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Here for a (Half) Lifetime?
June 1st 2006, 22:28 CEST by deadlock Upon its release in 1998 (eight years ago!), Half Life attained near-legendary status in the gaming community. Its contemporary setting, unique (at the time) approach to plot development, audioscape and enormous scale quickly established it as one of the cornerstones of the First-person Perspective Shooter. Memorable locations, some very original baddies (the tentacle thingie) and an ill-conceived platformer section ensured that the game was a flawed masterpiece. Half Life was an evolutionary step forward for the genre, rather than a revolutionary one - but it was a pretty big step. It took elements that we had already seen in other games - portals to nightmarish worlds, the ubiquitous secret labs and military facilities, futuristic weapons and a geek-turned-hero protagonist - and made them seem new somehow, providing us with a level of detail and immerson that we hadn't really experienced before. Half Life had such a huge impact on the FPS-genre that it became a reference point for pretty much every FPS that followed it as well as every review. I and many others have often found ourselves playing a game post-HL and bemoaning the fact that it played as though Half Life had never happened. Very often, even those games that did take on board some of the things that HL brought to the table gave us the impression that they were either ticking off points on a feature list or, worse, completely missing the point. Half Life 2, like its predecessor, was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, again taking elements that were already familiar from other games and making them seem better or more integral - physics being the most notable. But the sense of reinvention wasn't as strong with the new game. It was another flawed masterpiece, but this time the flaws (lacklustre AI, some showstopping bugs) were less forgivable. But the epic scale was intact and was, in fact, greatly expanded on. The battlefield was no longer confined to a remote facility but had become global. So, the question I'm asking is this: will Half Life 2, in years to come, be regarded with the same reverance as the original title or has the FPS genre become too diluted for a class-A title to have any impact any more? And is Half Life 2: Episode One just a daft name or is it any good? |
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Topic: Here for a (Half) Lifetime?
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Shadarr had the best counter argument by far. You guys know I was just playing with all that jazz...I really do feel that HL2 is the best single player FPS ever released at this point. I'm happy for me...everyone's got their opinions on the matter and if we all agreed I'd worry. "me did a sneak attack to smack the demons off my back"
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Apparently, Valve hires nude models to come in and pose twice a week for six hours for its employees. I think 3DR had a policy like that too... |
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Apparently, Valve hires nude models to come in and pose twice a week for six hours for its employees. I think 3DR had a policy like that too.. Eh. We do that every other week. It's a great way for the artists to keep creative. Life drawing models have never been on the attractive side of humanity... Kilt Wearing Pixel Pushing Monkey Boy
DVD Collection Blend Creations After a long hard day of being a big male geek, it's nice to get to be a pretty, pretty princess for a little while. -- Hugin |
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Do you go in a storeroom and cry after the session is finished, Eric? "It's only make-believe until it becomes flim-flam."
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heh. |
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That is so dumb. No wonder games cost $60. Zep-- Matt Davis: If you had kids you'd learn to tune out the screaming baby and carry on watching TV as normal.
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schnee sounds like he never played multiplayer fps games before quake 3. |
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I'm halfway through Episode 1 now, and I have to say, the three chapters I've played through so far have been more fun than the entire game of Half-Life 2. Oddly enough, things feel much more "Half Lifey" in the expansion, or whatever new name will be invented for expansion-like-episodic-content, than Half Life 2 itself ever managed. Me oportet propter praeceptum te nocere...
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That's what I thought too bishop. |
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Speaking of episodic releases, if you like adventure games of yore at all, the second installment of Bone is much improved over the first effort. I'm looking foward to what TellTale does with Sam and Max. Me oportet propter praeceptum te nocere...
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Does it still play out line for line, scene for scene with no deviation whatsoever from the comic? |
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schnee sounds like he never played multiplayer fps games before quake 3. Sort of. I played a smattering of Quake 1 LAN at college. I always died so quickly, I never had enough fun to merit learning the game. I played a fair amount of Quake 2, but it just didn't 'click' with me. Quake 3 is when I started really learning the game, and I got fairly good for a scrub... i.e. lots of 13-year old kids would drop out and spec me while accusing me of cheating, but I got owned like a keyboarder on the better servers. I also joined a clan, started skinning, and hand-picked maps for our servers. So, I'm probably biased, but when I went back to Q1-2, they just weren't that fun. Q3A Promode was better than either of them. |
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Loved HL1, loved HL2, and am loving the first episode. Does the Sin episode use the same engine, because this episode feels better than the Sin episode did. Actually, the liberalism of the media - as a general thing - IS a major fallacy. What the media is, is a whore. -LP
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From what I've heard, SiN's Episode 1 uses an older build of the Source engine. This seems to be true because it has a lot of the sound stuttering issues that used to be a bigger problem in HL2 but were patched a while ago. YHBT. YHL. HAND
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Cute warning labels. This is a 100% Matter product: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result. We need to keep our arms open, our head up, smiles big and our middle fingers raised.
