Oh Valve, How You Steal My Heart -- Half-Life

It seems like only a few days ago that I first strolled up to a metro cop. It was in 2006 when I had my brand spanking new Xbox 360. My friend says "hey, check out this game called Half-Life 2, it's got physics." I played just a bit on his orignal Xbox and was hooked. Little did I know that compatibility on Xbox 360 was just awful. I was permanently stuck in Ravenholm because the zombie crushing autos decided to float away. That evening I ran to the store and bought the PC version and it's been love ever since.

Most people think the idea of loving a game is ridiculous, but come on, I'm not talking marriage love with a husband and wife and 2.5 kids. We're talking love like the kind that makes you cry when Mufasa dies or is the reason your can still play games like Super Mario 64 and get a kick. This may in fact have lead to my desire to find new games and tell the world about them. For a game as excellent as Half-Life 2 or it's expansions, mods, or prequels, it is extremely surprising how few people have played it. Now, let's step back in history and look at the games.

Half-Life

Why is it that dropout nerds make such amazing entertainment? Half-Life introduces itself like no other game; a rather long and boring tram ride with an annoying voice telling you all about a place called Black Mesa. As terrible an employee you seem to be, arriving so late and all, everyone seems so happy to see you because you get to do their dirty work in the test chamber. A wonderfully pure test substance has been given to your research department by a mysterious man in a blue suit (who is actually made of wood in Half-Life: Source.)

Well, things get messed up and the whole place basically gets messed up and lots of people died. Also you are introduced to parasitic aliens as well as other monsters that have great control over unknown forces. You are given a melee weapon and a healthy American supply of guns. Let's do a quick recap.

• guns
• aliens
• zombies
• army
• one man army
• huge environment
• everyone has a common enemy, you

Half-Life was available for PC and Playstation 2. There is also a Dreamcast build floating around online if you don't want to cough up the whole couple bucks a legit version will cost you. There was a remake of the game on the source engine which added better effects and performance. Oh Valve, you're so thoughtful.

This game had it all and deserves every reward it got. The game is extremely long and challenging in the style of older games. New games are far too easy on us. Autosave is a luxury and we were lucky to map the function to a key. I applaud you if you got through all the Xen levels without a little godmode or noclip. I didn't have the patience but still loved the game. It replaced Duke Nukem as my favorite PC shooter of pre-millennium times. I wish I could recommend this more, maybe a review is in order...

Case picture and video were taken by me. Valve eye picture thing is from developer.valvesoftware.com