Half-Loved

Half-Life is generally regarded as a milestone in video game history. As the game that combined exciting shooter gameplay with an interesting story - not the usual way, but in 3D! For many gamers, it must have been a unique experience to wander through the corridors of Black Mesa with the nanobesuited Gordon Freeman, smashing all kinds of zombie and alien creatures with conventional and unconventional weapons.

For me, the game with an 18 rating was of course far removed from any accessibility - not that I would have had the peripherals to be able to play this graphical masterpiece at the time. Nevertheless, I caught up with it at some point and had a blast. And since the game was recently ported to the much prettier Source engine using fan mods, you can experience the grandpa in an updated version. I'm definitely going to catch up on it and advise every genre fan to do the same.

While Half-Life was groundbreaking in terms of technology and gameplay, one aspect falls a little short: the music. I'm not saying that we're hearing a disaster here, but rather a symptom of the shooter genre's legacy. This form of music is certainly very well suited to the games, but detached from them it simply lacks autonomy. Surely they do exist, those iconic tracks from shooting games of that era. If so, at least I don't have them in my ear or the necessary romanticization to appreciate them accordingly.

Kelly Bailey, composer and sound designer, delivers average results here. Average, which, due to the magnitude of the actual game, tends to catch the ear negatively. In general, the score - as is usual with shooters - mainly functions as a background player. In other words: meaningless spherical droning (Vague Voices, Space Ocean, Cavern Ambiance, Dimensionless Deepness) and unspectacular action pieces (Klaxon Beat, Diabolical Adrenaline Guitar, Alien Shock) take over for long stretches.

This is partly reminiscent of Frank Klepacki's work on the Command & Conquer-series and has both advantages and disadvantages. As is so often the case, the disadvantage is the lack of identity that games at the turn of the millennium in particular suffer from. Is this Half-Life or Quake? Unreal? Or some mediocre game project at AA level? The only indicator here is the actual sound quality, because it is decent and testifies to skill.

The advantage of this arbitrariness in the composition, however, is that individual songs have the chance to stand out much more often. It helps that the track titles on the Gamerip are very descriptive and leave little room for interpretation: Adrenaline Horror begins like a homage to the action interludes of The Matrix-films, before moving towards the end in the direction of the scary mood from the Alien-series. Diabolical Adrenaline Guitar , on the other hand, stays more in the vein of C&C or DOOM and offers a nice action background. And Drums and Riffs? Of course, drums + electric guitar.

The pattern is clearly recognizable. Consequently, anyone interested can easily pick out what he or she fancies. Would you prefer something quiet like Nepal Monestary? Or jungle vibes in Jungle Drums? Maybe something techno in Credits – Closing Theme? Depending on your preference, you will find a very diverse selection of background music, ranging from boring to good. My highlights are the banging Nuclear Mission Jam, which is one of the most frequently played sections in the YouTube video, illustrating that I am a basic bitch and that my taste is suitable for the mass market.

The other track that should make just about every PC gamer jump is Hazardous Environments (Valve Theme – long). The name already gives it away: behind this inconspicuous track is the iconic Valve Theme that we hear when the company's logo with the bald guy and the valve for eyesocket appears. This guitar riff alone makes the score worth listening to, you just shouldn't be expecting a masterpiece.

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Opposing Force / Blue Shift

When you think of the first Half-Life , everyone probably remembers the story, the wow moments and the graphics. What is quickly forgotten, however, are the addons. Yes, Half-Life had two expansion packs; three if you count the multiplayer expansion Half-Life: Decay for the PS2.

Opposing Force was released at the end of 1999 and tells the story of the events in the Black Mesa research facility from the perspective of the marine Adrian Shephard. He and his team are supposed to put a stop to the alien plague; we already know how this worked out from the main game. Blue Shift came out two years later and, in addition to improved textures, featured a mini-short campaign in which we take on the role of security guard Barney. Although this adds a third dimension to the story of Half-Life , the changes in perspective didn't really sink in (at least for me).

Meanwhile, the fact that I uncharacteristically squeeze both games into one section has little to do with laziness. In fact, this work saving is due to developer Gearbox Software itself, as it not only dispensed with an original soundtrack, but simply used the score from Opposing Force for the second addon - at least for the PC version. The Dreamcast version used a mixture of tracks from the addon and the main game instead.

For the composition of Opposing Force composer Kelly Bailey was replaced by Chris Jensen. In 19 tracks, he shows us how generic shooters can sound and serves us accent-free MIDI music whose average track length barely reaches the 1.5-minute mark. Ambient pieces such as The Beginning / Temple of Limbo, Lost in Thought / Wastes of Limbo or Danger Rises are, as expected, irrelevant, whether due to reduction or repetition - it just doesn't appeal to me.

In its exciting moments (Storm, Alien Forces, Bust / Race from Doom, Chamber / The Ticking Timebomb, Tunnel) the score does sound like a mix of military meets Portal. The music is motivating, march-like and constantly drives us forward with the rhythm of an alarm or a beat. It's a classic retro shooter quality that may seem quite generic, but fits the game well.

After 23 highlight-lacking minutes, however, it's already over again. The score of the add-on (or add-ons) is therefore not a total failure, but Blue Shift and Opposing Force cannot match the music of the main game either.