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Half-Life
- victorstanciu 2y agoObligatory mention that if you want to enjoy Half-Life today (in spirit if not exactly the same game), Black Mesa is the best option for doing so: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/
- ekianjo 2y agoBlack Mesa is a recreation but it's not identical to the original either. So... Yes if you want modern graphics, no if you want the real thing
- TazeTSchnitzel 2y agoBlack Mesa is not the same game!
- graynk 2y agoYes and no. The original is still very much playable, one does not replace the other, both are very good
- bl0rg 2y agoAs someone who has played both, why not just play Black Mesa?
- Tsiklon 2y agoThe game mechanics and how the story is told is worth experiencing by itself in it’s original form before seeing the modern interpretation in Black Mesa
- worble 2y agoJust a quick bullet point list of differences from the top of my head: - Half Life has much faster run and gun gameplay (stemming from it's quake roots no doubt), while in Black Mesa it's much slower paced - The AI in the game is completely different, Black Mesa's soldiers feel way more aggressive, again encouraging a slower pace of play compared to the original - Lots of levels have small changes - some are cool, others kinda feel like they're just different for the sake of being different - Xen itself is completely different; Unpopular opinion, I liked the original! It feels otherwordly and alien and oppressive, the new one is certainly pretty but lacks that atmosphere, imo Black Mesa is a great game, one thing I have nothing but praise for is it's presentation - it's really nice to look at and they did a bang up job with the graphics and animations. But which is better is a matter of opinion, and personally I much prefer how HL1 actually feels to play.
- dijksterhuis 2y agoA couple to add, with my own biases included because I love Black Mesa - Joel Nielsen's great sound track / sound design work in Black Mesa ... I believe he admitted in an interview that some of the "squelching" sounds are recorded by slapping someone's arse O_o - The reworked Gonarch fight is, hands down, one of the most entertaining and intense boss fights for me in recent memory. It's way better than the original for sure, which I remember just being frustrating (lack of ammo). > Xen itself is completely different; Unpopular opinion, I liked the original! It feels otherwordly and alien and oppressive, the new one is certainly pretty but lacks that atmosphere, imo I see both takes. Like, in the original game I actually liked Xen (except Gonarch). It felt otherwordly and empty, as if one of the reasons for earth being invaded was because there was nothing left. But BM Xen is literally another world. I prefer BM Xen, but I did enjoy the original at the time. For a deeper look into Black Mesa / Half-Life and some of the changes, Soup Emporium did a great video here, where he only stole some of the points he raises https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8KAq78gco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8KAq78gco
- nobankai 2y ago> some of the "squelching" sounds are recorded by slapping someone's arse O_o Quite reminiscent of deadmau5' famous trick: https://youtu.be/4mx_P_gPyiE https://youtu.be/4mx_P_gPyiE
- graynk 2y agoOther people have already given great answers: it plays faster, the levels are different, etc. But to me the main problem of "remake replaces the original" approach is that it's a a very "content-consuming"-way to look at media. Videogames are art in their own way, old games can still be enjoyed for what they are and for what they were - same thing with movies. Silent Hill 2 (2024) doesn't replace the original Silent Hill 2. RoboCop (2014) doesn't make RoboCop (1987) obsolete. That's my take on re_makes_, at least. With re_masters_ I'd be much more willing to recommend them over the originals (although the preservationist in me would still like the originals to be available in some way)
- theshackleford 2y agoThey are not the same game. Black Mesa is excellent, but it doesn’t scratch the same itch, for me at least. Plus, there is no reason to not play the original, it works and runs fine.
- cs02rm0 2y agoDoes it run on MacOS? (That page suggests not?)
- haunter 2y agoymmv but runs under CrossOver https://old.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1e4pomu/black_mesa_on_an_m1_pro_mac/ https://old.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1e4pomu/black_me...
- karlgkk 2y agoWhile the original version did not get a port to Mac OS, later on the updated version did for Mac OS X
- davikr 2y agoSkip Xen if you're playing this.
- loehnsberg 2y agoWhy skip Xen? Xen in Black Mesa is really good. I found it to be much better than the original.
- 3eb7988a1663 2y agoIt is so long, and I did not enjoy my time there. "Alright, here is the third or fourth energy door unlocking puzzle to slog through". It was so much slower paced you lose the thread from the human world of what you are even doing anymore.
