Category Archives: Retro Reviews

Retro Review: Half-Life 2 Trilogy

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Half-Life 2 is another of those games I missed out on during the period where Real Life prevented me from gaming. But to be honest, even if I had been gaming at the time, I probably wouldn’t have played it. It’s just not a game that ever interested me much.

Alyx and Isaac in the lab in Half-Life 2For one thing, I didn’t play the original. I know it’s supposed to be a classic, but I never grasped why. I did play the demo for it, and it just struck me as another Doom clone. Oh, a bunch of scientists accidentally unleashed innumerable monsters? Gee, I’ve never seen that premise before.

For another, I’m not the biggest shooter fan in the world. I liked them more when I was younger, but these days, I find I prefer the greater depth of RPGs and strategy games. Plus, the rapid movement of shooters tends to strain my wrist rather badly.

But I’ve spent years hearing people rave about Half-Life 2, so I decided I should finally give it a try. Supposed to have a good story, I heard. So I waited for a Steam sale and picked the whole trilogy up for a pittance, and as of the last few days, I’ve finally gotten around to blazing through all three games.

And I really don’t understand why Half-Life 2 is so beloved.

First impressions:

HL2 aged a lot more gracefully than I expected it to. Video games are not a medium that ages well, and I expected to have to deal with hideous graphics and clunky, outdated game design.

Alyx looks out at the portal in Half-Life 2: Episode TwoFortunately, neither turned out to be the case. The graphics aren’t equal to modern top of the line games by any stretch, but they still look pretty decent, and aside from some rather dunderheaded AI, the gameplay held up very well, too. If I hadn’t known better, I’d never have known I was playing a game nearly a decade old.

Aside from that pleasant surprise, though, my first few hours in HL2 were pretty painful.

I’d heard a lot of people say that you don’t need to play the first game to understand the plot of HL2.

Male bovine excrement.

I had absolutely no clue what was going on in this game. Some aliens took over Earth and sterilized humanity because… they’re dicks, I guess? I had no idea who the aliens were, where they came from, or what they wanted. Most of the time, I wasn’t even sure what I was fighting. Aliens? Human collaborators? It’s all just a lot of masked humanoids shooting at me.

And there are also some other aliens helping humans. No clue who they are, where they’re from, or why they’re helping.

It took until Episode One for me to finally get a grasp on the story beyond the most basic elements, and even after finishing the trilogy, there’s a fair bit I don’t get.

Battling Striders in Half-Life 2This isn’t necessarily HL2’s fault. I just wish I’d known the story was so dependent on having played the first game, or I might not have bothered.

I found the early gameplay very inconsistent, too. I was expecting an epic thrill ride — shooters are a genre based on constant action, after all — but it seemed to take a very long time for any real action to take place. Mostly I just seemed to spend my time running and hiding.

I gather they were trying to hammer home the horror of the Combine occupation, but I was expecting an epic struggle, not a game of cat and mouse.

And then there were the vehicle missions. Oh, God, the vehicle missions.

The car one was a bit annoying, but the airboat level was Hellish. If I ever find out who at Valve designed that, I’m punching them in the jaw.

“Yeah, let’s put the player in a vehicle with all the maneuverability of a drunk, three-legged baby elephant and then force them to make jumps where being even an inch off course can lead to a crash. And they have to do them while driving at such ludicrous speeds that if you so much as breath you’ll spin like a top. And just to make it extra fun, let’s make it take forever!”

Half-Life 2 is a not a game for the weak of stomach...On the whole, the first half of the game just felt too stop and go. Every time things started to get interesting, there would be a left turn into some lengthy vehicle detour or puzzle. It had no flow.

I found the famed gravity gun disappointing, too. It’s a cool idea, and some of the uses for it are pretty clever, but the utterly arbitrary nature of what can and can’t be affected by it was frustrating, and it tended to be pretty impractical as a weapon — barring the ending, of course.

It gets better:

But to be fair, HL2 improved as it went along. I found the latter half of the game seemed to flow a lot better, and I started to legitimately enjoy myself. I’m not sure if it was actually better design, or if I was just getting used to the way the game played, but either way, it was a much more pleasant experience.

The last few missions were quite exciting, and I especially liked the citadel sequence with the super-charged gravity gun.

Despite my ignorance of the story, I started to get invested in the world and its characters, too. After hearing so much about Alyx Vance, I was disappointed she didn’t play a bigger role in the game, but she’s still a very likable character, and the other characters were also quite endearing.

