Geez, where do you even begin? It's almost impossible to talk about Valve's sledgehammer arrival without instantly gushing and spending pages upon pages explaining the phenomenal impact it had on the gaming world. If any game can be said to define the pinnacle of what every first person shooter should aspire to, the benchmark from which all others are not only judged, but also born, Half-Life is it. It did everything right. Absolutely everything. And therein lies the problem. How does one separate all of the aspects that make it such an incredible experience and write an actual review? Honestly, I don't know, but someone has to try. So here we are.

Unlike many games, both before and since, the main character remains mute throughout the entire experience. A conscious decision to allow we, the players, to implant our own viewpoint onto the blank slate that is the nerdy, shy, thick NHS glasses wearing lab tech of Gordon Freeman. The archetypal accidental hero. That's all he is. A lab tech, an MIT graduate, going about his daily routine of doing science things, when some flange experiment tears open a hole in the fabric of the universe and allows demonic creatures to pour in from an alternate dimension. So, our boy Gordan grabs his trusty crowbar, a conveniently dropped pistol, and sets out to survive. That's it. No grand plot to save the universe, he just wants to make it home in time for dinner. The saving the universe part is just a trifling inconvenience that, as it turns out, is required for him to achieve his far more important goal.

He does this through a mixture of shooting, character interaction, platforming (yes, in first person) and puzzle solving that flows effortlessly from one aspect to another. There are even swimming sections. Remember, this game is knocking on twenty years old now, with visuals that, despite being clearly old, are still strong enough to stand up under scrutiny. Especially since the release of the Half-Life Source re-release. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's old, and it shows certainly. But without being told, you'd be hard pushed to realise just how old. There is a reason Half-Life remained a graphical benchmark well into the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The audio, both music and sound effects, are exceptionally well done. Again, something else that stands up under present day scrutiny, though the dialogue can be a little clipped at times. It's just an all around great game. As much fun to play now as it was back at the time of its original release. A firm reminder that even something built primarily around shooting stuff repeatedly, until it dies, can eat up twenty hours of your life without becoming boring. And that's precisely because it combines all those elements listed above. And does them well. Most notably in the fact that you have several approaches to most encounters, such as alternate routes to take, which rewards experimentation.

Add in a wide variety of weapons and enemy types, so that you'll actually have reasons to switch them up, thus preventing any of them (the weapons I mean) from seeming redundant, and it's plain to see why this became an instant classic. And why the incredibly dedicated people of the Black Mesa project are working so diligently to give Half-Life yet another lease of new life, by completely rebuilding it, from the ground up, using existing Source assets.

Taking all this into consideration, it should come as no surprise the game became an ‘instant’ classic. The depth of the story, meaty length, wide variety of environments and character models and so on, you know, everything I talked about above? There’s just so much here. Boasting far more than many of the big budget (Valve were still really small at the time) titles of today offer in terms of content. Even after multiple play throughs, there still manages to be that one little thing, in the corner, you missed, or that extra room that you just figured out how to get into.  But most of all, it’s great fun.