amazing remake.
I've replayed half life just a few weeks before this one, after ZP review, and it feels it's the same game but for real this time. It's really gorgeous,(really like the "snow room" at the beginning for example, also the little headcrab zoo in questionable ethics). They tried to make it a believable world, so there's no more places that feels they only exist for the sake of challenging the gamer, but really serve a purpose, and everything's a bit bigger.
Also like the little jokes with the crowbar and the gun (but..where the f... is the crowbar?)
I found it slighlty harder than the original, and that maybe because I already played it a few times (I was around 15 when it came out and it seemed a looot longer and harder then), but I had no real difficulty and got through it in two evenings, it's pretty short sadly.
The added difficulty I think comes moslty of the added speed: enemies are generally a bit faster,
specially the vortigaunt, and the tanks that used to take a lot more time to reload. The marines also shoot quicker it seems.
A little tip for the ladder I found after beating the game: you can press use/E to get off a ladder without crashing to the ground. they could have signal this.
As for the difficulty, at this time fast-save and load anywhere was the norm for pc games, and when you can save anywhere no difficulty is unmanageable, and I think that's a good thing, because I freakin hate this new fad coming from console where you have checkpoint and if I have to do the same very long bit more than five or six times I generally quit before smashing my computer or my head against the wall. save and reload is part of the gameplay, if it's not working you can try another approach without going through the same hassle over and over.
I know some people think it's not a challenge anymore if you can't do it in one take, but it's just really annoying and boring. and, it breaks the immersion by breaking it in little chunks. The worst is games when not all the ckeckpoints are saved, so if you quit because you have sh$$ to do, you're screwed.
