| Monday, December 20, 2004 |
 | Oh thank God. I have finished Half-Life 2. After a while, obsession set in - it's narrative. The narrative conclusion has to be reached, or else what is the point of entering the narrative in the first place?
The careful reader might conclude from that that Half Life 2 is in essence more akin to a novel or a film than the kind of open-ended gaming experience, and he or she would be largely correct. Most of the time, you are moving in essence along a rail, at times literally, and, although action within the environment is highly flexible - you can explore freely, and the physics engine is astonishing, allowing for almost any object to be poked, prodded, eaten or sexed up - well, OK, pushed, dropped, hurled or bounced off each other, really - there remains only one way, generally, to trip the switch, turn the valve or press the button to allow entrance to the next level. That's not really the point, though. The sense of regret you experienced when another security guard bought it in the original Half Life - that's the point. Beautifully scripted interactions between characters, enhanced by massive advances in facial mapping, has created the possibility of something heading for the other side of the Uncanny Valley. Obviously, this can be found in characters like Alyx Vance (my. Girl. Friend), but it's elephants all the way down. When I set fire to my first zombie, the basic cannon-fodder baddie from the original game, it screamed and begged for help. That is, the game told me that, in its universe, the humans taken over by bargain-basement facehuggers and turned into lumbering monsters were on some level still self-aware and, which means in turn that every zombie I chewed through with buckshot in Half-Life was going through Hell. Definitely a shudder moment, and I think one of the best uses of in-game dialogue for atmosphere I've seen since Deus Ex.
The art direction is fantastic, as well - it's a coherently-imagined world, beautifully realised. If anything, too many environments are realised. Although the sense of mysterious technology and of races with incomprehensible motivations is a part of the charm, a little more explanation would, I think, have created a more satisfyting experience. Maybe I was overthinking, but even by the end of the game I still wasn't clear on whether I had actually been doing the right thing; just being a rag-tag army of rebels does not necessarily make you the good guys. Of course, I may have missed some Easter eggs, which sounds like me tempting myself to go back into the Matrix.
On a more pacific note, new Dykes to Watch Out For. Bet you don't get that and flaming zombies in a single post too often...
0 Comments:
| |
