Is Half Life that good?

[thiosk]

As has been mentioned in countless threads, HL1 is good because it was first. When it was released, no one had ever seen anything like it. I'd been playing rise of the triad, various iterations of the doom engine; when HL1 came out, it was amazing. The train ride in was nothing short of legendary for world building. In doom 2, i guess you were a space marine on mars or something? Demons? In HL, you felt like an insignificant part of something much larger, but then of course become the epicenter of the story despite spending most of your time crawling through air ducts.

Metro 2033 came out in the past few years. If a modern game can't improve on past games, whats the point of making them? To give russian voice actors a job?

Super Mario Bros. 3 was much better than SMB; but its SMB thats remembered for being transformative. And thats what HL represents in the history of gaming-- a transformative product.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

What I found with Half Life is that you have to meet it half way (no lame pun intended.)

The series as a whole is unlike any other triple A title in the sense that it doesn't shove its story, setting and characters down your throat and then send you on your way through a hundred different disconnected set-piece explosions. Instead the player is encouraged to discover everything they need simply by *being* in the world and experiencing the events.

I missed an awful lot when I played Half Life 2 the first time. I threw down my controller and declared it was the worst game of the year ever. I truly failed to see why it was so highly acclaimed. But when I went back a second time and played it as an interactive experience rather than a typical FPS I got so much more from it. There's true expression in the characters, true depth to the world and real impact to the events when you recognise the former two points.

It might not be a franchise that suits everyone; the same can be said for pretty much every game in existence. I enjoy games that weave compelling narratives through interesting worlds and when I spend some time looking for that in Half Life, I am not disappointed one bit.

However your mileage, as they say, may vary.

 

[Zenn3k]

I'm not trying to anger anybody but I've given the Half Life series decades to grow on me and I honestly still think it sucks. I don't even know where to start with all the things I just can't stand.

The story. There isn't one. I don't get Gordon Freeman. He isn't a character and I don't care what happens to him. The sequence of events I take him through are repetitive and uninspired. The pacing is just garbage. It's what I expect from a forgettable summer action flick. Thank God you made it. We have to go here! Oh no! Now we have to go here! There's no time to talk! Get out of here! Hurry! *explosions* Repeat from the top. I just don't give a shit.

The whole algorhythm that ensures you can never run out of ammo or health is bullshit. For me it's the greatest cop-out in game mechanics ever.

When I played the first hour of Half Life back in the day I was impressed. It was interesting and new. The problem is that that after that it's pretty much crawl through vents and shoot aliens. I had the exact same experience with Half Life 2.

It's not even that I hate the style. I've been playing Metro 2033 lately and while it isn't a masterpiece it does everything Half Life does but better and it manages to fit in real stories with real characters and a real understanding of the different stakes you have to play with at every moment. I felt like it gave me a reason to want to do something and gave me a way to do that.

I thought Portal did a good job but Portal 2 ended up being a lot of what I hate in Half Life games too.

I guess what I'm getting to is that I feel really alone in this opinion. I am very aware that Half Life 2 is regarded as one of the most important games of all time. I'd just like to know if I'm really alone in this opinion.

You mean a game that came out in 1998 doesn't hold up to modern day standards?!

NEWS AT 11!!

If you didn't play it at release at a teenager, you rightfully don't understand its significance as one of the best FPS games of all time.

You could sit there and complain that Wolfenstein 3D has all the same problems, that doesn't stop it from being one of the defining games in the genre for all time.

 

[Papadam]

Funny you compare it to Metro 2033 that has absolutly HORRIBLE story telling while the story telling in HL2 is among the best in the history of gaming.

HL has it flaws and alot of people like to point them out to discredit the games.

Still, so many yers later no FPS has come close to the quality of HL2.

 

[DoPo]

Sorry if I bothered you. I really have never heard anyone say Half Life is anything but genius but if there are dissenters out there I will take your word for it.

You can have my sword, and my axe and my links

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.401217-Does-Half-Life-2-Hold-up
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.408107-Why-do-People-love-Valve-so-much
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.395676-I-really-dont-believe-that-Half-Life-2-is-overrated-I-think-modern-Gamers-just-missed-the-boat
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.819824-Why-is-Gordon-Freeman-held-up-as-the-zenith-of-silent-protagonists
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.408311-Im-beginning-to-hate-Valve
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.373160-That-Was-Half-Life-2
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.281309-Half-Life-2-why
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.280978-Storytelling-in-Half-Life-2
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.259339-Can-someone-please-tell-me-why-Half-Life-2-has-such-appeal

The boxes you break always have whatever you need. If the game decides you have more than enough ammo and/or health most boxes will be empty. It's really obvious and kind of annoying because for me it takes away any illusion that my abilities are being tested and IMO completely destroys any tension the gameplay might otherwise induce.

