Halflife – frist approach
Yes, I know, this game has been around for a veeeery long time but it was my first time to try it out, just as a test to approaching the classic FPSs. HalfLife in its first incarnation was a really defining piece of engineering and created a stream of followers. It is now my turn to look at this classic and compare it to … well Doom, CS:GO and Halo.
gameplay
let’s be honest here, one cannot decide on the game after having barely completed the intro, but .. this was a good intro. the play is smooth, you manage a character that is running around some imaginary sub-terrain facilities, tackle obstacles. pretty good design. The intro makes it easy to understand the game basics, is very interactive and easy to follow. Basically, i was shown key operational capabilities – from walking / running to jumping and activating newly found objects. With only the intro / training behind me, i can tell that (especially for a game of that age) it is great.
story
right – no story here, as i basically went through a help / user manual. even this one is quite impressive – you get to run around trying various movement techniques. teaches well
graphics / design
it’s the early 2000 we are talking about here. the movements are smooth, occasionally loading content made me wait a split second, i’m sure that would have been fixed if my machine was fully ready. the one feature of the screen design is … it is very orange. it feels a little bit like the old DOOM i recall from the years past. texture of the walls and general surroundings makes the graphics less accurate, which of course is playing into benefit for the technical implementation . movements are smooth, picture well behaving, the avatar of yourself but also others are moving quite naturally. good compromise between number of details and the movement smoothement.
economics
nothing. zero. yes, you’ve heard it – the only economic aspect is that you buy a box (or electronic version thereof) from Valve and you can play. that is it, you dont even have to be able to count to 100 to play. somewhat disappointing. you can’t have it all, i guess.
technical dexterity
right, so, here we probably need a time machine to move back to the late ’90s to be able to comapre. as of today, the technology is not super duper, but it does what’s on the box – gives you a first person experience and you can shoot and run and jump etc. Overall – very positive.
IPLAYEDTHISGAME 