I'm not replying to anything else. I'm not one to argue about opinions, but Half-Life is straight up terrible so I'm getting this out of my system now so I can use it in the future. This is a long ass post for a reason. This game sucks that much ass.
Tea Monster, on 27 September 2015 - 07:00 AM, said:
Half life was the first shooter to have any kind of story. It was the first shooter to have 'real' NPCs who impacted the story as characters. Half life showed the way.
Are you fucking shitting me? SiN absolutely rapes it in every category, ESPECIALLY THIS. I'd go so far as to say SiN is the greatest FPS of all time and the fifth greatest game ever made, it knocked Sonic 3 and Knuckles off my top 5 after 20 years of sitting happy.
Here's some shit SiN has - keep in mind this is SiN! Everything except vehicles is implemented better than modern games, or occasionally, as good:
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First off, FUCKING LEVELLORD. And his levels in this game make Duke 3D's look like amateur hour.
-The best objective based gameplay out there. Although you usually have vague objectives, sometimes they are more specific to advance the plot, and they never hold your hand. They continually evolve and change in mission. Your resident hacker, JC, helps you out throughout the game, including breaking into all kinds of systems. Man, I wonder where Warren Spector got that idea?
-Levels that are always relevant to the plot and have a meaning to Elexis Sinclaire's master plan. That said, it's usually up to YOU to figure out the meaning, and it makes them really impressive. All Valve did was get rid of loading screens so gaming journalists would drink their cum. SO INNOVATIVE!
-Fantastic underwater levels! No, you didn't misunderstand me! SiN really is that amazing!
-A secret level, a geothermal plant, that contains a super secret level which turns out to be the part of the secret level you can't reach. You have to figure out the correct order to destroy the generating equipment in these levels in the correct order or you'll damage the facility and your progress will be blocked. You will have to go back to the level you came from, or progress to the next one early. The next two levels after this one are now filled with lava if you did your job correctly. In the super secret level, you can access an observation deck, and through a window you see a bizzarre spinning machine with platforms on it. If you blow three pumps in the super secret level, three levels later you actually enter the room with the spinning machine and you can see the super secret level from within the normal level's window. But now you notice there's no boiling water below the machine - so you jump down, and enter a drainage gate. Behold, a SUPER SUPER secret level. No other game ever made has shit on this. Do you have an erection yet? Because I do just thinking about it.
-A really good plot with ACTUAL cause and effect, like Mass Effect without the lovely blue space waifus.
-An awesome antagonist who's every bit as mysterious and terrible as a human being. I'm not gonna lie her voice actress kind of gives me a mental erection, like Judy Greer's voiceover of Cheryll on Archer. I didn't even know any other person was capable of doing that. She's such a piece of shit she uses sex to bribe her workers and scientists into doing what she wants. Complete and total narcissist. Fuck the G-Man. If you going to create something mysterious, give it SOME background so people can theorize on it's motives.
-Combat that's super dependent on headshots and hitpoints!
-Armor that only covers your torso, legs or head, and you can only loot armor less damaged than yours!
-REALLY GOOD VOICE ACTING!
-A FANTASTIC SOUNDTRACK!
-Super short vehicle segments!
I'm still leaving TONS OF SHIT out. If you haven't played SiN yet, DO IT! It's one of the most ambitious games I've ever played...it's on par with Anachronox, Deus Ex, or the Mass Effect Trilogy. All this game does is break new ground and erect structures so grand they're better than anything nearly 20 years later, and no one knows they exist. This game is absolutely perfect in so many ways.
I'm sorry...but Half-Life is half assed dogshit compared to this. Activision set game design back a decade by forcing Ritual to release the game in a buggy state. If they could have released it in February the entire industry would be different.
Jblade, on 27 September 2015 - 09:13 AM, said:
I normally respect your opinions Micky but I really think you're going out of your way to intentionally dislike Half-life. What point are you even trying to make here? excuse it from what? It had a plot that wasn't told through cutscenes or mission text, it gave it a feeling of viriscimilitude that even though it was basically a retelling of Doom with a faux-realism bent it still felt like a believable take on the themes. Most of what happened you found out as you played, the clean-up operation wasn't spoiled in a cutscene or with a dramatic voiceover - you see it happen in the exact same room. Valve were good at subtle storytelling even at the beginning.
It's just suttle though. It sucks ass. Hard.
Play SiN.
