My opinion of the original Half Life improved dramatically when I replayed it on normal difficulty as opposed to hard. If you haven't played it yet, then don't make the same mistake I did; it makes the hitscanning marines way too tanky for enjoyable combat encounters.
My opinion of the original Half Life improved dramatically when I replayed it on normal difficulty as opposed to hard. If you haven't played it yet, then don't make the same mistake I did; it makes the hitscanning marines way too tanky for enjoyable combat encounters.
I remember the first time I played the original on hard mode, I had a pretty big "oh shit!" moment when a point black shotgun blast didn't kill a Vortiguant in one shot.
Decay fits just fine, the problem is that, unlike B.S and O.P, it just kind of ends with no pay off.
Our heroes dont escape black mesa, they are just left with the false hope that they stopped the alien invasion...at best that serves to show that there was something keeping these portals appearing from the other end and that they had done all it was possible to do on Earth's end.
But the characters never have their fates explored.
And no, I dont count their "deaths" in O.P to be canon, I think it was just Valve/Gearbox reusing multiplayer assets.
At least there was an excuse for Shep not appearing anymore since he is basically G-Man's personal collector's item.
B.S and O.P ended somewhat conclusively.
And Lost Coast was kind like a demo so I guess its "eehh?" in terms of placement.
Doesn't seem like an ending to me, Gordon is free from the G-Man but now he has Alyx, certainly Gordon would go rescue her, right? Maybe with the help of the Vortigaunts?
If it did end there and left things to our imaginations, that still would have been better than ending with Episode 2's cliff hanger.
If Half-Life could have any sort of ending I'd imagine one where not all the mysteries are explained, but Gordon at least succeeds in freeing Earth from the alien forces that seek to control it.
The thing is, Marc's "ending" was all about how the Combine couldnt be stopped and one is foolish to ever believe that could be pulled off. The only reason Earth had a shot is because the Combine arent keeping their top-forces on it, but eventually they would notice shit happening and be ready to intervine.
There just isnt any conclusion to Half Life that would make sense and not be more bitter than sweet. It just feels like Valve wrote themselves into a corner.
A Vortigaunt makes direct reference to this fact by saying something like "many eyes see through yours" or something like that.
I think they were going for a meta thing with the fact that we, the player, are not playing as Godon, we're playing as something literally controlling Gordon.
Its vague enough that it could be either interpretation. Either it was just a "haha, players being adknowledged" or a "players control an alien force controlling Gordon"...which is still meta but differently so.
My opinion of the original Half Life improved dramatically when I replayed it on normal difficulty as opposed to hard. If you haven't played it yet, then don't make the same mistake I did; it makes the hitscanning marines way too tanky for enjoyable combat encounters.
The problem is that people think every "Hard" mode is the equivalent of "Ultra Violence" when difficulties tend to change between games. Sometimes its fair, sometimes hard involves making things comically unfair for you.
Thats why I always play the "normal" equivalent of a game when I play it the first time, then change to hard in further playthroughs.
Half Life 1 and its remake Black Mesa are amazing games.
There's just something about starting off the game with Gordon going about his usual routine only for a massive disaster to happen causing him to scramble around Black Mesa fighting for his life that feels raw to me. Especially as you go further into the game, the aliens start sending in more and more of their nastier troops and the HECU is eventually forced to pull back.
Then, in Black Mesa, you're teleported to Xen and you're given a breather to really take in the environment you are in. You could see why the scientists in Black Mesa wanted to explore and analyze everything there. But soon, as you head closer to your destination, Xen becomes more and more hostile and you eventually reach the tower leading up to the final boss. Suddenly, you're in some biomechanical hellscape where the Vortigaunts, creatures you've been fighting off back on Earth, are actually slaves that are beaten and abused by their captors, making the entire conflict much grayer than it initially appeared.
I also kinda loved how the HECU were humanized themselves by eventually being motivated to kill you because you've been killing dozens of their own as well as partially being responsible for what has happened. Makes the fights with them very impactful.
Half-Life 2 is my favorite game of all time. It's just such a rich game with its setting and characters. The soundtrack is just so awesome. I also like the weapons and combat. Weapon and enemy variety is lacking compared to the original, but what's there is really fun to use and fight against. "We Don't Go To Ravenholm" is a lot of peoples' favorite chapter, but my favorite has to be "Nova Prospekt" That chapter and the run-up to it taking down those two gunships is pretty awesome. My only real sticking point with the game is the chapter "Entanglement." The second segment of hunkering down in an area with turrets to fight off Overwatch soldiers and Manhacks goes on for way too long and makes my blood boil every time I get to it. What's odd is the first segment is moderately difficult, the second is frustratingly hard, and the third segment is a total cakewalk. I don't know why it was paced like that. I actually liked "Anticitizen One" and "Follow Freeman." I know they catch flak for how wonky the citizen AI can be and how they can obstructed your way forward, but I really liked fighting alongside them and seeing the total war zone City 17 had become. It was a really well-done bookend from the beginning of the game.