- deergomoo 2y agoOverall I think Xen was much better in Black Mesa than HL1, but why they felt the need to make it so long is a mystery to me. Half to two-thirds of the play time could have been cut and it would have only improved things.
- on_the_train 2y agoI really didn't like black Mesa at all. It's different for the sake of being different
- deergomoo 2y agoThere's still a lot of value in playing the original, but what the Black Mesa team achieved with what is effectively a fan project is incredible. And in a world where Take Two goes after people doing cool stuff with 20 year old GTA games, it's great that it got the official blessing from Valve.
- butlike 2y agoAs someone who's actively playing through GTA1 right now, what cool things are people doing with GTA?
- theshackleford 2y agoThey are likely referring to the 3D era games which google just unfortunately let me know are getting closer to 25 years old, at least for GTA3.
- deergomoo 2y agoPorting GTA3 to the Dreamcast has been the most recent example I’ve seen: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-the-new-grand-theft-auto-3-dreamcast-port-is-an-astonishing-achievement https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-the-new-grand-...
- scrlk 2y agoWhy do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?
- reubenmorais 2y ago> And then there are an awful lot of jumping puzzles, shoehorned into a game engine that has way more slop in it than is ideal for such things. I was taken aback by this comment. The original Half Life engine has super tight and responsive movement, to the point where the average "tryhard" in a server would be executing all kinds of movement tricks that require frame-perfect inputs or very close to it. Watch some speedruns or HL:DS games and you can easily find examples of gameplay involving super precise movement. In CS there was a huge scene of movement based maps like surf_, bh_, and deathrun_. Makes me think of something in the reviewers setup while playing Half-Life was introducing extra input latency and creating this feel of sloppiness.
- iforgotpassword 2y agoI also found it very weird back then.
- wingerlang 2y agoMy favorite pasttime in HL/CS back in the day was bhopping and kz_. To some degree I think it has too responsive movement. I recently went back to play HL and I fell down so many crates due to the instant movement, having been used to some inertia in games since.
- reubenmorais 2y agoI remember never quite getting into Counter-Strike: Source because of the difference in inertia. I had friends who were masters of movement there so I know it wasn't a sloppy game, but my muscle memory from 1.6 just made it feel... uncanny :)
- JansjoFromIkea 2y agoSuper tight and responsive movement wouldn't necessarily mean jumping puzzles make sense in a 90s single player FPS. Would also say what a tryhard is attempting on a server playing every day is going to be a fair bit off from the bulk of people who played through the main game. My memory is that it wasn't the controls but the sizes of the spaces you had to jump to and the clarity of where they were so you could adequately position yourself that were the issue. The latter of which is probably more down to texture usage than the engine itself.
- HelloUsername 2y agoDupes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42478326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42478326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42472847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42472847
- gxd 2y agoOne of the saddest things in my gamer resume is that I was never able to get into Half-Life. I can absolutely see what everybody likes in the game - both technically and in terms of gameplay. But I was never into its uneven pace when compared to Doom, not even back in the day. I always felt that the game couldn't decide whether it was a shooter or a puzzle-adventure, what the article refers to as "friction". The Orange Box console versions also suffered from a non-adjustable field of view that made me feel sick after a few minutes of playing.
- mrkeen 2y agoI played through the single player, but like you I think I preferred doom. That said, half-life mods were imo the golden age of gaming. Vampire slayer let you scare the shit out of your friends at 3am in a LAN. Day of defeat and firearms were the cod and mw of the day. Natural Selection crushed it in terms of fps/RTS hybrid, teamplay and overall quality and polish. Science & industry? Pirates Vikings & knights? Tfc? Several attempts at matrix mods & the opera. So much amazing diversity - it's such a shame that CS (the most banal, vanilla, milquetoast game ever) got all the mindshare. Even when CS ventured into making things more interesting/diverse (hostage rescue, shield, etc.) those things seem to have died off back to the 'standard' game mode (80% of players dead and spectating while "the bomb has been planted" sound effect plays).
