Half-Life

[eMTe]

Following my policy of playing games/listening to music/reading books years after being part of common knowledge I checked Half-Life. Great game. You know, it's 2009 and someone plays HF for ths first time. Far better than Quake, but still overrated. The most irritating thing in shooters is that you take repeated actions. Level number one - you kill the boss with this or that combination of moves. Level number fifty four. You killl boss with this or that combination of moves. This is how it works in games. In HF it doesnt. Each chapter gives you something new. You need new (new if you havent played platformers) skill each time you beat new boss-like character and sometimes you need new approach. It's a great game if you need to feel something and you can play it in your spare time if you dont have Ringu (damn scary movie) to watch right now, but as a game it's nothing new. It's not diveided in chapters - great. You can take elevator to next level, but you can still return. Gadzooks! Reality!! But when you play it longer you come to think that there's nothing new, because true moneymakers allowed the guys to smuggle only things they thought wont make harm to them.

Take HF seriously. Buggy (try to climb up the "hills" at the end of "on a rail" chapter and see results), deceptive (you can destroy obstacles set up by Marines but you cant destroy damn lamp), not-well-thought (stand in right place and shoot at marine/monster with pistol - you kill him and he wont even move) - have it in mind and you get the good overview. It's great game that does everything quite well. Graphics - ok for the time. Sound - ok, who denies it. Plot - interesting. Atmosphere - creepy. Levels - designed by true masters. And it's called milestone. Imagine that you work in a company and you make your job really good and youre being called by your chief a milestone for company development. Pretty weird. You do good work and youre called a milestone - really weird.

Absolutely great game, but adding nothing new. Just settling new grounds for overall standards. You do things good = you are revolutionist. Really weird. I wash dishes quite thoroughly. I'm revolutionist of some sort now?

[Chroelle]

But it really is an amazing game series with a plot that drives the whole series up into a league where few/none can follow.

There were some add-ons that was switching between "GREAT!" and "I quit before it was over..."
But when you get to HalfLife 2 and its episodes then you will see the true potential of HalfLife. Lots of different environments, enemies, actions, plottwists, characters with depth and scary situations way scarier than the ones from HL1.

REad more abot HL2 here:
http://curlysworldoffreeware.com/viewtopic.php?t=1307

[Scythe]

...and I still haven't played it. I kinda had enough watching a friend play it. Anyway, isn't it all the multi-player mods, etc. that kept the game a milestone?

[Chroelle]

I think it is a question of wether the chicken or the egg came first. The multiplayer mods indeed helped it out alot - Counterstrike, Team Fortress etc, but they would never have been as good had it not been for a great game and engine. Halflife was legendary before Counterstrike, but counterstrike came to be because of Halflifes popularity. To be honest I never played neither Counterstrike nor Team fortress to much extent. I was never one for multiplayer games.

[eMTe]

What I like in HF1 (dont know HF2) is the concept of marine soldiers cooperation. I might be wrong, but HF may be the first game TRYING to make behaviour of enemy TEAMS realistic. They call for help. They play hide n seek. They throw grenades, forcing you to leave your defensive position. The concept is revolutionary, but implementation poor - if youre far away from enemy it's all about running from one position to another and shooting few bullets from each. Great, but not so great. There are signs of realism, but once you sink your keyboard deeper into game you see nothing but half-successful programming tricks. And this is not enough to call HF best game ever made for PC. Calling it very good would be enough.

[eMTe]

I almost finished it. It may well be one of the best games of all times and certainly the best fps, but I still think it's overrated. I think what made various critics mad is the overall movie-like feeling making HF sort of rpg/adventure game rather than pure shooter. But weve seen this before, in Another World for example (prescripted sequences, allies met along the way). It does almost everything dangerosuly good, but when you reduce it to basic elements it's just one of many. With its bugs, omittances, glitches.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060 ... m_09.shtml

Yeah, quantum leap, how dramatic. It's quantum leap, because of its cinematiqueness. Sure. Nobody mixed deep storyline with shooter genre before they say. I say many did, but games werent called fps. Another World mixed deep storyline with platformer genre. Shadowcaster and System Shock did it with rpg. Then HF appears and people worldwide start to hail it for being innovative while it isnt at all. A couple of years passed, cp capabilities increased, new and highly emotional generation grew up, gaming market changed. It's a direct descendant and product of its time. Not a revolution.

What's really sad is that probably 200 development teams could have created such a game without any particular difficulties in 1998 and another two thousands are able to right now, but they dont have an opportunity because of the darn lack of money and big company support.

[Scythe]

It may well be one of the best games of all times and certainly the best fps, but I still think it's overrated.

Uhm, that doesn't compute too well.

Now, it doesn't do much for me, personally, though of course I only ever watched it being played.

[eMTe]

Well, overrated when being called "a milestone".

I dont argue with calling game great, but "milestone" gives the feeling that we experience something that changes the whole world, in this case world of gaming. I have no such experience, so I argue. It's overrated in terms of milestoneness, as for gameplay few can equal with it.

[earok]

I only started playing the game recently, and I'm about half way through.

I didn't think much of it at the time it came out (though I didn't give it a fair chance), but now I -do- think it is a significant milestone for First Person Shooters. Especially considering it came out not long after Quake II, and it featured a lot of things together you just didn't see often in games back then, such as:

- The game slowly brings you into the world of Gordon Freeman, rather then just pushing you straight into combat.
- A single, unbroken narrative from start to finish.
- A convincing and varied environment (compare with the generic levels in the Quake and Doom games)
- A large variety of interesting objectives the player has to do.
- Non-enemy characters who co-operate with the player.
- Enemy Marines that fight in a semi-convincing manner.

Though is it overrated? Probably. I still think Goldeneye 007 has far more (re)playability. And I enjoyed Red Faction almost as much as I'm enjoying Half Life, even though that got far lower ratings from critics.

[Scythe]

Also, don't forget the exciting "spinoff", http://horselife.deepsilver.com/