I had a hard time deciding what score to give Half Life. It was very very fun, but it had a difficulty curve that made me cry and all angsty for a bit. Should I dock the whole game for one issue? The decision: NO... so Half Life: Source gets EPIC WIN.

Half Life was Valve's debut game title, and you can see where their quality comes from. Half Life contains a metric ton of story, all told during "live" cut scenes, where you are the main actor and you see the world react around you.

There's plenty of strategy to be found; Half Life isn't a generic shoot-em-up. There's platforming action, there's puzzles, there's enemies with weaknesses that you have to figure out... it's surprisingly deep; pretty much the antithesis of what a non-shooter expects from a shooter.

I've had to use a walkthrough three times, not for major problems, but just for little issues where I miss a small detail that "gives away" the solution, or sometimes miss the dialog from a character. However, generally I was able to get through the game all on my own, in about 18 hours of continuous gameplay (this also counts time paused while I went to get something to eat). The only advice I would give is this: if you can't figure a problem out, try "use"ing (E key on my map) ON EVERYTHING. Eventually something will happen :D

My only beef with the game is the final boss. The whole game trains you (including your time on Planet Xen) that healthpacks and item refreshes will be at hand whenever you need them. In fact, I was always impressed because Valve has excellent placement of items for a player like me... I'd be limping along almost dead, turn a corner, and see a HEV suit and First Aid dispenser on the wall. HALLELUJAH! However, the final boss is not only tricky, but annoying, and severely lacking in powerups. He transports you to trick rooms (three of which... and you must beat them all before you can properly kill the guy) full of tricky situations. There's heal items there... but it's not easy to pull off. It just frustrated me that after 18 hours of moderate difficulty I suddenly hit this nearly solid wall of pain. Quick saves are awesome for mitigating the pain, but still, the final boss pissed me off!

I committed what may be a sin. I passed the -dev switch to Half Life and using the console ( ~ ) entered "god". God Mode allowed me to finally beat the boss, after a full game of not using any cheats or any other aide more than hints from speed scanning choice paragraphs from walkthroughs. *sigh* Well, I still have my save file, so I can beat the game properly later.

Half-Life is in the "good old game" category, but is worth buying today if you've never played it. I'm glad I didn't go straight to Half-Life 2... Half-Life is in and of itself a very playable and fun game. And worse case... there's always god mode.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, SUPPLEMENTAL:

I forgot to add this to the original review. The first black mark on the game was, like my sucking at FPS's, not Valve's problem, but a lack of education, shall we say. Unfortunately, Steam games do not come with instruction manuals, you just have to dive in. Which lead to trouble.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered, after an hour of game play, that (unlike Portal, my previous experience with Source games) Half Life doen't have save points. If you die, you revert back to your own last save point. Which wouldn't have sucked... had I known that I needed to make my own save points along the way. So, for first time FPSers like myself thinking of buying Half Life: set the Quick Save key in options to something handy, and use it whenever you've passed a point you don't want to have to do again. Then, when you die, you'll respawn at your save point. Multiple uses of Quick Save also let you back track a bit should you need to without having to play the whole game over again.