Well, it had to happen sometime I guess. As most of you know, I live, breathe, eat, sleep and adulterate with Half Life whenever I can. Those of you living under a rock for the last two and a bit years, Half Life is the game that took Quake 2 'round the back of the bike sheds and give it the kicking of it's life, and the went and stole Unreal's lunch money and warned it to keep up with payments. Half Life is a first person shooter with added bits of realism. (Ok, well apart from the aliens) Weapons, don't hover in mid air, spinning to grab your attention, they are cunningly hid at times, making you work for your firepower. The enemies AI is quite good, humans for instance will run for cover before opening fire. Each section of the game involves solving a situation before proceeding further, like finding fuel and air for a rocket booster, to burn a sound worm. The beauty of this game is it isn't your typical run in, shoot everything because you'll easily get killed that way. Often you have to plan your attack before executing it. Another plus point is that, the game doesn't require a powerful graphics card to run it on. It'll work fine on a regular card and still looks great.

One final point on the game is the multiplayer potential. There are so many options and the arenas are so big, you could easily run up a large phone bill. Bundled with Half-Life: Game of the year, is team fortress (An updated version is availible on Opposing Forces), a game which see you choose a role and work as part of a team against another team.

As regards the games themselves, Half Life follows the advents of Gordan Freeman, a research scientist whose experiment goes wrong and then must fight for his own survival. Opposing force is an add on for the original, this time featuring a young marine recruit, Adrian Shephard who must find his way out of an encampment after his chopper crashes. Opposing force has few changes like new weapons, more aliens and so on. However, it isn't as long as Half Life and you are left feeling slightly cheated. However, this is a serious must by if you like your first person shooter or exciting online games.

Half Life is availible in Game for £19.99, Opposing Force for £19.99 or you can get Half Life: Game of the Year Ed. and Opposing Force together in a pack called Half Life Generations for £29.99