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Eh. We do that every other week. It's a great way for the artists to keep creative. Life drawing models have never been on the attractive side of humanity... I dunno, this one is a bit of a butterface but I'd still hit it. |
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Cute warning labels. That reminds me of the internet back before Netscape, when it was only in university computer labs. |
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#36 by Ergo If you really want to shock us, tell us about a game that you actually DID like. Whaaa, I love games! Shadow of the Colossus was the prettiest and most immersive game I've played for ages. Need for Speed Most Wanted offers hilarious policechases and has very few sharp edges. Half-Life 2 offered exhilarating combat and a seamless frustration-free experience. Battlefield 2 (after much patching), seems capable of delivering goodly amounts of fun in flickering spurts. Half-Life 1, SP and DM, was spectacular experiences, and so on and so forth. Games are marvelous, don't you come here implying I'm just another hater mister. But you're a bitter man, so I'll assume it's just you who thinks I'm so Bob-like. I didn't personally like Quake 3 (or Q1 & Q2. Nor Doom 1, 2 and 3) at all. Well, I was actually pretty into Doom 1 back in the day before it starting being boring, which I think occured.. maybe at around Chapter 2 or 3. And D1 had its glorydays in multiplayer as well. You guys with your worshipping of Quake 3 are so weird. "the game will be based on famous battles which actually took place in ancient Japan. So here's this giant enemy crab."
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I never got that into Quake multiplayer at all. For me, multiplayer gaming was all about XvT online over the MSN Gaming Zone, or Warcraft 2 on Kali. I do remember some good times hacking people up with a lightsaber in Dark Forces 2. |
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And speaking of XvT, I just want to say that I was absolutely unstoppable in a Y-Wing during a 4 player dogfight. Sheilds double front, ION cannons blasting away, and set a collision course straight for another player. If he didn't move out of the way I'd smash into him, probably destroying him, and leaving me battered. If he did move out of the way, I'd keep hammering him with ion cannons and disable him, picking him off at my leisure. Good times. |
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Why hasn't anyone tried making a null topic yet? I am disappointed. Ideally, this is a job for the null poster. |
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Because the null thing is old hat. |
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I loved jk1. I also put my fair share of time into D1. There's only a handful of people here who are shooters only, gaggle. I even still play starcraft from time to time, although my days as the illustrious naero-K are long over. |
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Half-Life 2 seemed like less of a revolution than Half-Life 1. I mean, we were playing that for months, talking about it for years. I must've been through the first lab complex a million times. It started to feel like home. One thing I noticed when playing around with Hammer the other day, is that HL2 is a lot less diverse in setting than HL1 was. All the default textures are so typically HL2 that it's hard to make a map that doesn't look like HL2. HL1 had an office setting, various lab settings and other places with textures applicable in a wide range of situations. HL2's textures are pretty much only good if you're trying to make a post-apocalyptic urban map. After I learned of my [Dutch] heritage the rate at which I pushed passerbys off of bridges shot up significantly.
- Penguinx |
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Speaking of silly sequel names, look at Dark Forces: Dark Forces Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight (Dark Forces 3:) Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast (Dark Forces 4:) (Jedi Knight 3:) (Jedi Outcast 2:) Jedi Academy After I learned of my [Dutch] heritage the rate at which I pushed passerbys off of bridges shot up significantly.
- Penguinx |
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And don't forget Dark Forces 5: Jedi Knight 4: Jedi Outcast 3: Jedi Academy 2: Jedi Gone Wild. So long as it uses the gravity gun for push, pull, and possibly grip, I shall be happy. |
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G-Man (#61): Apparently, Valve hires nude models to come in and pose twice a week for six hours for its employees. I think 3DR had a policy like that too... Yeah, but aren't most of the in-game characters male? |
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Gunpoint: In fairness though, it's not like those games were actually named that way - it was more of a lineage thing. Like - in keeping with the LucasFilm thing - Indiana Jones 2 wasn't called Indiana Jones 2: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Crapfeed.
