Those issues are basically because those were key parts of the original HL. When it came out, the Marines were lauded for having great Human Enemy AI, which was very impressive in 1998. The issue it's been almost 30 years since then and AI has advanced a lot so those marines aren't particular impressive anymore.I do enjoy fighting the alien creatures, but im not a big fan of fighting the military guys. The alien creatures either attack exclusively in melee, or telegraph their ranged attacks, so if you take damage, it was probably your fault. In contrast, the military guys use guns, which are basically hitscan. If you can see them, they can see you, and fights with them almost always result in you taking some damage. This is fine in a game with regenerating health, but it does not in Black Mesa, and so you are reliant on finding health kits to patch yourself up. Admittedly they don't deal much damage, and the health kits are rather abundant, but it does still feel rather unfair to take damage that you couldn't avoid.
There also doesn't appear to be much in the way of a story. You will have some immediate objectives (eg kill the giant tentacle monster), but so far there is nothing to link one chapter to the next seemingly other than "don't die". Very little is communicated to you, and you play as a silent protagonist, so it often feels like you are going from one objective to another "just because". Similarly, the game doesn't even have a pause objective screen, so I'm anticipating coming back to this game after a few day's break, wondering what I'm supposed to be doing.
In general though, I'm enjoying myself. There is a steady drip-feed of new weapons, enemies and scenarios, so it always feels like I'm discovering something new. it isn't doing anything particularly incredible for 2024, but when I see it through the lense of 1998, I can see why this game has stood the test of time.
And the story, yeah, HL was basically doing the Dark Souls thing before it was cool where you get little bits of story and you''re more or less just meant to infer it from the environment because there are no cut scenes. Essentially to make it more immersive, or so was the intent. Considering most shooters in 1998 didn't have a story to speak of or had bad stories, Half Life stood out.
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