Half-Life 1 is kind of dated by now, but still loads of fun. On one hand, the action and seamless levels give the game perfect pacing, and a lot of the weapons (a big alien hand that fires weird missiles? Hell yes!) are still fun even today. On the other, the jumping puzzles are sort of tired, and the blocky graphics and poor-quality sound haven't aged well.
And, yes, there was a version released for PS2: a port by Gearbox, to be exact, who upped the polygon count, redid a lot of the textures, and added a nifty co-op mode. It also has 16:9 widescreen support, which, along with the better graphics, take the pain away of having to play it in 640x480.
Now, Half-Life 2... I'm about 12 hours in at the moment, and unless the ending turns out to let down, I'm convinced that this IS the perfect FPS.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
