Zero Punctuation: Half-Life

[Bindal]

...Seriously Yahtzee? You did Half Life this week? Well, I guess there was nothing good to review this- Oh wait there was KINGDOM HEARTS DREAM DROP DISTANCE FOR THE NINTENDO 3DS THAT YOU COULD HAVE REVIEWED THIS WEEK!!!

Yeah, it came out THIS WEEK.

Usually, you have to expect that he needs one to two weeks for a review - depending on how much time he puts into playing (which can be up to one week) plus a few days of writing. Considering that he doesn't like JRPGs that much, he probably won't spend that much time with the new Kingdom Hearts. Meaning it probably need the full week to play it.
So, start thinking outside of your fantasy-realm, where people puke out full reviews in 5 seconds and expect a video for that NEXT WEEK (if at all).

 

[porous_shield]

In regards to why Freeman is considered a messiah like figure in Half-Life 2 I though was fairly easy to understand though I agree they lay it on a little too thick. The people who survived black mesa have been telling Freeman's exploits for over a decade and his reputation (and probably the stories) have been blown way out of proportion of who Freeman is and what he did. In essence he disappeared right at his peak, and if you take sports stars for comparison, many of those who exit at their peak (Pavel Bure, Eric Lindros, Bobby Orr, Vladimir Konstantinov) and don't have their waning years are very highly regarded since people wonder what they could have done and achieved if they had stayed. Freeman has that along with a mysterious disappearance and hero like status to build his legend on.

In the same way Alyx has been told stories since she was little about Freeman and didn't need much incentive to fall in love with him. She was probably already in love with her image of him in her head already.

I wished they'd toned it down a notch so it didn't feel quite so smarmy but I can understand why he has the status he does.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I played Half Life for about half an hour or so. I rode the long boring train ride in, I messed about with the broken machine then I started doing jumping puzzles and just thought fuck it, I'm bored with this now.

Well at least I got a few laughs out of Yahtzee's review.

Practically every game AAA copies Halflife's "boring train" and other Halflife elements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EODbHVySFWM&feature=plcp

Never really noticed that before, heh.

But it must be said that that wasn't "nearly every AAA game". And Half life's train ride was a lot less atmospheric than say Call of Duty 4's car ride or Bioshock's submarine ride. Still better than Batman AA's elevator ride though! That was painful to sit through!

 

[AgentNein]

I truly makes me sad, I recently tried to go back to Half Life, and like every single fucking FPS of it's generation and previous I can no longer play more than five minutes without a severe attack of the nausea. These games used to be my bread and butter! But all these modern day smooth as silk cameras and such have turned me into a wuss. I used to have to walk fifteen miles in the snow grumble grumble fade out...

 

[CityofTreez]

It feels unfair to review HL/HL2 today.

The games didn't age very well and plenty of game have outdone what HL/HL2 did. Story telling, universe, graphics, game play, voice acting ect have all been outdone. Of course that doesn't mean HL/HL2 is bad it just means that it's, well, old.

The HL series to me is one of those series that just aged really really bad.

 

[cjacks]

CityofTreez, I can see you have a point on voice acting and graphics (not that I consider those things in this argument to begin with), but what part of the gameplay, universe, and storytelling is outdated?

The universe is so enthralling that there are currently no less than ten thousand people breathlessly refreshing valves news page looking for the next installment. The in game storytelling elements, like spotting the g-man walking through levels, are still innovative after fifteen years. And finally the gameplay and mechanics are so solid that people are still using those same mechanics to play counter strike as we type.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

Now that made my day. I must say I enjoy the retrospectives more than some of modern title reviews.

because alot of games today are shit

So were alot of 'retro' games

Yeah, but atleast they experimented and took risks. These days games are so god damn samey, its the most awful kind of bad. The kind that gets repetitive.

Also noticed that Yahtzee forgot to about "System Shock 2" in his major games he really likes retro review list. Because it ain't done yet. He only very vaguely mentioned it in his Bioshock review.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Pfft, silly Yahtzee. Gordon Freeman doesn't need to take off his glasses. He's the only guy badass enough to engage in huge firefights with intergalactic demons and government conspiracies with a vision impairment. I'd like to see Marcus Fenix try to be his gruff, badass soldieryness if he was nearsighted.

