I would guess that the majority of Half Life fans of the franchise currently were not around when Half Life 1 and its expansions were released. And they probably have little to no experience with Doom, Quake, Unreal (Tournament), and other shooters from that time period or slightly before. Their view of Half Life and shooters in general are distorted due to their only experiences being post Orange Box era.
I don't think you've said anything I disagree with, but I don't think the technology was there in 1998 to mask loading screens, in fact the game outright says :loading: when you enter into a new BSP level. For the sake of argument I simplified Half-Life's narrative concepts without thinking it through better. It's just there's some seemingly never ending praise for these outdated games. When I was a kid I don't remember people praising nearly to the same extent as they do now.
I hold the opinion that the competent pacing of the first game is spent around the time of "We've got Hostiles", where you begin to encounter the most annoying* enemies of the game - the marines and their sentry guns. The game takes a nose dive between that section and "Surface Tension", but it recovers for a bit before you begin "Xen". Of course, I'm certain the change of enemy and thus the pace of combat encounters were seen novel and interesting when the game was new and people tried emulating its success.
I don't really remember what I thought about it other than "I can't believe they're traitors!" and "hell, yeah, new enemy!" when I was, like, eight, which is when I first played the game. But I just don't think it holds up anymore, they're not fun to play. By 2001, Halo already beat the marines, thanks to the elites.
Half Life 1 was filled with cinematic set pieces that pause the action. Some are disguised as loading screens. But most are purely there for the player to stop playing and just listen to some NPC dump information to the player. Or provide some "wow moment" or visual spectacle that involves zero gameplay. I wouldn't call it 'wasting time' though. It's more of a deliberate design choice. Half Life has entire sections where the player is supposed to be watching things and not really participating and nothing is in your control. It's like an old arcade game. Where you beat the game for Ryu or Dhalsim's ending cinematic. Only Half Life gives you one of those cinematic pauses after every level.
About cinematics: Half-Life pioneered for FPS games a diegetic approach to storytelling. It's called revolutionary, despite the fact that few games actually took to using this approach wholeheartedly. I'm not saying that that means Half-Life's choice of story progression is bad, it's its own thing. Just that it's not exceptionally praiseworthy.
I remember when you fight off the Gargantua for the first time, you take the tram and destroy the thick concrete with it somehow. Then you move forward a little and then you find some guy, a guard, standing next to a switch who stops you at your tracks. And then you start "On A Rail" one of the worst experiences ever. How the hell did that guy manage to get through all of that? It's bonkers and he's talking to you about lunching nuclear warheads, like wtf? What's up with the script?
Not every FPS needs the pace of Unreal Tournament or Quake Arena. A big part of Half Life was watching one group of monsters fight the military NPCs. And feeling like you weren't the only person there trying to survive or escape. And slowing things down to immerse you in the level design or story moment. Some of it is exhausting and tiresome like the introductory train ride that goes on forever. But at the time that style of game design and pacing was rather unique.
I agree, but those games are multiplayer. Not that it matters for the actual "Unreal" game, since the pacing and overall story in that game sucked. People only remember the beginning fondly, due to the large open space it presented.
Also - Nemesis system - apart from having scripted events between soldiers and alien grunts fighting, many enemy types had their specific "nemesis" that they "hated" and had to kill. Headcrabs and bullsquids are the primary example. That stuff is awesome. All these animal aspects of the aliens were awesome. They weren't a coordinated military, they were just dumb monsters. That's a huge advancement, not just in technology but in design. Unfortunately, Half-Life 2 only used that concept for Combine fighting zombies. Lame.
I apologise for coming across as defensive for Doom 3. I just like the game, but it's always compared unfavourably to Half-Life 2 and I don't think that should be the case. It's so weird to me that Half-Life 2 is praised for straining away from the original game and it's called a bold move, but Doom 3 is blamed for not following the original two games before it.
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*Annoying enemies - ultimately, the controllers are the most annoying, but they're regulated to Xen and those levels in general suck, gameplay-wise.
