Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I feel so very, VERY conflicted about this game. I even considered making 2 reviews for a while, one where I look at this game on its own, and one where I look at it as a sequel to the original half-life. Than I decided that that would be pretty dumb and decided to just make a single thread. Spoilers ahoy. As in the previous reviews, I'll start off by listing the good points. The atmosphere in this game is utterly fantastic. From the second you enter city 17 you see a world and it's inhabitants in shambles. The people are completely without hope, possibly even forgetting what it feels like due to chemicals in the water. The police is utterly brutal and torture citizens for fun. More and more of the city is falling into disuse as the populace decreases because of the reproduction suppression field. Even the ocean feels like a shade of its former self, having lost much of it's volume due to the combine harvesting it. Everywhere you go, you see the ruins of what once was. And it is utterly horrifying. The same goes for literally every single enemy in the game. Their back-story is utterly fantastic, and every single one of them will give you nightmares if you think about it for too long. The two enemies that appear in the game the most are the combine overwatch, humans who have deliberately had most of their brain replaced by machinery which controls them, simply because they had no other way to go, and the headcrab zombies, which despite being dead for years by now, still cry for help. The level design is quite good as well, especially for the vehicle levels, which are a ton of fun. Especially the airboat level makes for a very good experience, as you get to drive over enemy soldiers, perform crazy stunts to avoid missiles and has one of the most engaging boss battles in the game with the helicopter. On some of the other levels, the level design is worse though. The cell blocks in Nova Prospect all pretty much look the same, which makes you largely unaware of where you are in relation to where you were. That also raises something of an odd weirdness in relation to the original half-life. In that game, you would find a lot of locked doors. Later, when you were on the other side of that door (usually by maneuvering through a dozen airvents), you could open it and backtrack to areas you had visited before. Half-life 2 still has the doors, but, with the exception of Ravenholme, you can't open them from either side. It's not a big thing, but it would have been so very easy to implement, and this game really needed a better relation with the original half-life. More on that later. The weapons in the game, while fun, seem mostly generic. You have the early weak but fast handgun, the strong, accurate and slow pistol, the slightly inaccurate SMG, the more powerful but highly inaccurate improved SMG, the shotgun, the sniper crossbow, grenades, the rocket launcher, the gravity gun and the pheropods. The sniper crossbow and gravity gun are my favorite weapons, and are also the least generic among these weapons. The pheropods are also cool, but you only get to use those in part of one level. A special note must be added for the most annoying character in the game: Barney Calhoun. This character never seems to shut up and has the most annoying voice in the game. That alone wouldn't warrant a special note. But this guy was the player character from Half-Life: Blue Shift. God, I can't play that game without hearing that horrific voice and whining like a douche now. All of this would still lead to a great game. The atmosphere is good, the battles are good, and, while a single character is annoying, the rest is not that bad. But I do have major issues with the story in this game. Don't get me wrong, the story is good in most of the game, but there are two moments which are infinitely stupid in this game. After you get trapped in Black Mesa East, Alyx claims that the only way out is through Ravenholme. A zombie infested hell-hole. This is despite there clearly being stairs which would allow you to circumvent the obstruction. And Dog easily being capable of jumping out of the scrap-yard while carrying you. The second one is in citadel 17, where you actually have to lock yourself into a political prisoner holding cell which restricts all movement and will lead to you being brainwashed. Twice. You miraculously manage to survive the first time. So what do you do? Step in one again! Even the enemy boss points out how ****ing stupid this is, just after the mobile prison delivers you to him. And because I mentioned dog earlier, I really have to point out how much of an atmosphere breaker he is. Enslaved humanity, most of the planet's original wildlife is dead, the oceans have been drained and here is a funny robot pet that acts like a dog and is technologically advanced enough to think and feel. There are two other big problems with this game that I feel are related. The first of these is that it doesn't really feel like I am the hero of the story, but more like Alyx is. While I was going through Ravenholme, she somehow broke through the combine invasion of black mesa east. While I travelled through the antlion infested beaches of eastern europe, she must have done the same, because I meet here in Nova Prospekt, where she is the one that frees Eli Vance, gives me instructions on how to win the battles and executes the escape plan. And, when I finally encounter the big bad, she is there as well, in exactly the same position as I am, giving me the instructions on how to defeat them. She is the character that all the other characters have an emotional connection with. She is the character with the special equipment. She is the one that figures out all the problems. I am just the guy with the guns. The second big problem is that this game really doesn't feel like a sequel to half-life. There are no button-pressing bosses, only 2 enemies of the original game returned and both of these have a minimal impact (outside of Ravenholme). Like the doors opening to earlier territories mentioned earlier, it would have been so easy at several points to make the game feel more like the original half-life. Why do we only enter the train on arrival, instead of mimicking the original opening sequence of half-life, where we get to preview some of the coming levels during the train ride? Why do we only get to see the G-man 2 or 3 times? The thing that irks me most is that in half-life 1, I saved the earth from alien invasion. And then in opposing force, I saved it from another alien invasion. And then, In half-life: decay, the rift that allowed any aliens to enter was closed. And then, in opposing force again, the only place where they could enter in the first place was blown up. I guess they sorta explained it with the portal storms, but it just feels like sloppy storytelling. In fact, those last two points have made me develop yet another patented crackpot theory: This game was already largely designed before it was decided that it would be a sequel to half-life. Most of the level designs were kept the same, only you as play Gordon Freeman instead of Alyx Vance. The level where you fight off the combine invasion was replaced by Ravenholme. Three random appearances of the G-man were added. Some random headcrabs, zombies and barnacles were added to the other levels. Anticitizen one was not fully designed at the time of the change, and this is why this level feels the most like the original half-life. Of course, this is just a crackpot theory, but I really wouldn't be surprised if it were true. Overall, the game still holds up very well. It's fun, it's engaging and the atmosphere is just amazing. If this were a stand-alone game, it would have earned a score of 8 or 8.5, with the flaws being slightly generic weapons, non-skippable long dialogue scenes and some stupid moments in the story. However. The game seriously falls short as a sequel to the original half-life as it just fails to capture the feel of that game. This leads to my final score of 7.5. p.s. Yes, I did get the achievement for doing ravenholme while using only the gravity gun. God that place is ****ing scary if you can't just shoot anything. p.p.s. Anyone know of a mod where you have to build a defense using the gravity gun? I would really like to try and create some larger scale defenses.
Last bit: Gary's Mod. Alyx as the hero: You're a scientist. Of course you're not a hero. Redesigned? Maybe. Maybe....
Not officially. She would've been like ~7 during the events of the Seven Hour War. She's just had whatever her dad taught her, and I get the feeling that she's often more of a procurer, eg she steals stuff from the Combine. Remember, she took out 5+ Combine with stunsticks unarmed.
Actually, the dialogue in the chapter "black mesa east" reveals that she is part of the science team and is the person that figured out the xen slingshot teleportation. She also developed DOG into a fully sentient AI that really clashes with the setting. So yes, she is a better scientist than you (she improved the teleportation tech you worked on), a better fighter than you (can actually take out 5 metrocops while unarmed), a better explorer than you (she created a device that allows her to enter much more areas than you) and a better computer expert than you (she can actually use them).
