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Sierra Best Sellers: Half-Life (DVD Packaging) | 
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| From: Sierra
Category: Video Games
List Price: £9.99
Buy Used: £1.45
You Save: £8.54 (85%)
Used (7) from £1.45
Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 6391
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 95
Genre: action-games
Media: Video Game
Number Of Items: 1
Age: 15 - 18 years
Operating System: Windows 95
EAN: 3348542135604
ASIN: B00005NZSL
Release Date: November 2, 2001
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most influential first person games, Half Life is the big daddy of its genre. released in 1998 before Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune and other greats, it still manages to be one of the most played games online. With an equal balance of action and storyline, you play a Dr Gordon Freeman, a professor starting a new job at a black ops research facility. However, soon after you arrive, things go horribly wrong with some of the experiments. Left to your own devices in a locked down facility, you basically have to get out alive. The game is based across one seamless level--the facility. Half Life broke the rules of the level-to-level games before it. Here you get immersed into the Half Life world. Yet it isn't just the maps that are different from what you have come to expect from this genre. The weapons aren't just strewn around as they are in Quake 3. Half Life prefers to hide them on people, lockers and testing rooms making the overall environment more realistic. But where Half Life excels is the multiplayer options. As a standalone package this game will keep you busy for a long time, but Half Life has a very big following, so in addition to the official add-on packs such as Opposing Force, the game has spawned a number of un-official, but hugely successful add-on packs such as Counterstrike and Team Fortress. This game has managed to create a special place in many a gamer's heart. Whether you are new to the genre or just looking for a new challenge, this game is well worth a look at. What's so great is that it's accessible to everyone. If you're new to the genre, stick with the single player missions. But if you're looking for that new challenge, get this and then download Counterstrike straight away. --Stuart Miles
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 Revolutionary March 27, 2008
Frederick Graham (Whitley bay, Tyne and Wear, The UK)
To state it quite plainly, this game has:
.Revolutionised FPS (first person shooters)
.Pushed graphics to new heights (At the time)
.Spearheaded PC FPS gaming
Wheather you want to buy it or not is yor choice.
An absolute Classic...every action game owes it something! December 2, 2007
L. Britton (England)
My dad got this two years ago...and it is still as addictive as ever!
This game is a pioneer in many things, and there are few games that can do all it can.
Environmental challenges:
These were used in a few older games (Quake II for instance), but this game takes them to the next level, and I have only ever seen the Tomb Raider series (a dedicated environmental challenge game) do better.
AI:
The baddies do work in teams and do their level best to survive whilst destroying you, and if you hit them with silenced weapons or grenades, they will run and hide. Yes AI has got better, but it is still an excellent challenge
Levels:
Huge levels with new puzzles make this game last forever. I did wonder about what turned out to be the half-way point "surely there can't be more levels?"...A testemony to the ability of the designers to squeeze so much onto that CD.
Weapons:
Yes you have all the classics, shotgun, pistol, etc. But they have been very inventive with the experimental and aliem weapons (though there are not many), creating a unique challenge, and several weapons have hidden abilities (one weapon can fire through walls!)
Conclusion:
Yes the graphics are not superb (they were for when it was released though), but with a very engaging set of challenges and decent AI, it is well worth buying. It takes a while to get going, but when you start killing things, it really gets good.
Oh dear, I appear to have wasted my time, most people with any sense of gaming tase own this already, nevermind.
Quite a nasty piece of work you done Mr. Freeman... March 23, 2006
Mr. S. E. C. Norman (London, UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There will never be a game to quite equal this masterpiece-this genius moment where designers and creators perfectly came together to create a game so engaging, so enthralling that it ceased to be a game and became an experience.
