There were a lot of great shooters released in the early to mid nineties. From Doom to Quake, these games all offered a good time, running around while gunning down demonic creatures. None of them really pretended to be anything more than just a game though, with the worlds existing solely as arenas to shoot your enemies in. With Half-Life, Valve set out to change everything. They were able to create a world that felt alive, through a mix of scripted events and intelligent, spontaneous AI. We saw the entire story through the eyes of Gordon Freeman, giving an attachment to the hero more than ever before, and it always felt like something huge was at stake. Half-Life let the world know that the FPS genre could tell just as great stories as any other.
