Half Life thread - Discussions about Valve's FPS magnum opus(es) and any related content (spin offs, expansions and etc)

[Oceanic Navigator]

It's pretty meta and fitting. Just like G-Man with Gordon, Valve pulls the Half-Life IP out of stasis if they have some tech they want to show off and potentially sell. Then it goes back into the cuck shed indefinitely. As for handhelds, that sounds like game development, not "exciting breakthroughs". Nintendo Valve ain't, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Was more trying to allude to valve trying to make a must have FPS for the steam deck. As much as it come across as a novelty since it can run many other games well.

Though i got a ROG ALLY instead of a steam deck and don’t really use steam anymore because their forum moderators and useless steam support can go to hell. 10+ years of a squeaky clean steam account and now I can’t even change my profile picture due to forum moderators mass banning people after making one single actual genuine post in a some community hubs. Like 343 jannies for example. Don’t even have to criticize the game to get a permaban from the community hub and there’s no system in place to combat this. Idk how a post like this one constitutes “racism” despite not even talking about race or using any racial terms. Yet steam support will claim the bans are “justified” while not actually looking into them and having the power to overturn them.

 

[Star Classic]

That is fucking retarded. Why do this shit?

Russians

I played it recently and that was my essentially my issue with it. As cool and impressive as Focal Point is, it's too fucking long. By the time I was two thirds in the chapter, I stopping taking my time through the levels and was just wanting it to end. I can imagine this will make trying to play through mod in one sitting dreadful.

After playing it I finally understood why Entanglement and Nova Prospekt were separated into 9 and 9a. There are several clear divisions in gameplay and aesthetics between the different islands that could've warranted it being separated into like 5 and 5a, wouldn't even need to change the title or anything. Heck why not just add a map selector like the bonus maps feature?

Some news, also related to a mod. That one mod, HL2 Overcharged, known for overbloating the game with weapons and enemies, and being incredibly buggy to the point that people shit on it for that, had its 2.0 version released, which not only fixed absolutely nothing, but also had code in the client.dll that blocked 4 community members Steam Id's from being able to launch the mod, these community members I guess having been very critical of the mod, including this guy who made a video on the issue.

Checking the mod page on Moddb, the downloads have been scrubbed which seems to have been done by moderators after receiving a lot of reports.
View attachment 6704098

SMOD chads stay winning I still haven't played SMOD

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

 

[Tsukasa Kadoya]

I finished Black Mesa: Blue Shift today or the 5/9 chapters that were finished, I was really really impressed! It wouldn't be hard to blow Blue Shift out of the water but they went and did it anyways. It takes way more liberties than Black Mesa with the source material but more often than not its with good reason. They've gone so far as to add things from Alyx like the Xen grenades, which Vorts can toss at you now and even slightly explained why Xen looks so different in BM by having an area that's dedicated to looking pretty much exactly like HL1 Xen.

Problems wise Focal Point is the best and simultaneously the worst chapter. Surprise, surprise much like Interloper it goes on for way too long (not joking the chapter is like 4 hours in length) and overuses the Alien Controllers. The last few arenas in the big factory section is much like BM's factory section in that its raw unfiltered AIDS. Except this time prettier. I guess you can say I "didn't beat it" for using buddha but if the game is not going to respect me then I will not respect it.

Spoiler: Various screenshots of my journey

View attachment 6700900View attachment 6700902View attachment 6700903View attachment 6700904View attachment 6700905View attachment 6700906View attachment 6700907View attachment 6700908View attachment 6700909View attachment 6700910

That's the main issue with BM too. up until Xen the main game for BM is phenomenal. Amazing atmosphere, great action, smart yet fluid puzzles, I loved it. Xen's first chapter is very good, but as soon as Gonorchs's lair is entered the game become a slog. Holy fuck Interloper is so fucking cryptic and overly long I literally nocliped through a chunk of it. I shouldn't be thinking as a gamer "When is this shit going to be over?"
I did like some of the changes with Xen. The crystals that charge your suit and the new enemies are a blast, but spending over 8 hours in Xen is a chore. I feel like a lot of the fat should have been cut to make a more streamlined and cohesive experience. The battle with Nihilanth is cool, they did away with the shitty teleporting stuff and made a more intense battle.
BM Blue Shift looks great, and I hope someone eventually makes an Opposing Force mod (INB4 Tripmine Studios, they are fucking dead as a doornail)

 

[Yak-130 Mitten]

My only issue with Xen rework in BM is this fucking interweaving conveyor and neverending teleporter. I just turn my brain off and turn godmode on. Easily the worst part of the game. Nihilanth, Gonarch, Vortigaunt living quarters, and running from Gargantuas beforehand... Awesome pieces.

 

[Star Classic]

My only issue with Xen rework in BM is this fucking interweaving conveyor and neverending teleporter. I just turn my brain off and turn godmode on. Easily the worst part of the game. Nihilanth, Gonarch, Vortigaunt living quarters, and running from Gargantuas beforehand... Awesome pieces.

The Gargantua chase is the best meta statement on Black Mesa as a whole. It's HL1 turned up to eleven in all the good and bad ways that entails.

As for why Xen drops off in quality and is longer than it needs to be: It's just very clear it was designed way after the earthbound chapters. I think even a newcomer to the series could recognized that there's a very big quality (visually) difference between the 2 sections.

Xen was also designed as a "episode" akin to EP1 & 2 as said in the documentary (there's also another point where early-on they talked about making Xen a separate game/exe) and is why it drags on forever. It's quite literary designed as a separate game and not what it should be: the 3rd act of the game like it was in HL1. Not that HL1's Xen even really warranted being called the 3rd act outside of chapter counts.

