Video games - Half-Life

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	Video games - Half-Life

Half-Life is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game developed by Valve Software and published by Sierra Studios in 1998, based on a heavily-modified Quake
game engine. It was first published for PCs running Microsoft Windows, and was later ported to Sony's PlayStation 2 and Sega's Dreamcast video game consoles, although it was never officially released in the latter's case.

Half-Life, often shortened to HL, has been heralded by computer game critics for its gripping and atmospheric presentation of the plotline, which would influence the development of other first-person shooters in the years to come. It was among the first games to feature a story that was told entirely in-game and in real time, without the use of cutscenes. Half-Life is also known for its (at the time) sophisticated enemy AI. Its own success continued for years with expansions such as Half-Life: Opposing Force
(OP4) and Half-Life: Blue Shift
(BS), mods such as Counter-Strike (CS), Team Fortress Classic (TFC), Deathmatch Classic (DMC), Ricochet and Day of Defeat
(DoD), and its sequel Half-Life 2
(HL2). Half-Life won over 50 "Game of the Year" awards from numerous publications and was named "Best PC Game Ever" by PC Gamer in its November 1999, October 2001, and April 2005 issues. It is the best selling PC first-person shooter to date.

Single player

The game is set in a remote area of New Mexico at the Black Mesa Research Facility, a fictional complex that bears many similarities to both the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Area 51. The game's protagonist is the theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, a survivor of an experiment that goes horribly awry when an unexpected resonance cascade (an apparently completely fictitious occurrence; see also 1, 2) rips dimensional seams that devastate the facility. Aliens from another world - known as Xen - subsequently enter the facility through these dimensional seams.

As Freeman tries to make his way out of the ruined facility to find help for the injured, he soon discovers he is caught between two sides: the hostile aliens, and the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, a military force dispatched to cover up the incident — including eliminating Freeman and the rest of the scientists. Throughout the game, a mysterious figure known as (but not actually referred to in-game as) the G-Man regularly appears, apparently monitoring Freeman's progress. Ultimately, Freeman uses the co-operation of surviving scientists and security officers to work his way to the mysterious "Lambda Complex" of Black Mesa, where a team of survivors teleport him to the alien world Xen, where he must kill the Nihilanth, the creature keeping Xen's side of the dimensional rift open.

The game's plot was originally inspired by the computer games Doom
and Quake
, both produced by id Software, Stephen King's short story/novella The Mist, and an episode of The Outer Limits called "The Borderland." It was later developed by Valve's in-house writer and author, Marc Laidlaw, who wrote the books Dad's Nuke and The 37th Mandala. However, the more influential aspect of the single player mode is not the plot itself, but rather how it is presented to the player.

The game tells the story by flowing into scripted sequences that are integrated as part of the game rather than as cut scene intermissions. These sequences range from the introduction of major plot points such as the resonance cascade to bringing the player into a particularly difficult part of a level. Two of the intended results of this style of presentation were to increase immersion and to maintain a contiguous narrative that keeps the player's interest.

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Video games - Half-Life

Single player

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