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Gameplay
In this scene, the player must bypass a dam and reservoir guarded by an Apache
helicopter, a group of soldiers, and a cannon emplacement. This shot shows the
original MP5 sub-machine gun, rather than the High Definition Pack's M4 Carbine
replacement. Half-Life, a first-person shooter, requires the player to perform
two kinds of tasks: combat and puzzle solving. Unlike its peers at the time,
Half-Life utilized scripted sequences, which range from small events, such as an
alien ramming down a door, to major plot points. While most contemporary
first-person shooters relied on cut scene intermissions to detail their
plotlines, Half-Life's story is put forth entirely through scripted sequences,
keeping the player in the game at all times. In line with this, the player
rarely loses the ability to control Gordon, who never speaks and is never
actually seen in the game. Half-Life has no "levels", opting instead for a
continuous world divided by short load times to minimize interruptions in
gameplay. That said, the game can clearly be split up into distinct "chapters",
the titles of which will flash up on the screen at the start of each one.
The game regularly integrates puzzles, such as navigating a maze of conveyor
belts. Some puzzles involve using the environment to kill an enemy. There are
few "bosses" in the conventional sense, where the player defeats a superior
opponent by direct confrontation. Instead, such monsters occasionally define
chapters, and the player is generally expected to use the terrain, rather than
firepower, to kill the "boss". Late in the game, the player receives a "long
jump module" for their HEV suit, which increases the horizontal distance and
speed of jumps, by crouching before jumping. This is used for platformer-style
jumping puzzles in the later portion of the game.
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