Alyx and D0g contact Eli Vance in Half-Life 2: Episode OneI do think they might have gone a little over the top with her fawning over the player, and the fact that Gordon is an utterly silent protagonist makes their relationship seem pretty ridiculous, but even with these flaws, I thought Alyx was one of the highlights of the trilogy.

I think a lot of this is down to some really excellent voice acting. If there’s one thing Valve always seems to do right, it’s getting fantastic voice actors. Alyx is definitely going down as one of my favourite video game voice performances of all time. She just sounds so authentic, no matter what emotion she’s trying to express.

The animators also deserve a lot of credit. HL2 is probably the only game I’ve ever played where facial expressions look even remotely realistic without falling into some horrible uncanny valley, and the body language of characters can also be very expressive.

There was one moment in Episode One where Alyx just collapses against a wall and takes a moment to catch her breath, and it just felt like such a real moment, for lack of a better term. It was subtle, but very well done.

And that brings us to…

The expansions:

I think Episodes One and Two were a marked improvement over vanilla Half-Life 2. The pacing felt a lot more natural, there was a lot more action, and the story felt clearer.

Using the gravity gun to fire a saw blade in Half-Life 2Alyx had a much bigger role, too, and that had a very positive effect on the game. Having a companion made for some more interesting gameplay, and the extra chatter and character helped to break the monotony of shooting zombies and using the gravity gun to stack crates.

Of the trilogy, Episode One was my favourite by a significant margin. The feeling of racing against time added a lot of excitement, and again, Alyx helped a lot.

Unfortunately, it was also extremely short. According to Steam, I finished the whole game in three hours. I’ve played Mass Effect DLCs longer than that. Even Portal took longer.

Episode Two was almost as fleeting. Combined, the expansions would have made for a very short game. Individually, they seem even more lacking.

Still, I had a lot more fun with the expansions than the main game.

I don’t get it:

Half-Life 2 is a good game. Most of my complaints are the result of having the wrong expectations or subjective biases. Airboat mission aside, I can think of very little objectively wrong with HL2 or its expansions. They’re well-designed, polished games with some unique aspects, and they’re a pretty decent way to waste a few hours. The bits of the story I understood were a little thin and cliche, but a rich cast of characters helped make up for that.

Shutting down the Citadel core in Half-Life 2: Episode OneBut I am absolutely mystified as to why this series is so beloved. It’s a solid B+ at best, in my books. I can’t begin to comprehend why it’s universally hailed as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — PC games of all time. It’s not even the best shooter I’ve ever played — the original Call of Duty and No One Lives Forever were both far superior.

At least I can understand why people are so crazy with impatience for the next installment. They really left us hanging there, didn’t they?

Overall ratings:

Half-Life 2: 7.1/10

HL2: Episode One: 8.6/10

HL2: Episode Two: 7.9/10

Mass Effect: Looking Back

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You may recall I mentioned that I was following my overdue completion of the original Mass Effect by playing through the rest of the trilogy in order while making different choices. I’ve now completed the Great ME Play-through, and I’ve decided to do one more post to sum up my remaining thoughts on the series.

Choices:

Ilos in Mass EffectI’m not going to go through my feelings on every major choice within the story — I’d be here all day — but there are a few that I’ve only gained a full appreciation for after playing through the series more than once.

One is whether to save Ashley or Kaidan. I’d always gone with Ashley, so I had no experience with Kaidan until I played the original and decided to keep him alive for the subsequent games.

But as much as I tried to keep an open mind about Mr. Alenko, I think I prefer Ashley. Kaidan’s a very likable guy — but that’s the problem. He has the same problem that Jacob and Liara do, albeit to a less obnoxious degree: He seems to have been designed to be a romance choice first and a person second.

Kaidan just doesn’t have any flaws. He’s the perfect noble romantic. I tend to prefer characters that are very likable, perhaps unrealistically so, but after a while, Kaidan just feels like an ideal created for female fans (and 10% of the male fans) to drool over.

Ashley, on the other hand, is a bit more rough around the edges, but ultimately more endearing. She’s angry, rigid, and borderline racist, but that’s just a nice balance for her courage, loyalty, and sense of honour. She’s likable, but she also feels like a real person.

A tense stand-off during Miranda's loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2I like both options, but Ashley just makes for a more interesting story. That said, it’s a win on Bioware’s part that I wish I could keep both alive.

The other choice that seemed to have a really interesting impact on the story is whether to kill or spare Wrex, though that’s not apparent until you get to third game.

