|
Here for a (Half) Lifetime?
June 1st 2006, 22:28 CEST by deadlock
Upon its release in 1998 (eight years ago!), Half Life attained near-legendary status in the gaming community. Its contemporary setting, unique (at the time) approach to plot development, audioscape and enormous scale quickly established it as one of the cornerstones of the First-person Perspective Shooter. Memorable locations, some very original baddies (the tentacle thingie) and an ill-conceived platformer section ensured that the game was a flawed masterpiece.
Half Life was an evolutionary step forward for the genre, rather than a revolutionary one - but it was a pretty big step. It took elements that we had already seen in other games - portals to nightmarish worlds, the ubiquitous secret labs and military facilities, futuristic weapons and a geek-turned-hero protagonist - and made them seem new somehow, providing us with a level of detail and immerson that we hadn't really experienced before.
Half Life had such a huge impact on the FPS-genre that it became a reference point for pretty much every FPS that followed it as well as every review. I and many others have often found ourselves playing a game post-HL and bemoaning the fact that it played as though Half Life had never happened. Very often, even those games that did take on board some of the things that HL brought to the table gave us the impression that they were either ticking off points on a feature list or, worse, completely missing the point.
Half Life 2, like its predecessor, was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, again taking elements that were already familiar from other games and making them seem better or more integral - physics being the most notable. But the sense of reinvention wasn't as strong with the new game. It was another flawed masterpiece, but this time the flaws (lacklustre AI, some showstopping bugs) were less forgivable. But the epic scale was intact and was, in fact, greatly expanded on. The battlefield was no longer confined to a remote facility but had become global.
So, the question I'm asking is this: will Half Life 2, in years to come, be regarded with the same reverance as the original title or has the FPS genre become too diluted for a class-A title to have any impact any more? And is Half Life 2: Episode One just a daft name or is it any good?
|