- hypercube33 2y agoI deeply miss Science and Industry. Half life is still being modded these days just isn't as popular. Jollywangcore features some of the single player mods
- dijksterhuis 2y agoJolly's Hardcore Mod is still one of my favourite youtube videos -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL8rxqodeRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL8rxqodeRI
- paulryanrogers 2y agoLet's not forget Action Half Life. The variety sometimes meant you only played your favorite mod a few times at the LAN parties. Because people had so many other things to play as the 90s and early aughts progressed.
- TrackerFF 2y agoTried it when it was release, then bought it myself in 1999, after I finally had managed to purchase a new PC - can't remember if it was a Nvidia TNT2 or 3dfx Voodoo 3 card I bought with it. But it was the first time I could play the game without it being sluggish and looking like crap. We had bought a family PC 4 years earlier, which had cost a fortune - but by 1998/1999 it was woefully outdated. Also, a thought: Imagine purchasing a PC today for $5k, and it being unusable for games in 3-4 years. One thing I (in general) miss from those days, was how easy it was to get into modding. Whether that be to make your own maps, or more involved game mods. The modding community really was something, and kept the game somewhat fresh for years. I also vividly remember downloading all the new iterations of counter-strike, which really took off - until settling on 1.6 On a side not, it's a bit tough to think that all this was 25 years ago now, but I still remember all this quite well - having only been a teenager back then, and in 25 years I'll be this old man. Wonder if all the memories from LAN-parties etc. will be as fresh in 25 years, as they are now.
- gonzo41 2y agoI loved world building with the valve map tools. It was fantastic. Almost as much fun as the game itself.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoWhich in turn led to an exploding mod scene, clans, hosting and communities. Truly a world-changing game at a golden moment in game history (beside Unreal). And yes, like a good story book a generation have memories of escaping the crumbling Black Mesa facility chased by alien horrors. Mission accomplished Valve.
- joquarky 2y agoWorldcraft was so much fun! At least until "LEAK LEAK LEAK" appeared
- erikbye 2y agoHah, that reminds me how I started leakfree.org, where Black Mesa got started. That was a long time ago.
- mediumsmart 2y agothis balancing act between scripted story and open gameplay with "conscious" AI defense is so hard to pull off. In the scripted entertainment league Half-Life rules I think. Crysis had the tech to do the real thing and failed - too much cinema and a bad story. But the realism, the mechanics of movement and physics - it was all there in god tier quality.
- agumonkey 2y agothere were other brilliant ideas bridging nascent technology for the sake of gameplay, like surround sound to locate some fast (nearly impossible to see coming) enemies. It really was perfectly executed.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoGreat early examples of simulated acoustic spaces matching geometry, like delay networks for metallic ducting in the crawl spaces. And notable firsts in sound management - before there were really "sound engines".
- Christian_A 2y agoThis was the game that brought me into counter-strike and in my opinion still one of the best stories there is. Well done, especially when you think about how limited their possibilities were in the days back then.
- hadriendavid 2y agoI remember playing on the computers at university. Someone had modded the campus map, was so fun to play.
- sylens 2y agoThe observation that Doom was on more PCs than Windows was very astute. Doom was everywhere at the time - it was not uncommon to find the shareware on computers inside many typical office jobs
- bombcar 2y agoThe shareware version of DooM was more of a complete game than many boxed games at the time. It’s no wonder it spread so far - especially because it was also an amazing hardware demo.
- simonjgreen 2y agoWonderfully written article, but especially delighted to see extensive mention of DF2: Jedi Knight. This game absolutely dominated mine and friends free time for multiple years, both single player and multiplayer. Up there as one of my favourite of all time, certainly most played. Lucasarts absolutely ruled on the story based games genre merges. See of course all the point and clicks such as Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, but also of course XWing and Tie Fighter.