But...as far as I'm aware the loot from crates is fixed. Unless it's been changed with a patch? But I really don't think there is anything to hand you what you need when you need.

 

[senordesol]

By today's standards, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are average. That's pretty nifty for things that came out in '98 and '04 respectively. And I'll warrant that even modern games fall short of what they did.

Remember the tentacle monster? That was one of the first times a game ever asked NOT to take on a boss head-on. The initial Black Mesa outbreak which left you weaponless for a few minutes was one of the first times a shooter afforded me a bit of genuine tension. I don't know if you remember; but most shooters in those days had one method of dealing with enemies: shoot them until they fall over.

Running, screaming, and crying as the Gargantua chased you down is still something few shooters today have the balls to do.

Then there was Half-Life 2: HOLY SHIT! That was the first time most of us have seen a physics engine, and what an opener it was! Yes, using floating barrels to raise a bridge may seem passe now, but then it required us to think about our videogames in a way with which we were very much NOT accustomed.

Then, of course, there was the variety of gameplay and enemies. For the first few levels, they've got you running across rooftops and trading pistol fire like you're Jason Borne. Then you're dodging mines and machineguns in an unarmed airboat. Next you're listening for the sinister chirp of a Black Headcrab or the howl of a fast Zombie in Ravenholm. But it's not over yet! You've got to play 'the floor is lava' with the antlions (until they actually give you the opportunity to COMMAND the antlions), scramble for rockets as you fight gunships (since the fuckers keep shooting them down), face down a squadron of Striders, and finally: complete the entire end of the game with nothing but the gravity gun.

Wait, wait, wait...I'm sorry. What I said about it being average...I take it back. Half-Life 2 STILL puts 90% of the shooter market to SHAME. I'm wracking my brain trying to remember a single other game that let me do so much in one experience. Even the Elder Scrolls, with their open worlds and 1,001 approaches to gameplay, don't offer so much in one package.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I've put my nostalgia goggles on, but I'll be damned if any other game made me as tense as I was when I was low on ammo and listening to the ever-nearing sing of manhack blades whistling through the air.

Half-Life 2 is an excellent game (in my opinion); something I would definitely submit as the unqualified best game of all time. Yeah, it's got its problems: the guns are a little plink-plinky. The story itself is kind of...meh. But when that airboat sailed through the air as I ramped off a concrete pipe, helo impotently firing just to my left; I felt like an honest-to-God action hero, and no one has been able to equal that experience since.

 

[al4674]

Half Life was pretty good, but has not aged well at all. I never really cared about Half Life 2 because the pacing was just too horrible. Everything dragged on way too long and almost every level overstayed its welcome, especially the driving sequences. It always dragged on to the point of boredom and redundancy.

I only finished it because that's just what I do with every game. The story made no sense, I just had to walk from A to B to do some nondescript tasks and ultimately the game treats me with one of the most anti-climatic cliff-hangerish endings I have ever witnessed. This was before the Episodes came out.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

But...as far as I'm aware the loot from crates is fixed. Unless it's been changed with a patch? But I really don't think there is anything to hand you what you need when you need.

No, it's always been like that. It's called the Dynamic Resupply System. About 50% of the Supply Crates in the game are rigged to be mroe likely to give players supplies that they need. I'm not sure I see why it's a problem, but there you go.

 

[schtingah]

Here's what you should do when you wonder about Half-Life being good or not: Go play any FPS released before it came out. It isn't that good by today's standard, but it was massively influential in getting today's standard to the level it's at today.

 

[surg3n]

Yes. Half Life is awesome. One thing to keep in mind, is that Half Life was based on the Quake2 engine, now Quake2 looks like this:

But the advances that Half Life brought us go far beyond just visuals and effects. Quake2 is a damn dull single player game, there's no real puzzles beyond find the red key for the red door. When Half Life was released, the game mechanics are what made the game, totally - even from the demo running on a software render on a P200, the demo was great, and the game did nothing but reinforce those mechanics. The opening sequence for Half Life was nothing short of groundbreaking, the little effects like the rings on grenades bobbing when the player moves. In fact, hundreds of features and ideas and effects that are all over modern games started with Half Life, these days we take them for granted.