"Our Benefactors" is legit amazing, Going inside the Citadel with it's whole alien, and brutalist aesthetic was so cool. The poweredup Gravity Gun is a total blast two use and Dr. Breen trying to talk you down from trying to stop the Combine is really well done. I also liked riding around on those capsule things and just getting a good look at the interior of the Citadel. "Dark Energy" is fantastic. I really like the little conversation you hear between Dr. Breen and Eli Vance before you met Breen face-to-face. I love the ascent you make before blowing the Citadel core apart. When the G-Man came in to give his speech at the end, I was really suprised and got goosebumps. It's something that rally stuck with me and it really tied together how special this game is from start to finish.
TL;DR Nerd spergs about how an 18 year old game is his favorite of all time and recommends you play it if you haven't already.
My opinion of the original Half Life improved dramatically when I replayed it on normal difficulty as opposed to hard. If you haven't played it yet, then don't make the same mistake I did; it makes the hitscanning marines way too tanky for enjoyable combat encounters.
Decay fits just fine, the problem is that, unlike B.S and O.P, it just kind of ends with no pay off.
Our heroes dont escape black mesa, they are just left with the false hope that they stopped the alien invasion...at best that serves to show that there was something keeping these portals appearing from the other end and that they had done all it was possible to do on Earth's end.
But the characters never have their fates explored.
And no, I dont count their "deaths" in O.P to be canon, I think it was just Valve/Gearbox reusing multiplayer assets.
At least there was an excuse for Shep not appearing anymore since he is basically G-Man's personal collector's item.
B.S and O.P ended somewhat conclusively.
And Lost Coast was kind like a demo so I guess its "eehh?" in terms of placement.
I think Decay is canon too but it does get weird how many spinoffs there are including an obscure one that's only officially available on the PS2 (though I think there is a fan port), you can very easily say only the mainline entries and the Episodes are canon or you can include some of the spinoffs or all of the spinoffs, it's pretty clearly a case of how you look at it as opposed to being as set in stone as some series are.
Sadly I guess we can only assume the ladies of Decay got killed at some point, but what's interesting is doesn't Decay imply that one reason why the resonance cascade happened was because of sabotage? Wonder if the G-Man is who did it.
The thing is, Marc's "ending" was all about how the Combine couldnt be stopped and one is foolish to ever believe that could be pulled off. The only reason Earth had a shot is because the Combine arent keeping their top-forces on it, but eventually they would notice shit happening and be ready to intervine.
There just isnt any conclusion to Half Life that would make sense and not be more bitter than sweet. It just feels like Valve wrote themselves into a corner.
The Combine are seemingly unstoppable, unless you have a guy like the G-Man who can bend time and space working to take them down, which is what he seems to be doing.
"The right man in the wrong place can make all of the difference in the world", G-Man sees humanity and Gordon in particular as being just the right ones for the job of taking down the seemingly unstoppable.
The series has hinted at time manipulation, including in Marc's ideas for Episode 3, maybe the ultimate ending could be Gordon going back in time and preventing the resonance cascade from happening in the first place?
There's a million different directions they could have gone but I guess that was part of the problem, choice paralysis, hard to decide what direction to go so they wound up going nowhere.
It would have been cool if we at least got to see the Combine's Dyson sphere HQ though, what a great visual that would have been and if the series did end there, better than ending with Alyx crying over the corpse of her dead father, almost 15 years later and it still tears my heart out that's how the series ends.
Its vague enough that it could be either interpretation. Either it was just a "haha, players being adknowledged" or a "players control an alien force controlling Gordon"...which is still meta but differently so.
Who knows what was going on, it could be that there's a 3 way conflict going on here, G-Man wants to take the Combine down and Gordon is in turn possessed by some mysterious force that wants to ultimately take the G-Man down.
Gordon maybe wasn't on G-Man's radar until he realized he had taken down the Nihilanth, not realizing what lies behind Gordon's skills.
The problem is that people think every "Hard" mode is the equivalent of "Ultra Violence" when difficulties tend to change between games. Sometimes its fair, sometimes hard involves making things comically unfair for you.
Thats why I always play the "normal" equivalent of a game when I play it the first time, then change to hard in further playthroughs.
That's one thing that's great about the series is they offer a good level of challenge on normal that's challenging but rarely frustrating, hard is for when you've played it a million times and are an expert I guess.
Half Life 1 and its remake Black Mesa are amazing games.
There's just something about starting off the game with Gordon going about his usual routine only for a massive disaster to happen causing him to scramble around Black Mesa fighting for his life that feels raw to me. Especially as you go further into the game, the aliens start sending in more and more of their nastier troops and the HECU is eventually forced to pull back.
