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A must buy Playstation 2 game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 35 / 44
Date: August 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

My brother works for Valve software (the people who made Half-Life) and I got to test this item myself. This is the best game for the Playstation 2 so far I would say. The controls are remarcable compared to the PC version. But, if you liked the original controls with the keyboard and the mouse, you'll love this. Half-Life supportes the USB ports. So hook up your mouse and keyboard and get playing!

The graphics are also stunning on this game. They are enhanced very much from the PC version. And, if your concerned about the framerate, no fear, it runs as smooth as silk.

There's also a multi-player mode and a co-op mode on Half-life, so you can compete against your friends in a deathmatch, or try and get place back to normal by fighting side-by-side.

I gave this a 5/5 because... IT'S THE BEST FREAKIN' GAME FOR THE PS2 YET!!! If you liked the original, you'll love this one.With totally revised graphics, and new multi-player mode, this is a must buy for the playstation 2.

(there's also a rumor around valve about online play)

good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 27 / 31
Date: November 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Let me tell you a little secret:I never finished half life on the PC.I know it's sacrilegious,but hey,it was the fall of 1998,and my consoles were calling to me with stuff like Xelda and Metal Gear Solid.Now,revisiting HL on the PS2,i'm reminded of just how amazing this game is.Although it's looking a little outdated in the graphics department {even with the upgraded PS2 visuals}, HL can still hold its own against prettier newcomers like Red Faction.The saving grace here isn't how good the story is {it's rather cliche actually},but rather how well it unfolds in the context of the game.You're never at a loss for where to go next.Sure, the lecels are ultimately linear in design,But none of the areas feel contrived or unnatural.It's also one of those games loaded with a ton of cool moments.Trust me,no amount of hyperbole on my part can prepare you for the shiver inducing stuff you'll see in some of the later levels.Believe it,HL's single player experience is unrivaled.In multiplayer,however ,HL is a disappointment.Decay,the two player co op mode is too short,and with its head to head and weapon modelsin two player head to head and weapon models in two player splitscreen only further hampers the deathmatch experience.Despite these heart breaking shortcomings,i can honestly say i had more fun playing HL on the PS2 this month than i ever did on my PC three years ago.And yes,i finished it this time.

It's no HALO, but what is?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: January 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

OK, I'll begin by saying I own all game systems. N64, PS2, X-Box, Dreamcast,and Game cube. I've played every FPS game released (I know, sad huh....) and I concider myself an authority in this arena. That said, Half-Life is the current game in my PS2 console. I had never played the PC version so I didn't know what to expect. I went through the in-game training and then began with DECAY. The co-op play was fun. What I found kinda cool is that you can play the co-op version by yourself.(One controler, switching back and forth between player 1 and 2. ) AI keeps the non-user alive and even helpful during battles but you have to advance BOTH players. Play it, you'll see what I mean. Although DECAY was kinda short, 12 levels, A grading system offers bonus levels if you do well. DECAY gets 3 stars.

The Main game is where the real action is. The levels are long and progressivly more difficult. The lock-aim feature is invaluble. AI is incredible. Fighting both aliens and humans keeps the game alive and the sound, WOW. The story line is one of the best I've played and the weapons are easy to use. I also enjoyed having to solve the mind puzzles along the way. Not puzzles really but more like "how the hell do I do this....."

So, why is it no HALO ? Well, if you have to ask, you have never played HALO before. For starters, The communication voice often gets lost in the music and action noise leaving you wondering what it is you need to do. Not that you have to stop and restart mind you, the game is linier in nature so eventually you'll figure out what it is you missed. Next, the loading pauses take place too often for my taste. It slows the game. The graphics are less than should be expected for todays PS2 games but still very detailed. Even with these minor things, the game was addicting. Don't turn it on if you only have an hour to play, you'll be late to where ever you need to be.
Oh, and one other thing.....go play HALO. Did I mention HALO?

A good game-will ALWAYS BE a good game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: January 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Half-Life is unquestionably the best game on ANY platform ever made and no one can possibly deny it. It has gotten over 50 awards from a bunch of different publishers and companies, and PCgamer rated it "The best PC game EVER!" And I totally agree. When I first got this game for the PC I was inspired. Yes, the game is so inspiring in every way when it comes to graphics and fun factor and everything else that this game makes me wish I could create something this spectacular. I have a new urge to take on a career to make stuff like this, all because of this little CD by VALVE and GEARBOX.

