Aside from Ravenholm, though, Half-Life 2 doesn’t offer this same level of tension, excitement, or wonder.Īnd then there’s Xen. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Emergency lights fill steel corridors with an ominous red glow, pools of radioactive sludge block your path, and broken gas pipes shoot jets of flame every which way. Throughout, the Crowbar Collective expertly captures that feeling of a world sinking into the abyss, just as Valve did over 20 years ago. To this day, the unfolding, escalating horror of the Resonance Cascade is something that few other games have managed to beat You move through experimental laboratories, office cubicles, and rocket silos, desperately trying to outrun the invasion forces and the facility’s total collapse. Each level has a logical consistency and believability to it. Survival is Freeman’s number one priority, crowbarring his way through a lethal mix of military and alien assailants. The beauty of Black Mesa lies in its simplicity. But Freeman’s path to overthrowing this tyrannical government just doesn’t seem as plausible, or as consistently engaging, as his journey through Black Mesa. After following one vaguely defined objective after another, it eventually becomes clear that you’re supposed to lead a resistance force against Earth’s new occupiers. It’s an undeniably fun experience, but one that lacks the focus and subtlety of its predecessor. Heck, the finale even lets you throw enemies around like ping-pong balls with the supercharged Gravity Gun. The player’s journey is one big power fantasy, turning Gordon Freeman into a messianic figure and arming him with vehicles, turrets, robo-dogs, and Antlion buddies. HL2 is geared towards action-packed gunfights and bombastic set pieces.
If Black Mesa is like Ridley Scott’s Alien, then Half-Life 2 is the James Cameron sequel. Half-Life 2 lacks the focus and subtlety of its predecessor And after the better part of two decades, the visuals are in desperate need of a spit shine. NPCs constantly get under your feet (don’t get me started on Barney). The driving sections are long-winded and marred by poor vehicle handling. Ravenholm is celebrated as the game’s outstanding moment of horror and atmosphere, but it stands out because those things slip away afterwards.
Dialogue sections, for example, become tedious on repeat playthroughs, leaving the player with nothing to do but wait for the AI to unlock the next section of the level. But its dazzling visuals, along with the Gravity Gun’s mesmerising ability to pulp enemies with sawblades and broken lavatories, hid all manner of sins. Half-Life 2 was jaw-droppingly beautiful when it first landed. And you’re caught in the middle of it all.
The military is brought in, initially to the relief of the disaster’s victims, until it’s discovered that their job is not to save you but silence you, and they mercilessly pick off any remaining survivors. As your two worlds collide, the fauna and flora of the extra-dimensional Borderworld threatens humanity’s very existence. Extraterrestrial tentacles burst through floors, dragging unlucky scientists to their deaths enslaved Vortigaunts stalk the darkened hallways and your undead former colleagues wander about the facility, parasites gripping their skulls. To this day, the unfolding, escalating horror of the Resonance Cascade is something that few other games have managed to capture. And yet, I prefer Black Mesa to Half-Life 2.īlack Mesa plays out like a classic disaster movie. The graphics were shiny, the guns were new, and the story was thrilling. Jetsam and flotsam bobbed up and down in canals, explosive barrels peppered enemies with shrapnel, and Combine soldiers tumbled realistically down stairwells and over railings. The adventure was not just complemented by visual splendour but also some groundbreaking simulated physics. We trekked across Antlion-infested highways, battled Hunter Choppers on the narrow walkways of a rickety bridge, and toppled a tyrannical government with the aid of a giant canine robot. Half-Life 2 was a revolution in gaming, transporting players to a world that barely seemed possible.
After struggling to download patches for the game through some weird program called Steam (it’ll never catch on), the community would finally see what Valve had been working on for the past five years.
Half-Life 2 had finally lurched from the depths of development hell, overcoming source code leaks and a series of costly delays. Nvidia’s 6800 GPU was the new kid on the block, mechanical drives wept at Doom 3’s crushing 2.2GB storage requirements, and the Pentium 4 was still the go-to CPU.