Not only did the HEV suit serve a practical purpose in the game’s story (it’s used to protect Freeman during the experiment that sets the story in motion), but it assigned a logic to in-game items, which at the time were usually treated as if they were magic mushrooms in Super Mario. Half-Life changed all that by introducing Gordon Freeman’s HEV suit during the game’s infamous opening sequence. You would just pick up health packs, armor, and power-ups as you went along, and you didn’t ask any questions. Prior to Half-Life, the concept of health and armor in most first-person shooters (and many other games for that matter) was pretty simple. It all sounds simple, but at a time when shooter the genre was still trying to escape the “ Doom clone” label, this is one of the ways that Half-Life showed that even more action-oriented FPS titles could still benefit from a dose of realistic design.
![half life game half life game](https://www.indiegamebundles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/half-life.jpg)
On top of that, you’ve got impressive details like the fact that crossing into a body of water that is touching an exposed electrical source will electrocute the player or enemies.
![half life game half life game](https://theredledger.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/HalfLife5417-900x600.jpg)
Titles like GoldenEye 007 played with similar ideas, but there really is an internal logic to the location of nearly every gun and item in Half-Lifethat goes beyond whether a gun is floating magically or laying in wait. The most infamous example of this is humorously highlighted in the game’s manual, which boasts that in-game weapons are found in practical locations rather than just floating in the air. Yet, so many of Half-Life’s best touches are grounded in realism. At a time when some shooters force us to stay hydrated and take our vitamins, that’s probably not the way modern gamers would choose to describe an FPS that ends with a trip through an alien dimension. “Realism” probably feels like an odd word to use when talking about Half-Life.