BREEOW WNNNRANN NN NNNNN NN goes the recharger as I crouch behind a table and take stock of my situation. 2 Grenades, 37 rounds on the light submachine gun and 4 shotgun shells. Oh yeah and the world around me: everything, and the kitchen sink. With the gravity gun strapped, I duck out from behind the barricade that I makeshifted out of debris and proceed to pummel the enemy with anything not tied down, ripping radiators from the walls and plowing them through civil protection units. Their auditory lifesign monitors whine out as I leave the room and I chuckle gleefully while searching around for anything harder than meat.

Where Half-Life 1 succeeded was innovation; never had we seen such thrilling cinematics mixed with futuristic combat. Special ops dropped from the sky, giant tentacles came up from the sand and followed your every move, not to mention that you were a scientist... Half-Life 2 keeps this forward thinking in creating an incredible game engine, where the environment literally becomes your weaponry. You are equipped with a gravity gun, a wonderful invention that allows you to pull objects towards you and then fire them at great velocity towards enemies. This makes for some very interesting battles and puzzles, allowing you the full advantage of the game’s HAVOC physics engine. You'll be glad to hear that the crowbar is back along with a whole slew of toys that take you tripping down memory lane.

The combat is great. The .357 tears gaping holes in meat and splashes blood forcefully on the wall. The shotgun is immensely destructive, especially when used very close on the upper body, as you'd expect it to be. The enemies are varied and require different tactics to vanquish. Battles often involve starting off by throwing something heavy into the room, diving in behind it and clearing out all the larger enemies. Once that's done, you'll want to switch to a pistol to finish of the remaining small head-hoppers and such. The sniper rifle is also a treat, firing what look like heated iron rods, impaling enemies and leaving them hanging on the wall behind. This game is surprisingly much bloodier than I had expected, which was a welcome shock. The messiest and best weapon in my opinion is the saw blade when combined with the gravity gun. You can saw through groups of enemies effortlessly, leaving their torso and legs in morbid piles.

Grenades and explosions take the cake as for sound quality. Most explosions start off with several small explosions followed by a pause and then a ripping roar as the final detonation occurs. The grenades explode with frightening power knocking your character for a loop and leaving ears ringing.

Vehicles in the game are quite unique and lovely to behold. The civil protection choppers are nimble and mechanical, while the later choppers are partly biological, and twist and turn in the air like a manatee, blasting away at you the whole time. The striders are a wonder to behold, kicking troops away while swaying and ducking and firing. You get your chance at piloting through this wonderful physics engine in two different vehicles. The air-boat will take you through swamps and sewers, while the dune buggy will give you a chance to drive through ant-lion spawing grounds over the sand dunes. The driving physics make it spicy run-and-gun fun.

The enemies, some from the first game and some not, are incredibly detailed. Civil droids and flying buzz-saws accompany the civil protection units, floating in through small holes everywhere either to spy or to attack you. Radio reports and life sign monitors on dead bodies add great environment to battles. Some of the faster head-hopped humans give quite a fright when they lunge out at you from dark corners. Sucking up the flying buzz-saws with the gravity gun and firing them back into groups of enemies is quite an enjoyable experience. The enemy soldiers use tactics and even hand signals to spread out and surround you.

Half-Life 2 starts you off running for safety through what appears to be a city under martial law. People are generally quiet and scared. And this reflects in the wonderful facial animation. You can almost touch the tension in the air from the detail of the environment, both social and physical. The game gives a sense of civil unrest, akin to movies such as Brazil, with the police just barely in control of the populace. The policing force will not hesitate to beat you if you step out of line. You can almost hear the resounding evil in the muffled speech coming from underneath their white gas masks.

The graphics are hands down incredible. Barrels roll down hills, bouncing off of rocks while debris splashes in the puddles below. The landscapes are gorgeous and varied, from sunrise over a fortified cliff to burned out city centers. No words can do them justice. The glass shatters satisfyingly as you pump rounds out of your SMG from building to building. As in the original Half-Life, the levels usually consist of some sort of puzzle relating to the environment. The new engine allows for more complex solutions such as stacking boxes or yanking out plugs from a distance to take down force fields.

Throughout the game, you'll be helped by several different types of NPCs. The main characters have histories from the original Half-Life and these characters play storyline rolls. You'll also get a chance to lead groups of ant-lions and rebels into battle. While not the best AI, they help suppress the enemies allowing you to get in close and knock heads. Your squad members get visibly wounded which adds a level of attachment to them. If they survive for a long time you can recognize them by a horrible head wound or missing pincer.

The story is mainly non-existent throughout the first part of the game, which left me a little apprehensive about the extended driving and shooting they put you through. Don't get me wrong, I love combat, but sometimes I need a reason to kill. Sometimes. Later on in the game your buddies get captured or pinned down and it's your responsibility to help them out because you're Gordon Freeman. Apparently your old supervisor is breeding the next evolution in humanity and you've got to stop it. It would have been nice if they had broken some sort of that plot out before the last few battles. The environment encourages you to go fast and hard, sometimes missing out on vital information presented on TV screens. I feel they didn't do enough with the NPCs; the betrayals weren't shocking and the attachment to the characters was light. This was really a shame because the interaction between NPCs was brilliant, facial expressions beautifully modelled, anger, fear, hurt all accurately represented.

I downloaded Half-Life 2 off of the Steam Engine on a Saturday afternoon and was finished by Sunday night. For a game touted the way this one was, I expect more gameplay time. It took me about 1/4 as long to download it as to play it. At the end I was still somewhat mystified as to the purpose of many sequences in the game and the whole plot in general. It reminded me of the mission based approach they took to Hitman Contracts, where room is left for many sequels.

Aside from the disappointing and canned storyline, the game engine that Valve has released is top-notch. Physics are near-real, bodies flip and twist, and giant entities dominate the landscapes. The dark techno that heralds the arrival of intense battle is well-applied and keeps you adrenalized. The combat is fun and widely varied, letting you fight tanks to helicopters to head-hoppers using the environment around you.

The major innovation in this game is the physics engine and the ability to manipulate things with the gravity gun. Grabbing a cabinet and launching it into a group of enemies sends them bowling over. The way you can use your environment to fight your battles mixed with the stellar graphics and puzzle based levels should make this game, or at least the engine, stand the test of time. I hope this gave you some insight into what to expect beyond the hype of the Half-Life dynasty. I'm off to get in a teleportation accident or two.