Then, in Black Mesa, you're teleported to Xen and you're given a breather to really take in the environment you are in. You could see why the scientists in Black Mesa wanted to explore and analyze everything there. But soon, as you head closer to your destination, Xen becomes more and more hostile and you eventually reach the tower leading up to the final boss. Suddenly, you're in some biomechanical hellscape where the Vortigaunts, creatures you've been fighting off back on Earth, are actually slaves that are beaten and abused by their captors, making the entire conflict much grayer than it initially appeared.
I also kinda loved how the HECU were humanized themselves by eventually being motivated to kill you because you've been killing dozens of their own as well as partially being responsible for what has happened. Makes the fights with them very impactful.
I played the original release of Black Mesa in 2013 and was very impressed, but have yet to play the complete version because again, for me this is a hard franchise to go back to and get invested in again.
Decay fits just fine, the problem is that, unlike B.S and O.P, it just kind of ends with no pay off.
Our heroes dont escape black mesa, they are just left with the false hope that they stopped the alien invasion...at best that serves to show that there was something keeping these portals appearing from the other end and that they had done all it was possible to do on Earth's end.
But the characters never have their fates explored.
And no, I dont count their "deaths" in O.P to be canon, I think it was just Valve/Gearbox reusing multiplayer assets.
At least there was an excuse for Shep not appearing anymore since he is basically G-Man's personal collector's item.
B.S and O.P ended somewhat conclusively.
And Lost Coast was kind like a demo so I guess its "eehh?" in terms of placement.
The thing is, Marc's "ending" was all about how the Combine couldnt be stopped and one is foolish to ever believe that could be pulled off. The only reason Earth had a shot is because the Combine arent keeping their top-forces on it, but eventually they would notice shit happening and be ready to intervine.
There just isnt any conclusion to Half Life that would make sense and not be more bitter than sweet. It just feels like Valve wrote themselves into a corner.
Its vague enough that it could be either interpretation. Either it was just a "haha, players being adknowledged" or a "players control an alien force controlling Gordon"...which is still meta but differently so.
The problem is that people think every "Hard" mode is the equivalent of "Ultra Violence" when difficulties tend to change between games. Sometimes its fair, sometimes hard involves making things comically unfair for you.
Thats why I always play the "normal" equivalent of a game when I play it the first time, then change to hard in further playthroughs.
I honestly don’t think it’s any of that (who controls Gordon). It’s simply that the gman puppets Gordon around and other characters like Breen remark on it. To me, one of the really great twists in HL2 and the episodes was the distinct revelation that others are indeed aware of the gman, and are similarly wigged out by him.
I honestly can’t wait to see where Valve takes the lore for him. The little snippets we get in HL: Alyx reveal a whole new slice of the gman, and make me rethink a few of gman’s key traits.
So what's the consensus now about Hunt Down the Freeman? Is the story in that mess someone better than the likes of The Last of Us 2, Game of Throne's Season 8, The Last Jedi, and Attack on Titan #139?
I heard a while back that part of the reason valve never released HL3 is because they were printing money with some microtransaction game. Apparently at the time the pay structure at valve was based on the team's project revenue, so few people wanted to take a risk working on a shooter when microtransactions are a better payday.
I recently replayed the original 3 games. HL1 without the source engine upgrade hasn't aged well. The fight mechanics feel super dated and the projectile physics are...not great. It's definitely the pinnacle of corridor shooters, though. It's still a masterclass in FPS storytelling and the vibe still holds, but Black Mesa doesn't feel nearly as big as it did in 1998.
Blue Shift has bullshit puzzles and is just a cakewalk with a few frustrating moments thrown in. Opposing Force had lots of potential (3 melee weapons and a portal gun!) but they didn't do anything with it and the final boss was piss weak. Like, they play around with some portal puzzles in Crush Depth but just abandon all the cool ideas immediately. Definitely could have done more with squad based combat too.
HL2 had piss poor online compared to HL1. I spent incredible amounts of time on HL1 deathmatches because it had good levels and great weapons. HL2 the weapons were all bullshit apart from the gravity gun which was OP.
I remember some mod or something, you played as one of those zombie workers for an AI named Minerva, anyone else play that one?
So what's the consensus now about Hunt Down the Freeman? Is the story in that mess someone better than the likes of The Last of Us 2, Game of Throne's Season 8, The Last Jedi, and Attack on Titan #139?
I consider it "better" than these because, ultimately, is just fanfiction with a budget.
These ones you mentioned (tho idk much about AOT 139, I stop reading the mangas for a while so they can build content and they screw it up? Urgh) do much worse than Hunt Down the Freeman. Ultimately, its a self contained story within the universe, a poorly made one but one that doesnt "hurt" the original in any way.
