What happened to half life?

[mParadox]

It has been nearly ten years since i've heard so fantastically bad voice acting

O_O Are you serious? ;_;


I played Half Life and i loved it to death. Then i played Half Life 2 and the subsequent episdoes and i loved it to death. Maybe you were expecting too much from it. Plus, VALVe's calender is rather full of games as it is. AND there are still two annoucements left remember?

 

[Audio]

Wasnt it the Sierra Studios company that made Half Life..which then got eaten and remade into Valve? Perhaps the brains in Sierra got washed out when they made HL2 as Valve :[

 

[dommyuk]

Wasnt it the Sierra Studios company that made Half Life..which then got eaten and remade into Valve? Perhaps the brains in Sierra got washed out when they made HL2 as Valve :[

No, Sierra only published it.

OT: Half-Life is possibly the best series of games ever made imo. Every installment is awe inspiring and has yet to disappoint me. Every one of them has some kind of emotional impact which I've yet to see or feel in other games and I still consider the series to be Valves best work.

So I don't really understand your problem with it, perhaps you could explain it in more depth?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Like what happened? I cant understand how they got this bad. Its almost like they got to obsessed with doing silly stuff with the physics engine, or trying to be really clever with its plot and characters. They seemed to really shove Alex in my face just hoping i'd like her when she was completely unlikable and her voice acting didn't help. It seemed like she was there for eye candy.

The physics add to the game, it feels a bit more genuine and you can do some physics puzzles which I don't consider taking anything away from gameplay.
"trying to be really clever with its plot and characters" - Half Life is a strictly story based game, plot and characters will always be a huge part of that...
Alyx as eye candy? She just looks like you every day girl, put there as an occasional companion, you can care about her if you want but I can't see the "shoved in your face" part anywhere...

I really do wonder what you actually liked about Half Life?

 

[NLS]

The Episodes are more of Half-Life 2, except adding a few nice things, such as Alyx or the Advisors. I was disappointed they didn't add any new weapons and hardly any new enemies.

But try the Half-Life expansions, no matter how old Opposing Force kicks ass.

Man, Opposing Force. That was one good expansion pack, new weapons, new enemies, new (playable) characters. I probably played through Opposing Force at least twice before I even finished Half-Life 1. Looking nforward to the Source remake of Opposing Force.

 

[SaunaKalja]

I've loved every Half-Life game. Blue Shift was definitely the weakest one and Episode 1 seemed a bit like a tech demo, trying out some of the new fancy stuff like Alyx's sync-kills and lightning things.

At first I didn't really pay attention to it, I just went with the game, but on later playthroughs I found Alyx to be kinda creepy. She's an adoring fangirl from even before the game even starts and she loves you more and more as the game progresses. You never even say anything to her. I guess she just loves the way you murder and bash all living things with your crowbar.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I never played the first and my main complaint with the second was how it dragged on and, on and, on and, on and, on and, on and, on and, on. Then once it got to the promised land it was good. I think...I haven't played that game in a while and at the moment all I can remember are the vehicle segments and, Ravenholm. Ravenholm was good: I loved that place. Nothing like killing zombies with upside-down lawn-mowers.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

While I did enjoy Half Life 2 and it's episodes, I think that the original was the better game.

Yes, the sequel does a better job at building an atmosphere and it does a better job of giving me characters I can become attached to and so forth but the actual act of playing is, well, not terribly fun. I've considered why I think this to be true and the conclusion I've come to is that the game is just too controlled.

Now, don't get me wrong, that control is almost certainly a big part of the reason people adore the game. You are never lost, you are never confused about what you ought to be doing and that leaves the player to simply execute the necessary action. The less directed original Half-Life on the other hand seemed like it gave me just enough rope that I could really have fun with it. It felt like I had some sort of agency over how I was going to proceed. Sure, it was generally an illusion and the control I had was superficial at best but at least it seemed like I had control.

Both games are directed and controlled experiences. The trouble is, in Half-Life 2, all too often I can see the strings.

