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Half-Life 2 – (Chapter 7) - Highway 17
It’s hard to pick out one part of Half-Life 2 as being superior to the rest, since it’s pretty much fantastic from beginning to end. I chose Highway 17 because the first time I played through it I was totally immersed. It easily counts as one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had. When that part of the game was over I was in two minds as to whether to carry on or go back to earlier saved positions and play through it again.
The level sees Gordon Freeman driving a battered dune buggy along a rugged stretch of coastal road; however it is not a straight drive. There are isolated cliff-top houses to be explored and ransacked for supplies; Combine roadblocks; strange landmines that stick to your buggy and force it over onto its back; Where the Asphalt has collapsed you are forced down onto the beach which is strewn with the rusting hulks of ships and is populated by Ant Lions.
One point in the level has you assisting resistance forces as they fight off an air raid. Another sees you climbing into the cabin of a crane which you can also use to drop shipping containers on your enemies.
The level ends in with Gordon Freeman negotiating the girders and broken walkways on the underside of a railway bridge. On the return journey the hazard of missing a step and plunging hundreds of feet into the sea is made even more difficult by the fact that a Combine Gunship is circling overhead.
Highway 17 is a masterpiece of imaginative and balanced level design - beautiful to look at and with a huge variation in the gameplay, which means that it never really gets dull.
