Half-Life is an FPS game franchise created by Valve based around a theoretical physicist getting caught in an alien invasion that he probably caused. Now his goal is to kill everything.

Personally, I find that I vastly prefer the earlier lore to the newer lore…like with Bionicle.

I’m noting this here so that you take everything I say with a (preferably huge) grain of salt: I haven’t actually played and finished any of the games.

This is important to note mostly for my own peace of mind.

That said…I’ve seen several playthroughs, analysis/speculation/theory videos, lore videos and quite a lot of stuff related to Half-Life. There was a point in time where I regularly watched Deadwater Gaming – who play Half-Life games almost exclusively – and when I still watched YouTube videos regularly, I’d watch Half-Life videos. So I have a pretty good picture of the theory surrounding Half-Life, just that I haven’t played (and finished) the games.

Though, elaborating on “played and finished”, I have played:

• Half-Life
• Half-Life: Opposing Force
• Half-Life: Uplink
• Half-Life 2
• Half-Life 2: Episode 1

And Black Mesa…plus I may have played Blue Shift. Though I never finished any of these and, to be clear, I plan to.

Also, I’ve never played Alyx and I don’t plan on it.

Seeing as I never finished it…I’m gonna comment on it from a more…top-down perspective?

I think that Half-Life is badly designed, though whether that makes it a bad game or not is another thing entirely.
Half-Life’s problem is that the game design is split between two different playstyles that are directly at odds with each-other. The first I’d identify as ‘Quake-like’ and the second I’d call ‘slow-and-steady’.
The Quake-like style involves entering a room and then quickly eliminating everything inside it…as in, running and gunning. Pretty self-explanatory.
The slow-and-steady style involves carefully maneuvering thru the environment and then out-thinking your opponents…like sneaking up on them, or dispatching them in an otherwise clever way.
The former approach is encouraged with the fast movement, the fact it’s in a modified Quake engine and…that’s all I can think of. The latter approach is encouraged by making the enemies quite tough, making Gordon fragile (relatively-speaking) and having puzzles thruout the game.

Originally, I believed that the slow-and-steady playstyle was the intended gameplay style and Valve simply failed to nudge player psychology in that direction…but since I’ve learned just how…unusual…Half-Life’s development was, I’m now convinced there just wasn’t a unified vision: different devs working on the game prioritized different playstyles. This then combined together into a strange mess.

The choice of a theoretical physicist as the main character makes a lot of sense in the context of the slow-and-steady playstyle…since a theoretical physicist is unlikely to have much combat experience, which would make him more wary and careful when actually engaging in combat.
But there are a few issues with this. First: Gordon being a theoretical physicist is practically a footnote and barely has any baring on anything; Second: the game doesn’t actually emphasize Gordon’s lack of experience/fragility almost at all.
If I were in their position and I really wanted to encourage that playstyle (which I’m not sure they wanted to) I would have:

• Made Gordon even more susceptible to damage, which forces players to be a lot more careful.
• Given players more options for avoiding fights/dealing with fights in creative ways.
• Made Gordon a woman.

That last point is of import because women are generally perceived as more fragile and weaker than men.^A) It may not seem like much, but it’s something you can rely on 99% of players to think, which will subtly adjust their behaviors. Whereas most people probably don’t have the same view of theoretical physicists. That isn’t to say that people think theoretical physicists are body-builders: they just don’t think of them period.
Something else this would have done is differentiate Half-Life from other games of the time since, to my knowledge, there weren’t any FPS games released back then that had female protagonists.

Moving on from there: the story. The story is actually okay, mostly. I think that the biggest flaw is with the G-man. Though I don’t think I’ll elaborate on my thoughts there for quite a while. There is also a possible flaw when it comes to the inter-dimensional stuff, but that would require a lot more thinking on my part. ‘sfar as I know, it doesn’t depict a multiverse, so it’s fine.

My previous draft for this review states that I think Half-Life 2 was a mis-step. Yeah, I still agree with that. The first game remains superior in the key ways.

I say this because Half-Life 2 is too radical a departure from what Half-Life originally was and I see no reason why it had to be this way. Actually, I think Half-Life 2 goes out of its way to be different from the first game, to its detriment.
The other big issue is the chaotic development. Valve is filled with geniuses, yes, but they’re also stupid. A lot of the development stories you hear from HL2’s development indicate that they really don’t know how to cooperate. Though I’ll leave that for Valve’s eventual article.

Major proof that Valve didn’t really know what they were doing is with the Combine. The Combine are the main enemies you face thruout Half-Life 2 and there isn’t a lot of enemy variety: most Combine Overwatch look, sound and act the same way. Comparatively, the first game has a much higher variety of enemies. Even Opposing Force has more variety.
But, ignoring that, the Combine Overwatch actually have very intelligent and sophisticated AI. I’ve never faced them personally (of course), but I got that from videos analyzing the Combine AI and showing it in action.
However! The Combine AI is clearly designed around flat terrain, with a lot of cover and closed corridors. For most of the game…you are not facing them in optimal conditions: you’re facing them in open terrain with varied geometry. As a result, the Combine have a reputation^B) for being stupid, despite how good their AI actually is.
I believe that this is a result of Valve’s development strategy: which is to have the teams work independently with little communication between them. Essentially, the people programming the AI didn’t seem to talk to the people making the levels, who didn’t talk with whoever was deciding on enemy placement and objectives. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense otherwise.
Something else that you may have noticed is that the Combine AI seems to be designed for Half-Life 1’s environments, rather than Half-Life 2’s environments. While I’m the one making the observation, I don’t have much else to say about it.

Though I’ll avoid criticizing Valve too much (even though I could go on for hours). Needless to say, I think their priorities were mixed up.

I may have more to say about the gameplay after I actually play Half-Life 2 (), so let’s move on.

The worldbuilding of Half-Life 2 is…well, I previously thought that it was okay and roughly equal to HL1…then I thought it was inferior…and now I’m not sure.
HL1 was a lot more low-key than HL2. As in, it all took place within a single facility in New Mexico. HL2’s world affects the entire globe. The difference is that HL1 doesn’t have to put as much effort into the worldbuilding as HL2, because the scale just isn’t comparable.
Actually: I’m going to avoid talking about this aspect until I think about it more.

Moving on (for now): I noted in a previous draft that Opposing Force may be a better sequel to the original Half-Life, since it’s similar to the first game…but makes enough changes to be different.

That’s it.

• Half-Life Steam Page
• Half-Life 2 Steam Page