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Last Update: 02.12.04

Half-Life 2: the second half of the life that you started living in the original Half Life

Already it's -3 months before the expected release of Half-Life 2, and talk about the game is heating up. For example, I found some guys that were talking about it and put them in the microwave. To make sure that the game is received with all of the enthusiasm it deserves when it comes out -3 months from now, we here at Trainsaw were granted an exclusive sneak preview of the game to review for all the rest of you. That's right—nobody else has seen any part of this game, at all. This is 100% exclusive.

First off, the title is kind of confusing. I figured that instead of "Half-Life 2" this one was sure to be called "Full-Life." It's not the first thing to be horribly mis-named, though, so we'll let that slide. Half-Life was such an immense success that the game's fans have a lot of big expectations of the sequel. Some of these include:

-More things to shoot
-More guns to shoot things with
-Guns with bigger clips so you can shoot for longer
-Fewer scientists and other things you're not supposed to shoot
-Less of a story line
-No resemblance whatsoever to every single first-person shooter ever made

Not only did Valve address most of the above, but they put in a few improvements of their own:

-In keeping with the concept of Half-Life, maximum health is now 50%
-Levels consist entirely of jump puzzles. Apparently OSHA never complained about the fact that all of the scientists had to jump from one platform to the next over an acid pit just to get to work every day.
-Bosses are now way larger than the rational mind could comprehend and take an ungodly amount of ammunition to kill. Luckily, they shoot slow-moving projectiles that you can continually dodge and they never learn better, and will not change their (obviously flawless) tactics even when close to death. Also, even though it would take a small army to pack enough firepower to kill one of these things, you manage to do it with one guy.
-Although you play as Gordon Freeman, some scientist trained in heavy-duty high-tech weaponry and alien-killing, he gets hit by a large dose of radiation early in the game that causes him to mutate into Bruce Campbell, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, or Kurt Russell based on your character's playing style. Playing style is determined by a complicated algorithm...at the beginning of the game, somebody asks you "Who do you relate most to? Bruce Campbell, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, or Kurt Russell?"

The plot is brilliant, original, and completely optional. Seriously—in the game options panel where you can turn off blood (since blowing things apart with a shotgun and NOT having them bleed definitely advocates a lesser degree of violence) you can also turn off the plot. If you do, it saves you a lot of pointless cut scenes and preachy scientists who whine about boring stuff and lets you cut straight to the action.

The premise of the game is simple: somebody stole the Necronomicon and is using it to raise up zombies of the aliens you killed in the first Half-Life. This makes them far more sinister than in the first one. Instead of wanting to kill you, suck all of the fluid out of your body, and do an autopsy on your withering corpse, now the alien zombies want to kill you and eat your brain. Needless to say, you have to recruit your trustworthy army of chainsaws and shotguns to do battle against the evil zombaliens and their sinister (but elusive) master (who is probably just one of the scientists that you thought you killed in the first one but who in fact was just staging his own death). Not to ruin it for you or anything.

I've heard a few people say that the plot was a little lacking, but I think they just hadn't reached the part where you start blowing up zombies. And hey, if it was good enough for Evil Dead...

And now the moment you've all been waiting for: the completely arbitrary scoring system that will influence your ultimate decision to buy the game or not, since you're a mindless sheep who is completely unable to make decisions based on descriptions of products and has no substantial knowledge of his own preferences.

Graphics: 14T on a scale of 4C to 83Q
Sound: It kinda sounds like this: "BOOM! BOOM! UHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUH! Roooowrrrrrrrrr BLAM! This is my boomstick! KABOOM!"
Gameplay: I don't know. Does anybody actually pay attention to this part?
Zombies: 20,000 or so, rough estimate

This gives the game a final score of 20,014T. Since that's the highest score yet, I get to put my initials on the high score list.

1. 20,014T----------JGG