(Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/28/2023)
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Half-Life
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Sierra
Genre(s): First-Person Shooter
Platforms: PC
Release Date: November 8, 1998
I should probably interject and claim that Half-Life was not an “alternative” FPS game that appealed to the PC gaming hipsters while alienating the casual crowd that was usually satiated by the standard gung-ho FPS games. Half-Life was well received by practically everyone under the sun because it was still a tried and true FPS game. In fact, Half-Life’s beta form was a modded experiment, using the iconic multiplayer FPS game Quake as its mechanical template. Still, Half-Life was arguably the most innovative FPS game of the early 3D era after the genre’s basic foundation was established in the generation prior, and I’m surprised Valve’s ambitions didn’t turn anyone off at the time. Half-Life was truly a game changer not only for the FPS genre but for gaming in general, as games from genres outside of the FPS also took note of Half-Life’s sprinklings of pure genius. If I were to compare Half-Life to another work outside of the gaming medium with the same kind of impact, it would probably be Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 film debut Breathless. The seminal French New Wave film took the rulebook of filmmaking and burned it to a crisp, and Godard reshaped the medium of film from the smoldering ashes of tradition that was forever lost when he ignited the pages. All the while, Breathless still offered a simple story so as to not mystify the audience too swiftly with all of the radical rule-breaking they were witnessing. Half-Life follows something of a similar effect as the game is easily recognizable as an FPS game on the surface, but they’ll soon notice the askew details interwoven in the fabric of the game. As one could probably guess, Half-Life’s legacy is cemented by its visionary attributes that several future titles would emulate, making it a game held in the highest of respects by the gaming zeitgeist. However, Half-Life is turning a quarter of a century old this year and it's a game from the earliest of 3D eras, so I unfortunately have to bring its overall quality into contention with the dreaded “great for its time” assessment usually accompanied by an ellipsis. I hate to judge this legendary title by the liver spots it sprouted over time, but I’m not sure Half-Life can entirely coast by now with its landmark accomplishments.
Immediately, the player will notice Half-Life’s most innovative contribution to gaming in the opening sequence. Half-Life’s video game equivalent to Godard’s advent of jump cuts is the seamless cutscenes. In most video games, cutscenes are implemented as breaks from the gameplay to interpose exposition in a cinematic display. In an era where cutscenes were becoming more commonplace thanks to gaming technology now competently rendering something akin to reality like film, albeit in textures resembling claymation, Half-Life was not satisfied with conforming to this prevalent trend. Personally, I don’t mind cutscenes in video games as long as they are of a tasteful length and aren’t used as opportunities to substitute gameplay as film clips with little interactivity. Perhaps Valve was dissuaded after witnessing the self-indulgently long cutscenes seen in Metal Gear Solid released that same year and adamantly declared that video games should not stray away from their interactive nature. The opening “tram sequence” where our protagonist, the faceless theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, is being escorted through the entrance of the Black Mesa research facility. While riding on the tram suspended over a magnetic rail, the player has free reign of camera control that can point Gordon’s first-person perspective towards any of the sights along the way to the main entrance. Once tardy Mr. Freeman finally makes his arrival through the security gates, his fellow scientists instruct him to find the HEV suit and make his way down to the testing chamber. Normally, a cutscene would direct the player through the process of directing Freeman toward his main objective because it’s pure exposition with no trace of action to gamify, and the opening on the tram would be scrapped entirely for being unnecessary. Most likely, cutscenes would interrupt the gameplay any time a scientist or security guard would speak to Gordon or the player would watch a lengthy cutscene detailing the descent from the entrance to the test room because the “action” doesn’t occur until after this objective is completed. Allowing the player to keep control of Gordon during these sections as if the action never ceases feels more organic in terms of mirroring gameplay with real-life autonomy. It almost exposes the superficial aspects of implementing cutscenes with automatically generated results in an interactive medium. Of course, the ability to act freely at all times allows the player to act like a lunatic in down times when their gaming skills aren’t needed. In this context, Gordon can dick around the facility for as long as the player wishes, running around like a sugar-addled child and popping a scientist's meal by pressing the popcorn button on the microwave too many times. Half-Life is arguably the prime culprit in causing a sense of “ludonarrative dissonance” in gaming, but the game was made at a time when non-gamer critics were apathetic about the medium and didn’t come up with rhetoric in an attempt to sabotage its credibility.
