Daily Review: Half-Life

Daily Review

Half-Life

System: PC (Steam)
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Silo area

I suppose it is only natural when you go back to a much older PC FPS that you run into things that will just irk you, especially if you've played the later ones. To be honest, I've always heard great things about Half-Life, but never being a bit PC gamer nor an FPS player, I never really picked it up. The summer sale on Steam was a great opportunity to do so.

Admittedly, I'm probably not even halfway through it, but it has aged...eh, fairly well. The controls are floaty, which is very bad in a game where they put so much emphasis on proper movement, jumping, landing, and not getting electrocuted or falling to your death. The environment has killed me far more times than the enemies. The use of 'cat scares' is so overdone at this point, but I suppose it was fair for its day, and the graphics still do a passable job of communicating what needs to be communicated.

My main issue is at times you can't tell where you're supposed to be going to progress, or if you're currently on a branch with extra ammo...or completely lost. Several times so far, I've gone down a branch that made every indication of being a main route (dialogue from enemies and a new area you hadn't been to yet that you could see), but had to backtrack for a minute or so and take another branch to actually continue. I'm currently in the Silo, which apparently you are supposed to test fire the rocket engine. I spent a few minutes around the fuel area, wondering why I couldn't go anywhere, till I finally took another path and turned on the power...and now am rather stuck trying to find the oxygen area since I still can't go to the fuel area. Each time I leave one of those areas of course, the big baddie with the grasping claws kills me several times trying to go through the middle, and I waste more ammo knocking it down for a few seconds to get clear. Putting it down for now to take a little break.