Up until Xen, the entirety of Half Life is awesome. There's just no other word to describe it. It mixed horror, smooth action and great FPS mechanics into a game that was well received with both players and critics. How did this final chapter of such a brilliant game come out this... wrong, is beyond me. Don't get me wrong, it feels alien (as it should) with very interesting flora and fauna, but the way it plays doesn't fit the rest of the game. It's like this level wasn't play tested enough. All the jump puzzles (with low gravity, because of course), switches hidden in plain sight and strange healing pods make for a frustrating level. How exactly were we supposed to know what these alien things do? It's trial and error, for the most part. And while Xen looks pretty great, the pure level design is really, really bad. It's almost as if Valve had forgot how to make the gameplay flow as it did back in Black Mesa. It's virtually the same thing as it was with Dragon Age. A great idea where the execution failed miserably. Although, some people do like Xen the way it is, so it's a rather subjective opinion. What isn't objective, however, is the fact that it should have been done better, with the same focus on quality as there was earlier, on Earth. Therefore, Xen is disappointing and bad, especially when compared to the rest of the game.