During the experiment in Black Mesa’s chambers, Half-Life truly loosens the chain of exposition as all hell breaks loose. Or, at least in Half-Life’s context, hell is the convergence with another dimension light years away. An accident occurs during the test when Gordon pushes a space crystal into the concentrated energy field in the test chamber’s center, which becomes dangerously unstable. This mistake creates a phenomenon the scientists refer to as a “resonance cascade,” which acts as a one-way portal to Earth from an alien world called “Xen.” If the explosion from the reaction didn’t kill everyone with the laboratory crashing down on them as collateral, then the hostile creatures from Xen will be sure to make quick work of them. Panicking in a situation that is seemingly hopeless, Gordon has to fight his way to the surface with his Black Mesa peers and pray that some kind of organization like the military comes to their rescue. The catalyst event in Half-Life is such tonal whiplash from the mundane office environment, and it catapults the player to a point of no return.
Throughout the duration of the game, Half-Life subtly exposes itself as a horror game. The game isn’t classified as one by most because it doesn’t fit the traditional definition of one, probably due to the genre being redefined in the vein of survival horror at the time thanks to Resident Evil. Surely, the content of Half-Life would be reasonably described as horrific. The state of New Mexico is a very inspired choice of setting for the Black Mesa compound, for the “Land of Enchantment” used to be associated with conspiratorial oddities like UFOs and radiated creatures before a certain television series shifted that to crystal meth production. Everything fucked up in New Mexico seems to only be affirmed by unreliable word of mouth, and that is exactly what the scenario in Black Mesa seems like something like a future urban legend. On top of climbing to the surface, Gordon and the others have to contend with Xen’s eclectic ecosystem of creatures, who all seem to have acquired a taste for human flesh. Every enemy the portal has provided is completely unique and takes some time to learn how to dispatch them upon frequent encounters. However, it’s not how they approach Gordon that makes them terrifying, rather; it’s what they do to the defenseless scientists. “Head Crabs” get their nickname from attaching themselves to the heads of their prey after they’ve paralyzed them, controlling the host in a zombified state. The look of how gnarled and decayed the host body is in such a short amount of time matched with their agonizing cries makes this enemy a shocking encounter. Barnacles are stationary predators that act like venus fly traps, letting down their sticky, rope-like tongues to unsuspecting victims and hoisting them up to liquefy them like a bioorganic blender, leaving the bone remnants as cleanly as a barbeque feast. Sometimes, the enemies lurking in air vents and between the crevices in the walls reduce the scientists to a bloody pulp, a testament to the theory that the fear of the unknown is more frightening than what is seen. Eventually, the military does arrive, but the player should save their hallelujahs. Instead of lending a helping hand, these padded, meathead sons-a-bitches are ordered to exterminate every last Black Mesa employee as a drastic means of covering up the resonance cascade incident. It’s like a darker depiction of jocks picking on the nerds, or picking off in this context. Even with their combat training and weapons, the military men will also succumb to the same grizzly fates at the hands of the aliens as the scientists did. All hope seems to be lost in Half-Life, and the constant visceral encounters make the feeling of doom more impending.
Yet, Half-Life never really exudes the same aura of spookiness as most horror games do. Half-Life’s atmosphere is more cold and mechanical if anything. Most of the game takes place inside Black Mesa’s walls and before the facility ran rampant with extraterrestrials, this was a place of business. Black Mesa was a professional environment that looks like the archetypal corporate building, reveling in sterility. Once chaos ensues, the destitute state of Black Mesa’s interior is like a fracture of bureaucratic stability. It would feel liberating if Gordon’s life wasn’t at stake because of what reduced Black Mesa to this, or if he wasn’t wedged between multiple layers of the Earth’s crust. Between the detritus of machines littered around the corridors of Black Mesa and the sublevel layers of earth the facility exists under like an inward skyscraper, Half-Life exudes a dreadful sense of claustrophobia that seems insurmountable to escape. Music is used very sparsely in the game, so the soundscape is the minimalist static of broken machinery matched with the tapping of Gordon’s footsteps. Half-Life gives off the feeling of being alone, even though many NPC scientists and security guards are scattered about trying to survive. The fear stems from feeling like Gordon is left to his own defenses in this grueling trek to freedom.
