Let's discuss: Half-Life

The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!

Let’s discuss the Half-Life series. What is your favorite game in the series? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Are there other games that gave you similar feelings? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!

If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).

Previous entries: Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire

halfway_neko,
@halfway_neko@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

source engine aesthetic was peak. i still love it, and nothing’s been able to replicate it. some games have tried, but the source feel is just unique.

i always love stacking books in barney’s interrogation room and trying to shove as many objects as i can in to kleiner’s mini teleporter.

i also remember having to wait for headcrabs to finish their death animation before i could move forward in hl1, so that’s fun :P

StereoTypo,
@StereoTypo@beehaw.org avatar

My current favourite half-life is Abiotic Factor, to be honest.

RichByy,
@RichByy@beehaw.org avatar

Half-Life (1) was the game that got me into FPS in general and kept me away from the horrors that is CoD or so.

Half-Life 2 probably has the best campaign though. Especially considering all achievements for example.

Worst is difficult – I like them all for what they are, but the one I like least is Half-Life 2 Episode 1.

MrTHXcertified,

Half-Life and its mods defined my high school years. I have core memories of TFC 2fort with Eminem’s “Stan” playing in the background. Of finding a server, adding it to my Favorites, and eventually becoming part of the community.

Valve’s eventual inclusion of voice chat elevated the social aspect to another level.

DOOR. STUCK.

JackbyDev,

I have replayed Half Life 2 a few times. Some parts of the game feel really goofy now. There are many physics based puzzles in game. Like needing to weigh down a see saw like platform with cinder blocks to get across a gap. I think at the time these were really revolutionary, but they feel silly now. At the same time, I’m hard pressed to think of shooters that still include that type of puzzle (but I also don’t play many shooters nowadays).

sag,

I only play Brutal Halflife.

hand,
@hand@lemmy.studio avatar

It holds a very special place in my heart.

I remember playing Half Life at my Grandparents house, my grandfather or Dad stuck me on Half Life (they had a PC) and I loved it.

I was only able to get past the first few zombies (by fleeing) before having to give up from being too scared lol. While I had played other games / consoles, Half Life was the first game I played that blew my mind and gave me a “wow” factor.

I think other than the original I think Opposing Force is my favourite of the expansions.

Thanks for the post; I’m due for a replay 😁

edit: typo

JackbyDev,

Ravenholm was terrifying! The fast zombies’ roars along with them jumping across buildings really got to me.

iamjackflack, (edited )

That hl2 tech demo way back when. The graphics and physics engine update from old game to new (I mean really against anything current) was unreal! Holy shit I’ve ever been more pumped for a game in my life!

Found it - E3 from 2003 youtu.be/4ddJ1OKV63Q?si=GhIZZF1Xc4M8OZ6R

CaptainBasculin,

Back when internet cafes were popular; this game right here was the cool shooter game being played.

A cafe near me would host monthly tournaments and would pay 3 times the hourly cost to the top three with nuke button banned. We weren’t really skilled in the game compared to the pro players; but we had our own weapons we were good at. I was good with SMG grenades and electric gun but never managed to hit top three; but all the matches were good times anyways.

There was a really good player that used arrow keys to look around instead of a mouse, and was insanely good with the railgun. Would somehow always end up at either first or second place. Wonder what’s he up to nowadays.

julianh,

Half-Life and Portal had a huge impact on my life. In high school I was in the source modding community, so I’m probably too familiar with valve’s engines and games. I made a few mods, the most well known being hl2 classic, and it kinda got me into game development.

But needless to say, it’s a fantastic series. I had a chance to play alyx and it was nuts. It’s crazy how influential this series and its technology is on gaming as a whole.

And a fun fact: quake had a feature where level designers could make a light flicker with a pattern of brightnesses. There were some premade patterns you could select as well. These made it into the goldsrc engine, then source, then source 2 - so Alyx, Quake, HL1, HL2, Portal, Portal 2, and more have lights that flicker in the exact same way.

Corr,

I played hl2 a long time ago (at least 10 years). It was a really good game when I played it and I suspect it will stand the test of time for a long while still.
That said, its not Something I’m especially interested in revisiting personally

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

I know this is a controversial take, but I really intensely do not like Half Life.

I have issues with it from a narrative perspective. I have no idea who it is I’m fighting or why. It feels like an incredibly forced “oh, we need an excuse to throw some baddies at the player” premise.

But the main problem I had was mechanical. It’s just not a fun game to play. The gunplay was fine, but then it forces itself to throw a bunch of puzzle and platforming mechanics at you, and just…why? It’s so, so terrible at them. Running up to the edge and jumping will more often than not really in you falling because of a misalignment in perceived location and where the game’s engine says you are. Boxes, which you have to move around to solve the puzzling, fly around at a million miles per minute, making the fine control needed to successfully solve the puzzles very, very difficult. And ladders…don’t even get me started about ladders.

I couldn’t bring myself to finish the first Half Life, let alone start on the sequel.

julianh,

The thing with pushing stuff and it moving really fast was actually a bug in the steam release. It finally got fixed last November for the 25th anniversary update.

GBU_28,

Skill issue

magic_lobster_party,

I think you should give HL2 a chance. It can be enjoyed even without the first game. You have already played the first game a bit, so you know the deal (experiment gone wrong, aliens everywhere). HL2 takes place 20 years after the incident.