Marphy Black, on 27 September 2015 - 03:50 PM, said:
I think the combat in Half-Life is among the some of the highest quality ever achieved in a first person shooter, and even today, it remains largely unparalleled thanks to the intricate AI which makes every battle both engaging, entertaining, and unique.
Yeah, too bad you spend most of the time shooting tiny alien shit monsters.
Why do people give John Romero so much shit for the mosquitoes and frogs in the first two levels of Daikatana when Half-Life commits the same sin for hours on end?
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Keep in mind that Half-Life focuses on smaller enemy counts. For example, the maximum soldier squad size is four: one leader and three grunts. This was a bit of a risky move in 1998 as most successful first person shooters by that point achieved their fun value by mass quantities of hostiles (which I adore, but there had been few attempts at anything otherwise). However, while other titles had AI with enemies acting like omniscient pachinko balls, Half-Life took a gamble by taking a much different and unexplored route. Enemies never magically know where you, the player, are. In order to ascertain your position at any time, they must rely on their own sight and sound detection (smell, mainly meant for aliens, was only partially implemented). Check the source code, and you'll see a complex system of "last seen positions", scouting areas, and investigating sounds (fire gun shots and you'll grab attention, sneak by crouching and you can silently maneuver around). Simply finding the player isn't the sole goal of the AI, either. They make decisions based on their circumstances. Soldiers will throw grenades at your last seen position in an attempt to flush you out, while Alien Grunts will happily abuse the homing-capabilities of their tracking hornet projectiles by deliberately hanging back and firing them around corners they see you duck behind.
Yes, and yet again, you spent most of your time fighting retarded fish frogs.
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Even then, that's not the extent of the AI's decision-making, as several enemy types are coded to work together in a collaborative effort. While one soldier throws a grenade to flush you out, another will intentionally rush into a flanking position to catch you off guard. If you're chasing down a retreating soldier, another soldier can detect you're running after him and drop a grenade at his own feet to head you off. Not only do these AI squads act together, but they communicate based on their hierarchy as well. When the squad leader is alive, the squad acts much more efficiently as his grunts will continuously communicate your last seen position to him which he relays to the rest of his soldiers. If you kill the squad leader, this chain of command is broken, and each individual unit in the squad must track you down on his own as he's lost instant communication through his commander.
If only head crabs and screamer shits were larger and not fucking retarded.
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Perhaps the most impressive feat in all this is the fact that this AI is completely dynamic. All a squad needs is some info_nodes to function. There's no heavy scripting to feign intelligence in play, and it's a joy to be engaged by the AI over 15 years later. If I had to name one fault here, it's that the engine's stiff pathfinding and movement holds back the fluidity of the AI. Mods like Sven Co-op aim to improve this, however.
It's still implemented on a minority of the enemies, pal.
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If you're not convinced by your own experiences from the game, I suppose you'll just have to take my word on this, but I can tell you that I
regularly delve into the Half-Life source code, and almost every time I can take away something new that surprises me. There's a vast amount a depth for 1998 that embarrasses even many shooters today (although that's may be more of a commentary on the general modern state of shooters). Even Half-Life 2 is a downgrade as Valve chose to make the AI, while inheriting much of the original squad cooperation and behavior, much slower to move and react in order to highlight the newly introduced Havok physics system (it's easier to fire physics objects with your Gravity Gun at mostly stationary targets than ones darting around trying to outmaneuver and flank you).
Great programming? Too bad the game is shit. Great AI is wasted on segments of the game surrounded by horrible level and stylistic design.
Flying Techbot, on 27 September 2015 - 03:52 PM, said:
Slow and boring? I've known slower games, and I wouldn't call Half-Life boring. And the only tiny enemies are headcrabs, houndeyes, and snarks. Did you get killed easily by headcrabs and snarks?
They don't kill me easily. They're just tedious shitty enemies.
The game is seriously slow as fuck, how can you not see this? No FPS has less forward progression than Half-Life.
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The puzzles are not that time consuming if you know what you're doing. They're relatively quick. The longest puzzles are from Blast Pit and Power Up, but just involves getting to certain areas to activate buttons. I think of those sections and the fight with the Nihilinth to be elaborate homages to the puzzle-based bosses of Quake 1 and Doom II.
It doesn't matter. There's too many of them. I want to advance, see new things, and shoot shit. They're fucking cock blocks, and it's a lazy way to increase the length of an game that's already tripping over itself trying to genre-blend.