*DRUMROLL*

This is it… possibly the most unexpected review/article of all
time.

Half-Life 2 comes to Just Adventure +.

Well, we reviewed Doom
3, so it was felt within the ranks
that Half-Life 2 really had to be
done. If not a review, a discussion, if you will…

*cough*

Do you know something? I feel pressured here! It’s not easy following
up the most publicly criticized review of all time – but luckily,
thanks to one Petter Holmberg (whose comments are shaded in gray),
I’m not alone. Here we are, collectively staring into the precipice,
wondering exactly why the most hyped up action game of all time is
being talked about on the biggest adventure site of all time. Well….
why?

Because we can, because
we want to and, frankly, because we need to. Many (not all, of
course) adventurers only concern themselves
with developments within our own favorite genre and may not know
much about this game, either through choice or simply because they
don’t follow the mainstream rags. We’re also going to explain
why you should be interested about what its developers, Valve, have
brought to the table. We’re not going to talk about the action, insofar
the story and presentation and how the technology behind it helps
to suck you straight into another world, or rather, another time
and space.

Throughout this piece,
we’re also going to be talking about other recent adventures to
see exactly what features the engine that powers
Half-Life 2 could bring to them. Although not necessarily worthy
of comparison directly, being a completely different genre, we’re
going to be talking about them as a counterpoint as to exactly what
adventure games could be doing to involve the player further. This
doesn’t necessarily mean moving away from 2D, but as far as storytelling
and how they do it, Valve have created the “next big leap” for
gaming narrative far beyond anything we’ve ever seen so far. Not
to say that it’s startlingly original, but the application of the
use of narrative and digital avatars are of primary interest and
it’s worth looking at the game in-depth to understand what
it is we’re on about…

ALL STEAMED UP…

So, onto Half-Life
2. The first thing Valve has concerned themselves
with, even before you’ve set foot in City 17 where the game takes
place, is modern piracy. If you’re interested in buying the game,
you can get it one of two ways – either on a DVD from your local
games shop, or by Internet through their own online distribution
system, a program called Steam. Either way, if you download it or
manually install, it requires registration before you unlock the
game in order to play it. Files are then compressed onto your computer
for you to play online or off, so an Internet connection is required.

Insofar as stopping pirates
and online gamers using illegal copies, so far it’s a system that
is only semi-successful. “Warez” copies
of HL2 are freely available on the Internet, proving that the system
can be broken, but on the other hand Valve has used it to ban illegal
Steam multiplayer accounts to great success. There is also the problem
that Steam may be down when you register. For me, its just another
big barrier in-between the consumer and the product. While I can
appreciate a company taking steps to protect itself from piracy,
as proved by the pirates themselves it doesn’t work. Where it does work is for the multiplayer element, but for some reason Valve has
taken it upon themselves to use it for the single-player side of
things too.

What with recent issues within our community with regards to various
copy protection, and the current discussions as to whether it’s needed
or not, it’s a bit of a blow to see the big boys playing with even
bigger toys. What can be learned here is that copy protection, from
this moment on, is only really going to get more obtrusive. Whether
that’s justified or not is another matter.

Steam also introduces the concept of automatic updates and patching.
Half-Life 2 is not without its problems – a fair few people, including
myself, have encountered audio stuttering to some degree in the game,
ranging from severe to practically unnoticeable. While one can appreciate
the sentiment behind it, the silent patching process often introduces
code to your game that doesn’t always improve performance. A recent
patch caused my frames-per-second to dip incredibly low, but thankfully
the general community manages to find manual workarounds quite quickly.
Personally, I’d prefer to have more control of the information being
put on my machine, particularly when performance is affected without
the ability to rollback.

Unfortunately, to play the game you have to use the Steam program
and suffer the consequences should a patch create a problem, at least
until a fix is created. It’s a shame, but for multiplayer fans it
does provide an easy way to find games and provides access to download
other Valve games and free content. I’m really of two minds as to
it’s necessity for a single player game, as a recent patch to remove
the Securom program – meaning you have to retain the disc to play
in the drive – was welcome.

ALL ABOARD… THE NIGHT TRAIN!

Now that that’s out of the way, onto the game itself. Valve keeps
the presentation slick and clean throughout from the logo up until
the extremely clever menu page. Immediately, you’re greeted with
a fully 3D view of a square in a city… somewhere unknown, but recognizably
European. In the distance beyond a threatening metal gate, a giant
black spire rises into the heavens. A crow flies up into the vista,
and your eyes are drawn to military guards walking about clad in
armor and sporting gas masks shaped like distorted skulls. In the
air, small drones fly around photographing everything that moves.

