| Half-Life | Valve / Sierra | 1998 | |
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Valve licensed the Quake 1 engine (and built in the course
of the game's development time, parts with the Quake2 engine). At first
Half-Life was under the list of announced games rather inconspicuously
(Sin and Daikatana were the ones most anticipated - although Sierra
published full-page announcements for Half-Life for a long time). However,
it turned out to be a huge hit and created a huge and lasting empire.
In the game, you play as Gordon Freeman - a theoretical physicist and
employee of the Black Mesa Research Facility who is a survivor of
an experiment gone horribly wrong, allowing aliens from another planet to
invade Earth. It was inspired by Stephen King's The Mist but script was
from sci-fi writer was Marc Laidlaw. As you try to
escape the destroyed facility you soon discover that you are caught between
two sides: the aliens, and the forces of the United States military which
has been dispatched to cover up the experiment - including you. It had an
exciting story, numerous astonishing ideas, realistic weapons (including
sound aspects), and revolutionary use of numerous in-game scripted sequences.
It was also the first FPS to have: a training segment which is presented as
an integral part of the storyline, blood-splatters and other persistent stains,
semi-random NPC speech and 'interaction' in an otherwise straightforward action
game, and weaponry which needs to be manually reloaded between magazine changes.
The game does not consist of distinct levels. With some exceptions, you can walk
totally free in the game world, even back to the beginning of major sections.
The enemies were the most intelligent ever seen in a
game up to this point (especially the soldiers which provided for adrenalin
rushes without end) and with the free addon Team Fortress, a brilliant
team multiplayer game. Half-Life has also been used as a base for many mods
(add-ons) such as the immensely popular and free multiplayer mod, Counter-Strike.
Other popular mods include Day of Defeat, Action Half-Life and Natural Selection.
All this contributed to the fact that Half-Life brought new improvements
and a lasting impact in the 3-D action genre and remains the best-selling FPS
game of all-time as of the 2008 Guinness World Records. A graphic high-definition
pack was later released as part of the Blue Shift expansion. A shoddy port
to the more modern Source engine was also done as Half-Life Source which only
added some physics gameplay and water effects.
See also: #Black Mesa, #Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update, #Half-Life Add-Ons, #Half-Life: Decay, #Half Life: Further Date V.1 & V.2, #Half Life MP: Opposing Force, Half Life: Blue Shift, Half Life: Deathmatch Classic, #Half-Life Source, #Half-Life: Threewave (cancelled), #PC Gamer: The Extended Play Collection Volume 3, #PC Zone April 2000 Coverdisk: Unreal Tournament, Quake III & Half-Life 500 Levels, #Ricochet, #Underworld Bloodline |
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