Harry Crews, Motherfucker wrote:



As we all know, it's a great time to be alive if taking a shotgun down holes and shooting scuttly toothed vaginas is your thing. However I was concerned there weren't enough comparisons of the two games on the Internet, so I've decided to throw my guts into the ring. We'll let the Mexicans clean it up, it's what they're paid for.

Starting with the sound, because it's the blind man's television. The sound in Halflife 2 is visceral and perfectly judged, its music restrained, spooky or rocking as required. The first Halo had brilliant sound, every thunk, boom and kachunk fitting perfectly into place like a spiked collar round the neck of a paunchy homosexual. And its music was ace; cranking up and shifting down in intensity at the drop of a hat. Of course there were no hats in Halo 1; there are in Halo 2. This might explain why the sound is so shit. The voices are muted, the gunfire unrocking, the music generic. There are still moments of glorious insanity, but I'm not doing this to be reasonable, so Halo 2 loses here. Also it has Steve Vai in it, so it double loses if possible.

The graphics on both are flashier than their respective originals, as they should be. In Halo 2, though, characters in cutscenes start out crudely textured then self-assemble into 21st century bump-mapped pretend people with wrinkles and warts and stuff. This is odd and clumsy, but doesn't affect play.

Nor do the graphics. Halflife 2 wins because Halo 2 is just more of the same, while Halflife 2 is the most gritty, coherent realisation of a realistic near future I've yet seen in my imaginary career as an armed sociopath. There are greasy pools of water in which bob discarded plastic bottles, whose bobbing is disturbed by the downdraft of the alien insect-o-copter as it gravitates past overhead. Eat that Doom 3 you fucking fuck.

The physics model makes the environment believable. Halo 2 has pseudo physics; bodies, vehicles and crates fly around but most everything else is static. In Halflife 2 the physics is a minigame. It has puzzles, or toys, like the bit where you drop a rusty Lada on to a group of staggering zombies or pick up a shipping container with a magnetic crane and fling it over a river onto a gun post. Also you're constantly being surprised by some quirk like taking cover behind a filing cabinet and having sniper fire knock it over onto you, or throwing cans of paint at zombies to make gruesome, shambling paint-zombies, or finding a floating body in a cellar and shooting it a little to see it jiggle around. The last one works in real life!

So Halflife 2 wins, though Halo 2 doesn't care - Halo 2 is about combat and flying bodies are the cherries on the cake, while in Halflife 2 you'd probably have to say physics based gameplay is the icing as well.

And, of course, the Gravity Gun. It only works because of the physics model described above, but it's a total hoot. The first time you realise that you can grab a circular saw blade and use the Gun to slice a zombie literally-in-fucking-half you'll be giggling like a paedophile in daycare, you sick fuck. It's a bit too clumsy to use much in regular combat but this is also a clear win for Halflife 2. Though as Halo 2 had no Gravity Gun nor any intention to include one, this is sort of like a limbless man declaring himself winner of the Can't Run For Shit Cup.

Both games have linear stories, but I'm going to give Halo 2 points for narrative drive and Halflife 2 points for style. Halflife 2 has the marvellous Dr Breen ranting away on enormous screensabout how Earth's new alien overlords have shut down our reproductive ability for our own good, which is a snarky dig; most of its players won't have too many problems imagineering themselves into this new world-without-sex.

Halo 2 has lots of great scenes, but set against a confusing narrative toasting-fork of a story in which the characters exposit very quietly. Like they're sitting in a drawing room taking tea, rather than in a futuristic playground with guns instead of swings. The Internet advises me there is an interesting backstory, but they said that about the Matrix. Tch ptah.

The end scene of Halo 2 is disappointing with a capital GAY. It is a letdown of "nice beach holiday on phuket" proportions. Tacking a dull and pointless boss battle ending on the sequel to FUCKING HALO is worthy of the most baroquely overwritten synonym for "bad" you care to invent. I understand Halflife 2 has a crappy final scene too, but not having seen it I've decided it can't be that bad so it wins this one.

Of course it's the gameplay that matters, and they've both got that down smooth as an Irish drinking arm on payday. Dynamic, fluid, brutal, exciting, it's all there. Despite my whinging caveats you really can't go wrong with either.

Except in one aspect: Steam. Say it low, slow, and with plenty of hoick in your gob for the requisite foetid bubbling sound. Steam is a pain in the ass of barbed-wire dildo proportions. And we aren't talking genteel fits-in-your-purse size, neither. No, we are referring to 'The Black Intruder', an artificial shlong of such mammoth proportions that it blocks out the sun.

Of course, it's only a fucking video game, right? Who cares, right? I do. Halflife 2 is a piece of consumer entertainment. Its only purpose is to be fun. What other item of consumer entertainment do you have to plead with in order to get the right to use it? To nursemaid for hours while it ambles around the net, downloading this and that?

I understand it's better with broadband. And that it works smoothly once you've put in the requisite eight hours of pissing around, . It's better if you don't bother with the box/cd and slurp it straight off the net. It'll get better with time. I know all this.

But fuck it. Vigorously, painfully. I don't give a shit. What pisses me off is that I know that this is the wave of the future. Publishing companies executives are tapping their chins thoughtfully, the fuckers. "People like being 'visited' by the Black Intruder?"

The future starts here and we are the only ones who can stop it. Luckily, our wits are keen, our skills honed and our trigger fingers locked into firing position by tendonitis. Pass the flamethrower and crack some health and ammo out of those crates - it's time to get serious.