Half-Life: A Place in the West

Half-Life: A Place in the West teases the Half-Life fans by delivering a very compelling story based on the Half-Life universe, presented as a fan-made digital comic featuring a total of 13 chapters which are planned to be released over several years. By the time of writing this review, 5 of them are available on the Steam store (the first one being free).

Even if the comic uses the Half-Life setting, its story follows a completely new path, unrelated to the characters featured in the series so that it’s not centered on Gordon Freeman’s adventures. I haven’t played any of the Half-Life titles, yet I greatly enjoyed reading the comic which didn’t require any prior knowledge about the franchise. The few intro pages describe this setting very well and the info provided is enough to get you started: at Black Mesa Research Facility, scientists discover a new alien life form and while attempting to analyze it, they accidentally cause a dimensional rift to open; as a consequence, Earth becomes exposed to an alien invasion. Seven hours later, the extra-terrestrial race known as the “Combine” conquers the planet entirely and kills most of humanity. Gigantic towers, called “Citadels” are sent out by the Combine to the major cities of the Earth, in order to enforce their will on the remaining living people.

Half-Life: A Place in the West picks up the story 10 years after this event. The tower destined for Boston never made it to Earth but has now reappeared in the city of New Franklin – one of the last remaining establishments of human resistance to the Combine. This tower seems to be controlled by “The Entity” – an unknown life force – and the Combine aboard are dead. A group of scientists from Europe has been summoned to research the Entity, but the party never made it to New Franklin, apart from Leyla Poirer. She managed to survive with the help of Dreyfus – a member of the Vortigaunts alien race, which was also enslaved by the Combine.

At the same time, several children are kidnaped and transported to New Franklin for unknown purposes. Albert Kempinski, a man whose daughter has been kidnapped, is heading to New Franklin to search for her and joins paths with Leyla Poirer. Upon entering New Franklin, they find a city divided into two major factions, each seeking to impose their beliefs on the other: the leader of the city plans to use the tower to fight the Combine, while the opposition hopes to use the tower to leave the Earth together with the remaining survivors of the human race. The story splits into several branches, with Albert and Leyla in the middle of the conflict between the two political groups.

The characters are designed in a very complex manner, the plot has all sorts of twists and turns to keep you hooked and in my opinion, the overall execution is outstanding. The narration is non-linear and it often jumps from one storyline to another and back and forth in time, through flashbacks that support the character development.

There is one major community complaint about the comic: the fact that the first two chapters award achievements, of which only the first chapter is available for free; therefore, people who want to give the comic a try by playing the first chapter will obtain only the 6 / 11 achievements and will not be able to have a 100% completion unless they buy the second chapter. The developers explained in this post that the addition of these achievements was not meant to force people who previously completed the free chapter to also buy the next chapter in order to maintain their completion percentage. As a result of the negative feedback from the achievement hunters community, they decided to not implement new achievements in the next chapters, but at the same time, they didn’t take any measures to improve the existing achievement situation, which left the achievement hunters community unsatisfied.

Also, because the funding was received only after the free chapter released, the soundtrack of the comic book is sold as a separate DLC. This means that you will play the game without any music, unless you spend some extra money on purchasing the Soundrack DLC. Unfortunately, this collection of moody / dark-ambiental tracks didn’t enhance my experience; most of the time, I even forgot to listen to them because the story itself was so immersive. My advice would be to buy an extra chapter rather than the music, which also costs 50% more than one chapter and doesn’t add much.

In my opinion, not incorporating the soundtrack by default in the comic and instead selling it as a separate DLC, together with the decision of not addressing the complains of the achievement completionists community indicate (despite what the developers say) that these two courses of actions were specifically meant to inflate the sales. If this is the case, then it’s a pity after all that these decisions were taken, since the comic is good enough to stand on its own, without needing these “tricks” to bring more awareness / revenue.

However, before deciding whether to buy any of the chapters, keep in mind that you will spend $2 for a 30-45 minutes reading session, after which you will be left wanting to read another chapter. It’s like an addictive TV series full of cliffhangers, but you won’t get another episode for months.

And don’t get your hopes up, Half-Life 3 is still unconfirmed.