scare3crow's posts: very informative, a++

shambler's posts: exactly what we expect, a++ 

Finished Half-Life. It got worse towards the end and while I had thought everyone was shitting on Xen for no good reason, Xen *is* shit. Ugly as hell, changing gameplay and the boss fight is just annoying. I managed to throw a grenade in there, killing it and i died in the same moment so the outro played with me laying on my side, that was good. The teleporter puzzle in the reactor right before Xen was just annoying as well. I like the G-Man much more than its HL2 version.

Overall a damn good game with an anti-climatic ending (regardless of your final choice).

I played the whole game without ever seeing my HUD which somehow felt interesting. Wasn't a problem until Xen (no more health machines to fill up/know I am full). Quicksaving is a great thing and due to many death traps you really need to employ it. HL also silently autosaves at new levels which are not big, so even noobs should have no troubles.

Not sure if my experience with FPS or improved spatial awareness, er, higher resolution and higher framerate are the reason, but the game was much easier than I remembered. Especially "seeing" how to progress. A major part was that I now actually understood what NPCs and signs were saying, back then my engrish was not good. Compared to HL2 the "in-game cutscenes" were *very* much not annoying as they were short.

Now, what is the sign on G-Man's briefcase? 

is the logo for Black Mesa Research Facility. Doesn't make too much sense from a story perspective really as I always considered him to be an antagonist.

You're right about HL, the xen levels were a pain (and they're long too). You shouldn't have had no HUD throughout the game, that's probably a bug. 

The HUD was just cut off because I was playing in a virtual desktop with Wine and was too lazy to resize it. I considered it a challenge and it made it more fun imo. 

 

What do you like so much about it? 

Change of scenery, change of pace, godlike atmosphere, properly alien and hostile, and overall it's just a lot of fun. 

BRB DOWNLOADING IT NOW 

trying to remember my original impressions of half life.

- hitscan enemies pissed me off
- hated how much health the army dudes had, i remember turning on god mode, walking point black and emptying almost an entire clip from the smg before an army guy died, and thinking it was absolutely ridiculous
- liked how it felt like some long journey from start to finish, the passage of time shown with varying outdoor sunlight.
- got lost several times due to 90's mazelike map design.

that's it for now... 

headshots matter :) You can take the marines down pretty quick if you keep that in mind. 

Headshots do matter indeed. One revolver round or crossbow bolt to the head takes down any soldier. But otherwise they do feel spongy and unsatisfying to fight. It's rather incongruent because of how much effort went into the big alien soldiers with their armor plates, including that gap in the spine for a bolt to hit.

I can understand being spongy on torso shots as a basis of armor, but they also have helmets, so really face and neck shots should matter more, skull shots less - and the beret bearing ones could've been better armed or had better aim, but would have taken tons of damage from any head shot. The soldiers were definitely the PR focus, but they needed more attention in the actual mechanics. 

i think at the time, i didn't know headshots did extra damage. up till then, i had only played games like quake where it was just a hitbox. 

I've always aimed for the head in games if there was mouselook. I sometimes aim for the head in Quake, even though I know it does nothing - granted, I did play a metric ton of TF back when it was fun.

But I had also played a lot of Unreal before HL came out, a game I find to be massively superior, and since it focused more on 1v1 fights with high health monsters, and did have hit location, prioritizing headshots could end the fight a lot faster, so it was really ingrained into me come 6 months later. I was also conditioned by that awesome SiN demo. 

I played these games in the order above and found Half-life to be the superior of the two. Story-wise, at least. 

Story, Half-Life is... ...a first person shooter. Dudes poked with a teleporter, oh shit things that eat our faces, lets kill them first, oh shit dudes with guns for us to shoot with our guns, travel to the homeworld and kill something symbolizing a family structure. Other than the introduction order of dudes with guns, pretty Doomish. Yeah Half-Life tells the story better, but, it wasn't exactly riveting stuff.

Now moving beyond story and into the things which video games can do separately from other art forms: Unreal's AI, alien world, sense of wonder and exploration, unique weapons, and the most empathetic NPC this side of an RPG... I got a lot more out of Unreal than HL. The story wasn't astounding, but it also wasn't hammering me over the head with it. Like that time HL makes you plainly walk into an ambush so they can turn out the lights and take your guns away to pad the content feed. 

You're not giving Half-Life enough credit. 

Half Life being the prototype for the current day "interactive movie" form of games, Unreal being a great example of the oldskool lose yourself in this world and explore type of game (that wasnt a sandbox). 

I tried playing Unreal several times in the past and always got bored/annoyed. The weapons feel much less than HLs and the enemies' float skating is ridiculous. The world felt very sterile and plain. 

I disagree on the notion that HL is the prototype of interactive movie games. It is a linear game, that is true, but it has only one cutscene when you have no control over the character (when you are dragged by the two soldiers to the trash compactor). All the other story exposition cutscenes or scripted sequences still allow the player to be in absolute control, something that almost never happens in interactive movie games nowadays (see Bioshock Infinite for instance). In any case I'd argue that CoD 1 is a lot more to blame than HL, and I see HL more like a continuation of System Shock 1 without the sim elements with a pinch of Quake thrown in. 

"All the other story exposition cutscenes or scripted sequences still allow the player to be in absolute control, something that almost never happens in interactive movie games nowadays"

I think that gets a little overstated IMO ... Yes, you are in control of your character but 9 times out of 10, you're stuck in a small room or corridor. So what's the difference?

You can look around freely at these four walls. Oh ... great. 

The thing with HL's scripted sequences is that the devs encourage you to look at them, but they don't force you to do so. You can completely ignore what's happening if you want. Current games, on the other hand, force you to look at them by locking your view/immobilizing you because it took devs hours and hours to make these sequences. 

Yeah, that's true and it's also illustrative of how Half-Life benefited from a thin plot. If you missed one of the interactive scenes or something someone said, it didn't really matter. Or, more precisely, the designers didn't mind.

These days, designers often see themselves as master story tellers and therefore want to make sure you hear and see every detail of the web they're weaving for alpha bravo kilo squad in uzkatstan or where ever.

The reality is, nobody care. :) 

it's still a C grade story. 

So is pretty much anything. The value is in the execution, not the story. The story is just a catalyst for the experience. 

as in different formats like books and films can have better than C grade stories.

But yeah I agree execution can cover up simplicity and unorignality in a format like a game.

Also my comment wasnt directed at Half Life's story but your point about designers thinking they are master storyellers.