- DylanSp 2y agoThe same author has full articles on Jedi Knight [1] and X-Wing/TIE Fighter. [2]. If you go through his archives [3], he's also written a lot about LucasArts' adventure games; I think the first posts that talk about them are the three "A New Force in Games" posts. [1] https://www.filfre.net/2024/04/jedi-knight-plus-notes-on-an-expanded-universe/ https://www.filfre.net/2024/04/jedi-knight-plus-notes-on-an-... [2] https://www.filfre.net/2021/02/the-second-coming-of-star-wars/ https://www.filfre.net/2021/02/the-second-coming-of-star-war... [3] https://www.filfre.net/sitemap/ https://www.filfre.net/sitemap/
- HaZeust 2y agoI've been waiting decades for a re-visit of the Jedi Knight series; preferably in the breadth of Jedi Outcast. I hope to see it soon.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gyomu 2y ago> It was far from flawless, but it was really trying to push the boundaries of a young medium. Great read, it made me realize how far we've come. Video games as an art are really in an interesting spot right now - big budget projects all end up being bland, buggy, cookie cutter rehashes of the same couple templates. Companies that once represented the pinnacle of creativity and what could be achieved with high budgets - Blizzard, Bethesda, Ubisoft, etc - are now the laughing stock of gamers. Not that it matters when the bulk of gamers are still putting dozens of hours and plenty of microtransaction dollars into decade old games like Fortnite/Minecraft/GTA every week. What's the last big budget release that actually left a strong artistic impression? What's the next big budget release that will actually move the needle of the medium meaningfully? Thankfully, there are a bunch of indie developers that still release fresh experiences - but they too kind of end up falling into the same tropes (if you like 2D roguelike/platformer/puzzler there's plenty of choice, otherwise...). Not too unlike the state of the film industry. It's hard to imagine what a solid shakeup of these behemoth, mature industries could look like.
- ekianjo 2y agoGTA5 had a super big budget yet received very good feedback from gamers and critics alike, and is still played to this day. So not sure you can just discard big budgets as a whole. And then Star Citizen is quite innovative in many regards and has virtually unlimited budget, and would not exist in the first place without a long runway
- dijit 2y agoGTA5 released more than 10 years ago fwiw, the zeitgeist has changed significantly in the last 5-7years.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoIn what way(s)?
- dijit 2y ago
- lokimedes 2y agoI literally got the t-shirt (came with the game), and later became a particle physicist, working at CERN, we received a crowbar for the initial startup of the LHC. This game defined my life.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoWell, please be bloody careful and don't create any resonance cascade scenarios.
- baruchthescribe 2y agoLokimedes doesn't need to hear all this. He's a highly trained professional.
- _benj 2y agoLokimedes, we have complete confidence in you.
- dijksterhuis 2y agothey’re waiting for you Lokimedes, in the the chamberrr
- astrolx 2y agoWe boosted the anti-mass spectrometer 105 percent. Bit of a gamble, but we need the extra resolution.
- markus_zhang 2y agoWow that's inspiring. Let us know when you are asked to send a crystal into the testing chamber. I'll go to the mountains.
- tomaytotomato 2y agoLet us know if we need to prepare for "unforseen consequences". Also I am really sorry but I messed up your lunch in the microwave earlier.
- vasco 2y ago> how many computers were currently running Microsoft Windows in the United States. The number of 20 million that he got back was impressive. Yet he was shocked to learn that Windows wasn’t the most popular single piece of software to be found on American personal computers; that was rather a game called DOOM. Newell and Harrington had long enjoyed playing games. Now, it seemed, there were huge piles of money to be earned from making them. Later on they also found out that introducing gambling to kids is indeed a much better business than just selling games. Going on for many years without anyone cracking down, and doing workarounds when governments try to make it illegal.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoI'm reminded of my art professor whose friend worked designing lottery scratch offs, and found it unfulfilling yet well paid. While my professor struggled teaching at a B-tier state university and contracting for prestigious brands. Around the same time I gave up my dream of making videogames because pay and hours were terrible, and I had no prospects in the Midwest.
- hnclimategroup 2y ago[flagged]
- ReptileMan 2y agoOne of the unfortunate fallouts of Half-life was Quake 3 arena, which could be viewed as it's exact opposite. I am convinced that after half life people just couldn't appreciate the opposite - just shooting, without any story. And it didn't create the deserved following. Instead we had almost 15 years of Spunkgargleweewee-s as defined by Zero Punctuation.
- k__ 2y agoI loved Q1 and Q2, but Q3A just felt like half a game to me.
