Developed by Valve and initially published by Sierra On-Line (1998–2003) to then be also published by Valve, the Half-Life series has two tent-pole titles: Half-Life (1998) and Half-Life 2 (2004). Each of these entries has a number of further smaller expansions related to them. Developed by Gearbox Software, Opposing Force (1999), Blue Shift (2001), and Decay (2001)tell the events of the first game from different perspectives (soldier, security guard, and scientist, respectively); Valve’s Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007) continues the narrative of the second game. After a 13-year hiatus, the latest release, Half-Life: Alyx (2020), is a virtual reality title from Valve, with events taking place from the perspective of a different protagonist, Alyx Vance, as a prequel to Half-Life 2.
The plot of the Half-Life series is centred around the theme of alien invasion. In the first game, aliens from Planet Xen pour through a trans-dimensional portal accidentally created by scientists working at the Black Mesa research facility, upon which the military are called in to contain the situation with indiscriminate force. The events of Half-Life 2 consider what might happen if a more powerful alien culture, the Combine, then came through the expanding rift, to take over the world and subjugate humankind. Throughout the narrative of the main series, the player enacts the role of research scientist Gordon Freeman (a “free-man”). Aided at times by the enigmatic G-Man, colleagues, and eventually a rebel network, Freeman tasks himself with ending the cascading horrors that his initial actions caused. At the end of Half-Life, Freeman travels to the alien world to defeat the gargantuan, floating-foetus-like Nihilanth; the narrative of Half-Life 2 concludes with the Citadel, a forward base of operations for the Combine, being destroyed, but the story, as played out in the episodic additional content, remains unresolved.
The Half-Life series is critically acclaimed for two interrelated reasons: the sweeping drama that pushes the player along, and the advanced capabilities of the game engines that power the actions on screen. However, it is crucial to note that neither of these qualities are in themselves novel when it comes to alien invasion videogames. Historically, it is within this type of game that technological progression and cultural impact are often keenly at the forefront of contemporary developments.
In 1978, aliens invaded videogames when the Japanese developer Taito created the arcade hit Space Invaders. Space Invaders, a game in which the player moves a crude representation of a tank across the horizontal axis at the bottom of the screen to shoot descending lines of regimented aliens intent on attacking an Earth-like location was a “game that revitalized the videogame industry and changed it forever” (Kubey 1982: 64). With Space Invaders, players could engage in a genre that had been popularised by the movie Star Wars (1977), but, despite its iconic look, the success of Space Invaders was not due to any space-operatic saga being told. Instead, as Mia Consalvo points out, Space Invaders features “gameplay with no dialogue apart from ‘high score’ and ‘game over,’ which were ‘understandable to all’ players” (Consalvo 2016: 42). In addition, J. C. Herz states that, “This was the first game to display a continuous high-score display” (Herz 1997: 15), and as Toshihiro Nishikado, designer of Space Invaders offers, his game featured novel in-game interactive elements, where also for the first time, “the enemies react to the players’ movement and attack back” (Retro Gamer 2004: 35). Space Invaders, above all things, was innovative, encouraging players to challenge themselves while pushing forward the capabilities of the target-shooting genre, with its ray-gun, mechanical, and static precedents. Where tin-cans, cowboys, and wildlife had come before it, the new and mutable possibilities afforded by futuristic alien visitor subject matter defined the direction of the games that followed. It wasn’t until the release of DOOM (1993), developed by id Software, that the alien invasion narrative rebooted with bloody impact.
The full 2,900 word version of this article is published in Aliens: A Companion, edited by Elana Gomel and Simon Bacon, published by Peter Lang, 2024.
Carl Wilson 