Can someone explain half-life to me?
- Thread starter egwidalin
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At the time it was revolutionary, nothing else like it! I played Half-Life 2 for the first time on Orange Box, I had always heard about it so I figured I would get it. It was more than I expected, great story, good levels, cool guns, good characters. I have played many FPS in my life and Half-Life just takes the cake.
Sure, if you replace "Doom" and "Wolfenstein" with "Quake II", "Unreal" and "SiN".Zenn3k said:
But, yes, character interaction on the level that existed in Half-Life was pretty much unheard of at that point, and the puzzles that had earlier at best been "find key to open door" now became more reality-oriented. Its naturally flowing narrative, without briefing screens or anything of that sort, was also quite fresh.
Half-Life 2 was largely about game flow, physics puzzles, emotive characters and continuing the story from the first game. It was among the first games where animated facial expressions actually looked real and not-awkward. And the Gravity Gun is pretty awesome.
I get to answer from both sides of the coin. You see I played Half Life shortly after it was released this was round a time where your average FPS was you as some bad ass marine, trapped in a situation that involved getting from a to b whilst killing anything that had a pulse. They also used levels which required searching for keys or cards to progress.
Half Life introduced some new stuff, intelligent AI that tried to out think you, a decent story, a decent character and a progressive game that was driven by it's actual story and not by the simple concept of get from here to there. It also introduced situations where you didn't shoot everything, where you had to work with characters and level progress meant solving intelligent relevant puzzles, yeah in a break down the progress was still find this or that to move on but it worked well with in the context of the games world.
On the other hand I waited for two years after HL release before I played it. Whilst the story driving the game on was still there as it was with HL, it was no longer something that was new to be honest the story in the FEAR games is far more gripping where as the story in HL2 just got yawnsome. The game itself wasn't that brilliant, maybe at the time of release it was new and intresting but I found that HL drew on far to many cliches from the FPS world. Situations where you're trapped with endless spawning enemies (yawn) situations where you have to take down x amount of tough striders (yawn), trapped in a town with limited ammo and zombies.... really?! The actually used the same set piece several times in HL2 where you're attacked by those flying helicopter things. Interesting at first boring after the third or fourth time. Yes it introduced some new stuff, like the physics element and the gland throwing thing but the physics stuff was seriously phoned in and just ended up being a time waster and the gland throwing stuff was... well okay but... meh!
The enemy AI was also less than engaging, it's hard to judge compared to HL1 since I haven't played HL1 in a good while but the AI in HL2 seems to be no smarter and in some situations even stupider than it was in the original game it sure didn't match up to the AI in the original FEAR game.
At the time HL was a revolution the stuff it introduced was new and fresh and not only that but it looked amazing and didn't require and uber PC to play. HL2 though seemed to just build on top of HL1 but failed to grasp that other FPS developers had seen what HL had brought to the genre and had made games that were good if not better and HL2 just failed to match up.
In my opinion the FEAR games are better than the HL games*. The story is more engaging, it is actually more disturbing and the link between 1 and 2 occurs more smoothly than the link between HL1 and 2. The enemy AI was better to the point where it was actually a challenge and it didnlt bog itself down by introducing stupid and totally pointless gimmicks in a vague attempt to make it seem original and interesting. Yes I'll admit FEAR 2 was dumbed down a bit due to the console market but it was still a fun game that I played right through HL2 just ended up feeling like a total grind after about the half way point.
*Please note this opinion is based purely on my own experience of the games, I am well aware that there are a lot of people that love the HL games and will consider my opinion as some sort of insult. Now you can feel free to chat at length about why I am wrong, why HL2 was great, why it was better than FEAR, why FEAR was crap... etc etc but to be honest you'll be wasting your time.
The thing that made half-life 2 work for me was that the graphics and physics design seemed to blend seemlessly into what I would call "perfect control".
It felt easy to me not because enemies were particularly easy to beat or the puzzles were too simple but it felt like I could do anything the game hurled at me without there being silly things like quicktime events or other things. In other words, it didn't feel like I was trying to get the character to do something, it was me directly doing it.It's hard to describe, but I think it's similar to "immersion".
Not to mention every kind of bad guy you could want from zombies to giant bugs and your standard soldier enemies.
The gravity gun also presented a whole new way to defeat things as well because lets face it, anyone can point a gun and pull a trigger and call themselves master ch(i)ef. Cutting a zombie in half by flinging a circular saw at it gives oneself the feeling of unrivalled awesomeness. Physics kills tend to puntuate a game much better in that you feel so clever with each one. Sure you could kill the antlion guard by pumping it full of rounds but ultimately I would always chuck as many explosive barrels as I could in any given opportunity.
Level design actually varied as well which is the main argument I bring up against Halo because I got so sick of running down the same copy-pasted corridor by some nitwit from bungie I had no choice but to ragequit out of boredom and constant confusion as to where I was.
Portal was also referred to and as it handled much the same as half-life 2 I immediately liked it. The further fact that each level I played I didn't necessarily find challenging but I certainly admired for the ingenuity.
Portal may also get criticised for being repetitive and I think that's fair really in terms of the level design but in each case I felt it worked because at least things were well lit and not the typical sort of grunge design employed by modern FPS designers as we see in, well, basically every modern FPS.
It felt easy to me not because enemies were particularly easy to beat or the puzzles were too simple but it felt like I could do anything the game hurled at me without there being silly things like quicktime events or other things. In other words, it didn't feel like I was trying to get the character to do something, it was me directly doing it.It's hard to describe, but I think it's similar to "immersion".
Not to mention every kind of bad guy you could want from zombies to giant bugs and your standard soldier enemies.
