Half-Life
From Sega Retro
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| Half-Life |
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| System(s): Sega Dreamcast |
| Publisher: Sierra On-Line |
Developer: Valve Coropration  |
| Genre: Shoot-'em-Up |
| Number of players: 1 |
Half-Life is a first person shooter developed by Valve Corporation. At the time of its release on PCs it was seen as groundbreaking, and still ranks as one of the highest rated PC games of all time.
The game was due to be ported to the Sega Dreamcast by Gearbox Software in a move that was much anticpated by Sega fans. However, a last minute decision saw the game be cancelled, despite playable (and finished) builds being showcased at trade shows and in magazine publications. Half-Life was set to be one of the biggest Dreamcast games of the year 2000 holiday season, ancitipated for a release in North America and Europe during September 2000 (a date it missed - DC-UK later claimed it would arrive in Europe in November of that year, priced at the usual £39.99 in the UK).
Half-Life was demonstrated at the European Computer Trade Show in 2000, being praised by the press and featuring as a cover story in many gaming magazines of the era and even in a television advertisement. Rather than being a straight port of the game, the Dreamcast version featured higher polygon models than its PC counterpart (allegedly twice as many polygons overall) and would have included an exclusive side-story titled Half-Life: Blue Shift.
Half-Life was unexpectedly delayed to mid-2001, and within just weeks of release, Sierra On-Line, the game's publisher, pulled the plug on the Dreamcast version due to "changing market conditions". By this point it was the middle of June 2001, and like many publishers around tihs time, Sierra chose not to support the Dreamcast console further. By this point Blue Shift had been released as a PC expansion pack (alongside the "High Definition Pack", upgrading all the in-game models), and much of the re-worked assets were being used in an upcoming PlayStation 2 version of the game, which launched in November 2001.
Inevitably the full version of the Dreamcast game was leaked onto the internet, showing a near-complete product. Though the game is fully playable, the frame rate is inconsistent, and load times are often fairly lengthy. Saving is also an issue - the further the player gets through the current level, the more VMU blocks are demanded for saving. Once a level is completed, the number decreases again.
Some of the features found in the Dreamcast versions of Half-Life and Blue Shift were never brought forward into later copies of the game, although this mainly includes some new NPCs, slightly altered level layouts and some in-game Dreamcast references. In early 2012 a mod for the PC version was released on Steam to address this.
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93 |
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| Based on 6 reviews | |
- ↑ Computer & Video Games, "November 2000" (UK; 2000-10-11), page 82
- ↑ Dreamcast Monthly, "November 2000" (UK; 2000-09-28), page 62
- ↑ DC-UK, "December 2000" (UK; 2000-10-23), page 58
- ↑ Dreamcast Magazine, "No. 15" (UK; 2000-11-02), page 56
- ↑ GamePro, "June 2001" (US; 2001-0x-xx), page 109
- ↑ SuperGamePower, "Junho 2001" (BR; 2001-xx-xx), page 34