Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 11 November 2001
Completed: 3 September 2017
I have a secret to confess – a secret shame that has eaten away at me for years and I can no longer live with it. I have never finished the original Half-Life. I have started it many times, and always enjoyed replaying those early chapters, but my attention span would wane and I’d move onto something else. I recognized what a great game it was. I just never saw it through until the end.
No more.
Now my shame has been erased. Now, I am victorious! I have basked in the glory that is Half-Life and I can officially say: yeah, it’s pretty good, I guess.
That’s not a slight to Half-Life and all that it brought to gaming. Even today, the AI is aggressive and challenging, the levels exquisitely designed, and the story mesmerizing. But having completed Half-Life 2, arguably the best game of all-time, it’s harder to see the original game in the context of when it was released. It is by no means or any stretch of the imagination a bad game. It’s a (mostly) spectacular game, even if the PlayStation 2 port I played lacks the visual fidelity of the PC original. It’s just also an older game, and it has some rough edges that are especially noticeable in modern times.
I don’t think I need to elaborate on Half-Life’s plot. I’m pretty sure every gamer knows it by now, but for the two of you who may not, you play as silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, a researcher at the Black Mesa facility. Black Mesa’s experiments cause a rift between universes to form, and alien creatures start spilling over into our world, so naturally you grab a gun and start shooting them. The military is eventually called in, but instead of a rescue team, they send a cleaning crew to kill all the witnesses. Gordon must rely on his wits (and his guns) to make it out alive.
Half-Life was revolutionary for its time. It had a much stronger focus on story than its contemporaries, and the AI was cutting edge. It's hard to believe looking at the blocky character models now, but the engine was actually pretty impressive in 1998. As a game, it mixed excellent shooting sections with some slightly frustrating first-person platforming. Movement could feel a little slippery at times, especially during the jumping sections, but as a whole it was - and remains - a fun game.
Thanks to its success on the PC, Half-Life was slated to be ported to Sega's Dreamcast console, complete with an exclusive expansion pack called Blue Shift. Sadly, though it was nearly complete, the Dreamcast port never saw an official release, and Blue Shift was eventually released on the PC. The PlayStation 2 port is based somehwat on the Dreamcast version. It features the upgraded character models that were to be included there, as well as its own two-player cooperative (only) expansion called Decay.
I had played enough of the PC version to be able to make a comparison, and I wanted to see how the PS2 port stacked up. In short: not all that well. The PC version is clearly the best way to play Half-Life. The PS2 version looks somewhat muddy and drab, and the framerate is often atrocious, but if you have no other way of playing Half-Life, it's serviceable thanks to an intuitive control layout.
The controls were actually the most impressive aspect of the port, in all honesty. They're customizable, and there are thoughtful inclusions like aim assist and lock-on to compensate for the loss of precision on a gamepad compared to a mouse and keyboard. If you have the latter, however, you can actually use them thanks to the PS2's USB ports.
Just about every other aspect of the game suffers, unfortunately. It's not downright ugly on the PS2, but it's a far cry from the sharp textures afforded by the PC version, even if you're still playing the original release and not the upgraded Half-Life Source. The framerate is more consistent than the unreleased Dreamcast version's, but it still dips into the teens with regularity. The character models may have been upgraded with higher polygon counts, but they're still ugly to the point of being unintentionally funny. The only positive change is the new weapon models, which have more detail than the originals.
The audio in every version of Half-Life has always been a mixed bag. Character voices sound muddled, and most of them have been inexplicably pitched up so they sound ridiculous. Guns, enemies, and environmental effects, on the other hand, have always had a satisfying clarity, but certain effects just sound too loud. The clang of the iconic crowbar against anything metallic, or the ear-piercing shriek of the houndeyes are among the worst offenders. The same is true here, but the voices sound even more muffled, to the point where it's often difficult to make out what anyone is saying, especially if there are other sounds in the mix.
Some of the problems with PS2 Half-Life can be traced back to the PC original. The platforming sections were never that great, and they're made slightly more difficult when played on a controller. The levels themselves are large and expansive, which gives the game a distinctly realistic and cohesive feel that was very different from the disjointed episodic structure of many previous FPS games. However, the levels are broken up into smaller chunks with set areas that will trigger brief, but definitely noticeable, loading screens every time you transition between them. On a high-end PC, the loading times were only a handful of seconds - a small hiccup, really - but on the PS2, they're between 10-15 seconds. That's still a far cry from the 20-30 seconds found on the near-complete Dreamcast version floating around online, but it still breaks up the flow of the game and it's especially obnoxious when you're retreating from enemies and you happen to trigger a loading screen.
The save system is quite odd. The game thankfully allows for quicksaving, but it comes with a caveat. Quicksaves are not stored to your memory card. If you turn your system off, you'll lose all your progress unless you have recently paused the game, gone to the menu, and manually saved to your card. I learned this lesson the hard way, forcing myself to replay the first hour of the campaign over again. You can save anywhere, just like in the PC version, but why the quicksave slot is not stored on the memory card is a foolish oversight.
The final levels of the campaign have always been very divisive. Frankly, I didn't find them all that bad. In fact, there were sections within the Black Mesa facility I found considerably more frustrating. I can do without all the jumping, but there are some pretty large scale battles that are very exciting. It does feel somewhat out of place, but if the aliens can come to our world, why shouldn't we be able to visit theirs?
Should you play Half-Life? Absolutely, yes. That's an emphatic affirmative. Even with its age spots, it's still a great game. Should you play Half-Life on PlayStation 2? That's a tougher recommendation when the PC version is dirt cheap, readily available, and will work on just about anything from the late 90s to modern-day powerhouse machines. If you have no other way to play it, the PS2 version will do in a pinch, but it's not the best way to experience one of the best games of all-time. But hey, at least it got released.
Half-Life was completed on a real PlayStation 2 with no cheats. The review score reflects the port more than the game itself.