…and that’s just the menu.

It should be noted that
my PC is rather midrange, but it was rendering this complex scene
in really quite high detail with crisp textures
and it looked really quite something. Valve have created a new 3D “engine” named
Source which comprises of various programming routines
that allow it for all sorts of fancy graphical techniques. This includes
the
ability to render crisp textures on even medium settings and create
multi-layered surfaces (i.e. shiny metal crusted in rust, the reflective
surface of the skin) on even a relatively outdated machine, as long
as you have a Direct-X 9 compatible graphics card. And it does it
superbly. Not everything’s perfect, as load times are quite high,
but for what you’re presented with these minor nuances are forgivable.

The other thing the Source engine allows for is the best physical
acting I’ve seen from a real-time 3D game. Actually, in terms of
nuance, the characters in Half-Life 2 are even better than such recent
cinematic endeavors as Final Fantasy and The
Polar Express, they’re
really that good and the creepy G-Man is one of the first actors
you meet. This leering, cold suited figure greets you as you step
into the shoes of Gordon Freeman, the eponymous hero the player was
introduced to in the previous game. But don’t worry, there’s no actual
need to know anything about the original Half-Life other than Gordon
appears to now work for this bizarre man. His real-time rendered
features are incredible to behold when you think it’s your own PC
doing all the work. As he brings you up to speed, scenes from the
original and from the game ahead flash in the background.

What’s remarkable is the
way he is presented. He feels real. It’s a true step up in game “actors” –
true, he’s not quite perfect, but the way his eyes look at you
through the monitor and
the extraordinarily convincing acting that accompanies it win you
over. Unlike a lot of the more static 3D in-game characters, like
for example those in The
Moment of Silence or
Syberia,
the G-Man is full of movement. The engine is capable of rendering
mouth and lip movements in real time to any soundtrack or language,
and the facial rigging is more complex than any other game to date.
His skin is created out of multi-layered textures and as he smiles,
the corners of his mouth wrinkle… the details make him, importantly,
very believable. This is something only recently developed for this
engine alone, and it’s something which is also being used in another
recently-released Source based game, Vampire The Masquerade:
Bloodlines.
While comparatively incredibly buggy and less polished to look at,
Bloodlines makes great use of this technology to render spoken branching
conversation trees with many non-player characters. This is something
that would work remarkably in an adventure and really put the player
in the game more than just relying on just good voice acting and
script and would help make it more believable. A good argument could
be that if you had an excellent script and voice-acting (but let’s
face it, how often do we see both of those nowadays) you wouldn’t
need this. But just the thirty seconds or so spent in the presence
of this 3D avatar makes you realize how important graphics can be
when creating a character.

As for the mute lead of
the title and his use within the game, the way it’s presented does
bring to mind Myst IV: Revelations.
As Revelations moved on from an otherwise static intro to letting
the player explore and get used to the surroundings and comparably,
so does Half-Life 2. In fact, the first 20 minutes or so are completely
action free and actually supercede Revelations in terms of content.
After the G-Man says his good-byes and fades out, a train and two
passengers fade in and you take over. Remarkably, the two men stare
straight at you through the screen and despite the complexity of
the moving train-carriage, with it’s dirty leather chairs and stained
windows looking out into the station beyond, have the same great
acting as the G-Man – even if the models aren’t as detailed.

All of this is nothing
without great design. Stepping off the carriage, the train station
looks grimy and realistic, sunbeams coming through
the glass above, posters stuck on the walls and various detritus
scattering the pavement. A small flying camera flies towards you
and takes a photo, momentarily blinding you with its flash. On high,
the main enemy of the title, the administrator Dr Breen, is broadcast
via a large hologram and introduces you to City 17. “It’s safer
here,” he intones as you round the corner to see a soldier (the
alien oppressors are known as The Combine) threaten a man as he tries
to take his luggage away. Going to rescue him, you’re pushed back,
watched on by a woman clutching at a set of bars calling to see if
her lost husband is on the train. It’s a great piece of acting and
design – the soldier genuinely seems threatening and when pushed
(or amusingly if you throw rubbish at him) chases and attacks you
with an electric baton. Moreover, the place where this happens feels
real, yet ever so slightly dreamlike.

A game like The
Moment of Silence could really benefit
from such a realistic and encompassing world. In fact, imagining
the TMOS gameworld utilizing the power provided
by the Source engine is really quite an exciting prospect. The core
gameplay may not benefit, but the detail and illusion of life in
Half-Life 2 during these sequences – particularly a little later
when a group of apartments are raided by the same soldiers seen throughout
the intro – really helps elevate the title above others and transform
it into an experience, rather than merely a game.

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