I think Half-Life is one of the greatest video games of all time, which isnât a controversial opinion. Valveâs 1998 debut rocked the gaming world. Many aspects of its design have yet to be topped. Nowhere is this more obvious than Half-Lifeâs sixth level, Blast Pit.
Iâve been thinking about Blast Pit in connection with another game Iâve been playing a lot lately, Bungieâs Destiny. As wonderful a game as Destiny is, Iâve found myself getting tired of the gameâs bosses. They sit there doing next to nothing while players slowly shoot and chip away at their health until their defeat. One boss took our team about twenty minutes to defeat, driving one of us to remark âI hate bullet sponges.â We all agreed.
Fighting that boss was mind-numbing and boring, devoid of fun or purpose. It wasnât just a Destiny problem. Bad, spongy bosses have plagued first-person shooters for a while. Fortunately, Valve solved those problems with Blast Pit.
For this article, I re-played everything from the first level of Half-Life to the end of Blast Pit. Itâs interesting to compare Half-Life to modern video games. The gameâs wonky maneuverability and dated animations hold it back a little. The odd, unrealistic level spaces would be laughed at today. But the level design is wonderful, especially with all the tricks Valve plays with how and where enemies spawn.
Blast Pit is, I think, the best level in Half-Life. Where most of the gameâs levels are about moving from point A to B, Blast Pit is about encountering a large boss, then using an entire level against him. Rather than simply sticking you in a fight with a big boss and having you unload your arsenal on him in a lengthy, boring test of endurance, Half-Life sends you through a series of rooms and encounters, changing things up until the boss is finally defeated.
One moment youâre trying not to set off a room full of explosives while killing a zombie. The next, youâre riding an elevator to a tram that will launch you into a pool full of toxic goo.
The boss is just a tentacle. It only shows up for a few minutes in your playthrough. Itâs scary anyway. It is your nemesis. Youâre made to encounter it four times throughout the level, ensuring that it remains the focal point even though youâre never with it too long. It never gets boring, which canât be said for most bosses in games today.
A quiet startâŠ
Blast Pit is Half-Lifeâs sixth level. The one before it is called âWeâve Got Hostiles!â In that one, Gordon Freemanâthatâs youâhas been trying to get out of the Black Mesa secret research facility. Unfortunately, he discovers that a Marine ârescue missionâ is actually a cleanup mission. The level begins with you encountering a giant, impassable red door. Your goal is to âget to the surface,â but that is eventually scuttled when the Marines start shooting. So you head back down into the base and return to the red door.This time, you can open it.
As you walk through the red door and into Silo D, Blast Pit begins.
Well, actually, not quite. You walk through, and thereâs a bunch of crates. You have to smash them. Itâs boring. Youâve just spent an entire level being betrayed, and⊠the first thing you find behind this giant door is a bunch of crates to smash. Itâs an inauspicious start to one of the greatest levels in video game history, but thatâs about to change.
Get through the crates and youâre ambushed by some headcrabs that have been waiting for you to come along. They drop from the ceiling. Alone, theyâre not that bad, but the bullsquid off in the distance isnât helping things. A bullsquid is a monster with a ranged spit attack and a close-range melee. The spit itself is slow enough to dodge, but when dealing with headcrabs, itâs a tense, fun situation. Bullsquids make that happen, and it was a bummer we never got to see them in Half-Life 2
The room you enter is fairly large in comparison to the earlier levels in the game, and it sets the tone for Blast Pit. Barring the opening level, much of Half-Lifeâs spaces have been small up to this point. Even the brief outdoor fight from âWeâve Got Hostiles!â is in a small, gated enclosure. The bullsquid room is large. Itâs got a huge cargo elevator in itâto activate it, youâll have to climb up to a control room and pull a lever, which causes a lights to turn on and sirens to blare. Itâs big
While youâre in the control room, a zombie comes through another door on your right. If, like me, you whirl around to shoot it, thereâs a chance youâll blow yourself up. Thereâs an explosive barrel behind the zombie, and in the room next to him is a crate of dynamite. Try to shoot him and, kaboom, everyone dies, including you!
This exploding room is one of the things that makes Half-Life special. Itâs a game about surprises and clever enemy spawns. Youâve got to play it smart, shooting the zombie without a single stray bullet setting off the explosives or backpedaling so the zombie exits the room before you blast it. Another example of this kind of good Half-Life surprise: In âWeâve Got Hostiles,â Valve introduced tripwires. One tripwire was set across a slippery puzzle. You had got to jump over it, but when you landed, you slid and Valve cleverly stuck an open elevator shaft on the other side. Itâs tricky and fun, one of many similar situations in the game.