So I can see how Half Life might be dated by modern standards, but don't forget how those modern standards were established in the first place. I would suggest trying Blue Shift if you can though, it's quite fun to play alongside the plot from a different perspective, and the weapons are better too. Half Life is a really long game, really really long - it's from a time when repetition was kinda expected, but I'd say it was less of an offender than Halo. Maybe it's worth trying Black Mesa as well, it does effectively bring it up to date to an impressive extent, the richer environment might make it more palatable, I enjoyed it anyway.

 

[DoPo]

But...as far as I'm aware the loot from crates is fixed. Unless it's been changed with a patch? But I really don't think there is anything to hand you what you need when you need.

No, it's always been like that. It's called the Dynamic Resupply System. About 50% of the Supply Crates in the game are rigged to be mroe likely to give players supplies that they need. I'm not sure I see why it's a problem, but there you go.

Hmm, didn't know that. Now that I do, I looked it up and it seems it's really easy to disable (set the desired levels of everything to 0). So yeah, I also don't see a problem.

 

[Olas]

I'm not going to try to convince you that Half Life is good, I'll just try to explain why I like it.

Despite what you've said, I think you'd have to agree Half Life does have a story, just not a particularly complex one. The reason I think Half Life's story is actually better than that of most modern games is that it's well fitted to a first person shooter. A lot of videogames today try to emulate movies and therefore have more complex, character driven, stories. This isn't necessarily bad, however videogames as a medium aren't really suited to telling these kinds of stories, as a result you often have the backbone of the narrative told through cutscenes that are completely separated from the main gameplay mechanic, and without much emphasis on gameplay you might as well have made a movie instead.

Now Half Life's story may not have the richness of a deep character drama, but it makes sense considering what you do throughout much of the game. It rarely feels contrived, nor does it jarringly switch tone, and it keeps the actual narrative and gameplay in sync for the most part.

As to Gordon Freeman, well he obviously isn't so much a character as he is an avatar for you in the game. It wouldn't really make much sense to develop a complex character for someone you control, nor does the games story really require one as your alone for most of it simply trying to survive. To be honest I have always preferred silent protagonists, I think they work better as someone for you to embody in the game.

As for the pacing, well, to be honest I have no clue what your talking about. The game has always seemed well paced to me. It moves along from environment to environment with steadily increasing challenges that also change up frequently to keep from becoming repetitive. I'll admit for a game as long as it is, there should probably be more variety, this is something Half Life 2 did better in my opinion.

My biggest complaint with the game is actually something you didn't mention, which is it's reliance on platforming elements that really don't work well in an FPS and convoluted maps that are hard to navigate through the first time. I think to some extent these were simply the norm when it came out which is why they're less frequent in the subsequent games.

 

[TelHybrid]

Has anyone ever told you an anecdote intended to be funny, then said "you had to be there" when you looked confused?

That sums up the Half-Life series in a nutshell. If you first played the games when they were new, then it's easier to appreciate them more.

To newcomers to the series, they seem "bulk standard" and "nothing special". The thing is they were the games that set the standards. Half-Life 2 was the benchmark for PC gaming for years, not just because of "t3h grafics!!!111", albeit it out-shined everything back then, but also the physics.

Where Half-Life also shines is its story and the way it's told. It's proof that games don't need to use cutscenes and game halting blocks of text to tell a story. It can be told through the world you explore.

Plus the protagonist isn't some trained marine or anyone even typically combat ready. He's a PHD scientist who starts with a crowbar.

Okay I'm fanboying like mad and I have no shame. I love the shit out of the Half-Life games!

 

[JudgeGame]

The 2 half life games might seem mediocre, boring and forgettable, and it's true nowadays. Games like metro, far cry, and tons others use a similar formula but do it much better. The thing you're forgetting is that half life started it. You might look at all the features from half life 1 like: story progression without cutscenes, smooth level transitions (every level just blends in with each other), platforming, puzzles etc... and find those boring. But they were the first time those things ever happened. Half life trail blazed the first person genre. All of those features might seem boring and lame and the same as everything else. But when it came out, nobody had ever done anything like it before. And people have been using the same core principles for games ever since.

I agree that Half Life 1 was ground breaking at the time and I too was really impressed with the first few hours of the experience. My main problem is with Half Life 2 which didn't really expand on the style introduced by Half Life 1 in any meaningful way for me.

 

[JudgeGame]

I'm not trying to anger anybody but I've given the Half Life series decades to grow on me and I honestly still think it sucks. I don't even know where to start with all the things I just can't stand.

