By: Mike Redman
July 31st, 1999

I've only played a small bit of Action Half-Life, which was just recently released at their homepage. This won't be a full-sized review, but a reaction of sorts to it.

I never played the original Action Quake for Quake II. OK, well, I did play once, but I wasn't smart enough to read the "README" file and see that I needed to bind a key as a "+use" key. So, I spent about 5 minutes in a room that I couldn't get out of, and I quit and uninstalled it.

Action Half-Life came about due to popular demand by Quakers who had switched games to Half-Life, but still craved the excitement of their favorite mod. I, for one, was less than enthusiastic when the Half-Life version was announced. I don't know why, but it never appealed to me after my first exposure to the mod. However, I was willing to give it a shot when the beta came out a few days ago.

The "Action" series of mods are based on the idea that games would be cooler if they were like action movies, with realistic weapons and cool looking levels that are typical fare for action movies: prisons, cities, basically large, cool-looking things. Realistic physics isn't necessary – most action movies require very talented stunt doubles and a lot of camera editing before they look cool. Also, the gameplay must be fast and furious, with lots of kills without the need for a great amount of skill.

I found that the intent of the AHL team was carried out very well in the few hours I've played. There are many lucky kills, and also very messy kills. I particularly remember one kill I had where I had the double-barreled shotgun, and a guy walked right into it, and, well, the entire wall ten feet behind the guy was red, and little giblets flew all over the place. Nasty, but very funny. The point of this mod is to make you an action star, but unfortunately I must be the bad guy because I always get killed ;)

The weapons are realistic type weapons, and you have the choice to start with some sort of gun like the Half-Life handgun, a .44 something (I'm not much of a gun man), or throwing knives. Those knives are really annoying, but easy to avoid if you kept moving. It's cool that they give you a choice of what you want to use instead of forcing you to use something like, oh, a crowbar or axe. During gameplay, you can only pick up one "special" weapon, so you'd better be wise about where you walk, so you don't pick up a gun you don't want. You have the choice of a machine-gun type thing, which is only effective in close-up scenarios, a shotgun, another close range weapon, a double-barreled shotgun, which is annoying, because you have to press "reload" after every time you pull the trigger, and a sniper rifle. The rifle is cool because it's very deadly, and it seems you don't have to be right on to kill people. Also, it has 3 levels of scoping power – good for long range sniping, bad for when you're being ambushed and you can't see. Other weapons you can get as "bonuses" include the double-fisted handguns and hand grenades, which don't count towards your "special" weapon. There are also special items you can pick up, but I haven't figured out the point to them yet.

My favorite levels so far are the city type buildings, which are reminiscent of the beginning of Shogo, only they're on foot and you can go through many of the buildings. The action is very fast and furious, especially in street combat, which is similar to Kingpin in that you feel like a thug who rules the streets when you're doing good. The atmosphere on all levels feels more like reality that most *games*, let alone most mods. Well done there.

However, because it is in beta, there are small problems, which I encountered. There is a great deal of lag – which isn't actually lag, but what seems like poor "vis'ing" on the maps, because everyone complains about it, even though there latency is pretty low. Also, there are missing textures, so there are bright blue spots in some levels. However, most of these bugs will be fixed over time. For being a beta (or alpha, which they wanted to call it), the game is remarkably enjoyable and playable (despite my lack of skill) and will surely be a hit when it's finished.