The gameplay and plot are a mess but there are 1 hour videos that explain those in detail. But its plot never diminishes the original. It orbits the original, it doesnt crash and damages into it if that analogy makes sense.
The examples you mentioned HURT the originals and their lores. They diminished the worth of the brands, some ruined it altogether.
Hunt Down the Freeman today is just a silly disaster project that serves as a cautionary tale about how to handle projects like these. Its also the example of failing upwards as its director would go on to be hired by Activision...the jokes write for themselves.
I managed to get it to work on one of the old devkits through a bunch of jank methods and third party programs. It was not worth it. Probably due to the lower framerate of that system and the general issues with motion control accuracy and range on older Oculus models. Though if any of the software issues are similar with newer Oculus units due to Facebook's drm I would not be surprised.
Half life is probably my favorite game full stop. There is still something really amazing about 1 and 2 and how the devs made a really well realized enviroment and world. The radio chatter of the combine and marines, the black mesa intercom system, the encounters with gman. I love the small details and world building in these games. It gave you hints at a wider story and world without relying on cliched audio and text logs, and I honestly don’t mind that it was probably going nowhere in the grand scheme of things. I loved the late 90s x-files influenced conspiracy atmosphere.
There was also something really great about the combat encounters and pacing in both games. There were scripted set pieces, puzzles, and exploration. I honestly don’t think there are many games that do the same thing today. Something more exploration focused than a boomer shooter or call of duty while still having scripted cinematic moments. People praised Doom 2016 combat, and while it is a fantastic game every combat sequence really just boils down to arena fight where you have to eliminate all hostiles. Half life had so much variety. One moment you are creeping through a rundown office complex and it’s more slow paced horror, the next moment a gun battle with marines, then you are in a big set piece encounter trying to eliminate tentacles in a middle silo. Even the zen platforming was something different than anything you had experienced in the campaign. Everything just felt like you barely scraping by and surviving by the skin of your teeth. Or at least it felt that way to my ten year old brain. If there is a shooter doing what what half life tried to do today let me know. I feel like maybe the last game that felt a little like it was singularity? The upcoming atomic heart also reminds me of it.
Does anyone know of good single player mods set in the half life universe?
Pretty good mod series for HL2 and Ep1. The main appeal was the level design. Instead of being a long stretch of connected boxes with only one way through them, the layout of all the buildings and underground complex was designed more like a functional architectural plan, with multiple ways in and out, and side rooms that were not necessary to clear but offered exploration or combat opportunities.
Also, another novelty was that there were very few map loading points. The verticality of the level design allowed the underground complex to descend further and further down into the depths of the earth in a spiral form.
I was pretty impressed by this one section where you can see almost from the top of the spiral to the bottom of the spiral like 2.5 km below you. The entire area was traversable without a single map load, and the pixel-tiny Combine Overwatch soldiers that you saw hurrying up from the bottom of the spiral were the same NPCs that would intercept you 20 minutes later, halfway down the spiral, and if you sniped a few of them dead from that first sighting, they would be dead when you got down to their level a kilometer below you.
The mod designer was supposedly hired onto Valve for Ep2 since they were so impressed by his work with the Source engine mapping in the mod.
There's a few that have dedicated steam pages which make them easier to install. Downfall Entropy Zero Transmissions Element 120
These are all Half Life 2 mods, not much experience with 1. But there are some on there too. They are also generally pretty short. Haven't played enough mod db mods or game banana, etc to be able to tell you of their quality.
Yes, part 2 required you to have Ep1 installed, since it used Zombines.
Part 1 saw you fight all the way to lowest depths of the Combine facility. Part 2 saw you fighting your way back up and out, with everything destroyed or collapsing and then when you reached the surface it was night instead of day. So very clever way to reuse the map assets of Part 1 while giving it a completely different feel and atmosphere.
It's crazy to me how one company pretty much simultaneously revolutionized the FPS genre in practically every game they put out and helped sowed the seeds for what would become insidious business practices and terrible game design decisions for many years to come.
Back in march 2020 i sat down and played Black Mesa , Hl2 and both eps , and honestly i don't like HL2 , it isn't a awful game but it just wasn't fun , maybe its because i've only played games that came after hl2 and so im used to all the tricks , but it was a chore to play at times.
Black mesa on the other hand was a great game , loved every minute and need to replay eventually.
I thought both episodes were shitty and prefer to believe that the Half-Life story ended with 2 with Alyx dying and Gordon stuck in limbo until the next time the universe needs him.
Alyx surviving actually takes away the huge emotional moment at the end of 2, kinda like how BJ surviving in Wolfenstein: The New Order ruined the bittersweet personal sacrifice story.
HLA’s ending was fucking sick, fight me.
Also, Epistle 3 isn’t exactly the absolute canon ending, I’m pretty sure Laidlaw has clarified that it’s a concept that would’ve been refined and altered in development.
