Posted: 14-05-05 In: Editorials By: Munro | (0) comments | Add your comments

Just over five years ago a PC-CD ROM title appeared on store shelves entitled “Half-Life”. It was an instant hit, gaining rave reviews and being toted by over 50 publications as being “Game of the Year 1998”. I bought the game in early 1999, I’d never really been into PC gaming, and the only other first person shooter I’d ever played was GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64. I played it and was absolutely blown away. In fact so were the 10 million other players that have enjoyed the franchise since 1998, including Half-Life’s single player expansions, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Condition Zero and Team Fortress Classic.

What made the game so enjoyable and so successful that the games based on that original engine are still to this day generating more internet usage than Italy’s entire online traffic, and with the hopefully impending release of Half-Life 2, will Valve be able to do it again and run a full decade being the creators of the most successful first person shooter ever?

To write this article I had to play Half-Life again for an hour or so, quite possibly the 10th time in five years that I’ve actually sat through that horrendously long (though equally amazing) introduction sequence on the tram with the intention of actually playing the game more than half way through. I wanted to really take note of what was compelling me to play it yet again. I’ve always said this, the one main thing that makes Half-Life so appealing is that from the very moment the titles fade out you are Gordon Freeman, you feel as though you’re late and have a job to do and this immersion factor of the game stays with you to the bitter end. Every step of the way you feel as though you have to make the right decision because your life depends on it; every time you try to help out Barney or one of the scientists and they get killed, you feel responsible; every time you see the G-Man you want to know who he is, and why he won’t help you. It’s that main factor about the immersion created from the characters, the storyline and the setting that made the game go on to be many people’s favourites and Game of the Year 1998, but why on earth, five years on are Half-Life and it’s variants attracting 75,000 players at any one time; more than Battlefield: 1942/Vietnam, Neverwinter Nights, Americas Army and Call of Duty put together?

Again, I had to load up the game for this part, more specifically I loaded up Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike and just to balance it out a little, two unofficial mods, The Specialists and Sven Co-Op. Parts of the game’s online success isn’t strictly to do with Valve, and then for obvious reasons parts of it are. Unofficial mods like the two above have their immersion factor given to them by the mod teams that have worked on them and so essentially the high quality mods we’ve seen over the last five years has helped make the game. However Valve’s support over the past half-decade, which has been nothing short of outstanding as the product has been fully supported technically and constantly upgraded and fixed as well as the guys at Valve always available to lend a helping hand with mod creation itself. It seems on a whole that all of the above effort, partly from Valve themselves and partly from the mod community has been the perfect combination for the perfect game.

On April 14th 2003 subtle hints were being laid by a UK publication that there would soon be an announcement on Half-Life 2. It soon became official and the frenzy of fan sites, rumours and even screenshots being leaked from a pre-release edition of PC Gamer, and then came the announcement that Valve were to appear at E3 with a major title for the first time since showing Team Fortress 2 in 1999. I never really thought about what they would present at E3, but I do remember how I felt when I watched the E3 demonstration video that Gamespy released. It was back to five years ago when I was Gordon Freeman for the first time, that “feel” and immersion was there again, and I’d figured that out before the G-Man had faded out. I remember being so excited that I was going to have the opportunity to carry the story on. The hype built and built, and the communities grew and grew and then another considerable familiarity from the history of Half-Life reared its ugly face. The game was set back. While obviously we’re still waiting for the game as I type this, I can’t actually help but think, ‘what if this is a bad thing?’. When Half-Life was originally announced it wouldn’t have had much of a following, its following wouldn’t have had such high expectations and the expectations wouldn’t have been benchmarked by the best computer game of all time. Whereas I accept that the delay was probably necessary for the completion of the game it is also true that Half-Life 2 has much more to beat than its predecessors. On the other hand, Valve completely scrapped the original Half-Life once and then delayed a second time during its development phase, and it was doing this that made the game into what it was, so maybe the delay can still be a good thing.

From what we know about Half-Life 2 it will have a very similar formula. It has a story written by novelist Marc Laidlaw, the original and expanded design team, the same characters and I’m sure, the same attention to detail. The game will also have a similar multiplayer experience to it, one with improved net code and even more support for mod teams. Already we have over 300 mods in development, some will make it, most won’t but still for a game that is unreleased with only a modelling application as yet while we wait for the full Software Development Kit, that is still an outstanding following already.

My conclusion is going to be slightly less decisive than I’d originally hoped. My mind keeps swaying towards both ends of the argument. Is it going to be decade or decay for the Half-Life series? It’s so difficult to say but it’s clear to see that Valve are trying to beat and compete with themselves for this title and so far they seem to be winning, but maybe we’ll take a look in another five years time, to see if it does make the decade. Here’s to hoping.