There’s fewer annoying platforming sections for instance. The puzzles also involves proper Havok physics, which is easier to manage.

The story is also a step up, with proper named characters. The baddies are also better developed and has a better reason to be the baddies.

raydenuni,

When did you first play it and what other shooters had you played?

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

I’m not a big shooter player. I had played a fair bit of Battlefield 2 multiplayer, the CoD4 campaign multiple times, as well as games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the first game with that title…) and Mass Effect (I think at the time I had played only 1 and 2).

I actually thought I had played the Source version of it, but my Steam history says otherwise. I was playing the OG version, in 2014.

raydenuni,

I think you have to take it within the context of when it came out. CoD4 and Mass Effect came out 9 years later. There wasn’t anything like HL in 98. Enemies that talked to each other and flanked you? Unseen before. Does it stand up to games now? We’ve learned so much since then. But I think you’d be hard pressed to find a modern shooter that didn’t trace its heritage back to HL.

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Sure, and I am in no way suggesting that it was a bad game in its day (especially now that I know at least one of the issues I had with it was a bug introduced long after the fact). But I am suggesting that it doesn’t hold up nearly as well as some people like to insist it does. It’s the “Seinfeld is unfunny” trope, except that that relies on the idea that people today don’t find Seinfeld very funny; the difference is that I regularly see people saying that yes, Half Life is still an excellent game if you play it today.

And for what it’s worth, the game I have put the most hours into on Steam (and by 2x the 2nd place game—which is a more recent entry in the same franchise) was released just 10 months after the original Half Life. Granted, I’m playing on a 2019 remaster with upgraded graphics and some new QoL features, but it’s the same basic game, and had a vibrant community still playing on the 1999 version all the way up until the '19 remaster. It’s a game that I think really does hold up very well today, albeit in an entirely different genre.

knokelmaat,

Is it Age of Empires 2?

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Thtat’s the one! (And my #2 is AoE4. AoM is #3, and AoE3 is #5. All these considering only Steam play time.)

knokelmaat,

Damn. I tried getting into it as a child but it was too difficult for me. The constant clicking and micromanaging gave me stress :P.

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Haha yeah, when I was young I played a fair amount of Age games, but never playing them in their normal intended fashion. A lot of using the cheats, playing the campaigns on easy mode, and some custom scenarios that largely don’t use actual economy management that’s at the core of the game.

Only got into the more competitive side of the game after the DE release in 2019.

stoy, (edited )

Watching the crazy speedruns of Half Life is mezmorizing.

This classic video of a segmented run is just stunning:

youtu.be/VtI5HM7GVGY

This is the current world record of an unsegmwnted run: youtu.be/nsr5qgpfaWI?

perishthethought,

Very cool. What makes a run segmented or not?

grrgyle,

Segments as in levels. So in segmented, you can try for example level 3 “Unforseen Conséquences” as many times as you like, and then pick your best time. In this way you can stitch together all your best times to make one segmented run.

Unsegmented I suppose just means a standard speed run: all in one session. If you get a bad time on level 12 you have to start all over at level 1.

perishthethought,

Gotcha. Thanks for the info

stoy,

If you get a bad time on level 3, you have plenty of chanses to recover on the next 9 levels.

Or, perhaps if you have a fantastic times on levels 3, 7 and 9 that earned time can be used to compensate on level 12, making the time possibly still good enough.

C4d,

Half-Life was my introduction to FPS gaming; I loved every game in the series that I had the pleasure to play - Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Half-Life 2 (Lost Coast, Episode One, Episode 2). I never got round to playing Alyx; I didn’t have hardware that would cope!

Half-Life also spawned the CounterStrike series; I sank way to many hours into them.

My favourite game remains the original; I enjoyed the narrative and the occasional puzzle. I purchased the upgraded graphics pack (which also fixed a few glitches) and prefer the original with this pack to the remastered version of the game (Half-Life: Source).

C4d,

The soundtrack was fun too

magic_lobster_party, (edited )

HL2 is probably the game I’ve replayed the most. It’s just as amazing every time.

When I played it for the first time almost 20 years ago (gosh!) I expected all games would have this level of immersion onward. It was such a leap forward. Things I normally could expect from the real world applied to HL2 as well.

Oh, there’s roller mines hurtling towards me? Obviously I’m supposed to throw them down the cliff using my gravity gun. No explanation from the game about this. It just felt like I would do the same in the real world.

Is this immersion the future of gaming? I can’t wait to see what the future will bring!

Turns out 20 years later that HL2 was a one of a kind game. Other games might have better graphics and physics, but no game is HL2.

modifier,

The graphics still impress me. It’s like the effects in Jurassic Park in that, while the overall tech has improved by leaps and bounds, the execution is so good that it still dazzles.

teawrecks,

The original graphics, physics, and performance were incredible for the time, but to be fair, that’s not what you’re running when you download HL2 on steam today. The textures have been silently updated many times over the years. Your mind’s eye says “yeah, this is how I remember it”, and I’ve seen multiple streamers playing it for the first time thinking they’re seeing the original textures from 2004.

bonegakrejg,

It does everything through clever game design, nothing takes you out of the game. No cut scenes or text popping up or freezing everything while dialogue is going on. You’re just in that world.

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