 

[Psycho_Juice]

Woah, don't be too quick to judge our old friend Half-Life series.
Half-Life is anything but generic.
Physics puzzles, immersion via no custcenes, interesting characters, unique battles, and most important its storytelling.

That's right... Storytelling.
Okay, we all know the story isn't the best story to hit computer gaming, It's not like it's the most complex or unique story in the Sci-Fi genre.
Hell it's not even a story I would repeat to someone.

However the storytelling is brilliant.

The world is told through experiencing it, never do you have to read about what happened, nor listen to a character giving you the 'This is what happened' story.

This is where Half-Life excels, you discover more and more about the world as you play on. Most of its told by the most subtle means. Characters, locations, technology, society, each having a story to tell of how they were affected by the 7 hour war.
All of which can be discovered by paying attention to little details of locations and characters.

And to top it off as you learn more about the world (or as the story is told to you), the immersion is never broken by cutscenes, or 'informative' loading screens.

I'll stop ranting to stop myself sounding like a fanboy.
And with that said, I don't even consider myself a huge half-life fan.

Hell I don't give a rat's arse if a new Half-Life game never emerges.
However what I do appreciate is the unique qualities that the Half-Life series has brought to the FPS genre.

 

[LandoCristo]

And Gordon isn't a great protagonist. The only reason everyone loves him is "ZOMG I CAN BE GORDON!" He's a generic voiceless space marine, only he's not. He is literally the same as Master Chief.

No. No you cannot.

But the thing is that even though you never hear Gordon talk, or see his face, he still has more personality than Master Chief. How many times in Halo did you walk into a lab, and have an old, one-legged black man shout out greetings? It's not Gordon who gives Gordon personality, it's the other characters' reactions to Gordon that give him life.

 

[Netrigan]

I agree that I'm pretty sure Valve is just making the story up as they go...

But I thought HL2 was pretty good. It was certainly different than HL1, but who knows, maybe HL3 will change that.

HL2 was all kinds of awesome. It's a great narrative, but the problem is it really doesn't go anywhere. I remember quite a lot of people being pretty annoyed with the "ending" of HL2. I think because nothing really feels like the plot. It starts off well, with you going after Dr. Breen, but when you finally catch up to him, Valve merely teases us with questions about Gordan's role in this whole thing. Breen didn't reveal the identify of anyone else that provides the next logical step in the plot. Breen doesn't reveal any real secrets about the Combine. We just get a To Be Continued.

Which wouldn't have been too much of a problem for me if the Episodes had picked up the baton and run from there, but just about everything from them strikes me as plot complications. Valve just gives us more questions, which are pretty much variations on the same question we had going into HL2... why did G-Man put us into this situation? Thankfully, the game hasn't pulled a LOST and added a bazillion questions that they'd never get around to answering properly and there's still the sense that a proper ending could come out of this; but they've probably already dragged the thing out long enough that there's a good chance I won't be back for the next installment.

If the game had a better sense of plotting, I think it would go down as one of the all-time great stories in video game, since Valve is really good at narrative. Characters tell a story, rooms tells a story, the world tells a story. I just wish the story told a story, because while everything flows really wonderfully from scene to scene, those scenes don't really add up to anything.

 

[Netrigan]

I will just calmly swallow my freakout and ask if you have... I don't know, a fetish for cramped environments? Do you loath videogame storytelling in any deep form?

Seriously, it's not particularly deep storytelling.

By this point, I'm not sure if they're actually telling a story anymore, as the stories often center around Gordan trying to get somewhere, something happening that makes it 10 times more difficult, then someone betraying them setting up some sort of rescue attempt or whatever. Who are the Combine and what do they wish to accomplish... bugger if anyone knows after three installments. The game has atmosphere, the game using a lot of good narrative tricks, but the best story they've told so far was the first one which took most of the plot beats from Doom... right down to having to shoot the Big Bad in the brain with a rocket launcher as numerous enemies spawn into the room around you.

Alright, "deep" may not have been the right word but it is definitely believable. If you look at storytelling in games in general, you have to admit that the characters here, if anything, seem like real humans rather than one- note things to perform a task for the hero (HL1).