I really didn’t like how the genophage story was handled in ME3 with Wrex alive. It was incredibly one-sided with Eve, Wrex, and Mordin all arguing for a cure, and no real argument being made for not curing the Krogan. It felt like a guilt trip, and although I think curing the Krogan is a really bad idea, I always picked it.

But this time around, I killed Wrex, and things got much more interesting.

Wreav is a psychopath. Giving him an infinite army of angry Krogan can’t possibly end well. The Salarians’ concerns seemed much more well-founded. It became a true dilemma.

On the one hand, we have Eve arguing for the good and potential within the Krogan. On the other, Wreav reminds us how dangerous the Krogan can be. Whether to dispense the cure becomes a very difficult choice, not a foregone conclusion.

The Illusive Man in Mass Effect 2And paradoxically, I found making the cure a less desirable choice made me more inclined to feel sympathy for the Krogan. When I actually had to think about the issue instead of swallowing the game’s predetermined choice, I found myself thinking the Krogan might deserve another chance after all.

This strengthens a belief I’ve had for a while that letting consumers draw their own conclusions about a story’s morality is better than just telling them what’s right or wrong.

Lasting complaints:

There are a few issues that bugged me all through the series, so I might as well get them off my chest.

One is the combat. I’ve said it before, but the gameplay feels like an afterthought in the Mass Effect series. It’s not bad, but it is incredibly forgettable and underdeveloped.

On this play-through, I came to the conclusion the problem isn’t the underlying design, but merely a lack of ambition. The fundamental system of combat is sound — at least after ME1 — but they never bothered to get creative with it.

Confronting Harbinger during the Arrival DLC in Mass Effect 2Every fight plays out the same way. There are hardly any unique enemies or bosses. There’s no random element. There are rarely any special mechanics to shake things up, and most of the ones that do exist don’t really make any difference. For example, the shockwaves in the Geth ship in ME3. The counter to the mechanic is to stay in cover, which is something you should always do anyway.

The handful of times they did bother to shake up the core mechanics — like the car chase on Ilium or the fight with Shadow Broker — the game actually got very fun. Even something as simple as the time limit while helping your crew member through the ducts on the Collector base made things infinitely more exciting.

Things could have been much more fun if they’d just tried a little harder.

Another thing I never quite got over was how bland most of the alien species are. This is a problem a lot of sci-fi has: The aliens aren’t cultures; they’re archetypes. There’s Angry, Chaotic Aliens; there’s Angry, Militaristic Aliens; there’s Brainy, Socially Awkward Aliens; there’s Sexy, Empathic Aliens…

I take particular issue with the Asari. As an entire species of adolescent sexual fantasies come to life, they’re nothing but shameless pandering. In another game, that might be tolerable, but considering how progressive most of Mass Effect is, stumbles like the Asari stick out like a sore thumb.

The only aliens who actually feel like people are the Quarians, and even they’re admittedly little more than a giant Battlestar Galactica homage.

The Reapers demolish Vancouver in Mass Effect 3Finally, while the ability to steer the story with your choices is Mass Effect’s greatest strength, it nonetheless falls flat on its face far too often. It’s far too easy to make the wrong choices simply because the consequences aren’t properly explained.

By far the most egregious example was picking your specialists for the attack on the Collector base at the end of ME2. It’s hard to figure out which choices are correct, but what’s worse is that it’s not even immediately clear that choices can be right or wrong.

When I first played that mission, my interpretation of the (incredibly vague) instructions was that certain roles would result in crewmember death, and I was simply choosing who lived and who died. There was nothing to indicate that your choice of squad member for each task mattered. As a result, I got most of my crew killed and had to do it over again so I wouldn’t have an empty ship in ME3.

I know a lot of “serious” gamers will sneer at me for wanting things dumbed down, but I will never accept obfuscating the player as good game design. Difficulty should like in overcoming challenges, not in understanding what the challenges are.

Final thoughts:

I may have many complaints about the Mass Effect series, and I don’t think it really achieved greatness until ME3, but don’t take that to mean it doesn’t enjoy a fond place in my heart.

The Normandy on approach to the CitadelThere is something indefinably special about the ME games that few others can equal. They suck you in, and I can now finally understand why people get so obsessive about them.

They may be flawed, but there’s nothing else quite like them, and they’re not games I’m likely to soon forget.

And I will say one thing: I think Mass Effect is good for the industry. I think it’s good that they’ve proven smart, story-driven, progressive games can be both artistically and financially successful.

What I’m really hoping to see is other game companies taking the best aspects of Mass Effect — rich character development, deep player involvement in the story, mature and progressive attitudes — and pairing them with deeper gameplay, better world-building, and a more lively game world.