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

[Spruce Supremacist]

My only issues with Black Mesa is that enemies get gibbed way too easily, and how bright and colorful Xen is. It's like they were designing some RTX demo instead of making it feel truly otherworldly.

I agree that the color palette for Xen in BM doesn't pay a worthy tribute to Valve's original vision, as Xen was originaly inspired by works of H. R. Giger, while BM's Xen looks lit up like someone's RGB-stuffed gaming PC.

 

[piombo]

What do you mean unwanted, that sounds like fun

unwanted because it reinvents the wheel and turns it into a cube instead, ADSing with weapons is both useless and horrible because:

1. it bloats the inputs which means you need a third button for alt-fires, and unless you have a mouse with side-buttons, it means you have to relegate ADS or alt-firing to the middle mouse or a button on the keyboard.
2. the only weapons that get a tangible benefit are the pistols and the m16 at best, the mp5 has akimbo, the shotgun is the shotgun and the USAS/m249 are the USAS/m249, which also brings the question
3. why? 90% of the fights in this game are cqc, and if you need a spread/recoil reduction you can simply crouch and not cover 50% of your screen with weapons that will blind you with their gargantuan muzzle flash.

for akimbo it's mostly bloat yet again, they add an individual slot to the weapon selection menu which means that instead of having 2/3 pistols it's now 4/6, or the 3rd category instead of having 4/5 weapons has 6/7 weapons, and unless you specifically bind weapons to a button, you're stuck surfing through these choices, as a concept akimbo could work, but if it's further bloat then it's not worth putting in.

the backpack part i explained already how it forces the game to make use of gib physics, which outside of making HECU marines into a chore, it means that now you're dealing with gib fuckery and that's a can of beans i'm not informed enough to delve into.

 

[Bob Barbas]

I'm gonna be honest a lot of this bitching just sounds kind of faggy.
My answer would be, obviously if you want to play Half-Life 1, just play Half-Life 1 because it's a completely different experience from Black Mesa.
Play Black Mesa if you want to experience what Half-Life 1 might have looked like if it were developed on Source instead of Goldsource, but make no mistake they are not the same game despite telling the same "story" and being officially endorsed by valve. They are very much different experiences.

Plus, I'd recommend playing HL1 just so you can play Blue Shift and Opposing Force too.

 

[Star Classic]

until the improvement was probably worse than the original, black mesa xen is mostly a glitchy slog that relies on its abundance of puzzles and mazey level design to finish, (and there's also the cancerous pre-final boss elevator fight and i fucking hate it so much) add the incessant self-fellation (everything needs to be EPIC AND DEEP!!!!!) about the effort they've put in those three fucking levels and it gets really easy to understand why it's not really an improvement over the simple shittiness of the original xen.

e: oh yeah, since the talk is about mods, i did try out brutal half life and i have to say that it's not worth playing, a simple case of bloating the game with:

1. spawning weapons like the DE and magnum/crossbow and sniper rifle in the same campaigns
2. custom weapons that are also redundant to their original counterparts, the m16 doing the same thing as the mp5 but you use m249 ammo instead, or the USAS-12 basically doing the same thing as the M249, but you use shotshells instead
3. unnecessary and unfitting content, ranging from doom, quake, duke3d and blood campaigns which adds reference weapons that can also appear in the main game like blood's dynamite and RCTW mp40
4. adding unwanted mechanics like ADS, akimbo and looting from the backpacks of dead HECU bodies...
5. which relies on glitching the game with either gib and prop physics, and it piles up with shoddy enemy placement and new npc behavior that fucks up interacting with all kinds of npcs

My guy you are complaining about the mods biggest selling points, if you remove the things you talk about it would just be pretty much a harder Half-Life.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

Plus, I'd recommend playing HL1 just so you can play Blue Shift and Opposing Force too.

Adrian is such an interesting case, if Valve were smart enough to use him.

 

[30+GameOvers]

This is the most appropriate thread to ask, but what's the verdict on Vladik Brutal? I'm seeing people call it "Russian Half Life 2", is it any good?