- 6stringmerc 2y agoGreat article on the single player aspect of the game and absolutely accurate about how exceptional it was - and still is - in the canon of modern gaming. What really gave Half-Life its legs was the multiplayer component. It came in just as broadband internet was appearing in households across the United States and Canada. The ability to host servers and coordinate through ICQ and message boards created a one-of-a-kind community. I know because I lived it. The [R]age Board for the Elites. The CLQ. Adrenaline Gamer and Counter Strike. Half-Life was incredible and still has an online presence of note - mostly in developing countries. Their hardware matches the lift to run at decent FPS and join games. Now and then I still hop on a server through Steam. The di clan video - digital immortality - can do more to highlight “why” HLDM and its physics and weapons were such a game changer, even compared to Q3 and UT at the time. There is nothing like using the long jump and tau cannon to literally fly around maps. Other games have tried, but I’ve never gotten the same high as with HL. Mostly I miss the community, as juvenile and crass as it was. Like the NFL, it was a young man’s game. Most of us were under 25 with rare exceptions. I’ll never forget when Neo Maximus Babson went missing. This article bring back a lot of memories and than you for sharing… -p$ychos!s- out (LMS, CML, syn, di)
- divs1210 2y agoHalf Life is my favorite game franchise of all time. Played all the canon games and SO MANY mods. Still obsessed with it.
- baruchthescribe 2y agoI was completely blown away when I realized that the opening cinematic was the actual game engine. First time I'd ever seen it and the scenes cleverly foreshadowed what was coming.
- ge96 2y agoI played this game on 512MB of ram and a 20GB HDD
- simonw 2y agoI got my start in the tech industry thanks to Half-Life - or more specifically thanks to the Half-Life mod Team Fortress Classic. I built an early fan news site for that game (effectively a blog before I knew they were called blogs) which got me a job with an early online gaming company ~1999 where I got paid to learn how web development works.
- dceddia 2y agoMan, TFC was the greatest. I’m surprised there aren’t more threads mentioning it here. Got overshadowed by Counter-Strike of course (also great) but TFC was the “prototype mod” released by Valve themselves as an example of what could be done with the HL SDK and it was a great game in its own right. I spent many hours perfecting rocket jumps and timing those grenade throws to wipe out unsuspecting enemies. 2fort ftw.
- jamesfinlayson 2y agoYeah Team Fortress Classic seemed to be a lot of the reason that Half-Life got the VGUI SDK 2.0 (basically exposing a bunch more interfaces and callbacks to mod authors) - Team Fortress Classic needed all of this flexibility (and without engine access to show off the SDK).
- kleiba 2y ago> Newell and Harrington had long enjoyed playing games. Now, it seemed, there were huge piles of money to be earned from making them. The gaming market today is completely different, very competetive, very saturated, ranging from huge stakes at the top end, to an enormous number of indie studios and individuals toward the other end that are trying to make ends meet. Yet, I've been seriously thinking for a while to start-up a game studio. The hope being that it would be one of these crazy ideas that everybody recommends against ("it can't be done") until you actually do it and prove them wrong. Ideally, I would like to start the studio as a loose group of like-minded people that have time for developing a game solely a hobby, and if that pans out, transition it into a business. Not AAA, of course, but with the definite goal of making the best game that such a setup could realisitically produce. The thing is, with today's tech, you can get started with very little capital if you begin doing this as a hobby.
- markus_zhang 2y agoThe indie market is a bloody red sea right now. But as long as you don't care about money or can expense your hardware and internet costs, I think it's good enough.
- 999900000999 2y agoI sorta want to do this, but developing completely open source games. Maybe even developing my own game engine. Of course all this costs a lot of money with no clear way to make it back. If I had to come up with a monetization model, I would come up with an ad network similar to Unity. If Unity needs 2 billion in revenue to barely keep going, I reckon a more focused engine could be funded for 20 million a year. It's a moot point since I'll never have that much money or be able to raise a VC round. But HN, let's dream. Imagine a .net or JavaScript engine that's web first. With mobile and PC support coming later( PC can just run a local server). The engine developers dog food their own engine, making very high quality examples for the community. Keep the engine focused on small lightweight games. Unity's ultimate problem is they keep trying to do literally everything. I wouldn't do that. I'd say straight up this engine isn't going to do AAA gaming. It's not going to scale. I'm not supporting 800 design patterns.
