Half-Life

The game that transformed FPS titles into a cinematic experience.

IF WOLFENSTEIN 3D and Doom were the forefathers of first-person shooter (FPS) games, then Half-Life was the prodigal son, taking a mildly tired and basic genre and catapulting it into a new age of action and storytelling seen through the eyes of a protagonist.

Half-Life had humble beginnings. It was the first game of Bellevue-based Valve, which back in 1996 was an unknown entity rather than the gaming platform giant it is today.

While Valve now has its own in-house Source engine on which its FPS games are built on, Half-Life used a modified version of the Quake engine developed by id Software, one of the leading FPS makers at the time.

Valve also wanted Half-Life to take a different approach to the FPS games of the 90s. Rather than place a chunky shotgun or rocket launcher into a player’s virtual hands and have them let loose at demons and Nazis for some rather thin reason, Valve’s founder Gabe Newell saw Half-Life as a FPS with a story, puzzles and a horror element that would fly in the face of existing FPS titles.

Half-Life’s unorthodox approach struggled to win it the favour of publishers until the now-defunct Sierra Entertainment stepped in.

Half-Life was released to critical acclaim in November 1998, launching Valve into the stratosphere of game development, and turning the FPS genre on its head.

SHOOTING THE NORM

Rather than opening with a cutscene or shooting sequence, Half-Life started with a monorail ride through Black Mesa Research Facility, in which the game is mostly set. PC gamers of a certain vintage will remember the on-the-rails tour of the facility, with robots shifting crates while the developers’ names popped up in a fashion more reminiscent of movie openings than the start of a game.