 

[They were once men]

Kinda annoying how the updates for hl2 stopped after only a little while and it doesn't seem like valve will add any more features to the workshop e.g. script heavy mod support, beta content etc. Plus having retroactive workshop support for hl1 would've been nice aswell

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

2025 will be the year of new Half-Life... I can feel it bros

 

[The handsome tard]

*HECU Voice* FREEMAN! EXPOSED!

FIRE-IN-THE-HOLE!

 

[AnOminous]

*HECU Voice* FREEMAN! EXPOSED!

FIRE-IN-THE-HOLE!

View attachment 6870769

I mean it's a joke and a meme, but when you think about it, they did right what wokeshit did wrong. Was there diversity, equity and inclusion in the cast of characters? Completely. And then you have the Portal games. The two critical characters are both female, the protagonist is not particularly good looking, and the one male character, in Portal 2, is an absolute moron.

Just describe that and it sounds like it should be woke, right? Instead there's actually gameplay, fun to be had, an actual storyline, and the games are classic.

One of the most annoying things about wokeshit is it always pretends it's doing something nobody ever did before. Like there was never a female badass character like Red Sonja or Ripley from the Alien franchise. Or Tina Turner's absolutely AWESOME girlboss from a *1985* movie. (Thunderdome btw.)

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

Just describe that and it sounds like it should be woke, right? Instead there's actually gameplay, fun to be had, an actual storyline, and the games are classic.

The diversity in HL2 also wasn't born out of maliciousness. Those involved with creating pozzed media are politispergs intent on pushing an agenda and or ESG investors looking to make a quick buck.

This doesn't apply at all to HL2 in 2004.

 

[RSU 1741]

I mean it's a joke and a meme, but when you think about it, they did right what wokeshit did wrong.

While I do agree, Alyx always struck me as wrong. I'd argue the main problem is not only what she is (and if you stop for a moment, her character is absolutely insufferable, the young quirky Blasian gun-slinging tech wizard) but also how she's presented to the player and how she gets a central role in the plot for no discernible reason.

Let us for a moment forget the SJW/woke kulturkampf and think about her critically. Is Alyx a good character? Personally I've always felt some kind of revulsion at her. She's written to be a nerd fantasy, a cute relatable girl next door that is also a badass tech-wiz and also falls in love instantly with a man that does not speak. We're told to care to her and we're told she's very important to the plot (to the point she hijacks it in Half Life: Alyx).

I know it was the 2000ies and she is clearly a product of that era, but for once Valve's skill in building the perfect waifubait makes me find her distasteful. She's too perfect for the role, too well-planned. If in HL1 I went beyond to save the random funny scientist or in HL2 tried my best to save the dumb Rebels, the forced companion section with Alyx always made me run for the exit, hoping to be free of the Committee Blasian Waifu.

But maybe it's just me.

 

[Nguyen Van Phuoc]

*HECU Voice* FREEMAN! EXPOSED!

FIRE-IN-THE-HOLE!

View attachment 6870769

To add to this: the most notable white woman in the game backstabs you and is infatuated with said black amputee

 

[GNU Abyss]

While I do agree, Alyx always struck me as wrong. I'd argue the main problem is not only what she is (and if you stop for a moment, her character is absolutely insufferable, the young quirky Blasian gun-slinging tech wizard) but also how she's presented to the player and how she gets a central role in the plot for no discernible reason.

Let us for a moment forget the SJW/woke kulturkampf and think about her critically. Is Alyx a good character? Personally I've always felt some kind of revulsion at her. She's written to be a nerd fantasy, a cute relatable girl next door that is also a badass tech-wiz and also falls in love instantly with a man that does not speak. We're told to care to her and we're told she's very important to the plot (to the point she hijacks it in Half Life: Alyx).

I know it was the 2000ies and she is clearly a product of that era, but for once Valve's skill in building the perfect waifubait makes me find her distasteful. She's too perfect for the role, too well-planned. If in HL1 I went beyond to save the random funny scientist or in HL2 tried my best to save the dumb Rebels, the forced companion section with Alyx always made me run for the exit, hoping to be free of the Committee Blasian Waifu.

But maybe it's just me.

Comes with the territory of Valve really wanting to make games into movies sans cutscenes at the time. All the talk about exposition shots, where they want you to pan the camera, character introductions, etc. in their dev commentary is a pretty big clue. Most of the HL2 NPCs that you interact with were like that for me, to be honest. From gathering a crowd of scientists and guards that I've managed to save on a level before the transition to the next in HL1 to "oh cool more bullet sponges to sic on Combine" in HL2.

