When trying to devise a meaningful way to present this review I stumbled upon an aspect of the game that really made it unique. Any game can have great graphics, physics, a story and a multiplayer mode. That’s why people play games, to experience these things. The original Half-Life was a game that made an excellent attempt at gluing it all together to make it really feel as if you were there. Granted with the visuals back then, it wasn’t easy, but Valve sure did absorb us into their world. The thing that makes Half-Life 2 as good as it is, is the immersion. Walking through oppressed war torn cities and being chased by mammoth alien creations has never felt as real as it does now. The graphics, sound, gameplay and even the physics engine clamp together to form one unique experience that will stay in your mind just as well as your favorite blockbuster movie or novel. It’s the thing the game industry has tried to do for a very long time, and it usually gets surprisingly close, but Half-Life 2 is undoubtedly the closest, at least as far as first person shooters are concerned. Amidst all of the controversy surrounding the game’s development including the highly publicized source code theft and release delays, Half-Life 2 rises out of the “Coming Soon” purgatory as a champion. Its flaws are minor and its strides are noteworthy, to put it simply, it’s an experience most gamers have been waiting for all of their lives, fun and excitement from start to finish.

Half-Life 2 was always aiming to remove its own predecessor from the throne of PC first person shooters, but new competition has sprouted up at ever corner since its development began. Doom III was its most direct threat throughout development and when Doom III was finally released; gamers were just praying Half-Life 2 would be light years better. Doom III wasn’t a bad title, but it lacked the thing most people were expecting, which was a thorough and precise evolution of the genre. If you look at Half-Life 2 on the scale of all games, you will realize its nothing revolutionary either, but it does bring the potential of PC and console games to a new level.

The star of the game is actually not Gordon Freeman, but its physics engine, which has been seen in bits and pieces of other games, notably Painkiller and Max Payne 2. Both of those games used the engine as a way to elevate the realism or (in Painkiller’s case) sense of unreality in their game’s worlds. Half-Life 2 relies on its physics engine to push the game forward. If it lacked the physics, HL2 would still be an excellent shooter, but it obviously wouldn’t be as good as it is now.

The plot surrounding the game is difficult to explain in words as it relies heavily on visuals to make sense of its immense scope. Gordon Freeman is of course the main character in the game and he is the one you have the honor of playing. First let’s get that fact that Gordon is a mute, out of the way. Throughout the course of the game, he never speaks a word, and it’s up to the people around him to give you an idea of what he’s feeling. In all honesty, Gordon is basically you. You are controlling his body, but his experiences are dictated by what you do, so you are essentially Gordon, and vice versa. Sounds confusing, but its really common sense, and that’s what most of the questions the game asks you are. Gordon was a scientist at Black Mesa, an underground lab conducting shady experiments with technology able to pierce through dimensions. Of course in typical fashion, everything goes wrong and the aliens are now piercing through your fellow people. Gordon eventually escapes from Black Mesa. The game abruptly places you back in Gordon after a brief interruption by the G-Man (who I will not spoil anything about for you) who goes on to throw some cryptic information at you. When you leave the train station you start in, you realize none of what you see is right. The story pulls you through introductions of many new characters including Alex Vance, the daughter of Eli Vance (a fellow scientist at Black Mesa). Saying anymore would be a crime, but lets just say for now, that you get to blow up a ton of aliens and experience a mind blowing (good or bad, depending on how you feel about it) ending.

Playing a first person shooter has never been as fun as it was with Half-Life 2. Gordon is basically thrown in a world torn between oppression and war and with war, there are weapons, and with weapons, there’s a reason for Gordon to be around. Gameplay is initially reminiscent of the original, until of course the physics come into play. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, the physics engine is a system allowing the player to interact with objects in a game world. In this case the source engine allows you to pick up whatever Gordon can carry, including weapons, barrels, milk bottles, frying pans, televisions and much more. Not only can he pick things up, but when Gordon fires at certain objects in the environment, they may react. If Gordon shoots a window, it will start to crack in every area, he can then pull out a crowbar and begin to chip away section by section at the window until it’s gone. When Combine forces advance towards you, if there happens to be an explosive barrel on a bridge above them, shoot it down and watch as the bridge collapses on top of them. There are literally thousands of things that can be done, accidentally or intentionally with the physics engine, and it adds a sense of realism to the world.