I remember the day I finally had a computer powerful enough to play the first Half Life game. I eagerly installed it and watched as Gordon Freeman the hero of the piece is taken through an enormous network of underground tunnels to his place of work. You play Gordon Freeman an MIT Scientist who unfortunately sets of a reaction that causes a portal to open up into another world. That’s when things start going horribly wrong.
Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman. Rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No-one is more deserving of a rest. And all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until… well, let’s just say your hour has come again. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes.
G-Man
Built by Valve in 1998, Half Life was one of these games that just stunned you. It was a totally immersive experience that made ‘you’ the lead character of a movie. There was no cut scenes, your character Gordon Freeman never speaks. It is essentially you playing that lead role.
The Games
Half-Life—the debut title by Valve Software—took the PC gaming world by storm upon its release on November 19, 1998. Winning over 50 Game of the Year awards and selling more than eight million copies, Half-Life still reigns as the best-selling FPS of all time. An alternate version of the game called “Half-Life: Decay” was released for Playstation 2 on November 15, 2001 as well, offering different player characters and an all-new storyline.
Built off of a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, Half-Life boasts much-improved graphics, artful ingame scripted sequences and one of the most immersive storylines of any game to date! Gameplay includes a mix of intense action-oriented combat and various puzzles, all combined in a continuous and immense world.
The player again picks up the crowbar of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth being picked to the bone, its resources depleted, its populace dwindling. Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed back at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him.
The game is set two decades after the Black Mesa incident and the world has certainly changed since then. Under the employ of the ambiguous and so-called G-man, Gordon Freeman is deposited on Earth for reasons unknown, and, joining forces with the resistance science team ultimately sets forth on an adventure that pits him against the totalitarian alien menace of the Combine, in an effort to save the remnants of Earths dwindling population.
The Cast
Gordon Freeman is a fictional character, the main protagonist of the Half-Life video game series. He is a theoretical physicist (Ph.D. from MIT) who finds himself thrust into a battle for survival against both alien and human forces. Throughout the series, Gordon must prevail in hostile situations despite overwhelming odds, often without backup. As a means of immersing the player in the role, the character never speaks, and there are no cut-scenes or mission briefings.
Alyx is the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance. Her mother, Azian, who is of Asian descent, can be seen in a family photograph appearing in the games but died during the Black Mesa incident (the event depicted in the first Half-Life game). Alyx was only a child when Gordon Freeman was employed at Black Mesa, but Freeman’s stasis between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 has erased most of the age gap between the two characters.
G-Man, is a mysterious recurring character in the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games. He is known to display peculiar behavior and capabilities beyond that of a normal human, and his identity and motives remain almost completely unexplained. He plays the role of an overseer and employer, both observing the player as the games progress and pulling strings to control the outcome of specific events throughout the Half-Life saga.
Barney Calhoun is one of the main characters of the Half-Life series. He was a security guard at Black Mesa before becoming a key Resistance leader. From Half-Life: Blue Shift and onwards, he turns from the Half-Life generic security guard into a standalone character, is given a surname, and an expanded role.
Dr. Eli Vance is a brilliant physicist and researcher, an African-American man apparently in his late fifties or early sixties with short gray hair, a beard and moustache. He wears a prosthetic leg to replace his left leg beneath the knee, which was lost when he was attacked by a Bullsquid while helping Isaac Kleiner climb over a barrier to get into City 17.
Dr. Judith Mossman first appears briefly in Red Letter Day, in which she is attempting to stabilize Gordon Freeman’s damaged teleportation. In Black Mesa East, she meets Gordon Freeman at the entrance to the facility and tells him of the research that is being conducted there as well as her deep admiration for Freeman. Although she is obviously very fond of Dr. Eli Vance, she briefly quarrels with his daughter, Alyx Vance. Dr. Mossman disapproves of Alyx’s light-hearted approach to science.
After finishing Half Life we then had to wait over five years for the sequel and what a sequel it was. Half Life 2 broke all boundaries in the world of gaming. The graphics were out of this world, the atmosphere created in the game was tense and the classic opening scene where you walk out into a totalitarian 1984 style world and are then catapulted full tilt into a game of cat and mouse with a alien race is just exhilarating.
Facing up to the Combine in Half Life 2
As the game develops you unravel the mystery of the Combine and their reason for them being on earth. Each level takes you deeper into the apocalyptic world and you go from driving along desolate highways to heavily fortified ports until you reach the end of the game where you end up in guerrilla warfare in City 17 where the game is based.
Episodes
After the release of Half Life 2, Valve the developers of the game announced that future installments of the series would be episodic in nature. Two were released and continued the excellent story of Gordon Freemans adventures.
Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first in a trilogy of episodes that serve as the sequel for the 2004 first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2. It was developed by Valve Corporation and released on June 1, 2006. Originally called Half-Life 2: Aftermath, the game was later renamed to Episode One after Valve became confident in using an episodic structure for the game. Similar to Half-Life 2, Episode One also uses the Source game engine. The game debuted new lighting and animation technologies, as well as AI ’sidekick’ enhancements.
The game’s events take place immediately after those in Half-Life 2, in and around war-torn City 17. Episode One follows scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they fight in humanity’s continuing struggle against the transhuman race known as the Combine. When the story begins, Gordon wakes up outside the enemy’s base of operations, the Citadel, after being left unconscious from the concluding events of Half-Life 2. During the course of the game, Gordon travels with Alyx as they attempt to evacuate the city. As the game comes to an end, Gordon and Alyx are caught in a major accident, and both of their fates are revealed in the sequel, Episode Two.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the second installment in Valve Corporation’s series of episodes for the first person shooter computer game Half-Life 2. The first two episodes of Half-Life 2 were developed concurrently by separate teams. This episode was released as a part of a bundled package, The Orange Box. A separate copy of Episode Two is available via Steam worldwide.
Continuing with Valve’s policy of orienting each episode around a particular theme or set of technologies, Episode Two aims to focus on expansive environments, travel and less linear play. Following the closing events of Episode One, it sees Gordon Freeman and the series’ other major players moving away from City 17 to the surrounding countryside.
Episode Two’s retail version was released on October 10, 2007 in North America and Russia for Windows and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 after repeated delays. The version for the PlayStation 3 was to be released “around two or three weeks later,” as it was produced separately at the Electronic Arts UK studio, according to Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi. This version was further delayed. For the rest of the world, the release date was October 18. The Steam version was released on October 10, 2007 worldwide.
The Future
Valve have always said that a third episode of Half Life will be released but we have now eagerly been waiting for nearly three years and there has only been a handful of screenshots to whet the appetite.
Some rumours circling are that it will actually be a full length game like Half Life 1 and 2, others says its waiting on technology to catch up with the game, but personally I feel they have been concentrating on Steam too much and have taken their eye off the ball. I suppose time will tell.
I can’t wait though and hope to be playing before I grow old and get grey hairs………oh wait a minute…
Tags: Alyx Vance, G-Man, Gorodn Freeman, Half Life, Half life 2, Valve