These surprising moments stand out, especially compared to what you see in top modern shooters. More recent shooters have focused on creating shooting galleries, slowing players down through health systems (regenerating health encourages players to remain stationary) and the use of enemies that often hide in cover. Here, Valve keeps players on their toes by establishing a living environment. Enemies bait players into shooting the wrong thing and inadvertently killing themselves.
Enemies in just the right spotsâŠ
You know that scene in Jurassic Park where Muldoonâs trying to find the velociraptor, and it outflanks him, and he quotes Total Recall and says âclever girlâ just before it kills him? Thatâs Half-Lifeâs spawns. Itâs a game that encourages you to think about the space youâre in. Itâs not just about where your enemies are in relation to you, but where a bunch of different things are, all in relation to each other. Itâs a game that frequently brings a smile to my face whenever I run into a particularly devious scenario, and I think it really brings Valveâs later games down quite a bit.
Back to Blast Pit. Youâve just defeated that zombie. You can enter the room it came from and find a rewardâhealth and a grenade.
Head back out, jump onto the elevator, ride it down, and youâll find a tram surrounded by houndeyes. Like bullsquids, houndeyes are interesting enemies that round out Half-Lifeâs bestiary, yet Valve unceremoniously dropped them from Half-Life 2. Where bullsquids are ranged enemies, houndeyes are three legged, many-eyed dog creatures. Theyâre kind of like Flood carrier forms in Halo: they try to walk up to you and explode, but unlike the carriers, they can take more damage and they donât die when they attack you. This is balanced by them charging up their attack. The charge is signaled by a characteristic whine as they ready their attack. Really cool enemy design right there.
Get past the houndeyes, hop on the tram, and go! Youâll zoom through a huge tunnel, watching houndeyes, bullsquids, and headcrabs fight each other. All seems to be going well until you round a bend and crash into a barrier, which flings you into a crate. The crate collapses, dropping you into toxic goo!
Itâs a wonderful âclever girlâ moment.
Leap out, fight another bullsquid, climb into some pipes, fight through another pipe room, and⊠woah.
Valve really wanted to show off scale in this map. Itâs a simple room. You follow a path, get to the elevator, and ride it up. The room feels huge, in part because of the gigantic silo that occupies the far side. Itâs on a different scale from everything else in the game up to this point.
At the top of the elevator is a hall that leads you inside the silo. Another bullsquid is munching on a scientist in the corner. Kill it and someof houndeyes come running. Kill them, walk on the railing around the inside edge of the silo, and make your way to the inside of the silo. Unfortunately, another houndeye stands in your way.
On the catwalk next to this houndeye are two explosive barrels. If he attacks, theyâll blow up and take the bridge with it, which, fortunately, doesnât spell instant failure. It just adds a complication for you: now youâll have to jump across the gap. Valve also dropped off some health kits behind you. Theyâre sitting next to some totally-not-suspicious-at-all explosive barrels, behind which is hidden, yup, another houndeye.
Kill both houndeyes without setting them off and youâre golden. Fail to stop them, and the resulting explosion adds a new obstacle.
Difficulty in many games is simply about increasing the length of time it takes to kill your foes and decreasing the length of time it takes to kill you. With Half-Life, Valve implements challenge through awareness. The challenge isnât from having the constitution of soggy cardboard, itâs from intelligently managing the enemy spawns. Messing up might not kill you right away, but it can have repercussions down the line if youâre not careful.
Assuming you get past the houndeyes without a scratchâand youâve survived the Bullsquid thatâs pelting you from far awayâyouâll find yourself at the inner silo. Head inside, kill a zombie thatâs waiting on the other side of the door, walk down a narrow corridor. Youâll find a mortally-wounded scientist, who tries to tell you something before he dies, something about killing âitâ before it grows any larger. All the while, youâll hear a loud clanging noise. Something big is just around the corner.
Uh oh.
Exit that corridor and youâll find another scientist. This one seems totally fine, until a giant monster reaches through into the window and grabs him.
Meet the boss.
Itâs one of the most exciting moments in the game and a great example of a scripted sequence done right. Many modern games utilize scripted sequences to show you something cool, often taking control away from you, the player. Here, Valve uses a scripted sequence to show you just how terrifying the Tentacle is. Itâs directly related to the gameplay.
In the room is a button that fires a rocket motor thatâs suspended above the tentacles. Problem is, the engineâs got no fuel or power, so you canât kill it. Not yet.
Moving on, youâll find a guard who tells you that the monster is attracted to sound. To bring the point home, Valve has another guard shoot the creature with his pistol, screaming at it, calling it an âouter space octopus.â Frankly, I think this name is better than âtentacle,â but, hey, thatâs what Valve calls it.
