| 8 years later....still awesome |
I'm fully aware that I have been living under a rock for the past 8 years when it comes to Half-Life 2, but having recently built a capable gaming PC, I finally was able to experience this title as it was meant to be experienced. Of course there was the opportunity to purchase HL2 for consoles via the "Orange Box" release, but I had no interest at the time since most of the game's fan base seemed to be PC loyalists for which I had irrational disdain. However, after Steam announced that they would be discounting HL2's already low price tag of $9.99 to nearly 1/3 of that cost, I decided to dive in and give the game a try.
After roughly 3.5 hours of playing the campaign, let me say I am still thoroughly impressed with this game. It's true that HL2's mechanics are somewhat clunky and outdated given the fact that so many shooters have deemed it necessary to include an excess of sensory feedback devices (i.e. motion blurring, head bob, ADS, etc.), but HL2's bare bones point and shoot/interact mechanics are almost a refreshing break from all of those things. Not being able to see Gordon Freeman's hands while he is steering a vehicle, and the absence of his lower body when pointing the reticule toward the floor may detract from the immersion effect of the game, but those complaints are small beans when compared with the copy and pasted issues that many modern shooters face.
So what is it exactly that HL2 gets right almost a full decade after it's release that modern shooters repeatedly fail at? It all boils down to simplicity, and difficulty. Now my current play through is still fairly young at under four hours, and I'm sure things will ramp up before I'm through, but HL2 is not an overly difficult game even on the highest difficulty. The difficulty of the game is not really what I'm talking about, but rather the level of player challenge that the game presents mechanically. Confused? Let me explain.
Most modern games offer multiple levels of difficulty that adjust how the game performs in specific ways. Lower difficulties dumb down enemy AI, and perhaps even lower the number of enemies you face from level to level. Other alterations may include increasing the overall amount of damage that your character can sustain from enemy encounters, or the availability of health packs and ammo, etc. However, many shooters will still lead players through the environment in an obvious way via an NPC shouting "follow me to the next objective", or by placing a glaring way point marker on the HUD that leads you to the next checkpoint. They want you to succeed even though there may be some cheap or unsound obstacle sitting in your way.
There are some exceptions to this rule, but nearly many modern shooters on the market has a way of leading players by the nose through scripted events in an effort to make things more exciting or visually pleasing. Everything is instance based, and it makes for short, derivative campaigns that really don't leave players feeling like they have accomplished anything. Sure, the ride was exciting, but then again it was more like participating in a choreographed action movie than actually having interacted with a world or it's inhabitants.
At it's core, HL2 is still a linear shooter with clearly defined objectives and way points, but moving through Gordan Freeman's world feels very different than most experiences in that navigation and puzzle solving is left mostly up to the player. Perhaps the most obvious indication of this difference through the first part of the game is that there is very little dialogue aside from the few interactions Gordan has with NPCs as he sets out into the world. There are huge gaps in the narrative where players are left to explore the environment where no direct communication with Gordan is made aside from the mechanical sounding chatter of his enemies. There's no inner voice instructing players on how to solve puzzles, there's no radio chatter telling Gordon that he's headed in the wrong direction, there is only the emptiness of the desolate world that players must survive.
Puzzle solving also plays a huge part in what sets HL2 apart from most games. HL2's world is a puzzle in itself even though it appears to be linear and straight forward. HL2's stages are set up as one continuous labyrinth where players are presented with obstacles that are not immediately obvious to solve. For example, in the early parts of the game I was navigating through the drainage canals of the first city when I came to what was apparently a dead end. Before me was a pool of water with a large stirring apparatus in the center. On the other side, a locked gate with a ladder and walkway behind it. My first reaction was to scour that area for a way to get around the gate, but my searches above and below the water turned up nothing. After several minutes, I realized that this area was just meant to throw me off of the true course which was hidden behind some rusty metal oil drums that I hadn't noticed earlier.
The small amount of triumph that I felt at having passed that obstacle was greater than any scripted action sequence that most modern shooters have thrown my way in the past eight years, and that's something that I hadn't expected from a first person shooter. In fact, given Valve's reputation, they are quite adept at making first person action platformers that masquerade as shooters given the popularity and success of their Portal games, but perhaps this type of balance is what is needed in modern FPS games across the board.
ArmA 2 is another example of an older game that brought several interesting concepts to the board by giving players a huge sandbox world to traverse while still throwing in the action element that other shooters offer. Now the ArmA series is perhaps a little too complicated mechanically to appeal to the wide audience that HL2 caters to, but still the concepts are the same. Developers need to move away from holding the hands of their fans to some extent if they would like to appeal to more mature audiences.
Is this a profitable business model that will ensure that heavy hitting publishers/distributors will continue to see top dollar sales on a continual basis? Perhaps not, but it is an appeal for developers to pull back from their need to funnel players into enjoying their gaming experience in a specific way. Games should be interactive, but also should promote exploration and innovation in a way that promotes better game playing instead of exploitation. Perhaps with next generation consoles on the horizon, systems will be able to handle this more capably, but it is more likely that such games will find a larger following with the PC community.
I will continue to enjoy the more generic shooters of this generation, but once I finish HL2, I will always be looking for something more to fill out my experience.
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