Half-Life 2

Excuse me. Is this the year 2010? It seems I've overshot a bit. Let me just pop back a few years. Maybe I'll bring a few newspapers back with me, surprise everyone in 2007 about just how absurdly bad things have gotten...

Anyway, if you're the one person left on the face of the planet who hasn't played Half-Life or any sequals/expansions thereof, congratulations. You're very, very silly.

I bought Portal about a month ago on the advice of a friend who used to write for this blog, back when it was about a movie we were making. Because I don't believe in downloading things from the internet, the means by which I aquired Portal was the purchase of The Orange Box. It also included Team Fortress 2 (or as I call it, how many different comical ways can you be killed by people halfway across the country) and Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, and Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Again, as if I should even have to say it.

So I beat Half-Life 2 today. And let me just say this. Every single game that has an escort mission, or a co-op with an NPC, absolutely must simply copy Alyx Vance's AI. Okay, yes, she has an absurd amount of health... but at one point near the end of the game, she shows up and the hallway behind her is full of dead bad guys. This is such an improvment over the usual "I'm going to get in the way of your bullets now - oh look I'm dead again" AI that too many games try to saddle your allies with (and, yup, most of the "resistance" members are hopelessly worthless).

In fact, the resistance members are so utterly worthless that I found myself wondering just why Dr. Breen wanted me to surrender on their behalf at the end. He had two of the only three resistance members worth a damn - that'd be me and Alyx, and the extent member was Barney - captive at the time. Really, an all out strider/gunship mop-up was all that was needed at that point.

During the penultimate level, you're running around inside his base making ragdolls of his goons and doing an uncomfortable amount of first-person platforming (the biggest problem I had with the game was the first-person platforming, which is just a no-no), and he's talking to you over his video intercom. At one point he asks something along the lines of "tell me, Dr. Freeman, you've caused all this destruction, but what have you created?" And you know what?

The man had a point.

Not that the game ever gives you the option to surrender, no. It's on rails from start to finish, despite the percieved immersion (complaint number two - number three is the way the game interrupts the action every five minutes to load the next five minutes of gameplay, because nothing but nothing wrecks immersion faster than a time-stop and the word "loading" appearing in front of your face).

Yup, Breen's an opportunistic snake. He probably doesn't had a problem with anything the Combine does or what it stands for. But from his message about collaboration on, it became clear to me that the game's designers had gone out of their way to make sure the villian wasn't just a one-dimensional "conquer the galaxy, crush the lesser races, unimaginable power, unlimited rice pudding" villain. If it weren't for him, or someone like him, would there still even be a society for Gordon to save? In all likelihood, Gordon would have woken up to an inhospitable black rock, or one entirely overrun by aliens.

Let's not forget that the war between the Combine and Earth lasted for seven hours. If aliens showed up right now and wiped out everything you cared about, I think you'd lose all hope. This isn't freaking Independence Day, because the aliens invaded much faster - there was still so much of America left to trash 36 hours after the first blow was struck.

Breen never thought Gordon had a chance, right up until everything went to hell for him. Ultimately it was his lack of faith that did him in. Well, that and my unholy fury. But far more so than Andross in Star Fox 64 or Al-Mualim in Assassin's Creed (my other two favorite games), I liked Breen.

It's a game set on Vichy Earth, where every little detail reminds you that yup, we're all stuck under the heel of a brutal and uncaring regime. Breen put a human face on that (literally), and definitely helped sell the story.