Youâll also find a box of grenades. Obviously, the game wants you to attack the boss with grenades! So, you chuck a grenade or two at the boss. If you miss, the tentacles will start attacking the area of the explosion for a few seconds. If you manage to score a hit, the tentacles will retreat into their hole for a few seconds. Then theyâll pop out again.
You canât kill the tentacle, but you can sneak past it. Unfortunately, youâll have to smash some crates and smash through a boarded up doorway, which will attract the monsterâs attention. Youâd better use grenades to distract it. Assuming you get through, youâll take a hallway to a catwalk that takes you outside. You cross across another catwalk through the gigantic outer silo and head down the hall to a fuel room.
Valveâs got another great spawn hereâin the shadows at the bottom of the ladder, two zombies wait. As long as youâve got a grenade, theyâre easy to pass. In another display of epic scale, youâve got a massive ladder to climb, down through the biggest elevator shaft youâve yet seen in the game.
Climb down, walk on some pipes and try not to slip off. Hang a leftâthe rightâs a dead endâclimb up a ladder, shoot a grate, and youâll find a zombie waiting for you. Kill it, pick up some grenades, open a door, shoot some zombies⊠and⊠woah.
Imaginative architecture.
That is a giant fan. It is in a room dedicated solely to the giant fan.
As Ross Scott points out frequently in Freemanâs Mind, much of Half-Lifeâs architecture makes little sense. Play a game like Half-Life 2 and a lot of the places youâre in seem believable, even relatable. Creating a believable, lived-in space is one of Half-Life 2âs greatest strengths, but as a result, it feels smaller. Half-Life, however, isnât so much a replication of a secret science base as it is a representation of one. Itâs like an impressionistic approachâa bunch of weird, awe-inspiring, interconnected rooms.
Why is there a room with fanblades the size of a bus? I have no idea, but it doesnât matter. A ladder takes you below the fan, where you flip on the switch, only to discover that the only way up is⊠past the now-spinning fan blade. It makes no sense at allâwho would design a giant fan like this?
Who cares whether it makes sense? The level design puts you in a fun situation where you have to flip a switch, turn around, and climb up a ladder before a giant fan blade kills you. Itâs another devious moment on the part of Valve, another one of those âpay attention to your surroundingsâ things.
Oh, and the giant fan works a lot like one of those indoor skydiving facilities. Jump into it and youâll start flying! It launches you up to the roof where you have to crowbar some boards, squeeze through, and get into some air ducts. Awesome.
Climb through the air ducts, kill some head crabs, and youâll find a room with a few zombies and a headcrab. This is the biggest fight in the entire level, and you might notice that itâs fairly small, especially in comparison to the mad gunfights of âWeâve Got Hostiles!â Thatâs because being a shooter is a secondary priority in Blast Pit. Itâs not about combat; itâs about problem solving.
Combat is just one of many ways to solve problems in the game, and quite often, like the exploding room at the start of the level, using a gun can actually get you killed.
Something new?
Every few minutes, Valve changes what youâre doing, keeping the game interesting, rather than just making the level a series of fight corridors. Once youâve completed this firefight, itâs back to the room with the tentacle, climb down some more, and fight through another doorway without getting killed. Problem is, the next hallway that youâre in is missing its floor, which means youâll have to jump. In the next section of the hall, youâll want to keep walking, because the floor starts to collapse under your weight.
Kill a zombie, walk across a catwalk, run down a hall, go past a Completely Harmless Puddle That Isnât In Any Way Dangerous At This Present Time, fight some houndeyes, enter a room, shoot some barnacles and a bullsquid, call the elevator, and watch as the lights flip on. This elevator shaft is huge, hammering home the scale of the level.
The elevator descends, as elevators do, until it decides not to be an elevator and gets stuck, making scary creaking noises. Leap across a gap and grab onto the ladder built into a wall. Fail, and you fall to your death. Succeed, and youâll survive while the elevator falls to its death. Climb down, and a scientist will seem unimpressed that you just defied death to get to him. Try to get him to follow, and he wonât. He will compliment your hazard suit, though.
Pass through some radiation, kill a zombie, and youâll find a room that makes no sense at all. In this room, you hop in a little car which zips around the edges of the room to the other side, where thereâs a ladder. Climb the ladder and youâll find another car, which spins around the room wildly. Time things just right, race around the edge of the room, climb up the ladder, turn around, and walk on a metal beam that clearly violates a great deal of OSHA regulations, but leads you to a giant metal sphere, on which there is a button.
A satisfying conclusion.
Flip the switch, jump onto the sphere, and youâll find a scientist who claims that this is his hiding spot. Cross to the metal beam on the other side, hit another switch, climb down, race around without the wild car thing hitting you, and climb back down. Apparently, hitting those buttons powered the thing on and killed the scientist.