 

[G-Force]

And Gordon is not a character, he's, to paraphrase YZ talking about Mario, a tool the Resistance use to ward off evil.
The other characters in the story tell you where to go and what to do, and then you simply follow their orders; I don't feel like I'm pushing the Combine back or doing anything worthwhile, I'm just trudging from Point A to Point B while shooting hordes of baddies while everyone else merrily plots along.
Even fucking CoD 4 made me feel like I'm making more of an impact than HL2.

I'm going to have to disagree here. Gordon Freeman's personality and characterization as even affects the context of certain events. During Half-Life Gman expresses intrest in Gordon Freeman after escaping from Black Mesa in my game (as I was new to shooters) I stumbled through many firefights but got better the more I played. In this example my Gordon Freeman was a normal scientist with no combat experience (due to fact that I the player had little experience playing shooters) who quickly adapted to the circumstances to survive.

Meanwhile my friend who's really good at shooters gets to the end easily. His Gordon Freeman was a natural born killer which is the reason why Gman took him in.

Two players, two different stories. This is why Gordon Freeman is a great character as the players becomes him thus making their experiences his.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

I remember when the Marines first showed up. I walked over to see if I could get a squad, then they started shooting at me, thus I killed them all with the mysterious dual shot from the single barrel shotgun. I love Half-Life.

 

[dnazeri]

Yeah, I still think the Half-Life series is mediocre at best and boring at worst lol.

Sorry, Yahtzee ;D

I never played the first, but I couldn't finish HL2. The puzzles frustrated the hell out of me. It seems like you need intimate knowledge of the source engine and Valve's brand of logic to be able to solve them. I spent hours stacking boxes next to a ladder with the bottom section locked up by a grate, but was unable to get them to stack evenly or climb the boxes. The room was literally filled with boxes, so I assumed that's what the game wanted me to do. When I finally did climb the boxes I found I couldn't stick to the ladder, no matter how hard I tried. Turns out I just had to shoot the lock and climb the ladder. Not to mention that bit where you have to launch your hovercraft over the awkward ramp to get to the dam controls. It took me 100 tries to finally get up there, and when I did finally open the gates I jumped back down without the hovercraft and had no way of getting over the wall which I had just opened and which was too high for Gordon Freeman to jump over. So I had to do the whole thing over again.

tl;dr: I'm going to maintain the illusion that I am not stupid by insisting that Half Life 2's level design was shit.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

It feels unfair to review HL/HL2 today.

The games didn't age very well and plenty of game have outdone what HL/HL2 did. Story telling, universe, graphics, game play, voice acting ect have all been outdone. Of course that doesn't mean HL/HL2 is bad it just means that it's, well, old.

The HL series to me is one of those series that just aged really really bad.

Half-Life is a strange one, it's become divisive in this respect. I can *kind of* see how it appears aged to some people but, well, I played the whole series for the first time this year and they quickly became my favourite shooters, ever. I haven't yet played anything else that gets my heart racing like the final section of Episode 2 where you're protecting the base.

In fact, I really cannot think of anything that's come out since, regardless of genre, that I've enjoyed as much and, as I said, I played them all for the first time this year.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

You want another good old game, Yatzee?

Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines (with the latest fan patch, or else the game is literally un-finishable).

It's got great stealth gameplay, great setting, great immersion, and it's just generally been blowing my freaking mind ever since I started playing it a week ago.

 

[Britisheagle]

Thanks to that text at the end I actually said Croshaw out loud. Damn you lack of sleep!

Good review and I agree that some features feel dated now. I have been playing older games recently and it makes me wonder how much would be changed in the name of casual gaming if they re released them.

 

[Mogless]

This review felt like classic Yahtzee. I really enjoyed it.

 

[Strain42]

He should do another Fake Review a la Duke Nukem Forever for Half Life 3, but go the opposite route and talk about how horrible it is.

 

[Gremlin-Stenning]

I bought this game just yesterday on PS2 for 2 quid and can't wait to give it a bash I love retro games
I don't think you can quite beat them.

 

[Sofus]

Everyone likes Half-Life... those who claim that they don't, simply suffer side effects from having enjoyed it so much that they must now live in denial or their brains will short circuit.

P.S. Gordon isn't Jesus...... Gabe Newell is

 

[purf]

I don't think I could stand playing the original now.
But then, as of this writing, Black Mesa arrives in 1 day, 3 hours and 20 minutes

 

[Mahoshonen]

As an aspiring CPA candidate, the idea that G-man works for accounting amuses me to no end