People new to the game need to get a better understanding of Half-life's wonderful factors, so I will tell some. This is one of the first shooters that was written by an author, which means it actually HAS an interesting story. In Half-Life, you do not just play the game, you FEEL it. Every event and "level" has some importance to the deep tale being told. The artificial intelligance is so spectacular that they will speak, help, and interact to you, and they always do at least something new, each time you play the game. I don't want to go too in-depth ABOUT the game because I'm sure some other people have already explained it, but I will tell you why it is very important to buy the Playstation 2 version over the PC version, even though it's a bit more expensive.

Using the powerful Playstation 2 hardware, the characters are actually smarter than on the PC. I'm not lying, either. I have both versions and the difference between interaction is a million times better, plus your foes make better decisions to take you down. One time, I was playing the PC version, and ten military soldiers were gunning me down. I dove through a door and pushed a box in front of it. The soldiers just stood there and threw grenades at the door, doing virtually NO damage to me. Then, I tried the same thing on the Playstation 2, in the same spot. The military were SO smart that they actually ran up, kicked the door down, and ROLLED in with their guns blazing, immediately taking me down. At the same time, they were yelling, "DIE, GORDON! and one of the soldiers waiting outside of the dorr, was actually signaling the rest of his squad to come and help kill me. See the difference in artificial intelligance? You will when you play. I hope that was enough about AI to give you an idea.

In addition to that, the graphics have gotten a major facelift from the original. Characters have completely articulating fingers, event-dependant facial expressions (if a scientist is running from an alien, he will actually look SCARED rather than having the lifeless robotic look like on the PC)and more detailed bodies, such as individually rendered walkie-talkies on soldiers and labcoats that breeze in the wind on scientists. Even med-kits and power stations have full, animatronic features.
Even the cars in the Black Mesa Research Facility have breakable windows, seats, and doors! In one simple phrase; EVERYTHING looks and moves better.

There is even an aditional mode where you can pair up with one of your best friends in a multiplayer co-op game, called decay. Decay places you as two women hazard course trainers who partake in the horrible incident. You will have to work together as real people to stay alive. You can also try it on single player with a highly intelligant "bot" running the second player instead of a friend. This addition features new characters and many new levels, all included in this spectacular package. Speaking of multiplayer goodness, there is also a deathmatch mode, where you can battle another friend in custom-made deathmatch levels. Yes, this game is packed with 2 player goodness. Even the MAIN MENU of the disk is better, with some cool techno music playing in the background to set the mood while you fully configure your controls (by the way, you can hook up USB keyboards and mouses to your computer if you are the ultimate PC Half-Life god; that way you don't have learn new buttons on the PS2 pad)and adjust sound and video. If you have a widescreen TV, don't fret; 16:9 Letterbox video is also available for use.

If you're a cheater, there are some very nice goodies for you. When you buy the game, enter these after going into options, and opening "cheat codes" section.

1.slow motion button enabled
Click "enter cheat" and press;
right, square, up, triangle, right, square, up, triangle.

2. Infinate Ammo
Click "enter cheat" and press;
up, triangle, down, X, up, triangle, down, X.

3.God Mode
Click "enter cheat" and press;
Left, square, up, triangle, right, circle, down, X.

4.Invisible
Click "enter cheat" and press;
Left, Square, right, circle, left, square, right, circle.

5.Play as an alien
Click "enter cheat" and press;
Up, triangle, up, triangle, up triangle, up, triangle.

Of course you can only use these if you buy the game, so you have to grab a copy; some of these codes are exclusive to PS2.
There's so much else to say, but I don't want my review to turn out way too long. In a nutshell, half-life is barrels of fun, and it is even better on the Playstation 2 (WAY better) than it once was. Half-Life is a life changing experience, especially in one-player. If you are a serious first-person shooter fan, and you don't have Half-Life, you aren't a serious first person shooter fan. Get it NOW!

From a non-1st person shooter fan

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: April 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Lets start this with "I don't like first person shooters" I have allways found them somewhere between silly and disturbing. I have tried many of them and none made it past an hour or so. With that said: I could not stop playing this game. It had an actual story, albiet a weak one, but a story none the less. The Graphics are good, the controls tight and the load times were not to bad. The training mode is very good and you go into the game with all the skills needed, so you don't spend a half hour dying because you can't control the character.

One thing that it offers that stands it above the rest is the puzzle aspect. Frequently they are obvious, but there are times when you don't really realize you are working them out. That stands out. The game is emersive and flows well, so you don't really "think" about what your doing, you just do it.