This ascent to the surface also feels quite extensive because of how Half-Life is paced. Half-Life’s progression is more linear than its FPS contemporaries, with the seamless nature of its presentation making the ascent to the surface an uninterrupted excursion with the occasional loading break. It’s a far cry from the tailor-made, individual levels that divide FPS games like Doom. Yet, the journey does not feel like a straight dash to the finish line. The way Half-Life is constructed is that while progression is technically a long stretch between points A and B, several intersecting routes put an array of decimal points to get to the destination. Half-Life’s story is organized into chapters, and the start of each chapter introduces something new or strictly has a core level motif. For example, “Blast Pit” is the circuitous extermination process of three sharp tentacles protruding from the exit point, and Gordon must turn the power back on in three separate pathways to expunge it. “Residue Processing” sees Gordon reclaiming all of his weapons after being bushwhacked in the dark by the military and sent to a garbage compactor like in the first Star Wars movie. Actually, describing Half-Life’s chapters as organized implies they are of equal division in length, and this is certainly not the case. Some chapters are brief while some are prolonged to the point of wondering when it’s going to end, and this pattern (or lack thereof) persists across the entire game. I much prefer the shorter chapters because the gimmick or theme of some of the longer ones tends to overstay their welcome. “On a Rail'' is an excruciatingly long chapter involving traveling with an electric rail car to the end of the line just so Gordon can be lifted along one elevator after a certain point. Considering how many times Gordon has to stop and prudently run across the tracks, it seems like we’re escorting the rail car rather than vice versa. Isn’t that ass-backward? “Surface Tension” sounds like the apex point of the game’s narrative, but it is rather the midway point where the game’s difficulty curve ratchets up exponentially. Snipers located in elusive corners annihilate Gordon at every waking moment along with new armored alien species with projectile weapons to contend with. Did I mention there is an attack helicopter to duck and cover from unless Gordon has a specific weapon on his person? After completing this grueling expedition around the surface world, the chapter made me feel as bruised and battered as Gordon probably did. I have no qualms with the shorter chapters.
As par for the course in an FPS game, Half-Life grants Gordon an abundance of weapons at his disposal. Gordon starts with the standard weapons seen across most FPS games such as a pistol, submachine gun, and shotgun to name a few, but his arsenal quickly extends to the point that it gets ridiculous (in a good way). Ammunition for the .357 magnum is scant, so one should conserve this powerful handgun for strong singular enemies. The crossbow is the only weapon that operates while Gordon is underwater, and it still impales enemies on dry land just as effectively. Explosives ranging from grenades, trigger-operated C4, and a rocket launcher, to trip mines will blow the enemy to bits if the player can use them accurately. The submachine gun even has an alternative grenade launcher with its own ammunition, and it's by far my favorite weapon in the game. The Tau Cannon and Gluon Gun are juggernaut weapons that are powerful enough to evaporate anything it targets. If the revolver kicks like a mule, these weapons kick like an oncoming car. The developers even get creative with providing some foreign imports from Xen that the aliens have foolishly left lying around. The grotesque, phallic-looking Hornet Gun unleashes the angry insects in spurts of eight, and it’s the only gun that replenishes its own ammo. Gordon can wrangle up these nasty, man-eating bugs called Snarks and sic them on his enemies (provided they don’t chew him up beforehand). Ammunition for most of these weapons is plentiful as it can be found by breaking open boxes with Gordon’s trusty crowbar. Not only is this the weapon people associate Gordon Freeman with, but it’s the first melee weapon in a first-person shooter with its own use besides a last resort of defensive for when you’ve exhausted your ammunition.
