Do video games need to be more cinematic? Cinema is still the greatest (fabricated) spectacle on Earth; why wouldn’t you want to emulate that? It has glamour; it has style; it has action. It squeezes complex narrative into a compact running time.

[inline:2]Can the person owning the disembodied head please collect it from platform 2The reason why the answer isn’t a clear “Hell, yes” is encoded in the form of Half Life 2.

Spat back out into a bleak, restricted and fractured world, Gordon Freeman is once more cast in the role of Earth’s saviour – a saviour, though, manipulated at all turns by the mocking G-Man (a name that can be read as a play on Freeman’s name, as well as conjuring-up the image of a ruthless government button-man). You (as the ‘Free’ man) must somehow alter Earth’s bruised fate and smash the control the mysterious Combine have imposed on your planet. HL2 deliberately obscures events, meaning supposition (or a trawl through Google) is needed if you want to add up all the elements. All you - both as a gamer and as the fictional Freeman himself - know is that suddenly the world is under the yoke of a 1984-style fascist dictatorship; one that is alien in origin. Floundering in a grimy, derelict ex-Soviet containment camp of a city, escape, survival and resistance are your only goals. There’s nothing else left to do.

Feeling gravity’s pull

HL2 has hit zones and ragdoll physics up the wazoo. The greatest use of the Gravity Gun (or ‘Zero Point Energy Manipulator’, to give it its full title), however, comes in the final few chapters of the game, when you can use it to grip, spin and fling human beings around. The sense of power this gives the player, after a game spent conserving ammo and using a crowbar to smack people around the bonce, is awesome.To yoink a marketing metaphor, this is the pointy end of the cone. Giving a protagonist a limited objective is the beginning of every adventure, going right back to the Grendel-slaying Beowulf: get the girl, kill the baddies. Save the village. Lift the curse. HL2 starts with a basic objective, a very linear path, that you are never able to break from, no matter what tools and weapons you collect along the way. And, see, that’s the point. The G-Man strips you of the illusion of freedom, both as avatar and player. You are stuck in a game, and both Valve and their twisted avatar want you to know it. That’s life.

Still, we humans don’t like to think of our fates as inextricable. So you fight, try and widen the ‘cone’ using whatever tools are to hand. The story has you battle through the outer limits of the fictional European country, desperate to aid the Resistance effort. Along the way, circumstance and the binding ties of fate force you into ever more harrowing areas and increasingly more desperate battles until, finally, you can strike a blow at the heart of this fictional world’s corruption.

The narrative, design and atmosphere of Half Life 2 constantly skips through different genres – from horror to action to bleak political agitprop. Valve have made what sounds (on paper, at least) to be a gimmicky approach work by sticking to their underlying coda: everything must operate with the same physics in each area, and every area must remind you that you are in Hell. Angst doesn’t appear in games very often, but HL2 delivers it like a blow to the head. From the skull faces of the SS-like Combine, to the living detritus of the Black Crabs, to the spindly, violent evil of the tripoidal war machines, everything in the game is brutal, soulless and designed for nothing else than to rend apart humanity. [inline:4]I can get this on the NHS, right?You can be approaching an abandoned Lighthouse on a breezy, sunny day, or tearing along a beach to avoid the rugose AntLions, and the feeling remains the same: that you are stuck in a world where there is only suffering, and nothing else.

Fortunate, then, that you can affect the world around you, and that every blow you strike against it feels solid and palpable. All characters and objects have realistic weight and gravity – boxes can be shifted for access, cinder blocks used to weight the end of an ersatz see-saw, barrels of petrol thrown at assailants to explode on contact. Lifeforms are totally ‘ragdoll’: The Puppetmasters

Freeman’s reality is your reality is Valve’s reality. You give up your freedom to the game by playing it. Freeman gives up his freedom to the G-Man in the narrative. You give up your freedom to Valve by playing the game. They didn’t just throw this plot together during a trip to Starbucks, ya know…. shoot one at close range with a shotgun, and it’ll fly back, knocking over anything behind like bowling pins. Additional realism, in an ironic twist, is wrought through the addition of the fictional Gravity Gun. Any object lying around can be used as a weapon, or a tool for puzzle-solving. That you can affect the world so directly, and that so little is nailed-down, raises the game above almost every other FPS (or even adventure title in general) ever made.

A combination of narrative, atmosphere and use of an astonishing physics engine makes HL2 the rewarding product it is, but the visuals push it that bit further. Artistically, as well as technically, Half Life 2 is so far ahead of the competition that it isn’t even funny. A glimpse of the world reflected in the sewer runoff, or dust motes drifting through an attic skylight is enough to convince you that you’re part of a Brave New World. The Soviet Bloc-style City 17 is a stark place of savage clarity; the Citadel (literally) a graphic reminder of the warped universe the game is set in.

[inline:6]Never look directly into the sun, please.The flaws in HL2 are obvious: the game loads mid-level with no pause, frequently, which leads to framerate stutter. As sections that need loading often depict pitched battles, this has the malign side effect of reducing some of the most tense and crucial moments to a chugging mess. It can be alleviated (although not eliminated) by tweaking and optimisation, but remains a fly in the ointment that even high-end users have to suffer. Secondly, the dialogue – although very well acted and presented – is weak, and doesn’t serve the plot as it should. It’s a shame that the only intelligent commentator and mouthpiece of Valve’s ideas in the game is the G-Man, whom is only heard from at the very beginning and very end of the game. Any other criticisms levelled at Valve and their latest HL game are full of spurious reasoning (mainly derived from people expected the moon on a stick, and being disappointed that their wild fantasies weren’t fulfilled by the game). These can be ignored.

The chances of anything coming from Mars…

HL2 wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but they are carefully blended. Therefore, you see a War of the Worlds-style war machine striding through a skyline that looks suspiciously like H G Wells’s shattered London, but at ground zero when you are tackling the faceless, swarming Combine soldiers, the feel is much more Eastern Bloc/Berlin Wall/Iron Curtain. The threat is from within (political, cultural) as much as it is from without (Extra Terrestrial)Another ignorant criticism would be to point at the game’s linearity, as this aspect is vital for creating atmosphere. Valve are telling you you’re in a game – that you are a participant – the whole time, intentionally, so that this twisted world of fascist control is one you are forced to experience first hand. An example of an atmosphere falling short of its goals is Resident Evil 4: the lack of isolation in Mikami’s impressive game is far too empowering. In HL2, you always feel isolated, always adrift in a labyrinth of existential dread. The characters are stuck in a universe of fear, Valve are saying, so we’re going to make damn sure you feel trapped in there with them. There are no codec messages from the safe, sane world; this is not a mission you chose or a fight where the White Hats are going to win. This is your curse and your destiny. You, as Gordon Freeman, are being controlled like a puppet, every step of the way, sent capering through the inferno.

Why does Half Life 2 prove games shouldn’t be emulating cinema? Because cinema is escapism; HL2 is a cleverly designed trap for the mind – a maze that forces you to consider the moral right to freedom, all the time. Although not the epoch-making Magnum Opus some gamers believed it was destined to be, it’s totally compelling: walk a mile in the “Free Man’s” shoes, and you’ll want to see his destiny through to its dark and bitter end.