Strong words one might say, but there needs to be strong words to give an idea of the quality this game entails. It's not that it's frightening through monsters suddenly coming out of nowhere or that the guns are especially awesome (though given that the sub-machine gun with grenade launcher, shotgun, railgun, magnum, hive-hand, crossbow are all awesome guns among others this is also true), it is that from start to finish you feel like you are Gordon Freeman, a mysterious scientist, travelling down into a mysterious underground laboratory and then clawing his way out again. The plot is deliciously dark and gritty-there are no real happy endings, you have no friends, there is no love affair and you're not especially out to save the world-though to be fair this is what you end up doing-but as I say, it's barely a happy ending as you will see. You are just a scientist caught in the middle of a screwed-up situation trying to get out-and in this way it feels like you are there yourself-not just playing a crap cheesy hollywoodised plot. Indeed, the opening credits are not exciting or stylish-just you inside a train moving deeper and deeper into the complex. There are no real set missions or objectives (Yes I know that killing the three headed geezer is a sort of mission-but it's not like it's laid out for you like in most games)-the game just plays itself out. The mystery is superbly created by you having no known past, no background and the mystery of the game is barely resolved until the final moments-perfectly enhanced by you teleporting to other worlds and seeing an unknown figure walk through the blood-spattered corridors.
While there is variety of landscape and it is excellently created-the bareness of the offices and labs except of monsters and the general coldness of the facility as well as the chilling music creates a dark, sorrowful atmosphere. Your almost complete loneliness (apart from the occassional scientist or security guard) is capped by the chilling messages enscribed on the wall, 'Surrender, Freeman.' 'Freeman yor dead' by the military.
What about the action? Well, as I have said the guns are awesome, particularly the grenade launcher, but the nice thing about this game is that it is gritty shoot-em-up survival but also a certain amount of tactical skill can help you as well-such as dodging from box to box to outflank a machine gun nest or carefully taking out a hidden sniper with a well-placed grenade-it's not just kill 'em all.
Finally the puzzles are reasonable-challenging but interesting-not irritating like Jedi Knight 2 for example-and there's not too much of the getting through rooms with conveyor belts and meat mashers in. In general they add to the atmosphere-even creating a certain amount of desperation rather than frustration-as your fear impends you to quickly solve them.
By the end of it all-when you've killed so many, fought grittily and bloodily with tooth and nail-you will feel triumphant but drained, as you finally emerge out of the complex, and back to civilization. Perhaps, as I did, you will sigh a little sigh of sadness that you only have a stilted, cheesy, unimaginative, tiresomely-long-to-load sequel to look forward to.
Still a GREAT game January 4, 2006
Dozza (Hampshire, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Okay, HL2 has been around for a year but this is still a great game, especially if your PC lacks the power to handle the second outing and you don't have broadband, which is needed to run it because of the absurd Steam account thing.
HL1 will therefore keep you on the edge of your seat and while the graphics are more 'cartoony' than HL2 they still look good.
The best thing for me were the surreal levels with odd beasties to take out floating in space that were scary and left you with a feeling of 'what was that all about?'.
A classic amongst shooters with plenty of tension and excitement.
Rediculously good game October 17, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There is nothing I can say about this game that hasn't already been said in other reviews. This game redefined the FPS genre by introducing an RPG element to it. The best thing about this game - I thought - was the fact that there are no cut-scenes, the other characters just talk to you and much of the time at the start it's nothing to do with th storyline which I think gives the game a whole new level of realism which hadn't been seen previous to that.
The storyline is quality and very well executed, as is the plot twist! At the time of release the graphics were second to none, and the sound was too. Although some of the music was pish it did seem to work really well, like the strange ambiences in the background.
The game has no levels, just short loading screens (at least, they're short these days) which keep you in the action of the one huge level, which works really well. Valve excelled themselves with this title, and although Half Life 2 is an amazing game it still doesn't outshine this game. An absolute must for FPS fans (and some non-FPS fans)Gameplay: 96% (Then and now)
Graphics: 93% (Then - its about 25% now)
Sound: 85% (Then and now, although quality is much worse now)
Lifespan: 98% (I still have urges to play it now)
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