Part 2

4: Half-Life

It's an unsurprising choice most folks make when noting their "top games" lists. It's an anachronistic choice when made today though. For our supposedly refined taste in games now, many of the elements in Half-Life are just plain silly either in or out of context. Chief among these being crates filled with ammo.

Today, when we play our epic cinematic masterpieces ammo is typically found in the most obvious places, off the bodies of the fallen. Some games take this process of ammo collection and make it an mini game in and of itself, such as recent PC gaming darling Crysis. There, a dedicated press of the action key is required before you can even pick up the ammo. In games such as Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2- The Fall of Troy, the acquiring of ammo is so automatic that not even a sound effect chimes in to mark your pickups.

Meanwhile, in Half-Life, you smash an man sized crate with a crowbar to find exactly one rocket inside. This crate, logically enough, being located within an office complex.

As a staff member of an office complex I can say with great certainty, though not complete, that I have never once seen a missile fall out of a crate.

The beauty of the "smash the crate" action was, however, that it gussied up a the age old tradition of opening the treasure chest with something that felt very real and tactile.

I could list the other achievements of Half-Life- its two dozen different weapons, its unshifting perspective, its realistic level design, its lengthy playtime, its excellent multiplayer, and its fantastic expansion packs- but they all pale to the fact that Half-Life was the first polished shooter.

Compared to the other games I'll be running down on this countdown list, Half-Life was the only title that was feature complete right out of the box. There are no showstopping bugs, there is no need to wait for user content or patches to fix the game, and- most importantly- none of its mechanics are half baked.

Here's an example:

The Health/Armor Stations.

Bungie's Marathon games, forever landlocked on Mac platforms, were the first noteworthy titles to make use of wall mounted Medkits, despite the actual forefather of the concept being a rightfully forgotten title called Corridor 7. Marathon let the player recharge their energy at these vending machines at will.

What Bungie forgot, however, was providing the player with any other means of regenerating life. It became easy to trap yourself in a nigh unwinnable situation because you entered a level with barely any life and no Med station in sight for a good half hour or so. Furthermore, there was absolutely no risk involved in any Marathon map once these stations were discovered. Players could simply take a few hits from a fight, run back to the health teat, then recklessly charge back into the fray with nary a consequence.

Foreshadowing of modern FPS health systems I suppose.

Half-Life, though, offered players the sanctuary of the teat fairly frequently but with a finite number of health points each could bestow. Rather than seeing each health unit as something to suckle on through the entire mission, each had to be used sparingly get the most out of them. A succinct example of Valves "refine not innovate" philosophy.

Although I've claimed much ado about how much was included within the game itself, I can't deny its modding scene saved that game from being just another notch on the bedpost of PC gaming's "unappreciated gems".

Half-Life did give us Counter Strike after all. It also begot: Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat, Vampire Slayer, Action Half-Life, The Opera, They Hunger, Deathmatch Classic, and at least 30 different single player games I can barely remember playing.

In short, that single game could provide someone with enough content to last them at least a decade of games.

It offered me far more, it introduced me to a friend.

Half-Life cannot be undersold in its importance of shaping games we play now.

Go to www.steampowered.com and pick it up for ten bucks. It's the best money you'll have ever spent on a game.