Half-Life 3 has become one of the most anticipated games not announced in years. A series which has managed to surpass it's predecessors each time a new release has emerged, Half-Life was regarded as a stellar game whilst Half-Life 2 managed to blow it out of the water with an enriched story, impressive graphics and fantastic controls. To many fans amazement Valve even managed to produce 2 pieces of added content for the original and 3 for the sequel which still managed to meet everyone's standards. It appeared after the release of Half-Life 2 Episode 2 in 2007, Valve could do no wrong and with the release of Portal two days later which was also met with Critical acclaim, whatever Gabe Newell touched would turn to Gold.
However after the rise of Steam as the dominant gaming service on the PC, Valve began to devout more and more of their time to improving the platform, and with this, tie in games which would expand on the use of Steam as a service. For instance DOTA 2 has become one of the most played games on the internet and with business being the foremost important thing within a company like Valve, why should they devote less of their time working on this cash cow and instead focus on such a risk?
Now don't get me wrong, I would love to see Valve publish a Half-Life 3 especially using the technology available to them now. How far games have advanced since we last saw Gordon Freeman and his crowbar, but are we maybe blinded by our Nostalgic spectacles to completely deny what has happened in situations like this before? First example, Sonic the Hedgehog. In Hindsight, our favourite Sega mascot has fallen, and fallen hard. Sonic made the transition to 3D on the Dreamcast with Sonic Adventure and then would follow that up with Adventure 2, whilst it is not the Adventure games which make it as my example, it would be the so called reboot of the series on the previous gen consoles, Sonic the Hedgehog or Sonic 06 for short. 06 was perceived as Sonic's answer to Mario's excellent move into the 3-D world. Whilst the adventure games were not awful, they certainly have not aged well with an abundance of Glitches and poor animations, Sonic definitely struggled to convince Gamers that the move to 3-D had been successful. Sonic 06 was going to advance the game engine and once again have Sonic rivalling his Plumber pal at Nintendo. After constant delays to the release date, Sonic 06 was released as a broken unfinished mess. Whilst this was in part due to the corporation being fed up of the constant set backs, which could be down to having to move the game from the sixth Generation of consoles onto the recently released next Gen, Sega gave the Sonic team a deadline of late 2006, mixing this with the change of console and forced change of game engine at such short notice opened a can of worms that not even Yuji Naka could save. The game was a complete mess, the engine was broken upon release in short, the story was broken, oh did I mention it was broken?! Fans were devastated and after the previous mistake of Shadow the Hedgehog, the series carries a tarnished reputation which seems irreversible.
A second example of failure upon a highly anticipated sequel would be the self proclaimed King himself, Duke Nukem. Do I actually need to explain this? In case anyone was luckily under a rock when this complete mess was released I'll give you a quick explanation. Duke was arguably every teenagers favourite game in the 90's alongside titles like Doom and Quake. Everyone wanted to kick ass and chew bubblegum with Duke. Until after 1996 that is, when he disappeared off the face of the planet. Teenage angst probably grew with the vanishing of their favourite Steroid Junky. The latest installment in the series, Duke Nukem Forever, was actually delayed for over a decade, originally planned in 1997 and an announcement of the delay would be released each year until 2008. Finally in 2011 the game was announced after years of teasers for consoles like the Dreamcast, Gamecube and Playstation. A planned release of summer 2011 was set and whilst many believed this to be too soon for the series to release a strong sequel which it deserved, they were reassured they had been working on the game months before they had actually announced it. If Sonic 06 was full of bugs, it was amazing how a game released 5 years later could actually be classed as worse. Whilst we can look passed the dire graphics and dull story, let's be honest, Nukem never really had a great storyline anyway. The game play was pathetic. The game lacked the same punch as it used to carry, the controls were completely ruined in some sections and made the game impossible at others. There was no middle ground, it was either a complete hailstorm of difficulty or a walk in the park. To make it even worse, the Duke just came across as a broken record, there was nothing new, he was boring. As of 2012 Gearbox Software now owns the rights to Duke Nukem and are apparently working on rebooting the franchise.
Any video game fan should know the name John Romero, and even if they don't, they have most likely played a game influenced by his own creations. Romero and John Carmack arguably created the FPS genre in video games. Creating and Designing master pieces like Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, it seemed like anything these two touched would turn to pure Gold. I played the Quake games quite a lot as a kid, having the game on my old PC, I thought they were incredible. So no doubt when someone let me borrow a copy of Daikatana when I was older, I was excited. I hadn't read anything about it and the game was already quite old, I simply tried it expecting to see another Romero masterpiece. Carmack wisely stayed away from Daikatana and in similar fashion to the previous two installments in this article, a high number of delays stretched out the project, wore the development team down, and unpractical deadlines led to Daikatana being released "Unfinished". Romero stated that content had been left out of the game that would have been revolutionary at the time. The game was ugly, controlled poorly and was full of game breaking glitches. Now honestly, I don't think it deserves the label as the worst game in history, there are moments when you think "Oh wow that was cool" but I should be thinking that after most firefights, I shouldn't be bored when playing a game like that, it left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth especially seeing as an N64 game would cost about £55 new. The hype behind John Romero releasing another game was too much for Daikatana and to some extent Romero has struggled to really get back to the level he was at during his Quake and Doom years.
Honestly, I could go on and on about sequels which flopped. This means in no way I believe that Half Life 3 will be a failure, or would be seeing as it hasn't been announced. Rumours fly around everywhere, this proves that is is confirmed, or did you see this on Steam, it is confirmed. I am with everyone else in hoping to see Gordon Freeman one last time, but the point of this piece is to say "Let's not get too excited, you've seen what has happened before, be careful". This article really means Half Life 3 confirmed.
