I have asked that question quite a number of times over the last 8 years or so ever since I played the original Half Life. My whole life revolved around playing Half Life everyday and sharing my experiences of joy and frustration with my best friends in high school at that time. But what was it that made it such an overwhelming and enjoyable experience. I discussed the same question with one of my best friends a couple of days back who happens to be a gaming nerd just like me and finally we hit the conclusion and I thought it would be cool if I shared it with everyone else here as well. The thing that made Half Life such an amazing experience was that while playing it, I was not aware of any spoilers which would have made it impossible for me to enjoy the different "wow" moments I experienced in the game.
The first time I read about that game was in an issue of Time's magazine in my school's library with just a single screenshot of a couple of dead grunts with graffiti of "Die Freeman" on the wall written in some hapless random scientist's blood. I had no idea if the grunts were on my side or on the evil side, I had no idea if there were going to be any aliens in the game and I had no idea if the weapons were going to be as cool as they were in the game…in short I knew nothing about the experience that awaited, just that I had to pick up and play that game.
The game starts off with you in a huge science lab as a PhD in Theoretical Physics and it seemed like just another random day at the job. From the first look at the game, I thought it's going to be something like Tomb Raider where I will have to run around solving random puzzles. Instead, the game offered a completely unique experience, something which was completely alien to other games of that time. The whole scary experience of the head crabs (which reminded me of Facehuggers from the Alien movies), the anticipation of the grunts coming over and helping out the scientists (but instead they come to cover the evidence), the awesome boss battles and the outstanding weapons added to an unforgettable experience which I cherish till this day.
Oh yes, and you must be thinking, what was the conclusion that me and my friend drew after our little discussion we had about the game being so enjoyable. Well, it was that we didn't know what to expect from the game, we had read no reviews beforehand, hadn't seen no spoiler movies on You Tube and had no access to comprehensive reviews/previews from websites like Gametrailers to give us an idea what we might be seeing in that game. I think that the current trend of websites and other media which review games gives away a lot of what these games have to offer to the end users killing off pretty much all of the experience which they would have had in case they did not know what was in store for them. I think why I didn't have a similar experience of awe and amazement from Half Life 2 was that the media had exposed so much of the final game that it just didn't offer me enough surprises along the way. For the new GTA 4, Rockstar tried really hard to keep the media in the wraps before it released the game which I think kind of helped the sales of the game to a great extent in the end. I think all developers should take serious notice of this problem and websites should only display the rating of games as numbers and a small paragraph about the game itself and should just end their reviews at that point. Revealing too much about the game, the graphics and the plot only hurts the experience and doesn't help it! Feel free to comment on my opinion!