If you are a hard core 1st person shooter type player, I don't know what to tell you, but if you are like me and either a casual gamer or have never really liked them, give this one a try.

If ya played it on PC, ya played it here

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: August 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Well, they didn't screw it up. That may seem like a back-handed compliment, but in the case of Half-Life, which many of us consider the greatest computer game ever made, this is high praise indeed. The classic tale of Dr. Gordon Freeman's encounter with government duplicity, a science experiment gone wrong, and horrid visitors from another dimension are all here as they were. Even people who have never touched a first-person shooter know the story. In the middle of an experiment with a mysterious substance, a portal to another dimension opens, spilling into Dr. Freeman's world thousands of grotesque creatures. He must make it out of the Black Mesa facility to find help. Early in the adventure, he discovers that the U.S. troops are already here, but for some reason they are shooting at him. Why would the government want to eliminate all witnesses to this strange alien invasion? That becomes the mystery of Half-Life, still one of the great ones all these years later, even with dated graphics, poor voice acting, and the inherent limitations of a gamepad. To say that Half-Life is a well-balanced, finely orchestrated single player experience is to slight a design that has never been equaled. It is the measure of a tightly scripted adventure. Freeman starts in the bottom of Black Mesa and makes his way up, through ruined halls and air ducts, across radioactive pools and up enormous ventilation shafts. The genius in this machine is the pace. Freeman is challenged relentlessly but never tediously by ceiling and floor cave-ins, timed explosions, loose electrical wires, and of course a menagerie of creatures that all look variously like animated slabs of meat on feet. While much of the action takes place in an underground lab (and some in surface locations), Half Life maintains a remarkable feeling of variety. The assortment of enemy challenges and obstacle puzzles is so ingenious that you forget that you are spending most of your time among gray institutional walls, and the wave after wave of problems somehow never feel forced. The designers make the usual assortment of FPS conventions live by pulling Freeman and us into the strange conspiracy at the heart of the game in a natural, unobtrusive way. Even the best of game designs can be killed by poor control, and in the FPS category it is especially hard to get a console controller to have the speed and accuracy of a desktop mouse, which is the way God intended us to play shooters, after all. The Half-Life control scheme is about the best we have seen on the PS2 or any console. Front, reverse, and strafing commands fall to the left control stick, while up, down, left, and right pivots go to the right joystick. Shoulder buttons handle jumping, crouching and firing, while the directional keys flip through the weapons inventory. It takes mere minutes to get used to the scheme, in part because the action is so responsive to the controller. Since aiming quickly is very tough with a joystick, Half-Life for the PS2 institutes lock-on targeting, which lets you lock your aim and track on a moving enemy. It is a helpful feature, in most cases, but unless you hit the lock-on button a second time to release the targeting, your gun seems to be inexplicably locked just when you need it to blast that wet sock of an alien that just crept up behind you. Half-Life has a modest arsenal compared to most shooters (rifles, remote-detonated bombs, grenade launchers, etc.), which is fine since this is one shooter that stresses level design, puzzles and plot rather than pyrotechnics. The same holds true for the graphics. It looks as if Sierra's developer Gearbox lifted all of the fuzzy texture maps straight from the three-year-old original. The enemy and ally bodies have gotten an upgrade, more detail in faces and bodies, but this game is not pushing PS2 hardware by any means. HL was always strong on sound, and the same is true in this port. The ambient tracks are menacing throughout, and many upcoming situations are telegraphed by distance sound cues. While the masterful single-player mode is the feature attraction here, the PS2 Half-Life adds a new co-op mission called Decay. This scenario follows the same timeline as the main storyline, but you play part of it through two female characters who are elsewhere in the Black Mesa complex. A single player can switch back and forth between the characters in order to overcome various puzzles, or two players can play in split screen mode. There is also a head to head mode in which two players run a split screen deathmatch for a designated time on select levels. While nice add-ons to the original Half-Life, Decay and Head-to-Head modes are no reason to buy this port. But that's the good thing about this game. Even if you did play it years ago, it is worth a revisit in this competent translation to the PS2.

Great fun for a while, but gets old eventually.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: July 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Keep in mind I'm writing this review from the perspective of somebody that played the game in the last six months, and not when it first came out. Back then first person shooters (FPS) weren't all the deep in the story department and most of the time players just saw the "storyline" as something getting in the way of shooting anything that moves Half Life came onto the scene with radically new thinking on several fronts.

