Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

My love for the first-person shooter genre stretches back nearly as many years as I’ve been playing video games.  It began with iD Software’s incredible Wolfenstein 3D and continued years later with Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough on the Nintendo 64.  I certainly missed out on plenty of greats — Doom, Quake, and Marathon, just to name a few — but Goldeneye deathmatches and epic World Is Not Enough bouts of King of the Hill were enough to cement shooters as the go-to option for multiplayer funtimes.

And then came Halo and the Xbox.  Combined, the two ushered in a tidal wave of shooters for home consoles, online gaming became a viable multiplayer option from the couch instead of the computer chair, and I was utterly hooked.  Most of the shooters from this period weren’t so hot, but enough stood out and held their own that there was always something new to play, some new carnage just begging to be wreaked.  Unquestionably, it was — and is — my genre of choice.  Which brings me to the series at hand — Half-Life.  If there’s a game in the FPS stable that’s more highly regarded than Half-Life 2, it’s a narrow victory.  Deus Ex and Bioshock spring to mind, but in the Fall of 2004, Half-Life 2’s long-awaited release absolutely blew minds, balancing traditional shooting mechanics with a brand new, cutting-edge physics engine to continue the story of one seriously badass bespectacled scientist, Gordon Freeman.

I tried getting into the PC version at the time, but overlong, obnoxious vehicle sections soon killed my interest.  And no matter how firm the convictions of PC shooter enthusiasts were, I could never quite buy into the ease-of-use of WASD movement — those four, oh-so static directions, lacking any distinction from their fellow keys.  Yeah, the accuracy of the mouse will always beat an analog stick, but why on Earth would I prefer rows of identical buttons, hard to distinguish by touch alone, to control every given action, when an input devise molded to fit right into my hands existed out there in the world?  Answer: I wouldn’t, I don’t, and I willingly abandoned Half-Life for the multiplayer excellence of Halo 2 until, at long last, Valve brought their masterpiece to the Xbox 360 in the form of The Orange Box.

This was it, right?  This was the time to finally appreciate Half-Life for the incredible, unrivaled game it is.  Truth be told, I bought the box when friends and I were kicking around for something to do, and we were pretty curious about Portal, which certainly didn’t disappoint.  Fast forward to this past Saturday, a year and a half after buying The Orange Box, and I’m finally current on Half-Life, having beating HL2: Episode 2.  Things have definitely changed since 2004: the Source Engine’s textures and geometry aren’t nearly as impressive as they once were, and Halo 3 beats the pants off Valve’s own HDR lighting.  Even so, the physics and character animation are as strong as ever — maybe even better — and the supporting cast shines with more life than any other NPCs out there.  And it was that supporting cast that really made me understand why I’ve never don’t jump on Half-Life like so many other shooters.

The shooting simply isn’t that fun.  In fact, I feel like Half-Life under performs significantly from a gameplay standpoint.  The movement feels floaty and imprecise and the weapons lack the tactile satisfaction or “oomph” of superior console shooters.  Even walking around and trying to interact with objects produces an unpleasant EHH sound, something I can only conceptualize as a shoddy remnant of a PC interface.  The weapons don’t come up short in killing power, but something about the way the entire game handles leaves me constantly frustrated, wishing for the ethereal quality of movement and shooting that Halo so effortlessly conveys.

And so the guilty admission is out: I think the shooting in Half-Life 2 and its Episodes ranges from frustratingly mediocre to competently good, at its best moments.  But despite every annoying moment or unsatisfying shootout I found myself in, I rarely had the desire to quit because Valve is absolutely unrivaled when it comes to telling a gripping narrative from the first person.  No elaborate cutscenes, no flashy video interludes — once you’re behind the eyes of Gordon Freeman, you are Gordon Freeman for the long haul.  The dialogue, character animation, and voiceovers are so flawlessly delivered, unraveling the next part of the plot provides a constant incentive to keep on truckin’.  And the plot, itself, that overarching narrative that spans so many games, represents one of the richest sci-fi realms in gaming, and the silent protagonist never damages the storytelling — if anything, it allows for other characters to receive considerably more attention and development than they would in a game with a tough-talkin’ hero.

Valve seems to be improving as they go, too — Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was a marked leap over Episode 1.  The mechanics were the same as ever, but the firefights, especially when Hunters entered the picture, were more fun than nuisance.  And if Episode 2 proved anything, it was that its predecessors were sorely lacking in Vortigaunt sidekicks.  Episode 3: Rise of the Vortigaunts, please.