Angus Young said:
I bought the orange box a few weeks ago to play Team Fortress 2. Well my X-box live expired so i tried Half Life 2. I played up to "Water Hazard" and had to go but what i want to know is why is this game such a big deal. It's a good game but what makes it such a culteral phenomenon?
Not trying to start a Flamewar so don't turn this into one.
Well for one, they're both really well made games, but you're playing them several years too late to really appreciate what made them revolutionary games.
People will argue this, but half-life 1 was really the first really immersive FPS with real enemy AI. Enemies would take cover, try to flank you, etc. Its not something you can really appreciate today because it's become a staple of the FPS genre, but before halflife, that kind of thing just didn't exist.
Also as I said earlier the immersion was excellent, as it was one of the first FPS to feel like you were really important to the outcome of the game. It really was one of if not the first fps which really had semblence of a plot and story and it put you right in the middle of the action, unlike doom or duke nukem where you just... started running around shooting things with no idea why. Once again, now that's not a big deal because every game does it, but had you been alive and gaming at the time you'd understand.
Halflife 2 was revolutionary for many reasons as well. We'll start with the biggest addition, and that was the physics engine. Before halflife 2, there weren't realistic physics in FPS. The source engine was the first engine to introduce physical properties to every entity in the game. For instance, wood floats and splinters, rocks are heavy and don't float. Everything has a distinct weight and density and acts like you would expect that object to act in real life (with few exceptions of course). Before halflife 2... this didn't exist. It's also a reason why so many games are built on the source engine. I'll say it again PHYSICS IN FPS DIDN'T EXIST BEFORE HL2. This is such a big deal.. and yet nobody seems to mention it.
Also, for the time period (and still now really) the halflife 2 graphics and models were amazingly advanced. Models actually had individual facial muscles, allow them a range of facial expressions. The textures details were unlike any textures previously seen in FPS games, glass, water, etc. They looked realistic as you could get, and the dynamic lighting omg THE DYNAMIC lighting.
Also, the remote camera system where you could have a real time camera capturing one area of the game and projecting it on a screen somewhere, and if you moved that camera, the images on the screen changed as well. That had never been done either.
I guess what i'm trying to say is, all the elements of FPS you now take for granted in your games came from half-life. That's why it's an amazing game. Now it's just a well made game, but at the time... it was the best made game. Halo wasn't even a dingleberry stuck on the hair of half-life's ass.
