Half Life 2

Half Life 2
First Person Shooter - PC
HD Backup
1 player

Let's not beat around the bush. Half Life 2 is one of the few games that I hated playing from start to end. I didn't really like Half Life either, but I could respect it for what it did. I cannot say the same thing for Half Life 2. It is so completely artificial, that I honestly can not see why it was as well-received as it was.

Following the events of Half Life, Half Life 2 dumps you in its world as a fugitive right off the bat. Consequently, the bulk of the game is simply you running away. It plays out mostly like your average FPS, with the one exception of the gravity gun. With it, you can point at certain objects and attract them towards you. Once you've got a lock on the object and it's floating in front of you, you can then launch it out. So everyday objects like boxes and metal debris can be used as weapons.

Let's start with the good. When the game started, I was thrust in an entirely unfamiliar environment. The surroundings were drab. The regular folk were nervous. The people in power were bullies. It was one of the rare times in a game where I felt really tense due to the immersion. I didn't entirely know what was going on, but that was the beauty of it. You're not supposed to. You only have that nagging feeling that something is wrong. It's a feeling I would experience again later on. What's not so great is that the other time is at the very last stage of the game.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of game Half Life 2 is. Is it a FPS? I suppose. But the shooting action is probably the worst I've experienced in the genre. You face more or less the same carbon copy enemies throughout the entire game. Moreover, they're generally stupid and weak, which makes me wonder why they exist at all. I was thoroughly bored with pretty much every single shootout in the game. Is it a puzzle game? The first Half Life had some puzzle elements to it. HL2 does as well, however it seems de-emphasized. There were probably a couple of instances where you had to do something more than hitting a switch. Then is it a dialog FPS? Not really. Like the first Half Life, dialog happens in first person view with no cut-scenes, so you're always a part of the game. I'm not entirely sure this is a good way to present dialog, because it's boring to simply stand there waiting for people to finish talking. But what's worse is that Half Life 2's story isn't even worth listening to. It's cookie-cutter generic and could be elaborated in a single paragraph. Half Life 2 doesn't really succeed at anything.

Another major problem is the filler. HL2 has a definite beginning and end. But everything in between is woefully inadequate. The stages themselves seem like a string of half developed ideas with no real direction. Nothing demonstrates this better than the awful vehicle stages included. For most of the first half of the game, you'll be piloting a boat or a buggy. Both of them handle like molasses, and neither of them contribute to the game in any meaningful way. When you get these vehicles, most of the time you only need them to cover the incredibly long stretches of the map that would be way too cumbersome on foot. The other times, you're simply running away. The stage that takes the cake is "We Don't Go To Ravenholm". The entire stage revolves around fighting creepy, crawly things and zombies. It feels way more at home as a B-horror movie than as an integral part of Half Life 2. It just further cements my feelings that HL2 is nothing more than a bunch of bad concepts thrown together. Even the gravity gun seems like an add-on as opposed to an integral part of the game. Sure there are certain segments where the gravity gun is required to progress, or can assist in a given situation. But for 95% of the game, it's completely irrelevant. The bulk of Half Life 2 is hollow.

Rarely have I felt such disdain towards a game. Usually I can see some value in what a game is trying to accomplish, or I could see an audience it might be catered towards. But I simply cannot make sense out of Half Life 2. There are no redeeming qualities. What a complete waste of time.

Portal

Portal
First Person Puzzle? - PC
HD Backup
1 player

Portal was well-received when it appeared on Valve's Orange Box in 2007. Assuming it was just your average FPS, I didn't pay much attention to it. Recently, for whatever reason, I decided to watch the official trailer for the game... and turns out I was dead wrong. Portal wasn't an average FPS. In fact, it didn't resemble a FPS at all. So piqued was my curiosity, that I upgraded my archaic PC components and bought the Orange Box just to play it. I expected Portal to be good. What I didn't expect is that it would completely blow me away.

Portal is a puzzle game. It looks like a first person shooter. It controls like a first person shooter. But instead of bullets, rockets and lasers, the only gun you get creates portals. Left click for a blue portal, right click for an orange portal. Enter one, and you'll exit from the other. It sounds very simple, but it's completely brilliant. You can open a portal underneath an object to transport it. You can use a long fall into a portal to propel yourself out of the opposite portal. Your tools are simple, but the applications are numerous.

The game is generally set up in a series of stages, with one puzzle after another after another. The complexity of the solutions ramps up as the game goes along. In the later levels, the game includes laser-guided bots that are out to kill you. Since Portal is not an action-game in the normal sense, your only methods of taking out the machines come down to tipping them over from behind or knocking them down with objects, courtesy of an overhead portal. In these sections, it reminds me of stealth games in how you think of ways to get to the enemy undetected. The fact that the game is done in a FPS-style enhances the experience. Portal placement requires precise angles and locations, so the first person perspective is much appreciated. For instance, many of the puzzles require you to simply observe your surroundings to see what you need to do, and what you're capable of doing at any given situation. First-person perspective works best here, because you can quickly and easily get a full view of your environments.

Ingenuous. Surprising. Innovative. Breathtaking. Atmospheric. Captivating. Meticulously designed and beautifully executed. Portal just does everything right. Maybe for the first time in my life, I have nothing to complain about. Portal is perfect.