While I appreciate the sweep of weapons and the ingenuity of the alien variety, I’d appreciate them more if all of them were practical. Naturally, some weapons aren’t going to be as powerful as others, but this isn’t the issue. The default controls for Half-Life are inverted because it was popular at the time for god knows why. If they weren’t inverted, the shooting controls still require a near-perfect amount of precision. I don’t know how many times a headcrab got an opportunity to launch at me like a tarantula because I had to take an inordinate amount of time to aim at the damn thing. This is why I recommend teaming up with the security guards, who I endearingly and non-canonically refer to as “Security Steve,” that can take care of the headcrabs early in the game when Gordon is limited to a pistol and the crowbar. After that, “Security Steve” is no match for the military or the alien grunts, and Gordon will still have to line his sights precisely while they pelt him with bullets. Even when aiming correctly, some weapons are pitiful against enemies. One would think a rocket launcher would be in the same league as the other juggernaut weapons, yet it always seemed to bounce off of any tanks or attack helicopters I’d fire a missile at. The shotgun is the worst of both worlds as it seems to deal a tepid amount of damage AND it barely does anything at point-blank range if the cursor doesn’t reach the enemy. It’s a fucking shotgun for Christ's sake! The reason why I love the grenade launcher is because it’s effective and I don’t have to take Adderall to ensure an accurate shot.
If the weapons are anything to go by, Half-Life is often a finicky experience. Why then did the developers feel the need to incorporate platformer sections? Jumping in FPS games tends to be trivial, yet there are so many in Half-Life that you’d think Gordon was donning a pair of overalls and red clothing underneath instead of a hazmat suit. Since we can’t see Gordon, perhaps it really is Mario that Black Mesa assigned to conduct their experiments. Honestly, Mario would fare better in this situation than Gordon because not only is he a schmuck, he’s a frail nerd. Playing as someone who is physically less-than-capable compared to the superhuman hunks overflowing with testosterone seen across most FPS games is admirably subversive. Still, this does mean that Gordon is subject to receiving more quantifiable pain than the average video game hero. Health is fortunately plentiful on the field in first-aid cases and in dispensers that inject up to half of the total health. While replenishing health is opportune, this is only due to the fact that it can be diminished quickly. Armor is less common and unless Gordon has at least a bit of it, his health can drop to zero in a heartbeat. I blame the military’s grenade launchers and the Vortigaunts Sith Lord lightning firing at all angles. With enemies, I learned to approach every new corridor with caution, and I managed to surpass them relatively intact. However, some sections that require platforming seem to punish the player severely. Hopping onto boxes, leaping onto ladders, and bouncing onto high platforms with those alien trampolines still tend to damage Gordon even if the player executes these athletic feats competently. FPS games and platformers were not ready to wed in holy matrimony, and Half-Life is indicative of this statement.
Half-Life is hard if all of my evidence didn’t make that clear enough. Because Half-Life is hard, it’s important to save often, and I can’t stress this enough. Half-Life’s loading screens are strictly the game buffering and do not factor as checkpoints. The player has the freedom to save at any point they wish in the pause menu, either printing their progress permanently or making something of a checkpoint with a “quick save.” As convenient as this sounds, being in the midst of action can make the player overlook saving. When they finally die, they can be resurrected so long before that point that it feels like a severe punishment more for carelessness than anything else. I tended to save at points where Gordon was at his healthiest, an opportune way to start anew if circumstances didn’t pan out. Eventually, as the game became harder, I started to abuse this feature out of paranoia more than anything, and playing the game didn’t feel organic. I guess this criticism could apply to the number of more modern titles with manual save features overall, and Half-Life is most likely the game that pioneered them. Regular checkpoints are just fine, thank you.