See my last post for a more detailed explanation, but Valve does a whole lot right. If these guys had a really great story at the core of the game, it would be one of the greatest video game experiences of all time... but navigating the plot is excruciatingly slow. Just about everything in the game tells a story (except maybe those Physics Puzzles, which always struck me as showing off) and there's a wonderful sense of this being a lived in world... but it never answers any of the questions it raises. Episode 2 did the "I'll explain later" bit, then insured that he never would.

 

[No_Remainders]

I loved playing through HL2 straight - so damn cinematic (especially hoverboating, when you get every turn correct with the flow of the music... aww yeah ^_^) - though I never did bother doing a full marathon with all three parts - maybe when episode three comes out.

Huh - episode 3... that's what I thought this thread was going to be about!

The hoverboat got boring after about 20 minutes... Which seemed like 3 hours.

 

[Wicky_42]

I loved playing through HL2 straight - so damn cinematic (especially hoverboating, when you get every turn correct with the flow of the music... aww yeah ^_^) - though I never did bother doing a full marathon with all three parts - maybe when episode three comes out.

Huh - episode 3... that's what I thought this thread was going to be about!

The hoverboat got boring after about 20 minutes... Which seemed like 3 hours.

Yeah, that seems to be the popular opinion. I just enjoyed it, worked for me, and was a nice change after all that sewer crawling earlier.

 

[repeating integers]

Perhaps I need to play the original Half-Life. I found Half-Life 2 to be a terribly average game, especially when you factor in how much it was hyped up by the fans on this site.

Really, the game had damn near no story that I could see, damn near no storytelling either beyond the (admittedly very clever) passive storytelling through the environments, bland characters who didn't even have so much as two full personalities and character traits between them all, a god-awful vehicle section and very, very linear combat. And you know, I actually didn't like the lack of cutscenes - standing around in a room and listening to people chat into your face (without being allowed even a non-committal grunt in response) is not a good method of exposition.

Entertaining physics puzzles and a bleak atmosphere - and one terrifying level - do not a great game make, if you'll pardon the Yodaism. However, I only played through the first half, to the end of Ravenholm specifically (I will finish next time I go back to Wales - do not ask) so I'm willing to accept that it might get better in the second half. Really though, "it gets better later" is not the best argument for a game's quality.

If the original is as much cooler as you say it is, I think I might enjoy it. Hell, it might even work on my PC - Homeworld does, and that's 2 years newer. At this particular moment in time though, I can't be bothered (and also Christmas is coming up, so I don't want to spend any money on games - or much else - right now).

 

[Ashcrexl]

i'll give you episode 1. it was pretty generic compared to half-life 2 (yet still better than most FPS's) except for the AMAZING pitch black section. but episode 2? come on. it was every bit as good as helf-life 2, just compacted down to 5 hours. i dont know what you've been doing with the game, but i loved it. and judgin by the amount of time episode 3 is taking, it's shaping up to be basically another half-life 2.

 

[No_Remainders]

i'll give you episode 1. it was pretty generic compared to half-life 2 (yet still better than most FPS's) except for the AMAZING pitch black section. but episode 2? come on. it was every bit as good as helf-life 2, just compacted down to 5 hours. i dont know what you've been doing with the game, but i loved it. and judgin by the amount of time episode 3 is taking, it's shaping up to be basically another half-life 2.

A great man named Yahtzee once said that Valve are missing the point of episodic gaming. They have shorter games at lower prices, but they take fucking ages to get off their asses and do ANYTHING.

It took almost 2 years between HL2 and HL2:E1.

Episode 1 was exactly 7 hours long, on top of which it was quite generic and not very good.

I'll admit, Episode 2 did only take, y'know, a year and a half after Episode 1, but it was still ridiculously short.

 

[Souplex]

You're not in on the conspiracy?
After the gaming community played Half Life 2 and had the exact same reaction you did we came to a consensus.
We would continue to blindly support Valve as it released garbage until they finished the Half Life series.
Then when Gabe Newell got up on the stage of whatever event we chose, we would dump pig's blood on him and reveal the truth.
It's the only logical explanation.