After six years of development, stolen code, leaked betas, missed deadlines, and tons of hype, Half-Life 2 has finally been released upon the world, though over a year after the original promised release date. Not to hold dates against Valve (apologies have already been expressed), Half-Life 2 is definitely worth the wait, though not without its share of disappointments.

Just to get the formalities out of the way and not to beat a dead horse, you are Gordon Freeman, the lone scientist that saved the day in the original game. Now working for the mysterious G-Man, you’re teleported onto a train heading for a city known as “City 17”. All is not normal, however, as the city is under a sort of police state run by the Combine and people are being herded like cattle. All is not unfamiliar, however, as you’ll meet up with some of your old buddies like Eli Vance, Dr. Kleiner, and of course, good ol’ Barney the security guard…who seems to hold his own a little better in the face of danger this time around. In addition to your Black Mesa alumni, you’ll also meet Eli’s kick ass, take no prisoners daughter Alyx, who proves to be a great help during your journey among other not so notable characters.

Like the original game, you, as Gordon Freeman, are star of the show. Everything is from your perspective, no cutscenes, CG sequences, or 3 rd person camera. You never leave Gordon’s body. Though Gordon is technically mute, other characters have no problem communicating with you to move the story along. I tried my best to communicate back with what little I had, as body language works well. When a character says hi to you, you can always look up quickly and back down in some sort of “what’s up?” nod back to them. Just something to try…I didn’t want to be rude. The game starts off the same way as its predecessor where you observe the normal every day happenings of City 17, though you’ll grow to quickly hate the Combine guards and will have you chomping at the bit to give them a taste of your crowbar. You’ll quickly find yourself on the bad side of the combine as you find there is an underground resistance ready to revolt. The story pretty much unfolds from there and becomes linear in nature as you try to move from one base of the resistance to another.

Gordon’s journey will take you through some diverse locations and situations like run down factories, driving an air boat through city canals, triggering booby traps in a town infested with zombies, navigating your way across a damaged highway scattered with roadblocks, and all out fighting the combine through out the interiors and exteriors of City 17 itself. The levels themselves are designed well, as you’ll have a steady amount of action and puzzles. The puzzles are pretty simple and mostly based off of the impressive physics of the game. Once you find out what to do, it’s a really satisfying experience. Yes, this is coming from someone that doesn’t like puzzles in their FPS. Missions are varied, while most feature the same tried and true Half-Life gameplay, you’ll also have some fast paced run-and-gun levels to go through, the most impressive of which happens in the game’s final two chapters where you’re leading squads of resistance members on an all-out Combine killing spree in a veritable war zone. Speaking of leading squads, one of the most disappointing aspects of Half-Life 2 is the AI. During E3 2003, Valve spoke of independent AI and non-existent scripting, thus making the AI act differently in any situation. We were treated to doors being blocked while the enemies first tried to pound the door down and eventually coming through the window. Unfortunately, all we got was some questionable AI and some scripting. Granted, pathfinding is great as you’ll never see any members of your squad attempting to run through walls or getting stuck on objects, but they’re not fast to get out of your way. Enemy AI is about the same as they’re smart enough to throw grenades, find you, duck for cover, and run away. Some will even charge head on, even when they're outnumbered.

From a technical standpoint, the use of physics is the best since (Dare I say? I suppose I do.) Painkiller. You’ll find yourself wanting to play and manipulate everything you find. From the very beginning you’ll find yourself wanting to knock everything over, pick everything up, and throw it at everyone you see…at least until the novelty wears off. It’s still cool to see how debris and bodies float in water and get knocked around when there’s a big explosion though. Things get even more fun once the gravity gun gets into your grubby little hands. Primary fire will punch things out of your way or shoot them long distances while secondary will pull things towards you. Of course this means you can throw grenades back at your foes, use barrels as shields, grab saw blades, or chuck explosive objects at them. It’s all great fun.

Aside from the gravity gun, you’ll only find a couple of new weapons in this go around. The combine pulse rifle is a rapid firing death dispenser that is short on ammo, but big on thrills. On top of that, it’s got a deadly secondary fire that will bounce around a room and disintegrate anything that stands in its way. You’ll also get the pheropod (aka bug bait) to summon a group of antlions to do your bidding. In addition to the new weapons, you’ll get the perennial favorites like the 9mm, .45 caliber, sub machine gun, shotgun, and crossbow in your arsenal. They all work about the same as they always did.

Who can look past Half Life 2’s visuals? In danger of stating the obvious, the visuals are impressive – even on lower settings. Nothing beats the feeling you get once you come out of the train station and into the city square for the first time. The water effects are to die for with realistic reflections and distortions. Of course, you can’t look past the character models as they seem full of life with the way they move around and look at you. Really impressive stuff there. Other small visual effects also make an impression like the transparent distortions of the combine shields, or the magnifying glass over the professor’s desk, or the semi-opaque windows on doors really add to the polish.

Keeping true to the Half-Life style, a lot of the sounds from your HEV suit to the head crabs, are recycled from the first game, or at least sound very similar. Not that this is a bad thing since you’re fighting some of the same baddies and wearing the same suit as you did before. That all makes sense. You’ll also get some creepy noises from combine guards as you can hear them reporting on their walkie talkies and hear them flat line as they die. You’ll also get a broad amount of noises as you walk across certain surfaces and some neat ambient noises from your surroundings that really immerse you in the experience. You’ll also get accurate noises from anything that you hit with the crowbar, for instance, wood sounds like wood, metal sounds like metal.

Voice acting is also well done, as the actors don’t feel wooden in their lines; thus breathing more life into the characters you encounter.

Half-Life 2 seemed to take forever and a day to ship out. The gameplay is definitely worth the hype, as it stays true to the gameplay of the series. However, some cutbacks on the AI and a disappointing story keep Half-Life 2 from perfection as it leaves even more questions and riddles in the end. One could say it suffers from the “Matrix Reloaded” syndrome in terms of story. It does, however, deliver in terms of a solid FPS experience as well as technical marvel for its time.

- Brad Hicks (aka Dr. Swank), SwankWorld Media