 

[Battlefield42]

Xen's first chapter is very good, but as soon as Gonorchs's lair is entered the game become a slog. Holy fuck Interloper is so fucking cryptic and overly long I literally nocliped through a chunk of it. I shouldn't be thinking as a gamer "When is this shit going to be over?"

This but OG Half Life. Both developers fucked it up.

 

[Star Classic]

This but OG Half Life. Both developers fucked it up.

Xen is just a cursed concept man.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

I love mods.

 

[Nikes_JustDoIt]

View attachment 6706632

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

 

[skykiii]

So... is it normal to have mixed feelings on Half-Life 2?

My own history... I played the first Half-Life when it was new (I had the pack that came with Opposing Force) and liked that, but I hated the impact it had on FPS games. Like what HL1 did was cool for itself but I didn't want it to be the standard, but unfortunately it became the standard.

When HL2 came out I was burned out, and couldn't play it anyway because I still had dial-up and even the original release required online activation which back then could legitimately take days.

Now I'm finally able to play HL2 but.... well, I feel bipolar. Sometimes I'm liking it well enough, other times its "oh god enough of this shit." I'm in Water Hazard BTW.

One thing that bugged me before I even played the game though was the direction the story took. The original Half-Life was captivating in part because there was a lot of mystery surrounding what exactly was going on, whether it was really an accident or planned, who and why, etc.

This is a case where honestly, the speculation and fan explanations were way more captivating than what the official answer turned out to be.

This is without even acknowledging that the story of HL2 is kinda retarded anyway. But I think I would be willing to overlook this shit if I was having more fun.

Even the first Half-Life, which I have a much higher opinion of and was positively obsessed with for awhile, is a game I rarely finish on replays because nowadays its issues stand out to me.

 

[Coolio55]

Played HL2 with a controller for the anniversary and while it wasn't bad, it definitely felt odd.

 

[The handsome tard]

Played HL2 with a controller for the anniversary and while it wasn't bad, it definitely felt odd.

Gabe did have this cold war of sorts with consoles for many years as Valve rarely ported their games to them and even when they did, it was in questionable states that made them obviously inferior to the PC versions. Gabe seemed to have seemingly even more of grudge against the PS3 in particular (iirc, it was because the console really had a hardware difficult for devs to work with in comparison to the Xbox 360). So it makes sense that Valve didnt put that much thought when it comes to controller controls as HL2 was very much a keyboard and mouse experience (outside of the boat section, that sucked).

That didnt stop Valve from chasing the console market for years tho, with failure after failure in trying to turn Steam into a console. They finally seem to have struck gold with the Steam Deck tho.

Nowadays Gabe did soften up to consoles and enjoys them just fine (even if he still openly prefers PC ports most of the time).

 

[Star Classic]

Gabe did have this cold war of sorts with consoles for many years as Valve rarely ported their games to them and even when they did, it was in questionable states that made them obviously inferior to the PC versions. Gabe seemed to have seemingly even more of grudge against the PS3 in particular (iirc, it was because the console really had a hardware difficult for devs to work with in comparison to the Xbox 360). So it makes sense that Valve didnt put that much thought when it comes to controller controls as HL2 was very much a keyboard and mouse experience (outside of the boat section, that sucked).

That didnt stop Valve from chasing the console market for years tho, with failure after failure in trying to turn Steam into a console. They finally seem to have struck gold with the Steam Deck tho.

Nowadays Gabe did soften up to consoles and enjoys them just fine (even if he still openly prefers PC ports most of the time).

It's more so they just stopped releasing games at all and the games they release now aren't really fit for consoles outside of Deadlock. Maybe, just maybe we'll see HL3/X get a port but I imagine it'll be closer to the HL2 XBOX port in terms of downgrading.

HL2 also doesn't really have an excuse for not making controllers work given there's an XBOX port for it.

 

[Nameless One]

The STALKER trilogy had a modern and last gen console release before the half life series and those games were always the ones you'd get a PC for. What the fuck is this timeline? Although I know there probably isn't a huge demand from console gamers but if Valve wanted to do it they can now.

 

[Gravemind]

This is my favorite mod for half life 2.

You can't install that without also installing this as well.

It's a model swap that replaces Breen with the Dracula Flow guy. It's also perfectly lip synched to the lines.

As someone who played through the entirety of HL2 with this mod installed, it's wonderful.

 

[RSU 1741]

So... is it normal to have mixed feelings on Half-Life 2?

It depends. There's a stubborn bunch of grogs that hate HL2 because in their minds it's "new bad" compared to HL1 (and this 20 years after release). Some criticism of HL2 is indeed possible: I'll admit that the weapon selection is functional at best and basic at worst (with the Gravity Gun thankfully helping a lot in creativity) , a tad more variety on the enemies would have been welcome, some levels have mediocre designs at times (particularly the urban combat later levels). Often though I find them to be contrarian cultists that simply want to hate on the game just because, and it's not like HL2 managed to become a trendsetter, military shooters first and then cover-based shooters nuked the FPS market afterwards.

One thing that bugged me before I even played the game though was the direction the story took. The original Half-Life was captivating in part because there was a lot of mystery surrounding what exactly was going on, whether it was really an accident or planned, who and why, etc.

Who the fucks plays HL for the story

The ambience is good, who the fuck cares about the story

 

[Gregg Turkington]

Who the fucks plays HL for the story

The ambience is good, who the fuck cares about the story

The story is one of it's worst attributes imo. Everyone is smiling and cracking jokes, stupid shit.

Everything from the canals > Nova Prospekt is pure atmospheric kino

 

[Star Classic]

Who the fucks plays HL for the story
The ambience is good, who the fuck cares about the story

Me.