Here we are then. The 1001 list has peaked. It's all downhill from here if all the greatest ever games of all time lists are to be believed. There is simply no better title than Half-Life 2.
I, as you'll soon find out, am not the best person to analyse or perhaps even describe this game. My words won't be able to do it justice. I don't even know where best to start.
Let's just revisit this gaming giant and see what we've been missing out on all these years.
Fond Memories
I cannot remember the first platform I played Half-Life 2 on, but judging by the release dates, I will have to assume that, once I'd gone through as much of Portal as I could manage, I then pointed the PlayStation 3's release of The Orange Box towards Half-Life 2.
If that's the case, I played the greatest PC first-person shooter of all time on a home console with a controller. I remember getting through a decent chunk of it, but definitely not finishing it. Ironically, perhaps, it wasn't very good. It wasn't at home on a console. It felt off, and cumbersome, even with alterations for the consoles.
But I tried it, I dove in, and as I said, I played a decent chunk but eventually abandoned it for something else - I've no idea what that something else would have been, but there we go.
A few years later (according to Wikipedia release dates, not necessarily actual historical events), Steam was released for Mac OS, which I had at the time. I had never bothered with PC gaming then, let alone gaming on a Mac, but Steam was free, and I think I'm right in saying that so was Half-Life 2 - I probably wouldn't have bothered getting Steam if it wasn't.
I don't remember playing much of that version at all though. I certainly didn't get as far as I did on the PS3. That would have been a decade or so ago, and bar videos here and there, I haven't touched Half-Life 2 at all, even after having a gaming PC for five years now.
Fun Times
But I feel like I know it. Not very well, but I know about the characters, the rough plot, the weapons, the setting. I know more about the start than the end, that's for sure. Half-Life 2 is just one of those titles that you know you ought to know about. You might not know precisely why you need to know it, but you're aware of it. Everyone is aware of it. You can't not be.
As Gordon Freeman steps off another train to begin the next chapter of his life, we get to see what five years of development have done to the state of the graphics. While the nature of the storytelling is the same - you are plonked into the world to take part in it as you see fit, rather than sat in front of a cutscene that dictates precisely how events unfold - the look and feel of Half-Life 2 stands head and shoulders above the competition.
To be fair, I don't know how much of this is because of late 2019 ultrawide monitor setups, but I've not touched the settings nor installed any extras, so I'm assuming it's as it looked, more or less, back in 2004. It's not too shabby, is it?
City 17 is not a place you want to find yourself staying in for too long. My grasp of the events of the first Half-Life isn't useful here. I'm sure there's a continuing plot that puts this all into context, but I don't know of it right now, so I'm just left to wander the place and learn what's going on as best I can.
It's not too hard. If you're wearing overalls, you're a second class citizen. Common scum. If you're wearing a gas mask and carrying a weapon, you're the bad guys. There are a lot of them. One of them, however, is not who they seem...
Barney and a rather familiar-sounding scientist whose name escapes me have managed to pull me out of trouble, intercepting my trip through the police state and prompting me towards the safety of the resistance. Relative safety, at any rate.
After stacking some crates and jumping out of windows with easy to manage controls, we're free to explore the wonders of City 17, with all its security checks and locked doors.
Every part of this place is grim. This is no way to live, huddling in apartment blocks in fear of your life, riot police knocking on your door for whatever reason they want. We've got to get out. Turns out we're not the only ones to suggest that.
Half-Life 2 flows like so few games seem to do. While a door may lead to a jarring loading screen, pulling you out of the moment, that door also leads to the next segment of worldbuilding, where piece by piece you find out about the state of play.
You don't get many chances to stop and take it all in, as you feel compelled to keep moving, to keep making progress through this hell. You especially can't stop when the cops bust in and start shooting at you.
You don't get the safety of a cutscene for this message. When you've scampered over the rooftops to escape, you probably won't get much rest afterwards either, as something or someone else introduces itself to you, picking you up and whisking you away into the next segment.
When you're able to take a breather, it's usually because you're a bystander in a play unfolding before your eyes. Don't take too much of a break, though, as these characters are probably saying something terribly important that you should take note of.
Alex Vance is our first new face, single-handedly saving us from the hands (and weapons) of the police forces.
We reunite with our HEV suit, as though it's our best friend or something, and stand back and watch these characters set the scene. It's always a little awkward in games where everyone else's actions are purposely scripted, and you're free to jump around like a twat in the background.
If you want to play it as you should, you often have no idea where to stand without being walked into, or have characters confused as to where to look, glancing around towards you to remind you that you're a character too.
But would I really rather have a cutscene? The 1001 write up mentions that Half-Life 2 uses techniques for storytelling that don't rely on other media. That is, cutscenes are just movies, and movies are another form of media. How would a video game tell a story if it didn't - couldn't - rely on just showing movies?
That's a question for someone smarter than me. I'll just stand here and wait.
