HALF-LIFE EXTENDED

Experience the original Half-Life the way (you think) you remember it.

- By Rick Lane

I've always said that my favourite chapter in Half-Life is Office Complex. In a game that's all about recontextualising the FPS from abstract mazes into a realistic, coherent setting, Office Complex felt like the ultimate expression of that.

It's the most mundane part of Black Mesa's clandestine research facility, swapping the hellscapes of Doom and the fantasy realms of Heretic for a cold and clinical administration centre. There are no laboratories, rocket silos, or experimental weapons manufacture here, just dimly lit workspaces connected by chequerboard-tiled corridors.

Unfortunately, time is a devious little rapscallion, and upon a recent return to Half-Life, I was shocked to discover that Office Complex is, in fact, quite a boring series of levels, with little of the survival-horror-ish tension that I recall. There are hardly any offices, and it isn't very complex. Perhaps Valve should have called it Corridor Simple.

Hence, the greatest compliment I can afford the Half-Life Extended mod is that it gives Office Complex the level design such a name deserves. It transforms Valve's basic layout into the nightmare administrative warren that I (mis)remember from my childhood, generating those same feelings of tension and disorientation.

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