DAY 99 / GAME 99
Half Life 2
If I had a top ten list of all time favorite games, this would be on it. Guaranteed. Half Life 1 was the product of smaller studios and a time where small budgets and little competition meant you didn't have to take the project so seriously. It still ended up becoming a pretty amazing game and it seems to me that Valve knew this because they really buckled down and made Half Life 2 a supple structured piece of art.
I remember when this was first announced. I was in school at the time and Valve had posted tech demos showing off the new engine. It was capable of all kinds of things I'd never seen before. Moveable in-game cameras with live in-game displays feeding from them. A variety of unique shaders and surface mapping that made low-poly models look much more detailed and lighting that rendered much more realistic that anything yet.
The Source engine, as amazing as it was, was only a sliver of what made this game so good. The pure atmosphere is incredible. The story is that after the events of the first game you had disappeared, only to show up 20 years later to a world where inter-dimensional species known as the Combine have enslaved humanity. The streets are patrolled by troops and the whole place feels like old-war Europe. Resistance groups huddle in boarded up apartments, lines of people are being herded off of trains and inspected on their way into City 17 and prisoners of war are being deported across the state to Nova Prospekt to be harvested.
All the designs are incredible. From the Combine troops and their gear and vehicles, to the new and old alien life that crops up around the game, remnants from the interdimensional rift caused in the first game. The Combine superstructure called the Citadel, rising up above the clouds, visible across the land. Screens piping propaganda among other Combine messages across the cities. I remember crossing a rooftop as a strange creature-vtol craft hybrid circled past me, kicking up the powerlines as they whip through the air. During an assault on the Citadel troops attack giant Striders patrolling it's exterior. Giant three-legged beasts that can skewer a man with a spike in it's foot.
There's way too much to get into when it comes to this game. I've only scratched the surface. The physics puzzles, the soundtrack, the sound fx, the characters and the level design. Even the start screen was incredible, playing a real time sample of whichever level your last save game took place. Half Life 2 even sported one of the best level editors I've ever tried. The Hammer editor allowed for some advance modification and level building for people who have never done so in the past. I even got started on a small level including some scripted sequences, it was a blast.
I could write a novel about how much I adore this game and how much the designs inspire me. I'm super glad I was given a copy of the Making of Half Life 2 which is full of great little bits about the development of both Half Life 1 and 2. There's always been a lot of mystery surrounding the release of a part 3 and I'm hoping it becomes a real thing because this is a series I'd love to see more of.
Half Life 2
If I had a top ten list of all time favorite games, this would be on it. Guaranteed. Half Life 1 was the product of smaller studios and a time where small budgets and little competition meant you didn't have to take the project so seriously. It still ended up becoming a pretty amazing game and it seems to me that Valve knew this because they really buckled down and made Half Life 2 a supple structured piece of art.I remember when this was first announced. I was in school at the time and Valve had posted tech demos showing off the new engine. It was capable of all kinds of things I'd never seen before. Moveable in-game cameras with live in-game displays feeding from them. A variety of unique shaders and surface mapping that made low-poly models look much more detailed and lighting that rendered much more realistic that anything yet.
The Source engine, as amazing as it was, was only a sliver of what made this game so good. The pure atmosphere is incredible. The story is that after the events of the first game you had disappeared, only to show up 20 years later to a world where inter-dimensional species known as the Combine have enslaved humanity. The streets are patrolled by troops and the whole place feels like old-war Europe. Resistance groups huddle in boarded up apartments, lines of people are being herded off of trains and inspected on their way into City 17 and prisoners of war are being deported across the state to Nova Prospekt to be harvested. There's way too much to get into when it comes to this game. I've only scratched the surface. The physics puzzles, the soundtrack, the sound fx, the characters and the level design. Even the start screen was incredible, playing a real time sample of whichever level your last save game took place. Half Life 2 even sported one of the best level editors I've ever tried. The Hammer editor allowed for some advance modification and level building for people who have never done so in the past. I even got started on a small level including some scripted sequences, it was a blast.I could write a novel about how much I adore this game and how much the designs inspire me. I'm super glad I was given a copy of the Making of Half Life 2 which is full of great little bits about the development of both Half Life 1 and 2. There's always been a lot of mystery surrounding the release of a part 3 and I'm hoping it becomes a real thing because this is a series I'd love to see more of.
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