Slightly concerned that the only reason a teleporter didn't work was that the plug came out, we lift the sparking cable back up, shove it into the wall, and watch Alex get teleported to some other secret laboratory to meet up with her father. And then it's our turn. And it's never that simple when it's our turn...
After seeing the sights (I'm as confused as you are concerning what we're seeing, don't worry), we land just outside where we started and will have to teleport the old fashioned way - by foot.
With the whole city on my tail, and armed only with a crowbar, our escape is going to be a little challenging, to say the least. Still, anyone who has played the original Half-Life will know the power of the crowbar. Heck, anyone who hasn't will still know of its strengths. It's not just wood that should be worried.
Bringing a gun to a crowbar fight won't do you guys any favours, and now I have a pistol, which is nice. I'm playing on the easy mode, so taking bullets to the face is much more viable. I wouldn't recommend it, though.
Through the trainyards and open sewers we go.
Frustrations
First-person shooters can often feel like a series of corridors and halls, one set piece after another. While you could argue that Half-Life 2 is no different, I find that it feels more like a game engine than a game sometimes.
There are some wonderful moments of physics fun. The first time you blow up some scenery and watch your enemies go flying, or whenever you get hoisted up to the ceiling towards the maw of something that really ought not to be found on Earth (especially not near anything larger than a cat)... these moments make Half-Life 2 look and play differently to a great many other games. Figuring out what the physics will do makes Half-Life Half-Life.
But for as well as they work, that's what gets in the way of the Half-Life games for me sometimes: It's Half-Life; therefore it's physics puzzles. The two are so hard to separate. Games have physics puzzles once or twice. Half-Life is physics puzzles. Well crafted, but inserted a little too obviously. They're a bit too distracting.
Case in point is an obvious see-saw puzzle. In other games, you'd stand on the back and sprint up it before it resettled its balance. In Half-Life 2, you weigh it down with cement blocks because, duh, it's physics. That's what you'd need to do in real life, so do it in Half-Life, damnit.
On the one hand, lovely. On the other, tedious. Maybe it's just me.
Further Fun Times
Onwards we trudged, avoiding attack helicopters and numerous patrols before we found a little time for rest in the safety of some resistance hideouts - if you could call them that. Maybe it was just a homeless guy helping me out. Either way, I battered some little attack robots out of the way with my trusty crowbar and carried on.
Because that's what you do with Half-Life 2. You carry on. Even if you see a chapter heading or a loading screen, they're designed to keep you moving from one part to the next. You don't want to stop. You want to keep the flow. I'm still escaping the city. I'm still trying to reach the Vances' lab. I've got a whole story to complete, and I'm enjoying it. I can't put it down. I can't find a good place to even save right now.
And then, somehow, for whatever reason, I felt the teeniest, tiniest amount of motion sickness, and I had to stop.
Now, that's probably mental, compared to the likes of the FPS Star Wars titles that set me off with their motion. I don't think Half-Life 2 is triggering any motion sickness, but my mind currently doesn't take too kindly to negative suggestions like that, so I did have to hit the save menu and get out of there.
But when will I get right back in?
Final Word
I've never been someone who ranks Half-Life 2 highly because of my history with it - or perhaps my lack of history with it. I can see why it's highly regarded but haven't seen so first hand, not until now. I certainly can't judge it on The Orange Box port, because I was viewing it as a console game, which it just isn't.
Half-Life 2 is the evolution of the first-person shooter on the PC. Or is it? Is it more of a first-person adventure? Gordon Freeman isn't a soldier, he's a scientist. We've access to a load of guns, sure, but we're fighting in self-defence, for our freedom. We're not going out into this world to shoot. Shooting is just one solution to our problems.
I suppose the more I play, the more I'll find out. Whatever the case, it really is an evolution. What other games bothered with physics simulations? What other title dropped cutscenes for in-game storytelling? These are genuine questions, I can't recall any games right now. Suffice it to say, once Half-Life 2 showed what was possible, once again, like Half-Life before it, games changed that little bit more in response.
You've been recommended Half-Life 2 countless times. We all have. I intend to play it some more. Maybe I'll finish Half-Life first, perhaps I won't. Will I finish them at all? I don't know. Would I watch them instead, if it came to it? Of course I would. In whatever means are available to you, you should consume Half-Life 2, if only to form an opinion of your own on it, instead of parroting every gaming magazine under the sun.
I like it. I don't know if it's the greatest game in the world, but it's certainly a historical one.
Fun Facts
The source code was famously leaked by a German hacker before release. When he said he was just a fan and wasn't acting maliciously, the plan was to invite him over to Valve for a fake job interview and have him arrested. German authorities beat the FBI to the punch, however, and dealt him two years probation for the offence.
Half-Life 2, developed by Valve, first released in 2004.
Versions played: PC, 2004.
The Orange Box, PlayStation 3, 2007, via memory
Mac OS, 2010, via memory.