With PC gaming in its current state, I didn’t think a game like Half Life 2 was possible. The FPS genre had become stagnated, and aside from my occasionally burdensome fascination with war-themed shooters, I didn’t see the genre on the PC heading in a very healthy direction. As much as I enjoyed Far Cry, easily the underdog release of the year, it was fairly conventional in its execution. And Doom 3, another game touting a technically superior engine, produced a truly disappointing experience. But over the past week, I have seen the future.

Forget everything you ever thought was a convention of first person shooters. Then purchase and install Half Life 2. And then prepare to have your expectations of what an interactive gaming experience should be permanently raised.

Note: As this review is essentially a diary of my adventures in the world of Half Life 2, it is rife with spoilers. Anyone who hasn’t finished the game and wants to keep the magic alive should stop reading at once.

Where Half Life 2 succeeds is its atmosphere: the engine used to present it just makes these feelings tangible. My first hours with the game were filled with a sense of urgency; that I absolutely must survive at any costs. I found it so invigorating that a game set in a dystopian, post-apocolyptic city eerily similar to real-life can terrify me more than the claustrophobic corridors of an army base on Mars overrun with demons. Granted both games have their merits, but it takes a certain kind of craftsmanship to build a living, breathing location such as City 17.

Half Life 2’s presentation is polished to the point where it absolutely shimmers. The themes, ideas and visuals that were built up during the course of this game put the vapid, big-budget action films churned out by Hollywood to shame. The action unfolds like an interactive film, with you in control of how events transpire. Your objectives are clear, the puzzles are challenging without being obtuse, and the many conflicts involve the very core of your being, enough that you can’t take yourself away from it at some points. For the majority of the game I was doing things without even realizing it – I was Gordon Freeman. I think the designers’ decision to not give Freeman a voice was a good one – that way we didn’t have to roll our eyes at a focus group’s idea of “witty” or “edgy” one-liners said by the main hero. Actually, that Gordon Freeman said nothing at all added to the association I felt with the character.

There is nothing in the game’s mechanics beyond the FPS boilerplate: slipping into the familiar control scheme fit like Freeman’s hazard suit. There’s no need to relearn anything or get tangled in unnecessary tutorials. Though the tutorial exists, you just don’t notice it while you’re initially taking in the environment you will be adventuring in for the next 25 hours.

The weapons feel substantial and responsive, with incredible sound to suit. The music is unobtrusive and further conveys the theme of the game, starting up at appropriate times only to fade into the game’s lonely silence once more. The radio chatter for Civil Protection and Combine troops is probably the creepiest, materializing as the fear of knowing that an entire city is looking for you.

Where Half Life 2 sidesteps the tired conventions of FPS-style puzzles is the way it steadily introduces you to the game’s physics. Some of the game’s earlier puzzles must make use of an object’s weight, but nothing will prepare you for when you get your hands on the Gravity Gun. It becomes as indispensable as the crow bar, not only allowing you to form makeshift bridges, retrieve distant objects or blast away debris, but also as a defense mechanism giving you the superhuman ability to catch live grenades and throw them back. The first time I figured that out I cheered; it was a truly empowering experience.

Both Halo and Far Cry let us know that merging vehicles with a single-player FPS doesn’t necessarily mean rails, and Half Life 2 happily continues this tradition. I was holding my breath for most of the time I was navigating the canals in the jet boat, ably finding the path of least resistance to each objective. The dune buggy you pick up later is equally thrilling to drive, allowing you to run everyone over or carefully pick them off with your side-mounted cannon. I also liked that you were encouraged to get out of the vehicle to explore. Although some objectives demanded it, you could find a hidden stash of ammo or health packs just by investigating the run-down ruins of a seaside home. These sequences just seemed to flow naturally, and my only complaint here was that the dune buggy levels seemed to carry on a bit too long.

The game’s many NPCs are beautifully modelled, but not used nearly enough. As a supporting character, Alyx could have had a much larger role – and I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see a female character that wasn’t bursting out of her clothes. Character interaction was few and far between, but I suppose this simply reinforced the solitary nature of Freeman’s quest. This all changes in the final levels when you get a human squad, but at times I felt more like an outsider than an active participant in the revolution I was supposed to have started.

During the resistance sequences, the addition of a squad brought me back to the fairly linear street fighting of Call of Duty. Though now I had the option of directing my squad to an objective, where they mostly took care of themselves. The only problem I encountered was the squad following me too closely, because we would all bunch up in stairways or small rooms. But at least they apologized for being in the way. Because you are constantly meeting up with people in your fight towards your ultimate objective of the Citadel, there is no real attachment to your squad mates as they are completely replaceable. The only guys I cared about losing were the medics, because they’d constantly be offering me medkits from a seemingly bottomless supply.

I also wasn’t a fan of the whole “Freeman as the Messiah” vibe that I got from the final levels, because it made me gaze painfully at the way The Matrix Trilogy ended with a cumbersome explanation. Indeed, heavy references to Freeman as “The One Free Man” were weaved throughout the story, and made the outcome of this game (and probably this series) way too predictable.