- Tycho 2y agoI only ever played Half-Life on a friend’s PC, but it still made a big impression. Especially the start, how you arrive at this massive research facility and get to just walk around before things really kick-off. Part of the appeal also in the Hitman games, I think. I remember playing Deus Ex on our iMac which was barely powerful enough to run it. Severe slow down during intense moments, and some major lighting problems. And yet, it remains probably my fondest gaming experience. Something about the way game worlds can capture your imagination when you’re young.
- mikehar 2y agoNice writeup. FWIW, I never saw Michael Abrash wear a tie. :) We were very into 3D cards back then. We had a lot of ties to that part of the world. I had been doing video drivers for OS/2 and NT. I got to know Abrash from his writing on the VGA, 8514, and, of course, asm. At Valve, we hired a couple of great guys from 3dfx. I still have a 3dfx hat somewhere that I bust out on special occasions. The killer setup back then was hooking up two 3dfx cards (SLI). But I usually played on a standard card because I wanted/needed to see it run like most people would experience it. We had a deal with one of the companies, maybe 3dfx, but I forget who, to include the first three levels of HL with their card. Even though the game wasn't anywhere near finished, we sent off a disk to the company with our first three finished levels so we could get paid. Somehow, it leaked. We were pissed at first, but then it took off. People loved it. It really gave us the confidence that we were on the right track. It was our first game. The validation was just what we needed. Fun times.
- dleeftink 2y agoWhat was the other fish?
- JadoJodo 2y agoPerhaps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnik https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnik
- mmustapic 2y agoIt was called Half Life Day One, and I remember seeing it as a bundle with some hardware, not sure which one.
- sho_hn 2y agoThis is how I was introduced to Half-Life - I got it with my GPU and played Day One. Unfortunately I also don't recall which it was. I do recall I had a Voodoo, then moved to a TNT2 and then later a GeForce 2. The TNT2 came out well after Half-Life, so it must have been 3dfx at least.
- i_c_b 2y agoI was knee-deep working as a technical game designer + engine programmer on Soldier of Fortune when Half-Life came out. I can't put into words the impression that the opening that game left on me; I still remember very distinctly experiencing the tram ride, just being utterly entranced, and then being deeply irritated when an artist walked over to my cubicle, saw the game, and jokily asked what was going on, pulling me out of the experience. For me, it was one of those singular experiences you only have a very, very rarely in gaming. It's funny, though - I would say in retrospect that Half-Life had the typical vexed impact of a truly revolutionary game made by a truly revolutionary team. In terms of design, the Half-Life team was asking and exploring a hundred different interesting questions about first person gaming and design, very close to the transition from 2d to 3d. And their influence, a few years later, often reduced down to a small handful of big ideas for later games influenced by them. After Half-Life, because of the impact of their scripted sequences, FPS games shifted to much more linear level designs to support that kind of roller coaster experience (despite many of Half-Life's levels actually harkening back to older, less linear FPS design). The role of Barneys and other AI character also really marked the shift to AI buddies being a focus in shooters. And the aesthetic experience of the aggressive AI from the marines as enemies also cast a long shadow, too, highlighting the idea of enemy AI being a priority in single player FPS games. Certainly, those were the biggest features of Half-Life that impacted our design in Soldier of Fortune, which did go on to shift to much more linear levels, much more focus on scripted events, and would have resulted in much more emphasis on AI buddies too if I hadn't really put my foot down as a game programmer (and in my defense, if you go back to FPS games from that era, poorly implemented AI buddies are often, by a wide margin, the most frustrating aspect of that era of games, along with forced poorly done stealth missions or poorly implemented drivable vehicles - the fact that Barneys were non-essential is why they worked well in the original Half-Life). You can see this shadow pretty clearly if you compare Half-Life to, afterwards, the single player aspects of Call of Duty and Halo. Both are series that, in their single player form, are a lot more focused and a lot less varied than Half-Life was, but they clearly emphasize those aspects of Half-Life I just mentioned. And in practice, those were the single player FPS games that were in practice actually copied for quite a while.
- sunnybeetroot 2y ago
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- rowanseymour 2y agoJust finished playing through HL1 and HL2 again.. as I do every 3-5 years. Maybe it's all nostalgia at this point but I just love being in that universe. The familiar sounds of a crowbar on metal, a sliding door etc. I was never very good at the relentless keyboard gymnastics required for other FPSs so I fell in love with this game that had puzzles and varied pacing and felt like a movie.