Gordon popping his head above the underground bunker to reach his goal of seeing sunlight again was only a secondhand task. The alien forces become so overwhelmingly pugnacious that the military surrenders and counts their losses. After this, the scientists decide to hit the aliens where it really hurts by sending Gordon to their home of Xen via another portal. That’s right; it’s time for Gordon to return the favor to these pussbuckets. The first glimpse of Xen is extraordinary. Gordon finds himself on a floating rock in what seems like the barren outer limits of space. The spacious, almost measureless setting here is the antithesis of the confined corners of the man-made setting of Black Mesa, and the aurora glimmering all around is gorgeous. The only drawback to this astral wonder is that the few chapters on Xen are not constructed like the ones in Black Mesa. The developers use the portal devices to teleport Gordon around the place, and the progression isn't as smooth. The gameplay here is tweaked a bit as resources are scarce because having them strewn about the place wouldn’t make sense. There are shallow bodies of water with healing properties that cannot be quenchable, which is pretty neat. Overall, it’s a nice change of pace for the end of the game, but it isn’t as effective as the Black Mesa environment in terms of tone.
Surprisingly, the motherland of Xen is also when the game decides to unload a few boss battles on the player. The first truly tenacious foe in Half-Life is Gonarch, a space arachnid that can spit acid, ram Gordon with its solid cranium, and birth infant head crabs from the giant sac dangling from its body. Obviously, this conspicuous part of its anatomy is its weak spot, so it isn't much trouble to subdue. Nihilanth, on the other hand, is the most roundabout final boss battle I’ve faced in a while. This alien demigod that looks like an unborn fetus is slow enough to efficiently telegraph his attacks, but he’s got a few interesting tricks up his sleeves. Oftentimes, he’ll unleash a green orb that teleports Gordon to four different areas, and Gordon must find his way back to the arena. These four areas are also the only opportunities to restock on health and ammo, so I recommend intentionally stepping in front of them even if trailing back can be distracting. Shooting his head enough times to the point where it splits open is when Gordon can unleash a killing blow on the beast and end things, but the continual hike up to reach him at eye level using those godforsaken trampolines and getting a bullseye on his brain is exhausting. This boss took more than a half-hour to beat, and the tedium severely grated on me.
Eventually, as the Xen leader falls, it is no time to celebrate. The final scene of Half-Life introduces its most interesting character: the G-Man. This elusive man who looks like an administrative official with his sharp suit and briefcase appears around the corners of Black Mesa throughout the game, and the player might miss him in their peripheral vision. Whether or not the player caught a glimpse of this debonair stranger during the game, he formally makes his acquaintance to Gordon and congratulates him on his accomplishment. However, what occurred at Black Mesa is not water under the bridge now. The G-Man offers Gordon an ultimatum, as he is to accept an ambiguous position from his employers or face the wrath of more Xen creatures with no means of defense. Exiting the tram from the beginning to a green portal will signal the former while ignoring him will teleport Gordon among hundreds of Xen grunts. G-Man isn’t only perplexing because of his transient demeanor, but of what he represents at the end. It seems to be that the events of the game have made such a negative impact that Black Mesa has doomed the earth. Is G-Man God making an appearance at the end of times, assigning Gordon as some agent of the impending apocalypse? Whichever conclusion the player might come to, the fact that the developers robbed the player of a happy ending after withstanding so much is a stride in narrative-driven games. Suddenly, video games didn’t seem so much like a source of happy escapism achieved through the player’s accomplishments.
Half-Life is remarkably impressive. Valve took no time in evolving as an exceptional video game developer, for they already concocted a masterpiece from the get-go. That is, Half-Life is a masterpiece on paper. The game attempted so many revolutionary mechanics like the seamless cutscenes and uninterrupted progression with that harmonious mechanic, and it worked so fluidly. It was more mature than most video games, much less ones in the FPS genre because it wasn’t afraid to convey an adventure that exuded a bleak atmosphere in a bleak setting that all culminated into a bleak ending. Only films at that time dared to leave the audience drained to that extent, but it shouldn’t have done so with some of the awkward mechanics that did not mesh well with the game’s more exemplary attributes. Half-Life is a strong enough blueprint for the FPS genre moving further than anything. Still, the game is an effective work of art, and that’s a landmark quality it continues to retain.
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