At the forefront of Artificial Intelligence

HalfLife (PC)

...and I thought the Unreal AI was good. Halflife stands out above Quake and Unreal in graphics, artificial intelligence and gameplay immersion. Having to use your brain more than your gun really does make a change in the Halflife world.

Not once did I simply charge forward with my guns blazing and survive.

Graphics

In my opinion, Halflife's graphics are but a small factor in the overall enjoyment - but this doesn't mean they're not impressive. Since I was playing this game a couple of years on from its release date and using a recent machine,I could play it in 1024x768 with all options turned on and never get a slowdown. The dynamic lighting is superb, the textures are well done and the eye-candy is all great. Take a look at these screenshots:

A cool addition to the 3D engine was the use of decals. When you shot an alien or soldier, a suitable "splat" mark would appear on the wall or objects behind him/it. You could shoot walls to leave place-markers (or just because you missed your target!). It is cool to back through an area you've had a large firefight in a admire all your carnage and destruction!

This can make the game very violent at times - sneaking up on a grunt with a magnum leaves creates a lot of blood and a suitable stain on the wall. The engine also uses different animations according to where you shot them, making the whole thing that little more realistic/disturbing. There is an option to turn off the blood though.

The team have done an excellent job of making Halflife very atmospheric - Halflife definitely had me jumping out of my seat more than Quake II or Unreal. Since all the technology in the game complemented the rest, it meant that the graphics combined with the sound system combined with the scripting could have you soiling yourself at scrabbling to pull out the biggest gun in your arsenal!

Artificial Intelligence

Here is the real baby of the game, though - the AI was fantastic. The aliens are pretty dumb, they'll run away if they get hurt a lot, but on the whole they were the "Quake-esque" style enemies. It was the grunts and other soldiers that really made the game fun. The first real gun fight with them was one of my most enjoyable experiences in a game. Watching them take cover, then scutter across to another hiding hole before popping a grenade down to your location. It wasn't numbers that made the game hard at points, it was simply the excellent artificial intelligence.

One of the hardest points in the game was spent trying to get past about 8 grunts. Now, in Quake (or even Unreal) single digit numbers could be quite easily taken out with a chain gun or some quick fire weapon. Not the case in Halflife! My first course of action (after a few unsuccessful attempts) was to fire grenades behind a guarded area which took out some explosive boxes and two of the grunts with them. Then I ran forwards spraying the area in front of me with my assault rifle - this discouraged any of the soldiers from popping out of there hiding places. More grenades around corners, mowing down any soldiers that ran out of their cover to avoid them. I then set up laser trip wires to take out any grunts that followed me.

Now, maybe I'm reading more into the AI than is explicitly programmed - but it is the overall effect. Like I said before, the excellent 3D modelling and scripted sounds often made the AI seem so much smarter. You would see soldiers waving to others to move forward, hear them shout "Fire in the hole!" as they threw a grenade toward you, or "Oh #$%!" if you threw a grenade toward them!

Gameplay

The gameplay was also excellent - the environment was highly interactive, the plot was relatively interesting, you'll be dying to know who that government guy is by the end of the game! The maps are rather linear, but they are still interesting to play and the puzzles all seem very logical.

The weapons provide you with a lot of different options, although you'll primarily use only two of them - the assault rifle and the magnum. The best group of weapons is the explosives section - remote-controlled explosive, laser triggered explosives, good ol'grenades and some funky killer alien bugs! Just these few weapons really extend gameplay - the remote-controlled explosives can be used to simultaneously blanket a large area, the laser-triggered explosives are great for setting traps, and the alien bugs are great to keep large enemies busy while you sneak off, or you can use them to clear mines or coax enemies to reveal themselves. Now add a missile launcher, homing wasps, uranium blasters, shotguns, telescoping crossbows and a crowbar and you have some idea of the weapons in Halflife!

The enemies are varied with both alien and human varieties, the levels also switch between Earth-based levels and low-gravity alien levels. The puzzles vary between timing and control precision, to gunfights, to turn X and press Y so that Z kills the big ugly monster-type puzzles. Overall, you couldn't be more satified with a single-player experience.

Something that I will miss since playing Unreal is the bot matches. I'm now done with Halflife, and I don't really feel up to playing the game again. With Unreal I had the bot matches to keep me going and hone my skills with. Luckily for me, I also have the Opposing Forces add-on, but once that is completed my time with Halflife will be done (I'm not a big multiplayer fan since here in Britain we don't get free local phone charges!).

Conclusion

Halflife has it all - beautiful graphics, stunning AI and fun gameplay. I really hope that Halflife has now set the standard for FPS-style AI. It seems a shame that Valve did not capitalize on their excellent AI by adding bot matches. Nevertheless, Halflife's single-player experience makes it worth every penny spent.

Cover 9.0

Platform: PC

Liked: Beautiful graphics, first-rate AI, atmospheric map design.

Disliked: No extended gameplay.

.: Buy at Amazon.com :. .: Buy at Amazon.co.uk :.

Last Updated: 23/01/2001

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