Graphics and Sound

One tough geezer

It has been two years since Half-Life was released, but somehow it manages to look not-that-bad when put beside its modern competition. Deus Ex, the Thief games and System Shock 2 are arguably just as bad looking, if not worse, yet their success clearly indicates that fancy graphics do not make the game. Of course, when Half-Life sits next to Quake 3, Mechwarrior 4 or even Unreal Tournament, the disparity in quality is very noticeable.

Going up

My middle name is danger!

The High Definition pack succeeds in its primary goal to improve the quality of the graphics in the Half-Life games, but obviously even with the pack, Half-Life cannot compete with Q3, MW4 or UT for sheer graphical impressiveness. Still, there are some things that the High Definition pack seems to do better than any of the three games I mentioned. The quality of speech animations, with showing teeth and realistic facial movements is unsurpassed. The fluidity of motion in certain characters remains as impressive now as it was when Half-Life was released. Then, there are things that the pack can't improve, like texturing, lighting or special effects. The textures in the game, especially those that make up the levels and larger objects, look cartoony and plain, while many special effects have a certain "B-movie" feel to them.

The design of the game hurts its graphical splendor in some areas by highlighting its weaknesses, and covers it up in others. The emphasis on a "real-world" basis for Half-Life certainly makes the level texture shortcomings obvious, but enhances and is enhanced by the excellent modeling and animation. All in all, the High Definition pack is a better-looking Half-Life, but still Half-Life. We also appreciate the fact that it can be used to enhance all three games - Half-Life, OpFor and Blue Shift.

Nice detail

Models? Great. Textures? Pass.

Eek! What was that noise?

Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock 2 proved not only that graphics don't make the game, but that sound is extremely important to gameplay. Would any of those be as fun or spooky if you never heard your enemies? Would they even be playable? Would you be scared if creepy music didn't turn on at the right moment? Of course not.

Half-Life had some of the best sound effects ever when it was released, and it still does - thanks to a certain stagnation in sound technology in today's games. With 3D positional audio a standard feature now, there seems to be little left to be done. Half-Life had that feature way back in the day, and had excellent sound effects recorded then. There are games that sound better, mind you, but not by much. Blue Shift uses stock Half-Life sound effects, which is great for continuity and quality. The music might be a little different, but it blended in well enough to avoid being noticed (a good thing). There are multiple tracks which are properly matched the situation. The only problem we had with the music was the time it took the damn CD to spool up to speed. Every time the CD is accessed for music after a long period of inactivity, the whole game locks up until the music plays - annoying to say the least. Perhaps this is just a problem with the 5X slot-load Pioneer DVD player we were using for the review.

Into the water we go

Boom goes the garbage disposal