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MP FPS is all about the QW. Also, now would probably be a good time to try HL2. Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any
Sense of compassion Between supposed lovers |
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HL2 was as good an FPS experience as I've ever had. It won't be remembered in the same way HL was, because it's the second installment in a franchise that began with one of the most groundbreaking games of all time. |
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Does it still play out line for line, scene for scene with no deviation whatsoever from the comic? Is that a problem? Besides, if they deviate then Bone fanbois will lay siege to their offices. Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
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I'm halfway through Episode 1 now, and I have to say, the three chapters I've played through so far have been more fun than the entire game of Half-Life 2. I know this will probably sound bad, but - does it have new weapons? New monsters? Any graphical improvements (apart from HDR)? Or is it just a map pack with a story? Also, Episode One exposes Alyx's combat skills and knowledge of City 17. Battle side-by-side with her through Valve's first episodic game, a four-to-six hour adventure of greater density and detail than non-episodic releases. [valve] has me a little worried as it sounds a bit too much like a nonstop shoot-a-thon. Are there parts of exploration still there, or is it Contract JACK with a buddy? "Similarly, your reloading and weapon management is substandard and betrays a lack of tactics." - G-Man
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Anaqer: From what I've read (I haven't had a chance to play it yet) there are new baddies in the form of Zombie combines who suicide rush you with grenades. I think the stalkers that were hinted at in the previous outing are in this one as well, but I could be wrong. There's apparently a more straightforward plot as well, albeit one that leaves yet more questions; these questions can or will be answered in the next episode. Crapfeed.
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Heh, look at me commenting on something I don't really know about! Next I'll be telling people how to raise their kids! Crapfeed.
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Best of all, Episode One appears to be every bit as hardware-friendly as Half-Life 2, and ran without a hitch at 1920x1200 on our test machine (a 3.4Ghz CPU with 2GB RAM and a GeForce 7800 GTX video card). [gamespy] Uh.. gee, thanks, that was helpful. "Similarly, your reloading and weapon management is substandard and betrays a lack of tactics." - G-Man
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Gamespy is BIAS against poor gamers! |
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I know this will probably sound bad, but - does it have new weapons? New monsters? Any graphical improvements (apart from HDR)? Or is it just a map pack with a story? No new weapons, some new beasties, but it's not just a map pcak with a story. It brings Half Life gameplay back to Half Life 2, and actually manages to improve on it a lot. There's a lot more interaction with the environment, better integration and more instances of physics-based puzzles, etc. It may all fall apart in the second half, but the first half was great. Me oportet propter praeceptum te nocere...
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HL2:E1 is really good imo. It's very polished, and while it might only last about 4 hours, they are really packed with cool (scripted) action sequences. It's like Half Life 2 Ultra, with all the action packed together. Looks better then HL2 due to the HDR, but no new weapons etc. The gameplay is a bit different from HL2, the AI is better (the game is certainly harder) and alex rocks as sidekick. Best FPS experience I ever had. A bit short though, but certainly worth the money if you liked halflife 1 and/or 2. |
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I couldn't get it load all day and night yesterday...and still no go this morning. I forgot to preload it on my home machine... arg! Steam does hate me. "me did a sneak attack to smack the demons off my back"
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The local walmart is selling a bunch of HP Photosmart M417 cameras for $70. No box, no accessories. I've been in the market for a digital for a while but haven't cared enough to invest, would this be worth it? All I'd need to do is track down a memory card and a usb connector thingy to hook it up to the cpu, so far as I can figure out, anyhoo. |
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Damn HL2 stutter bug prevents me from playing Episode 1. Motherfuckers. I have a hard time accepting that anyone could achieve this miraculously high level of stupidity. - Caryn
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Damn HL2 stutter bug prevents me from playing Episode 1. Motherfuckers. Try adjusting the sound quality? Fixed it for me when I had that problem previously. "me did a sneak attack to smack the demons off my back"
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Yeah, put it right down and it still does it. HL2 doesn't do it. Lost Coast doesn't do it, but Episode 1 does. Very annoying. I had the occasional little blip when I started playing, but as soon as you trg ba gur genva jvgu Nylk, it goes to hell and stays there. I have a hard time accepting that anyone could achieve this miraculously high level of stupidity. - Caryn
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Who do you play as in HL2E1? Barney? |
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Gordon. As Jeet said, E1 has lots and lots of puzzle-based situations, way more than HL2. Ergo is right, as he always is except the times when his opinion is different than mine.--Mr. Nutty
DVDs |
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Gordon? Oh. I thought he got whisked away by the G-man at the end of HL2. Nevermind - I'm sure it's all explained! I'll download it after I've finished GRAW and Oblivion. |
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get on the train with Alyx こんにちは
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Tert fhpxf qvpxf va Uryy I have a hard time accepting that anyone could achieve this miraculously high level of stupidity. - Caryn
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Jung? Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
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Nj, cbbe Arnyr, fbeel V uheg lbhe srryvatf. Naq ab, V qb abg fhpx qvpxf va uryy. こんにちは
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