Half-Life 2 Preview

Half Life 2 is one of the biggest hyped games of all time.  Half Life 1 redefined the First Person Shooter genre and it appears that’s exactly what Half Life 2 will do.  During a presentation at the ATI booth at E3, Doug Wood the animator for Half Life 2 showed a video demo that showed off the gameplay (in different areas than what was shown at last years E3) and even showed off a Multiplayer version!  Once again there is no way to actually describe just how amazing the game looks from the demo and how incredible the game appears to play. 

The video starts off with a well animated face talking to the screen, speaking to Gordon Freeman.  The face kept repeating the phrase “Wake Up, Wake Up” over and over again.  The animation on the face was very impressive and the lip synch looked very realistic.  The demo then moved to actual in-game footage.  Gordon is shown in a building where it appears the police are investigating citizens inside of the building.  Some of the citizens are shown talking to Gordon and mentioned that the police can always find a reason to stop them.  The demo showed the police knocking on someone’s door in the building and then later busting the door down.  As the demo moved on through the building we see other characters within the game consoling each other stating “Everything will be ok.” 

Next an announcement was made by the police that the building was under investigation or quarantine.  It wasn’t quite clear as to what the police were doing in the building.  But earlier while looking out a window you did see the police surrounding the building.  Doug Wood mentioned that you will have complete freedom to explore the world just as you did in the first Half Life.  The demo then moved on to actual combat within the game with Gordon driving a dune buggy like vehicle.  Insect like creatures were chasing after you in the dune buggy but you were able to drive over top of them with the vehicle.  There was even a scene where you drove over another human character within the game, presumably another police officer.  The much hyped physics engine took over as the officer dropped like a rag doll. 

After jumping out of the dune buggy, Gordon uses a machine gun to mow down the insect creatures and take out the soldiers.  As the demo moved further in the stage one awesome combat sequence was shown.  One of the enemy officers threw a grenade at Gordon.  The demo then showed Gordon picking up the grenade and throwing it back at the officer.  Once again the physics engine made this look absolutely amazing.  Then another amazing section was shown as Gordon fired an RPG missile at an enemy sitting atop a crane.  When the soldier was hit he literally flew what appeared to be hundreds of feet in the air and then land several feet away from the crane.  Incredible!  The last scene shown in this area, which is a dock/harbor stage, had Gordon getting into the magnetic crane.  He then turned on the crane and lowered it down to lift up one of the large storage units you see at a harbor.  He then dropped the storage unit on top of several officers.  The physics engine kicked in again with everything from the unit to the soldiers reacting to the environment and crash.  Awesome!

The next area shown was a town called Ravenholm.  Doug Wood described this as a horror type setting where you will need to use all of your skills and abilities within the game.  One of the first things you see is part of a corpse hanging from a meat hook.  Very graphic and gory stuff.  Once you get near the torso hanging another mutated creature attacks.  The creature is covered in blood and looks disgusting.  As the demo moved along it showed Gordon busting down a wooden door and then picking up different items inside the building.  One of the items picked up was a huge industrial saw blade that appears to be used for cutting trees.  Gordon picked up one of the saw blades and then threw it at one of the mutated creatures.  Then creature was then cut in half with the physics engine making this look incredible. 

The next scene in the demo showed off the AI in the game.  The scene had Gordon working with the NPCs in the game to fight off the huge spider like creatures present in last years E3 showing.  The NPCs were working together to take out the creature by moving in different areas on the stage and trying to back each other up.  Gordon was backed into an area in front of a building and then the spider like creature blew up part of the building.  You could see the columns in front of the building blowing up and crumbling after the explosion.  As mentioned several times already, the physics engine made this look amazing.

Then Doug showed off the multiplayer aspects of Half Life 2.  Everyone will probably be very surprised that what the developers have done is take Counter Strike and port it over to the gameplay engine powering Half Life 2.  Everyone in the presentation was full of oohs and ahhs.  The Aztek stage was displayed in the presentation with all new graphics that looked amazing.  Once again the amazing physics engine made it seem like a whole new game.  One incredible example shown was the shooting down of one of the terrorists on the wooden bridge.  The terrorist acted to the shot and then fell over but didn’t fall off the bridge.  He was left dangling from the bridge by one foot.  The frame rate did stutter a little during the multiplayer demo but this should be corrected by the release this summer. 

Half Life 2 is looking to become one of the biggest events in gaming history.  Everything you loved about Half Life returns with so much more this time.  The graphics are simply amazing and the physics engine is outstanding.  Other games have started to use similar engines for physics but Half Life 2 seems to have everything working almost flawlessly.  The developers even announced that Half Life 1 will be re-released later this year using the same engine as Half Life 2.  This looks to be a great year for Half Life fans! 

For All E3 2004 Previews