Although you can give id their due for creating a technically sound engine that will run on almost any architecture, Source has its own strengths. After Doom 3, I felt my aging rig would have certainly met its match. But I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could squeeze out of my computer, raising the resolution and detail settings to a comfortable balance between image fidelity and performance.

The load screens are back from the original Half Life, and this is an unfortunate byproduct of the resource-consuming graphics. Load times overall weren’t unbearable, but in a heated action sequence the last thing I want to do is stare at “Loading…”. To prevent this from becoming a serious detriment to gameplay, though, these loading/autosave checkpoints are only encountered after entering a new area or after completing a main objective. Of course, all of these complaints could simply stem from my two year old P4 2.4/GF4 Ti4600/1 GB RAM system – but some ailments seemed to be indiscriminate of your specs. The sound stuttering only seemed to happen during autosaves, everywhere else it wasn’t a problem for me. A fix for this was issued yesterday.

The game difficulty on “Normal” provided enough of a challenge that you could enjoy the game without having to reload all the time. Most tactics of enemy AI meant you could easily rush in to any situation with guns blazing, provided you have enough ammo. I know that in the early to mid levels, ammo was a real scarcity, but it became suddenly plentiful during the Human resistance’s final push towards the Citadel.

The only mission I had trouble with was the final stage of Nova Prospekt where you must fend off waves of Combine troops with three turrets and whatever health/ammo you had left at that point. It was an exercise in complete frustration, and almost brought the game to a crashing halt for me. It was ridiculously hard if you couldn’t conserve your ammo or health, and the turrets were almost impossible to set up under fire. To beat this area I didn’t even bother with the turrets – I hunkered down in the corner of an empty cell unloading my shotgun into the head of any Combine soldier that walked inside. The worst part was when you finally managed to stay alive for Alyx to meet you, greeting you with “Sorry to keep you waiting. You probably could have used some help.” I did my best to not roar at my computer at that point, but I can’t say I was successful.

There’s a large metallic obelisk you see in the middle of the city when you first wander onto the streets of City 17. It looks menacing, piercing the clouds with its darkened shape. My attention was immediately drawn to it, and my imagination started racing. What is that thing? Something told me that it would be important, and another part of me wanted to get as far away as possible. And yet its presence is felt in almost every map with the exception of the coastal levels. Little did I know the Citadel would be my eventual destination.

The inside of the Citadel was breathtaking to behold. Its darkened metal surface seemed to go on forever, both above and below the earth. I knew the final standoff was coming, and it most certainly would involve an encounter with Dr. Breen, former administrator of Black Mesa and current go-between for the human race and the alien garrison. But I wasn’t prepared for the brick wall that lay between me and a completely satisfying ending.

I wasn’t completely sold on the way the story was executed. Through the first half of the game I respected how much Valve left to the player’s imagination, because it served a clear purpose – generate a foreboding and mysterious atmosphere. Keep the player on his toes by making his mind race, looking at each encounter in a thousand different ways. But as you get closer to the end it starts to feel a lot like The Matrix Reloaded, where you’re expecting a new character you’ve never seen before to pop out and give a long-winded soliloquy. And although the endgame sequence almost does this exactly, thankfully it isn’t nearly as ham-fisted.

From what I could piece together, the plot of Half Life 2 blends elements of The Matrix (Part I) and X-Files: Fight the Future, but does nowhere near as decent a job explaining the situation at hand. You assume the story picks up where the original Half Life left off, but why does City 17 exist? Who are Civil Protection? Who are the Combine? (My best guess was mechanically enhanced/processed humans). Where do the Ant Lions come from? Why are the headcrabs and other aliens from Xen (the dimension opened up in the first game) here? Who are the Benefactors, or the giant green blob Dr. Breen was talking to? I feel like I shouldn’t have felt the need to ask these questions, but it seemed like instead of tying things together Valve let the player’s imagination and endless fan speculation do the work. The incredibly stunted ending frustrates more than it appetizes me for another sequel.

For reasons unknown, Valve decided to retool Counter Strike using the Source engine as the multiplayer component of Half Life 2. As a fan-made modification, Counter Strike did more to establish the archetype of the online twitch gamer than most published products. I’ll admit that it was fun for a while, but I quickly grew tired of the community that mutated out of the game. I feel a little let down that we didn’t get Team Fortress 2, something that has been “in the works” as long as Half Life 2. Improving the graphics of a 5-year-old mod may have been justified fan service, but I wasn’t impressed with Valve passing this off as the multiplayer portion of Half Life 2. I see it as just a bonus, because I will be more than happy replaying the single player campaign on “Hard” mode.

It’s rare that a developer devotes so much effort into creating such an immersive game world for the single-player campaign of a first person shooter, and actually gets it right. If there is one PC game you must buy this year, let it be Half Life 2. It’s probably the only one out there that fully captures what the FPS genre is capable of, both with storytelling and original presentation. To be disappointed about the ending and still be able to justify positive impressions of the game says a lot about its content, and I can easily say that the destination wasn’t as important as having invested myself fully in Valve’s frightening dystopian vision.

close your eyes and pray that it’s a dream