 

[Star Classic]

While I do agree, Alyx always struck me as wrong. I'd argue the main problem is not only what she is (and if you stop for a moment, her character is absolutely insufferable, the young quirky Blasian gun-slinging tech wizard) but also how she's presented to the player and how she gets a central role in the plot for no discernible reason.

Let us for a moment forget the SJW/woke kulturkampf and think about her critically. Is Alyx a good character? Personally I've always felt some kind of revulsion at her. She's written to be a nerd fantasy, a cute relatable girl next door that is also a badass tech-wiz and also falls in love instantly with a man that does not speak. We're told to care to her and we're told she's very important to the plot (to the point she hijacks it in Half Life: Alyx).

I know it was the 2000ies and she is clearly a product of that era, but for once Valve's skill in building the perfect waifubait makes me find her distasteful. She's too perfect for the role, too well-planned. If in HL1 I went beyond to save the random funny scientist or in HL2 tried my best to save the dumb Rebels, the forced companion section with Alyx always made me run for the exit, hoping to be free of the Committee Blasian Waifu.

But maybe it's just me.

I find that Episode 2 and 1 fixed this.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

While I do agree, Alyx always struck me as wrong. I'd argue the main problem is not only what she is (and if you stop for a moment, her character is absolutely insufferable, the young quirky Blasian gun-slinging tech wizard) but also how she's presented to the player and how she gets a central role in the plot for no discernible reason.

Let us for a moment forget the SJW/woke kulturkampf and think about her critically. Is Alyx a good character? Personally I've always felt some kind of revulsion at her. She's written to be a nerd fantasy, a cute relatable girl next door that is also a badass tech-wiz and also falls in love instantly with a man that does not speak. We're told to care to her and we're told she's very important to the plot (to the point she hijacks it in Half Life: Alyx).

I know it was the 2000ies and she is clearly a product of that era, but for once Valve's skill in building the perfect waifubait makes me find her distasteful. She's too perfect for the role, too well-planned. If in HL1 I went beyond to save the random funny scientist or in HL2 tried my best to save the dumb Rebels, the forced companion section with Alyx always made me run for the exit, hoping to be free of the Committee Blasian Waifu.

But maybe it's just me.

If you don't think Alyx is the hottest video game character ever and your eternal waifu I don't wanna talk to you.

 

[LifeAlert]

But maybe it's just me.

It's part of a greater problem with HL2, namely that it's a game that wants to be a movie and the story is written to be as Gary Stu as possible right down to the rebels treating Gordon like he's the second coming of Christ. It's basically a glorified tech demo whereas HL1 is a real game with replayability

 

[Incompetent]

If you don't think Alyx is the hottest video game character ever and your eternal waifu I don't wanna talk to you.

She doesn't show much skin and her tits aren't big enough.

 

[30+GameOvers]

If you don't think Alyx is the hottest video game character ever and your eternal waifu I don't wanna talk to you.

I might be getting my memories here wrong, but wasn't there a Gamespot contest to determine who was the best sidekick in videogames(at the time) and she lost to fucking Dogmeat from Fallout? I really hope I am not just imagining this.
Anyways, I just find it funny that people found a dog more charismatic than her, if this is in any way true.

 

[AnOminous]

While I do agree, Alyx always struck me as wrong. I'd argue the main problem is not only what she is (and if you stop for a moment, her character is absolutely insufferable, the young quirky Blasian gun-slinging tech wizard) but also how she's presented to the player and how she gets a central role in the plot for no discernible reason.

Total disagree, plus you're mentally retarded. At a time when every NPC in a game was some idiot you were supposed to escort to some location while the retard NPC incessantly tried to commit suicide, Alyx was not only useful, but often killed enemies too and shot enemies and unless you literally tried to kill her, she'd always kill enemies and get you to wherever you were going.

Who cares what her personality was if she was acutally useful instead of the usual NPC of the time that made it nearly impossible to finish a mission by incessantly trying to get killed?

Alyx was a really useful NPC throughout the entire game. Plus you're dumb.