The gravity gun also presented a whole new way to defeat things as well because lets face it, anyone can point a gun and pull a trigger and call themselves master ch(i)ef. Cutting a zombie in half by flinging a circular saw at it gives oneself the feeling of unrivalled awesomeness. Physics kills tend to puntuate a game much better in that you feel so clever with each one. Sure you could kill the antlion guard by pumping it full of rounds but ultimately I would always chuck as many explosive barrels as I could in any given opportunity.
Level design actually varied as well which is the main argument I bring up against Halo because I got so sick of running down the same copy-pasted corridor by some nitwit from bungie I had no choice but to ragequit out of boredom and constant confusion as to where I was.
Portal was also referred to and as it handled much the same as half-life 2 I immediately liked it. The further fact that each level I played I didn't necessarily find challenging but I certainly admired for the ingenuity.
Portal may also get criticised for being repetitive and I think that's fair really in terms of the level design but in each case I felt it worked because at least things were well lit and not the typical sort of grunge design employed by modern FPS designers as we see in, well, basically every modern FPS.
Now I'm fine with you not liking it, but never EVER say its in the same vein as Halo. What have they got in common BESIDES them being an FPS?WrongSprite said:
Win!curlycrouton said:Effective half-life denotes the halving of radioactive material in a living organism by means of radioactive decay and biological excretion. A decay constant is needed to calculate the half-life. It is the sum of the biological and physical decay constants, as in the formula:
With the decay constant it is possible to calculate the effective half-life using the formula:
The biological decay constant is often approximated as it is more difficult to accurately determine than the physical decay constant.
You're expereincing what I like to call the "alpha syndrome". Basically you think that half-life is overrated because it felt like a generic FPS. The kind that comes out all the time nowadays. maybe thats because all the modernish FPS's took notes from half-life and copied some parts of it to make their game "better". I think Halo suffers from this as at the time of release it was considered brilliant but now it seems boring, because all the stuff that improved the first Halo was then copied onto other games until every game had it and it was boring.egwidalin said:
Depends what you play it on; Console or PC.
I played the console version because I'm not a PC gamer, and wasn't a huge fan of it.
However, I played Portal on console and absolutely loved it.
I played the console version because I'm not a PC gamer, and wasn't a huge fan of it.
However, I played Portal on console and absolutely loved it.
It would have been funnier if you thought that about portal.Shapsters said:
I would say I really like the Half-Life games. If though they are completely linear I enjoy it every time I go through Half-Life 2 again. Just something about it that I enjoy.
The aspects of that game weren't generic when it was released, they just seem generic now every FPS under the sun copies it.
See, what makes the Half-Life series so successful is the search button and the countless threads about this very, exact, SAME topic. Why don't you get interested in that.
Though if you really, really don't have the time/patience to do that, let me do a quick TL;DR version:
Have you played them when they were released? No? That's why they suck to you. Because everything you see when playing them is so standard now. But back then see, we didn't have all that many great and fun games like today. So in the end, all this could've been avoided with the aid of the search button. Or probably a time machine. Which you'd probably use to go back in time to make the exact same thread.
Though if you really, really don't have the time/patience to do that, let me do a quick TL;DR version:
Have you played them when they were released? No? That's why they suck to you. Because everything you see when playing them is so standard now. But back then see, we didn't have all that many great and fun games like today. So in the end, all this could've been avoided with the aid of the search button. Or probably a time machine. Which you'd probably use to go back in time to make the exact same thread.
Half Life was released on November 19, 1998.Zenn3k said:
Unreal was released on May 22, 1998.
Suffice to say that I disagree with you. If
was remotely unique to Half-Life, I can understand it being a feature, but I can name them about 30 other FPSs released by 1999 where my character didn't talk.The_root_of_all_evil said:
But instead of being compared to Wolfenstein and Doom, it should be compared to Quake II, SiN, Unreal - they're way more recent. Duke 3D had very good interaction with the environment.
I do believe that Half-Life had very good use of scripted events though. I simply had what I found to be more interesting games to play at the time. It was definitely a good game, but definitely not the best FPS of all time as many hail it to be.
Can you name 30 other FPS's where there are different ways to take the enemies out rather than "guns-a-blazin'" though?Valiance said:
Hm...The_root_of_all_evil said:
Probably not, but most good FPS games give you options when it comes to approaching your objective, or weapons that allow you to set traps to lure the enemies into (laser trip mines ftw!). Some even give you environmental hazards that you can use (pressure chambers, electrically charged rooms, etc.)
Not saying that Half-Life isn't good. Just saying that it's not the "first to do (X)" where (X) is whatever innovative idea mentioned.
Is it me or is hating Half-Life starting to become the new hating Halo?
No offense, but I'm guessing you're relatively new to gaming, or at least the shoter genre. If you were raised on balls-to-the-wall action games like Halo or Gears of War, (nothing against them though, I enjoy them) I can understand how Half-Life's pacing and less complicated shooting mechanics could put you off. Instead of a cover system, corny dialogue, and epic cut scenes there are puzzles, scripted sequences, and story bits.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with today's high-action, nonstop shooters, I'm just saying they've changed the expectations of newer gamers.
No offense, but I'm guessing you're relatively new to gaming, or at least the shoter genre. If you were raised on balls-to-the-wall action games like Halo or Gears of War, (nothing against them though, I enjoy them) I can understand how Half-Life's pacing and less complicated shooting mechanics could put you off. Instead of a cover system, corny dialogue, and epic cut scenes there are puzzles, scripted sequences, and story bits.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with today's high-action, nonstop shooters, I'm just saying they've changed the expectations of newer gamers.