- moomin 2y agoI feel like the “no cutscenes” thing is overplayed. I’m not saying it wasn’t huge, but there was a lot more to HL’s storytelling than just the “animatronics on a fairground ride” stuff. They could have done that without the constantly evolving gameplay that kept pace with the story. Who can forget playing the soldiers against the aliens, working your way through a ridiculous set of traps, calling down a satellite strike against something otherwise unlikeable, and my personal favourite: the moment you get an RPG and then hear the sound of that damn helicopter.
- usrusr 2y ago> Mark Laidlaw, the sometime science-fiction novelist who wrote the script, makes no bones about the limits to his ambitions for it. “You don’t have to write the whole story,” he says. “Because it’s a conspiracy plot, everybody knows more about it than you do. So you don’t have to answer those questions. Just keep raising questions.” That's an amazingly humble insight. It's so simple, so true, and so totally not common knowledge. I wonder if he secretly enjoys sharing it as a "say what's wrong about The Matrix sequels without mentioning The Matrix at all"
- Nition 2y agoIt's incredible how fast games evolved in the 90s. As the article mentions, Half-Life released less than five years after Doom. These days, people will still cite games up to 10 years old (e.g. The Witcher 3) as looking graphically top notch.
- XCSme 2y agoProbably also because graphics nowadays are "good enough". I would rather have a new game with current-gen graphics and awesome story/physics/mechanics/world, than a game with shitty gameplay but slightly better textures.
- Nition 2y agoIt's not just that though. CPU and graphics performance also isn't increasing at anywhere near the rate it did back then.
- lupusreal 2y agoThis reviewer's criticism of Half Life's pacing, difficulty and gameplay is painfully plebian.
- EdwardDiego 2y agoWhat was really revolutionary, IMO, about Half-Life was how moddable it was, and how Valve supported the modding community and often acquihired good modders. Oh, and when they purchased the Counter-Strike IP, and started selling it shrinkwrapped, if you owned Half-Life, you just kept using the mod as you already were In these modern times, I suspect that would be monetised somehow now. Upgrade to a premium user to get golden lootboxes, likely. But yeah, I knew people who bought Half-Life just to play CS when it was early beta. Likewise, less famous, but still being played today, Day of Defeat - I was hooked as the experience of "Yeah the rifles can kill you in one shot, and grenades will kill you, it's not CS dude. Oh and press B if that icon comes up, it means you're bleeding" (Still unsure how I feel about them taking bleeding out.)
- markus_zhang 2y agoTwo major contributions that I think Half-Life did to the gaming industry: 1. Shew that FPS games can be more than pure shooters and still succeeded; 2. First time that an official, easy to use level editor (Worldcraft) was included in the CD of a major hit FPS. Doom and Quake definitely started the modding scene but arguably Half-Life made it more popular.
- scotty79 2y ago> John Carmack famously said: “Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” I feel like these days many games, especially expensive ones, went with completely opposite take. That gameplay is something that's supposed to be there but not important. With terrible results.
- Aeroi 2y agoHalf-Life and subsequently Counter-Strike changed my life. I was addicted, and it captured me in a way hard to explain for about 3-4 years. The gameplay, competitive drive, the simplistic sprites and world building. It touched all sensory inputs in a way that games prior hadn't. It's the only video game, or digital media for that matter, that makes me feel nostalgic.
- physhster 2y agoI remember buying a Riva TNT to play Half-Life better. Those were fun times! Then there was Counter Strike, many hundreds of hours were spent playing that too.
- adityaathalye 2y agoOh those screenshots. Faded memories resurrect... It was the year 2000, our college dorm room. Friend's PC which was completely naked, fan pointed at it, in the summer heat of western-central India. Half-Life running at less than half the recommended FPS. Yet we played. And yet the chills ran down the spine.
- butlike 2y agoTo add to the nostalgia train. My friend Chris had it installed on his computer (my family computer was far too old to run it). F5 quick save had been a godsend in that game for all the surprise traps (which the article calls out). Anyways, he accidentally F5'd falling into a pit. His only save IIRC, which meant he had to restart the game. A bummer, but made for a good story and fond memories