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Half-Life 2, a critically appraised game that could possibly run for “Best Game Ever” to many reviers. Whether it lives up to its reputation is debatable but the general consensus is that is still a great game. Having recently just finished this game (for the 5th time) I’ve decided to share my thoughts on it.

First off the story itself, I found it to be pretty generic and not as great as it was made out ot be. To put it simply, Aliens invade earth, Aliens take over earth, Humans go underground. Superman comes along, Superman finds humans. Humans rebel, Superman beats aliens, lalalalala typical plot insert. So pretty much It’s nothing special. What makes it great is the characters themselves. Though i found it really REALLY hard to connect with people like Mossman, Eli etc. etc, what really hit me was all the minor characters. i.e the random resistance members you come across. Maybe because of being more one-dimensional, I just felt they had more personality (like odessa) then most of the other characters except dog. Goddamnit, Dog is bloody awesome.

The graphics themselves still handle themselves awesome to this day (5 years later?). The lighting is great, the   textures look pretty good (just don’t look too close), and the characters themselves look suprisingly detailed while still looking like a video game. Although not as good as say something like Crysis, it more than makes up for it with its gameplay and it does everything right. So I guess that’s a plus.

Now what jarate’s me off about this game is how annoying the A.I is. SO. MANY. BLOODY. TIMES. Did i have to try and get through a doorway only to be blocked by an A.I which loves to glue themselves to my ass only to be shot to death by whatever the hell i was running away from. Luckily those problems are far and few as most of the time they’ll just run off and get themselves killed way right after you get them so luckily you won’t have a bunch of tailgating mindless zombies blocking your way of escape. Though I did find them useful at only one time, that would be shooting at striders, they served as a worthy distraction and their aiming with the rocket launcher wasn’t half bad.

The level’s themselves are luckily fantastically designed from the totalitarian city 17 to the dilapidated ravenholm. Each level has a distinct atmosphere to it which is nice(unlike the original, I got sick of the facility after about the first 2 hours).  Though I did find it annoying that some parts aren’t as straight-foward as it could’ve been(I’m looking at you pre-citadel invasion), often requiring to find some BLODDY GODDAMN OBSCURE BUTTON!!

TL;DR – Great game, has it’s flaws but lives up to its hype after all this time (as long as you’re not some graphics **** ***** that thinks everything should look like crysis).