Video-game reviews, rants, pants and purpleness

Friday 5 December 2008

Title: Whats So Good About Half-Life?: We're No Strangers To Love/Gunplay



Good evening ladies and gentlemen, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then we will begin. The half life series (god how many times am I gonna use them words) has always been praised for it's 'high octance, adrenaline pumped action and gunplay. But... well.. whaaaaaats so good about it? I mean, your put in a blocky room, pit again repititve enemies and eventually work into different puzzles and quests.

So... we're all no strangers to gunplay aye? If you've never played an shooter, plaay one like... like now. It's like your virginity, your first time will always be remembered.... and guess what the first FPS I played was? Thatsa right... Half Life. It was 1999 and in the dim room of my friend's house, I was only like 6, 7 years old, I saw this orange thing on his computer screen, I swear I pooped myself when the headcrabs came at him, I thought it was so realistic.

Ten years on and you realise, what the hell where they thinking? Hell yeh, I'm going against Half Life, and you've only just realised it... my house is gonna get burned down by the time I finish part five ain't it? Well come and get me valve fanboys, I've got a crowbar and I'm not afraid to work out to use it properly...



Well, let's start this ranting machine for good shall we? There really is no tactics in half-life, unless it's in the online deathmatch or whatever, just grab a rifle, hold down te fire button and zoom through hallways like theres no tomorow. Now tat I play it, there is no action or gameplay whatsoever, just mindless shooting around corridors.

At the time, it was considered to be the golden age of FPSs before the mass-market landed, so you'd expect Valve to make an effort and push the pony along, well they didn't really, in fact you could probably relate it to a lot of shooters today! Mindless killing for 7 hours with cinematic interloudes and a generally effortlessly put together story!

Generic hallways and rooms didn't help either, in fact it only made it worse through design, and honestly, Half Life is like a box of wood shavings (level design) added to a pool of custard (shooting and gunplay), I don't honestly think theres a more muddled fps tha came from that time, it didn't even know what it was half the time!

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Half a decade later and nothing much changes, some muddy design, same muddy weapons, same muddy levels and just about same enemies. Valve didn't do anything really but give a new slap of paint, pused it into some 'revolutionary plot' and then said ''get to it''. The thing I don't understand is why after all these years, are people still playing it?

I mean c'mon, you've still got a muddy, unorganised design to deal with - the guns have all changed names and skins and the enemies still bleed the same blood? I don't know what runs through the veins of hardcore half life players, probably gordon freeman's sperm or something. Which reminds me... why the **** doesn't he talk?

But that's for next week my friends, as the penultimate thing of whatever this is is like posted and shiz, stay tuned for Plot, Story and Characters: lol i'm mute

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