Online Gaming - Half Life 1,2, & 3

Half Life 1, 2 and 3

Half Life was first released for the pc on 19th November 1998 and later released for Ps2 on 15th November 2001.  It’s a science fiction first person shooter game and is seen to be the best selling PC first person shooter game to date with 8 million copies being sold since its initial launch.  The game was one of the first of its type to feature story that was told in real time without having to use cut scenes. The story is adapted through scripted sequences and the player is kept in the game at all times.   

The majority of the game is set in a remote area of New Mexico in the Black Mesa Research Facility which is a fictional building.  The date is May or December depending on the calendars in the game and the year is 200X which is somewhere between 2000 and 2009.  The games main character is theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman.  As he arrives for work, he is told that there has been a system crash causing him to have to wear a hazardous environment suit.  He is the survivor of an experiment that went wrong where an unexpected “resonance cascade” rips dimension seams into the building allowing aliens (Xen) from another world to enter through the dimensional seams.  Upon the aliens entering the building, Freeman realised that he must escape and upon doing so is caught between two sides, the aliens and the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit which is a military unit set up to cover up the incident.  Freeman must use the help of surviving scientists and security officers to get to the “Lambda Complex”.  It’s only in this complex that a group of survivors assist him in transporting him to the alien world of Xen where the creature known as Nihilanth must be destroyed to close the dimensional rift.  During the game there is also a strange figure known as the G-Man that appears regularly, he is first introduced at the opening of the game when a man in a blue suit watches Freeman take his tram ride to work at the complex.  It is the G-Man who offers Freeman a job at the end of the game and who in turn places Freeman into a stasis.

Half-Life 2 was released on November 16, 2004 and is the second in the Half Life series.  It was originally released as a window based game.  However, the game has since been made available to the Xbox console and will be released sometime in 2007 for the Xbox 360 and Ps3.  Half-Life 2 is completely set in City 17 and its here that the game picks up.  It shows the G-Man taking Freeman out of the existing stasis and placing him on a train to City 17 many years after the Black Mesa incident.  This time, the world is being overtaken by aliens known as the Combine.  The Combine is soon alerted to Freemans arrival into City 17 and he must make his way out of there.  He makes his way to Black Mesa East, however the combine soon start to attack there leaving Freeman to escape again.  City 17 is soon turned into a warzone and after a reactor explodes, time stops.  It is at this point that the game stops as it began with Freeman being placed back into a stasis by the G-Man and leaving through a door of light.

Through both Half Life 1 and 2, Freeman never speaks and all the action is only ever seen through his eyes.  In both games, the gameplay is depicted by a series of puzzles.  The difference between the two is that Half Life 2 contains physics-based puzzles.  There are lots of the same enemies on both games such as headcrabs, barnacles and headcrab zombies.  The majority of the same weapons appear in both games and the traditional crowbar, firearms and SPAS-12 shotgun all feature.  There are also new weapons with the gravity gun being one of the best.