Please see my other post about year-old game reviews and what they are.¹ This is my first review, and it’s probably going to be a bit rough because of that. It’ll take me a while to get used to this process and to find the right voice. Anyway, to the point; this my review of Half-Life: Source.

I was inspired to replay Half-Life after watching a documentary about the series on YouTube. I’d hoped that given the massive number of mods available for Source games, I’d be able to play this classic with some of the comforts of today’s graphics technology. This turned out to be trickier than I hoped.

The leader here is Black Mesa Source, which hasn’t been released yet but does look fantastic. It was while looking at texture packs that I realised that I didn’t actually own Half-Life: Source.

I had the original Half-Life and all the expansions. I had Half-Life 2. I even had Counter-Strike: Source. So, I checked out the prices and picked it up for £6. Having played and loved every other Half-Life game out there, I thought to myself, it’s going to be worth the money. This was my first mistake.

Here’s a little background about the game. Value use a proprietary engine called Source for their games, which they’ve been using since 2004. The original Half-Life was not a Source game (it was powered by a modified Quake engine), but as I understand it the Source engine can read and us resources that were designed for the original Half-Life games (Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, etc.).

So, what does the Source engine bring to the game? The Source engine was a huge technical accomplishment. It gave us better physics and lighting, and incredible tools for facial and body animations. If you watched the video above, then there’s this brilliant quote from Jay Stelly:

…we were really excited at that point, that we had made characters who’s mouths could move while they were talking…

So it seems fair to expect that the ‘Source’ version of Half-Life would take advantage of this technology. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t the case. What you’re actually getting with Half-Life: Source is the original game, better water effects and a new physics engine.

So, let’s simply spend a paragraph on each of these points. Half-Life is an excellent game, even when played almost 14 years after its release. It’s still atmospheric and moody. It’s challenging, entertaining and hugely enjoyable. The years have taken their toll on the graphics, but the underlying game still shines through as bright as it always did.

So what do the water effects add? Well, they are pretty, but they look very out of place alongside the textures of the original game. They actually do add quite a bit of atmosphere when you’re fighting the giant fish.

Then we come to the physics. Simply put, this almost killed the game for me. The Source physics engine simply doesn’t work right in this game. Surprisingly, it’s not the Xen levels that are the worst for this. It’s the early Black Mesa platforming elements, like the room with the hanging boxes. The boxes now sway realistically with your weight, and you have momentum. The result is that platforming becomes extremely frustrating in a game balanced for a much more primitive physics engine.

There are other issues with the physics engine. If you jump forward, you can do a complete stop in mid-air. But you can’t do any other type of aerial acrobatics, making platforming quite irritating. If you throw a grenade and then move backwards, the grenade will inexplicably defy its momentum and move back towards you. There are later points, particularly in Xen, when you can shoot Vortigaunts and they’ll topple from walkways and ledges with ragdoll physics. That’s a nice addition to the game, but it’s completely destroyed by the other problems with the physics engine.

Half-Life: Source is a lazy port. I suspect it may have had a lot to do with the Source engine source code which was stolen from Valve during the development of Half-Life 2. A lot of ‘fans’ discovered that you could recompile Half-Life using the Source engine, and I wonder if Valve didn’t simply create this game as a knee-jerk response to that threat. Either way, Half-Life: Source is a dark spot on Valve’s otherwise impeccable portfolio. If you want to play Half-Life, it may simply be worth holding out for Black Mesa Source.