Half-Life

Hlaf-Life

By: Sam Kisko

I was unimpressed to say the least. I was looking forward to this one very much and it let me down in numerous ways.

First lets start with the game setup. I have two video cards. A viper 550 w/16 meg and a old 4meg Voodoo 1 board. Half-life does not yet support TnT so the Viper 550 did not work with it. This is obscene since every other game I bought does, and Diamond is simply the industry standard.

The Voodoo 1 board does work, otherwise the game would be trash. The sound is the worst I've heard in a long time. I think they optimized for the four speaker Live or something, because my Sound Blaster 64 Awe sounded scratchy, full of static, and most of the sounds simply did not fit well. This is sickening since the Sound Blaster is a industry standard as well. As for the support for the Live card, who cares? It has competition and may not last another year.

How's the gameplay? I dunno. Maybe I was hoping for more, but it simply did not impress me. The start was slow and jumpy with a lot of loading, and I just wanted to start the action. Of course this was a ways off.

Once the meager plot thickens I'm even more unimpressed. Valve basically stole the entire Doom story, but made you out to be a nerd instead of a marine. Effects are interesting but nothing Unreal didn't do six months ago. Using buttons is tedious and if your one freaking millimeter off you won't hit it. At least they didn't overkill use of them. Gameplay was generally choppy. I get around 80 frames on Quake II, and it looked like less than 20 for Half Life. The textures look out of proportion, and most of them look as if they got them off of a texture clipart gallery.

All of the scientists look the same and they offer no help. "Gordon, get out of my way," "Gordon, don't bother me now," "Gordon, my leg is blow off, leave me alone," "Gordon, find your own damn gun."

As for the atmosphere, they attempted to steal from Doom again and simply could not touch it. The textures are too bright and the terror simply is not there. If your looking for something to jump you off your chair, this isn't it. Try X-Com UFO.

You get the idea. Perhaps I'm just not in the mood to play the game. Shortly after I played a quick game of Quake II, and it simply blows it away. Runs 100% better, plays 100% better.

Games "O" Score:

4.5

Gameplay: 3

Graphics: 5

Sound: 2

Value: 4

Reviewer's Tilt: 7

Difficulty: Medium

Learning Curve: 1 hour