to finally kill the huge entity that was (theoretically) causing menacing alien creatures to teleport into Earth has accepted the job offer from the mysterious “G-Man”. Freeman has effectively been held in stasis for the last number of years, but now a new menace has appeared to threaten Earth, prompting the G-Man, whatever his mysterious purpose may be, to awaken Gordon and put him to work.

See, following the events on Xen, the flesh-hungry aliens apparently didn’t stop teleporting in. In fact, the dimensional shifts began occurring at such a rate that humanity was having a huge degree of difficulty dealing with the situation, and was eventually forced into small, focused cities around the globe, which were easier to defend. Things were looking bleak until all hell broke loose when mysterious alien citadels suddenly began appearing in the middle of each city, unleashing an army calling itself the “Combine”. Apparently, something happened during the events in the original game that put Earth on the map of some manner of inter-dimensional war, and the Combine, taking notice, quickly moved in to deal with the supposed threat. What was left of humanity would have quickly been wiped out were it not for the efforts of Dr. Breen (the faceless “administrator” of Black Mesa often referred to in the original game), who succeeded in selling humanity to the Combine as slave labor in exchange for their survival. People are finally starting to get pissed off at the state of affairs and are preparing to rebel, but they just need a catalyst to get things in motion. One man – one “free” man.

Note that my description of the game’s plot isn’t all provided at once in the beginning in an obvious manner, nor is any kind of book like “Half-Life Universe for Beginners” provided with the game – this kind of insight into the game’s history and present can only be gained by paying close attention to the conversations and pieces of information as they are presented to the player throughout the campaign. Of course, the little Prima mini-guidebook included with my Collector’s Edition set also helped, but players are effectively on their own to try and uncover the secrets of what’s going on. Who is that crazy “G-Man”, and just what the hell is his agenda for Gordon? Where did the Combine come from, and are they really a Borg-like collective of many different races? How does Dr. Freeman fight off so many aliens, wade through thick toxic sludge, and beat up crates with his crowbar so much without his glasses ever fogging up? I suspect many of these questions may be answered sometime in the future, but it’s ultimately up to Valve to provide the info.

Right, that’s enough plot spoiling, let’s get down to what really makes Half-Life 2 special. For starters, the overall atmosphere of the game is done incredibly well, and Valve has really gone all-out with the scripted sequences to try and ensure the utmost degree of immersion. There are so many special events throughout the game that I’m not even sure where to begin describing them, but from the moment you step off the train into City 17 early on in the game, with Dr. Breen on a large screen coaching newcomers on why C17 is such a great place to be and local police units pushing the other civilians around, it’s evident that this is no simple run-n-gun affair. When I picked up a piece of trash and threw it at a guard’s head, I was surprised when he got pissed off and slapped me with his stun baton, rather than standing obliviously as if nothing had happened. The early parts of the game (where you have no weapons, nor even your standard-issue Hazardous Environment Suit) are chock-full of little details, but the amount of effort put into the game doesn’t cease once the action heats up. A few things players can expect to encounter throughout the game include a crazed ride through a dilapidated canal system whilst being chased by a chopper attempting to drop mines in their path, a chance to experience the hard-working life of a magnetic crane operator in a novel puzzle to bypass a Combine blockade, a hard fight through ruined city streets with fellow resistance fighters swarming in from all directions, and a hell of a lot of wasted time spent screwing with the game’s physics system.

Yes, “physics”, one of the most-hyped and biggest features to Half-Life 2. The game promises an incredibly realistic, and yet entertaining approach to environmental physics never seen in previous games to date, but does it really deliver enough of a novel gaming experience to warrant the extra CPU overhead and development time? While most previous games (there are a couple of exceptions I can think of) have used fancy physics engines for little more than neato background effects that don’t really have much bearing on gameplay, Half-Life 2 has taken the stance that just because the game focuses on running around shooting things a lot, it doesn’t have to be done in a stale and common matter, and the developers chose a highly sophisticated physics system as the means to making gameplay a lot more interesting. And it works! Every single level in the game is littered with props and other objects – both big and small – that can be used in either a defensive or offensive manner. Initially, the player is limited to carrying small objects around with his (invisible) hands, but it’s not too long before Gordon gets hooked up with the famed “Manipulator”, which can be used to pick up and propel large objects with ease. The addition of this tool adds a new layer to the game’s combat element, because not only can those big crates you’ve been using for cover be picked up and carried with you, but you can also hurl them at enemies when your ammo is low, or stack them up to get into hard-to-reach areas. But you’re not just limited to crates – tons of other objects can be used as weapons, and some, such as certain barrels, fuel cans, and even live grenades (if you’re quick) can be chucked at enemies for hilarious and explosive action.

Initially there were a lot of concerns over if Half-Life 2’s focus on physics interaction would get in the way of the action rather than improving on the fun, but after having gone through the game no less than twice, I can definitely attest to this not being the case. The manipulator tool really adds another tier to the gameplay that helped make me a lot more aware of the environment and its available resources than I would have normally been, and the number of times I went “wow… I can actually do this?” made the entire experience worth it. The level designers have cleverly put in all manner of puzzles into the game that require manipulating the physics engine to try and proceed, and while the pathing of the levels is still admittedly linear, there were several parts where I spent a few moments analyzing a situation, trying to come up with a solution (such as pushing a laundry machine into a small cart to raise a connected bridge, or using stray junk strewn across the landscape to try and make your own bridge across the terrain in a certain situation where touching the sand results in almost certain death), achieving said solution, and dancing over my ingenious and undoubtedly scientific approach to the problem. Of course, eventually I started to realize that the cool little tricks I was pulling off were basically in tune with what the game designers wanted me to do all along, but I usually didn’t notice this until I had already figured out the puzzle in question and had moved on, and trying to figure out exactly what I had to do in order to proceed was loads of fun. I know some people might be turned off at the concept of having to stop the action for several minutes to bypass some crazy physics puzzle, but I’m quite truthful when I say that they honestly aren’t all that hard to figure out and are immensely satisfying once you settle upon the final solution. There’s no way I could begin to describe all the cool physics-related moments (both intentional and not – mostly not, my in my experience) encountered throughout the game, but there’s definitely a lot to look forward to. One of my favorite parts of the game was “Ravenholm”, a spooky town that really pushed my ammo reserves to the limit and left me frantically searching for small sharp pieces of wood or hefty buzz-saw blades to hurl at the wandering undead, but another memorable moment was when I had to use hacked deployable gun turrets to set up a defense perimeter and hold against a Combine counter-attack, but once the attack was over I took the liberty of hauling the turrets with me using my manipulator gun until the end of the level. The game’s physics engine, combined with the manipulator device really does add a hell of a lot of enjoyment to the game that made me want to play the same scene over and over again just to try out all of the options at my disposal.