Oops.
At least you have power now!
Make your way back to the elevator shaft, climb all the way up, jump downâwhich takes a bunch of health, by the wayâand walk back to the puddle, which you will find is now an electrified death trap. Fortunately for you, some non-conductive crates can be maneuvered into the puddle, creating a makeshift bridge for you to cross.
Once again, youâll find yourself in the room with the tentacle. Climb all the way to the top and back to the control room. The guard who told you that the tentacle didnât like loud noises has gone. Itâs just you now, left alone to face the tentacle. You and a big red button, the kind of button that screams âPRESS ME!â
So you do, the rocket ignites, and the tentacle gets burned to a crisp. Congratulations, youâve just spent an entire level setting up a boss for his demise, and now heâs dead! It feels like an awesome victory. You face the creature three times before your final encounter. The entire level is dedicated to killing him. Itâs a wonderful thrill.
Climb down the shaft the Tentacle came from and youâll find its charred corpse. Youâll also find a revolver, which is a nice reward for a job well done. Make your way across and through some pipes, and eventually youâll fall, crash into a table, squish the headcrab that was hiding under it, walk down a hall, and begin the next level, Power Up. Itâs an odd conclusion to a wonderful level.
The problem with bosses in shooters.
Blast Pitâs Tentacle fight is a great alternative to the lengthy bullet sponges of modern shooters like Destiny. Facing a boss in any kind of game should be an eventâsomething memorable and distinct. In many games, a boss requires players to use all the skills theyâve mastered in order to defeat it. Unlike a normal enemy, who might die in a small flurry of hits, a boss takes time and thought to beat.
Unfortunately, shooters face a unique problem when it comes to bosses.
Shooters are all about ranged play. Where bosses in melee games often require different combo moves to combat them, shooters keep players at a distance, generally limiting them to a small handful of attacks: primary fire, grenades, and, if youâre lucky, a secondary fire mode. Generally, these all behave the same way: stay away from the boss, attack from a distance, let it take damage, and youâre done.
Because bosses are supposed to be tougher than the average foe, theyâre usually given a great deal of health, but because guns have to be at range, thatâs more or less all theyâre given, which turns most shooter bosses into mindless âdodge attack, strafe, hide in cover, click on enemy until he diesâ fights. Itâs not engaging, which means it gets boring fast.
Some shooters have introduced bosses with weak points, which, at best, means that players need to consider where they position themselves in order to fight their foe, but even then, these enemies are still bullet spongesâconsider Destinyâs Devil Walker tanks, which must be shot in the legs to reveal their weak spots so the player can kill them.
With Blast Pit, Valve went for a shooter boss that couldnât be shot. Sure, you could hurt him, but you couldnât kill him without going through a series of interlocking puzzles to solve the problem. Instead of a knock-down, drag-out fight that took twenty minutes to complete, Blast Pit consisted of a bunch of little fights and puzzles that led to a simple, satisfying climax. The rivalry between you and the Tentacle had the length and scale of a boss fight, but it filled that time with varied gameplay spread throughout several rooms and interlaced with several other smaller fights.
That is the kind of boss fight I want to see games learn from.
Blast Pit is all about progress. When players engage in a game, they expect to feel like theyâre moving forward. Some developers use things like audiovisual feedback to bring a sense of progress. Other developers give players hundreds, even thousands of enemies to kill. Still others implement alerts that remind players theyâre making progress. Valveâs approach here is much more subtle, Progress is felt by doing something new every couple of minutes. Players are driven onwards by a desire to see whatâs next.
Itâs somewhat strange that Bungie of all developers seemed to forget this in Destiny. That sense of constant progress is what made Halo such a great game, after all. Sitting still for ten minutes? Thatâs not the âthirty seconds of funâ design philosophy that skyrocketed Bungie to prominence and gave us a decade of great shooters.
Iâve played plenty of shooters this year, and theyâve all got their strong suits, but Half-Life reminds me that combat isnât everything. Itâs about pacing. Itâs about retaining interest. Itâs about how it feels. I like most of the shooters Iâve played this year, especially Destiny, but in returning to Half-Life, Iâm reminded why I fell in love with shooters in the first place. It wasnât so much about shooting, it was about engaging with a space, working towards a goal, and being awesome.
If youâve never played Half-Life before, you should. Itâs one of the all-time greats. While it hasnât aged perfectly, itâs still a fun game, and one well worth experiencing. Play at least up through Blast Pit, but really, play it all the way through.
GB Burford is a freelance journalist and indie game developer who just canât get enough of exploring why games work. You can reach him on Twitter at @ForgetAmnesia or on his blog. You can support him and even suggest games to write about over at his Patreon
