Computer gaming world

It’s end-of-the-year time as I write this (not end-of-the-world time, that’s April 24), and there just isn’t much to look forward to in PC gaming. But that’s because the best stuff is finally being released. Hooray!

Half-Life 2

After more than five years in the making, you can finally play what may be the best first-person shooter ever. As gun-toting scientist Gordon Freeman, you plow through a game that relies as heavily on thrilling scripted moments as the first. If there were ever any doubt that developer Valve crafts the best FPS levels in gaming, Half-Life 2 stomps those doubts dead, especially with levels that rely on the most incredible physics engine you’ll ever see. No game creates such a believable, compelling world.

Vampire: The

Masquerade—Bloodlines

Bloodlines uses Half-Life 2’s bright and shiny Source game engine to create the most unbright and unshiny game world you could imagine—a dark and desperate netherworld burning with loathing, suspicion, and fear. And that’s just fine. This huge, bloodsucking RPG (roughly 50 hours of play) redeems a license that made the leap from pen-and-paper to PC and landed smack on its undead face some four years ago. Bloodlines incorporates first- and third-person action, stealth play, logical puzzle solving, an intense game world, hardcore roleplaying, significant replayability, and more.

Copyright ?? 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Electronic Gaming Monthly.