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The choice he offers to Freeman at the close of the game is the archetypal Orwellian quandary: sell out or die. Like the Cigarette Smoking Man in the X-Files, he represents the secret cabal, the illuminati, the shadow government вЂ“ he is the fear that there are powerful rich white guys controlling all the horrors of the world. Then thereвЂ™s the gameвЂ™s real antagonist: the creepy man in the smart suit who follows you, appearing in neighbouring rooms, on walkways in the far distance, staring.

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ItвЂ™s such a horrendous concept it fits perfectly with the gameвЂ™s themes of corporate control and professional culpability. They attach to the victim, swallow their heads and take over their bodies вЂ“ the person is still in there somewhere, screaming. The gameвЂ™s most terrifying enemies are the headcrabs, ValveвЂ™s answer to AlienвЂ™s facehuggers. вЂNightmarish no-go zonesвЂ™ вЂ¦ Half-Life gameplay. Scratch the surface and itвЂ™s gore, chaos and terror. Black Mesa offers the pretence of scientific order, but itвЂ™s all a cover-up. As you progress through the game, you travel deeper into these nightmarish no-go zones, like an urban explorer traversing the sewers beneath a glittering city. Black Mesa, with its sterile high-tech labs and futuristic living areas, is a theatre set: behind the stainless steel panels and flatscreen wall displays is an intestinal labyrinth of work tunnels, ceiling cavities and air ducts, patched with rust and grime and dripping in goo. ItвЂ™s a world where horror keeps unfolding beyond your control, again giving you the sense of a real disaster.Д«ut brilliantly, like ValveвЂ™s other masterpiece, Portal, Half-Life is also a game about artifice.

Throughout the game, you stray into scenes you canвЂ™t control: you see monsters grabbing scientists, you see guards fighting gigantic beasts. YouвЂ™re not the space marine hero at the centre of events вЂ“ this isnвЂ™t Doom вЂ“ youвЂ™re trapped in a much wider nightmare. Half-Life wants you to know that other things are happening in the world. As in Ridley ScottвЂ™s Alien, Half-Life allows the creatures to fester in your imagination, ramping up your dread before they are unleashed. Meanwhile, the monsters scuttle about unseen: you hear them in the ducts and behind locked doors you see the eviscerated bodies of your workmates.

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From here, you stagger through a series of sequences that work like disaster-movie scenes: pockets of survivors вЂ“ gravely injured scientists, desperate security guards вЂ“ drip-feed you information, drawing you further into the plot. Freeman, weak and disorientated, must grab whatever he can to survive and the gameвЂ™s first and most iconic weapon, a crowbar, symbolises your role as a worker rather than a soldier. The game progresses not as a power fantasy, but a survival story. вЂYou can stand and listen, or just wander offвЂ™ вЂ¦ Half-Life gameplay. From then on, your job is to get him out of there alive.

Half life play order full#

Freeman regains consciousness to find the lab both collapsing and full of hideous HR Giger-esque alien monsters. The lab experiment turns out to be a disaster beyond imagining: it opens up a fateful rift in space-time, unleashing the massive explosion youвЂ™ve been waiting for.

The message is simple: youвЂ™re trapped here too. The lack of cinematic cutaway scenes showed great faith in the world and the player, and deepened your relationship with the environment and the protagonist. In this way, Half-Life is naturalistic, which was a revelation in 1998. You can stand and listen or just wander off.

As you enter the facility, fellow scientists chat to Freeman about a forthcoming experiment, voicing concerns and discussing trivial details. The opening accustoms us to the Black Mesa research facility, tells us a little about FreemanвЂ™s role and sets up the narrative universe вЂ“ all without leaving his perspective. The brilliance of Half-Life begins with its immersive storytelling. It was the first hint that this new game from fledgling Seattle-based developer Valve was going to be something interesting and unusual.

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In the background, a computerised female voice issues safety information, while through the windows we see tableaux of life at the institution: weird robotic machines, bespectacled scientists, a security guard desperately banging on a sealed door. A monorail carriage slowly transports everyman scientist Gordon Freeman to his new job at a remote science facility, Black Mesa. M ost action video games begin with an explosion.