bah who needs closing tags anyway? 

Fun for all the family.

Nitin, I gave it away ages ago... 

Most lag-intolerant weapon ever.

It probably is. The amount you need to lead your target with a 100 ping is rather unfair because of the speed of the game. However, the situation is made a little better if you get into unlagged games. 

But it's not like Q1 - where, no matter how fast you're thrown through the air, you can stop dead with a single keypress. 

you have to evaluate games' gameplay contribution in relation to what it adds to previous games.

In that respect, wolf3d was clearly a milestone. Doom was an incredible step ahead too, given that its vastly more complex level design possibility (which current games still have trouble competing with, think moving sectors, large amounts of enemies, and large open areas) gave us a completely new step in gameplay. Quake was not as big a step ahead, but still significant (personally I think the more consistent physics, allowing grenades, rocket jumps etc. made for an entire new feel of being in a 3d world).

Any game beyond that have progressively smaller gameplay contributions, half-life made a relative big one I hate to say, but not on the same scale as games before it. If you don't recognise half-life is still the same "kill stuff, hit the switch, move on" gameplay of doom & quake, you are pretty much blind and can't be helped.

Thinking half-life 2 will be ground breaking gameplay is even more blind, it is, on the grand scale of things, just a natural progression of HL1. Don't get me wrong, I have seen the HL2 video multiple times and I am STUNNED at the production quality of this game and looking forward to it, but it is not "ground breaking" bar their use of physics. You cannot compare this with the leap from, say, wolf3d to doom. 

but isnt that the question though?

What is it that needs to be done to achieve that next big leap in gameplay? 

Robotic Frogs obviously. 

something that maybe emerging form this discussion is what is the boundary between the two concepts of "gameplay" and "the engine". See now to me, one of the reasons i say Quake 1 was a huge leap in gameplay was becuase it had true 3D and of course you could look up/down and jump.

Now those features i classify as part of "gameplay", but others in this thread might say they are features of "the engine" (which they are as well). But i put them primarily under gameplay becuase they effect the gameplay , ie enemies can attack from above annd below, maps are designed in true 3d etc etc. To me, this is a huge leap in gameplay.
To others its still kill/find key/find exit.
Sure these goals are the same, i agree but the "method of gameplay" to reach those goals has fundamentally changed.
After all the goal of any game is basically the same, survive as long as you can and get the best score/complete the game.

Now me move to half-life. This is where it gets really interesting. See, to me Half-life gameplay is fundamentally no different to Quake 1. You still walk down corridor/kill/walk into room/kill/find exit, basically. Half-life adds a story and scripted events, but to me these things are NOT part of the GAMEPLAY of a game. They are part of "the engine". This was the original distinction i mentioned, its all a matter of where you draw this distinction.

Also, story and scripted events are basically what movies or books have. If i want to read a story or watch people acting in scenes then i will read a book or watch a movie.

To me the pure gameplay experience of actually playing a game is "diluted" by sitting thorugh story telling scripted sequences and cutscenes.
To me ,the train ride at the start of half-life added nothing to the game, fundamentally.
maybe thats narrow-minded of me, i would just say i dont like games being diluted from their "purest form".

In this sense i guess it is fair to say i am an old skool gamer i just want to play the game, not "interact" in what (to me) is a diluted and confusing mix of a book/film/game (metal gear solid would be a classic example).

Its not surprising i feel this way as the first video games i played were on the atari VCS and arcade games like Asteroids and Defender, first impressions count. 

its clear me and Aardappel are coming from pretty much the same viewpoint. 

as far as the advancements of HL was... well, the story is that of Dooms, only now youre a scientist instead of a marine. which doesnt change much in the game at all... the scientists are keys with more animation and sounds... theyre not terribly unique considering in Unreal you had the nali who would lead you to important sections of the game, reveal secrets for you, and could be killed by you or the enemy. but it was generally to your advantage to protect them.
i never really felt like the storyline was advancing, as much as i was getting new shit to kill... it was nice of them to throw in the twist of the marines showing up to kill you off, however they told us about this before the game came out, so the only twist in the plotline was revealed beforehand. and it wasnt pumped much in the game anyways... it was vaguely mentioned some, that the marines were coming, but it didnt feel me with a sense of being helped (partially because the developers made it widely known before hand that they were there to kill you). still portions of it were fun, however the ai didnt stun me, especially after all they promised regarding it... it wasnt as much of the soldiers using squad behaviour as it felt like they were glued together, and they didnt react to the actions of other squadmates usually (one yells grenade and the others stand there as he runs off, or often the case, takes cover ontop of it). true they didnt rush forward and kill me, but they didnt do much else aside from... sit there. so instead of running forward killing stuff grabbing keys and going through doors, i was running forward, waiting for scientists to open doors and killing stuff. and then sometimes waiting for other stuff to kill stuff for me (to which i mention the time where you let the stone titan take care of the kraal elite and then attacked him in the dasa pass of unreal, and the much much more intricate system of monster relations seen in Blood2). and the plot kinda... went away, when i reached Black Mesa. it was, "well, we dont know... but theres new aliens to shoot?". HL was a few steps forward in gameplay, but even moreso if you ignore other games in the period and dont pay attention to how absolutely completely linear the game is for the most part.

as for the quakeworld versus q3a argument... i enjoy both. which is fine by me. i see em as diff types of deathmatch, and i think the q3a bots are weak (model files with high accuracy as the only advancement in skill... and they make em easier by taking away their health instead of making them less skilled at fighting)

rabble rabble 

I personally feel that Unreal was quite a significant intermediary step in the advancement of FPS gaming complexity (which I think is an incremental rather than revolutionary advancement - Quake2 advanced it somewhat too). You had a slightly stronger overall story, various sub-stories revealed via the translator (Bluff anyone?), a coherent backdrop and setting, NPCs that actually did something, scripted events, a few non-fighting scenes, and a sense of discovery at exploring a world around you.

Of course HL did that and more but it wasn't a straight jump from Q1 to HL.