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Ever since the release of Doom in the early 90's, gamers have been subjected to a flood of first person shooter clones and gimmicky wannabes. We've had to sift through the Tek Wars and the Rise of the Triads in hopes of finding a game worthy enough to be considered a generational successor. Lucky for us, a true contender will grace our hard drives once every few years or so. In the past these titles have come in the shape of greats like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and more recently, Quake II. Each of these titles has delivered a quantum leap in an aspect which raised the bar for everyone else. Doom gave us unparalleled gameplay for its time. Duke Nukem 3D added interactivity and depth to a genre already seeing signs of shallowness. Id's Quake introduced gamers to the technology still in use by the industry today.
And then there's Half-Life…
Half-Life places you in the shoes of Gordon Freeman, a recent graduate relegated to doing admittedly repetitive duties at the Black Mesa Research Center. This once abandoned missile silo in the desert has been recently converted into a research facility and is the focal point of top-secret government experiments. Gordon finds himself involved in an experiment which seems to have gone horribly wrong. A rift to another world has opened at the Black Mesa Center, leaving much of the infrastructure destroyed. Gordon comes to only to find many of his colleagues dead, his surroundings blackened and the Center inhabited by a host of alien species. To make matters worse, the government has sent a "clean-up" crew consisting of marine grunts, stealth assassins and enough military vehicles to start a small war. Getting out of Black Mesa isn't easy, however Gordon will have the help of security guards and scientists along the way.
Half-Life sports the most seamless gameplay to be found in any game. Everything within Half-Life is done to completely absorb and immerse the player into the game… everything; the enemy AI, the scripted sequences and even the simple act of weapon placement. There are no cutscenes, no movie clips, no multiple camera angles and no text dialog. From the very start of the game until the closing credits are rolling, your perspective is always from Gordon's point of view. This goes a long way in drawing the player into the game and keeping them there.
To maintain the integrity of the game, Valve did away with the classic level setup. Whereas other games have clearly defined levels and campaigns, which are interrupted up by jarring end-level summaries and cutesy loading screens, Half-Life has none. Instead, the game is one gigantic level, broken up only by the occasional "Loading" on-screen text, which never last more than 2-3 seconds. These segmented levels are completely interactive with one another, allowing enemies to walk back and forth and even allow gunfire to be exchanged between their invisible boundaries. And while, to a lesser extent, Unreal featured a similar "one world, no levels" feel, the agonizingly long level loading times detracted from the overall gameplay experience.
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