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Xbox | Action | Half-Life 2

Boxart for Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 72 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 5.0
  • SOUND: 5.0
  • CONTROL: 4.5
  • FUN FACTOR 4.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.7
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.6
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

First Look: Half-Life 2

First Look by Sid Shuman | 07/22/2005 | 23:31:31 PM PST

Valve's paying special attention to the strengths of the versatile Xbox controller to make Half-Life 2 the smoothest, sleekest Xbox shooter yet.

Half-Life 2 blew away PC players with its innovative combination of jaw-dropping graphics and immersive first-person gameplay. Scarier than Doom 3 and more intense than Halo 2, Half-Life 2 is a legend. And lucky Xbox owners are finally going to experience that legend first-hand.

Twice the Life, Half the Calories
If you're not already in the know, Half-Life 2 tells the story of quantum physicist Gordon Freeman, a stranger in a strange land. In the first game, he blasted bizarre trans-dimensional parasites; now he tangles with the totalitarian, otherworldly forces controlling City-17, a post-apocalyptic city-state. According to Valve's President, Doug Lombardi, the primary development goal on the Xbox was to "make no sacrifices to the gameplay or the (visual) effects." That's the reason why Valve developed the product internally, rather than risk shipping it to a careless outside development studio. Valve was able to plumb the very depths of the Xbox's power by harnessing streaming technology, an uber-efficient technique that pulls data off the game disk only as it's needed. By pushing the Xbox's capabilities to the limit, the developers even squeezed a few extra visual frills into the game. You'll now see light blooms and advanced High Dynamic Range lighting, two innovative special effects making waves in the PC sector.

The Single Life
Slick graphical tricks are all well and good, but shooter fans have bigger questions. Most notably, how's the gameplay shaping up? Valve's paying special attention to the strengths of the versatile Xbox controller to make Half-Life 2 the smoothest, sleekest Xbox shooter yet. And yes, it will support custom controller configurations. But for online warriors, there's one surprising bit of bad news: Half-Life 2 is a strictly single-player experience. Valve is quite interested in implementing online multiplayer, but that will have to wait for next-generation consoles. The lack of Live multiplayer is a shame, but it's also understandable: adding a multiplayer mode at this point would surely delay the game well into 2006, and console players want this game now. After seeing what we've seen, we don't blame them one bit.


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