The biggest one was intelligent enemies. There was more artificial intelligence put into your opponents so as they didn't just run up to you and attack like the monsters from Doom and Quake. They took cover, laid suppressing fire, tried sneaking around you, and all other sorts of tactics. Back in 1998 you didn't much of that in a first person shooter.

The second innovation is more what the fanboys say about the game rather than the truth, and that's a storyline. Indeed Half Life had a plot that you followed throughout the game that made shooting the bad have a little more depth, however it wasn't all that. Games like the System Shock series and Thief already gave you superior FPS storylines. Half Life was just the popular one.

And that's where we come to how this game stacks in the new millenium. I played it on PC back in 1998 up to a point, but never finished. I ended up finishing the game with the PS2 version. That plotline only takes you so far as much of the action in middle gets extremely tedious. If you don't mind just shooting and solving jump puzzles without much story to inspire then I guess that's not big deal. However these days more engaging plots on FPS games is the norm.

Gameplay is pretty good for a console FPS. The target lock system helps make up for the lack of the keyboard/mouse configuration and the rest of the controls fit fine with the PS2 controller. The graphics are supposed to be enhanced, but I couldn't see all that much of a difference from the original Half Life game set to high resolution on the characters. I believe the bitmaps for the walls, skies and such is where the major graphic improvements were. Either way the graphics are indeed dated.

In the end Half Life was a good game to play for the most part. Only there were some very long stretches where I wished the game would just end already due to lack of any depth beyond getting past the level. The "wow" ending left me a bit underwhelmed after all those boring levels (again you're talking to someone who played it recently... I bet back in the day it was awesome).

What's the verdict? If you can find it cheap by all means get the game and experience the highs (and lows). I hear this game is being redone with the new HL2 engine, so at that point I would say it's up to you regarding a revisit when this happens? As for me I don't regret paying the $10 finding out what was good and bad about this game.

Excellent

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: August 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As stated before this game is dated by a few years and huge years in game development. I took that into consideration while thinking of how many stars this game should get. The graphics while not great (by todays standards) are really very good and the intensity factor is huge. The controls are very sensitive and if you loose your cool under pressure you may find yourself missing your target due to over or under aiming, but hey its better than sloppy inconsistent controls. All in all i would rate this game right up there with the much loved Halo. The graphics arnt as good but the story and gameplay is and as a sci-fi fan i find this game very hard to put down. Lots of mutants and monsters to kill and if your low on ammo you might even wack a guard and steal his.....just a thought. Enjoy.

Most thrilling fps on the ps2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. It's the scariest shooter on the PS2-with a brilliant storyline. Here are the pros and cons:
Pros:
Great graphics(graphics really shine when you see the detail drawn to all character people models and weapons models)
Nice audio
Immersive Innovative creepy brilliant game-play system design
Most brilliant storyilne ever written
Tight add-on-decay provides quite a difficult but worth it cooperative experience
Good battle royale mode
Incredible AI
And more

Cons:

Frame-rate isn't that smooth throughout game-play
Doesn't include blue-shift
It came out on the PC first
no multiplayer online compability
And more

So overall half-life is a unreal experience, and is truly worth it on the ps2.

Bring the challenge on.

Good solid FPS, can become a little tedious though

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Half-Life is certainly a good FPS title for the PS2. It's very reminiscent of Voyager Elite Force or Red Faction. You play the game as Gordon Freeman, a scientist in a secret research facility. Something goes horribly wrong and a portal to an alien world is opened up and you find yourself battling a variety of alien monsters and even government soldiers sent to kill you and cover the whole thing up. In the end, you will travel to the alien world for the final showdown.

Overall the game is a good game with decent graphics and sound. It has a "save at any point" feature which greatly enhances the playablity. The game plays basically as a continuous "movie" with few cutscenes and fairly decent loading times. The control scheme is almost identical to one used in Voyage Elite Force, however you have to learn that your weapon does not necessariy aim where you're looking.

I enjoyed the game and found it addicting, however I began to tire of it in the final missions. This game is longer than most recent releases, and even on the easy level, I found it to be pretty difficult, especially in the later stages. While most of the game involves fighting enemies, a fair amount of your time is spent solving puzzles and in the end, it became more about making tedious jumps rather than fighting aliens. After awhile, jumping from point A to point B gets a little tiresome.

This an enjoyable game worth the investment but be advised that it can get tiresome before you finish. The game is better than 3 stars but in my mind, maybe not completely deserving of the 4 star rating, primarily because of the "tedious" factor.

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