Valve waltzed around the gaming scene in 1998 and created a masterpiece, a game that would for generations be remembered for its design and aesthetics, a remarkable feat that even its successor has yet to achieve. There have been numerous attempts to reinvent this wheel post the era of Half Life, most of which have seen a remarkable amount of attention, but have any come close to the experience of astounding us the way Half Life did a decade ago.
Certain groups of individuals might feel that I should have taken Wolfenstein / Quake / Doom as points of reference. The reason for not doing so is that although they marked the birth of first person shooters genre as we see it today, their evolution (sequels) as modern shooters was seriously hampered. Their basic purpose was to provide a substantial amount of testosterone flow to the minds of players and induce them in a loop that was as addictive as crack.
Half Life on the other hand introduced the concept of a universe which was seemingly normal and did not quite require the player to mash his mouse all the time; instead it introduced a sense of caution and fear that lay behind a corridor. The narrative was constructed in such that there was always a sense of urgency built around the game and player.
Another reason for my choice of Half Life is that the narrative never leaves the grip of its protagonist. This system of progression formulates an interactive environment giving the
illusion of being in control with a linear environment. An experience which is becoming seemingly absent with the evolution of the sandbox. Keeping players attached to a structure is necessary in telling a story.
Most shooters till date rely heavily on the use of a hero/antihero to protect and save their universe and bring a form of sanity in their lives for which they receive the Nobel prize/medal in the end. The hero essentially is a representation of the savior that lies in the abyss of all humanity. Half Life however did otherwise, Gordon Freeman’s tram journey in the beginning of the game signifies him as any regular individual who was going to work.
His actions through the game nowhere point to a solid conclusion of him being the sacrificial meat for a generation to worship him. He is instead portrayed as a nervous physicist who has a date with a large bunch of mathematical calculations at Back Mesa. As the game begins the player’s only goal is to escape from this beautiful nightmare intact. This paraphrase is also present in the end of the game when G-Man asks the player to make the right choice by aligning himself with his employers.
The order of games in today’s generation sees a narrative that is entrenched in a mixed genre, which is neither explosive as Doom (although Serious Sam came darn close) nor as serious as Half Life. I still believe the best period of first person shooters has long elapsed and we now live in an entrapped genre that is bent on moving the shooter to a sandbox environment barring a few.
The Halo universe tried and still tries to do things differently by placing the player in midst of an alien invasion with subtle references to religion, but remains abject to the context of providing an exhilarating experience. Master Chief’s character remains underdeveloped throughout the trilogy, its only through the books can one understand the unique vastness they entire plot actually occupies.
I am surprised Bungie could not somehow connect with the plot writers of the book to the game. The gameplay was an inevitable evolution in the genre, vehicular combat and the two weapon theory added a whole new dimension of gameplay, but there is a serious lack in the game that needs to be addressed which lies in placing great ideas in a better context.
Halo 3 had a few spectacular moments that were either too short, or were devoid of the scale the developers were trying to achieve. The story felt disjoint and clichéd and was not able to find an anchor point for the narrative. The only mark Halo was able to achieve was its terrific enemy A.I. The most dreaded opponents from Half Life were the assassins and the army who was called in to clean up the mess. The Elites in the series prove to be a similar menacing thorn.
I used to find it hilarious that most PS2 owners would crib that Sony never offered them anything as spectacular as Halo (Not that it’s a good game), they all seemed to have forgotten the original Half Life was ported onto the PS2 and no other console.
Half Life 2: The sequel to the masterpiece tries to expand its horizon by placing Gordon in a universe that is far away from the bowels of Black Mesa, the character development remains top notch, but the gameplay experience feels overworked, although the sequel is not devoid of spectacular sequences (“We don’t go to RavenHolm” is one of the finest areas I’ve traversed in modern videogames) but the entire experience feels too vast to accommodate for the original game.
Valve reworked most of the gameplay mechanics to give the title of a true sequel to the game, which is well appreciated beyond words, but the sense of feeling lost and hapless got mingled with politics and the sublime leaving the experience a little less appalling to that of its the original outing.
BioShock: Now this should have sold 8 million copies, after ages I was finally encountered what System Shock 2 had left behind. Narrative, progression, character development remains top notch and varied. The motive of the game is to immerse the player in a mystery that had a variety of twists, but the narrative which held the entire game together began to lose ground as players traversed through the end of Rapture.
The crumbling dystopian world and the critiques of a capitalist system of power seem to reside within an encapsulated body of dichotomies which never seem to reveal their full functioning. The game utilizes a Lacanian perspective to analyze itself in context of need and desire which is quite effective in character progression and is the primary reason why it comes closer to Half Life. The basic aim of the game still lies in the fact of getting out of Rapture in one piece, whatever occurs during the game is more or less contextualized within the purpose of escape.
Far Cry series: There isn’t exactly a critique for a story that has not been done to death a million times; the original allows the players a sandbox environment to blaze through which implies multiple paths to progress from point A to Point B. The only problem lay in the fact that players seemed pretty confused in choosing a path within the sandbox most players felt uncertain when it came to balancing between stealth, gung-ho combat and vehicular sequences.
The game is followed up by an illegitimate and a legitimate sequel. Crysis and Far Cry 2, the former is a huge evolution in terms of visuals which proves that PC gaming still packs quite a wallop and the latter intensifies the nature of sandbox realism by adding injuries, flame effects and alliances amongst mercenaries. The point of contention is that these not necessarily come into the context of shooters for they do not fictionalize and fantasize within a given narrative but give the player the recourse to indulge in his or her own perspective.
Doom III and Quake IV: Well this is straight form a guy who worked on both projects, John Carmack would not allow anyone to change a thing in the game, the father of the genre who created the solution of loading times in a first person shooter via the use of a door separating areas, wanted both these games to mirror their prequels in the absolute similar manner overlooking the obvious evolution that had been brought forward by numerous games within the span of time.
This is only a minor list of games that have tried to compete with Half Life on different fronts, most of which have been extremely successful commercially, but the address goes to the fact that Half Life still remains one of the best “first person thinker shooters” in the planet.
- By Neelesh Mukherjee