The story. There isn't one. I don't get Gordon Freeman. He isn't a character and I don't care what happens to him. The sequence of events I take him through are repetitive and uninspired. The pacing is just garbage. It's what I expect from a forgettable summer action flick. Thank God you made it. We have to go here! Oh no! Now we have to go here! There's no time to talk! Get out of here! Hurry! *explosions* Repeat from the top. I just don't give a shit.

The whole algorhythm that ensures you can never run out of ammo or health is bullshit. For me it's the greatest cop-out in game mechanics ever.

When I played the first hour of Half Life back in the day I was impressed. It was interesting and new. The problem is that that after that it's pretty much crawl through vents and shoot aliens. I had the exact same experience with Half Life 2.

It's not even that I hate the style. I've been playing Metro 2033 lately and while it isn't a masterpiece it does everything Half Life does but better and it manages to fit in real stories with real characters and a real understanding of the different stakes you have to play with at every moment. I felt like it gave me a reason to want to do something and gave me a way to do that.

I thought Portal did a good job but Portal 2 ended up being a lot of what I hate in Half Life games too.

I guess what I'm getting to is that I feel really alone in this opinion. I am very aware that Half Life 2 is regarded as one of the most important games of all time. I'd just like to know if I'm really alone in this opinion.

You mean a game that came out in 1998 doesn't hold up to modern day standards?!

NEWS AT 11!!

If you didn't play it at release at a teenager, you rightfully don't understand its significance as one of the best FPS games of all time.

You could sit there and complain that Wolfenstein 3D has all the same problems, that doesn't stop it from being one of the defining games in the genre for all time.

You sure put A LOT of words in my mouth. I'm not going to bother adressing this post further.

 

[JudgeGame]

The boxes you break always have whatever you need. If the game decides you have more than enough ammo and/or health most boxes will be empty. It's really obvious and kind of annoying because for me it takes away any illusion that my abilities are being tested and IMO completely destroys any tension the gameplay might otherwise induce.

But...as far as I'm aware the loot from crates is fixed. Unless it's been changed with a patch? But I really don't think there is anything to hand you what you need when you need.

I'm not terribly well informed but I know that the AI Director exists so I gather that's what decides what drops you get.

To be clear, while I was playing Half Life 2, I noticed that if I cleared a roomtaking a lot of damage I would find two or three med packs in the next few boxes I broke. If I replayed that room again (because I got killed in the next room) and I didn't get hit at all, I wouldn't find any medpacks in the next few boxes. Once you realize this it puts a dampener on the experience for me.

 

[JudgeGame]

Has anyone ever told you an anecdote intended to be funny, then said "you had to be there" when you looked confused?

That sums up the Half-Life series in a nutshell. If you first played the games when they were new, then it's easier to appreciate them more.

To newcomers to the series, they seem "bulk standard" and "nothing special". The thing is they were the games that set the standards. Half-Life 2 was the benchmark for PC gaming for years, not just because of "t3h grafics!!!111", albeit it out-shined everything back then, but also the physics.

Where Half-Life also shines is its story and the way it's told. It's proof that games don't need to use cutscenes and game halting blocks of text to tell a story. It can be told through the world you explore.

Plus the protagonist isn't some trained marine or anyone even typically combat ready. He's a PHD scientist who starts with a crowbar.

Okay I'm fanboying like mad and I have no shame. I love the shit out of the Half-Life games!

I never said I didn't play them when they were new.

 

[Newby_Newb]

One thing to keep in mind, is that Half Life was based on the Quake2 engine

The Half-Life Engine was based on the Quake 1 engine.

 

[TelHybrid]

Has anyone ever told you an anecdote intended to be funny, then said "you had to be there" when you looked confused?

That sums up the Half-Life series in a nutshell. If you first played the games when they were new, then it's easier to appreciate them more.

To newcomers to the series, they seem "bulk standard" and "nothing special". The thing is they were the games that set the standards. Half-Life 2 was the benchmark for PC gaming for years, not just because of "t3h grafics!!!111", albeit it out-shined everything back then, but also the physics.

Where Half-Life also shines is its story and the way it's told. It's proof that games don't need to use cutscenes and game halting blocks of text to tell a story. It can be told through the world you explore.

Plus the protagonist isn't some trained marine or anyone even typically combat ready. He's a PHD scientist who starts with a crowbar.

Okay I'm fanboying like mad and I have no shame. I love the shit out of the Half-Life games!

I never said I didn't play them when they were new.

Sorry I kinda responded presumptuously before reading your original post.

You're the only one I've seen who's posted this thread subject (kinda overdone by now, no offence) who hasn't started with "I bought this game recently and I don't see the hype".