It’s supposed to be a stirring assault on the streets of this oppressed city, but with a wooden supporting cast, it falls flat. Suddenly you’re assigned a squad of nameless soldiers to fight beside you. Ironically, when Half-Life 2 stumbles, it’s because it’s trying too hard to be a shooter in the Call of Duty mold, and towards the end of the story, Valve abandons the one-man-against-the-world motif for a squad-based shooter that feels like a Michael Bay flick.
In recent memory, only Uncharted 4 gets close to achieving a similar level of pacing, balance and careful perfection.
WELCOME WELCOME TO CITY 17 SERIES
Valve cleverly metes out concussive blows alongside a series of jabs to the temple which ask that you engage your brain. Next to Half-Life 2, it feels positively simian. Only earlier this month, I put the finishing touches to my review of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, a game of absurd excess and forced spectacle. That’s especially relevant today, as games are becoming more tightly orchestrated all the time. Valve understands better than anyone that the journey should be as much about the sense of adventure as the numbers you mow down. Making things go boom is easy, it turns out, and Half-Life 2 is interested in what happens when lead stops flying. One minute you’ve been throttling a dune buggy, now you’re picking your way across the beachfront using your Gravity Gun to build a makeshift bridge to safety. And then you’re beside the beach on foot, avoiding the sand lest you awaken antlions, gloriously-named bugs that lurch from the sandy earth and flap their wings into life. Within minutes you’ve left the road behind completely and are making the perilous trek along a sky-high bridge, culminating in a boss fight against a Combine spacecraft. Like the hovercraft bits, Highway 17 is dotted with on-foot encounters off the beaten track, many involving quick gunfights, which are staccato flashes of violence. Take Highway 17, a jaunt along the City 17 coastline in a dune buggy. Plus, there are so many opportunities to play with the world that the next objective is never a blinking waypoint in view. The pacing is perfect, and you’re never doing the same thing twice. The genius of Half-Life 2 is that it’s a heavily scripted shooter without ever feeling like one. The first time you realize what the buzzsaw is useful for, the cruel brilliance of it snaps sharply into focus. Buzzaws drip blood, red barrels lie in wait and just then, over the horizon, a zombie shambles into a view. The Gravity Gun transforms a level laden with horror tropes into a veritable playground. The Gravity Gun is a thing of beauty, capable of pulling objects into its forcefield, then ejecting them at speed. It takes a starring turn in Ravenholm, an hour-long segue through an abandoned mining town crawling with zombies. Then comes the Gravity Gun, and with it, Half-Life 2 goes to the next level. The route to Black Mesa East is dotted with hideouts off the beaten track. Whether you choose to inspect these buildings or ignore them is up to to you, but lesser developers wouldn’t even have afforded the freedom. Suddenly you’re not running and gunning but alternating between land and the high seas as you chart a course through muddy waters. Here, Half-Life 2 demonstrates a willingness to tackle new ground with its levels, serving up a map of size and scope impressive by even today’s standards. This opening salvo ends on open water as you man a hovercraft in search of the hideout of one Eli Vance.