At the annual Who Can Shout The Loudest competition that is the PC Gamer UK Top 100 meeting, there are rules. These rules differ from year to year, and in 2008 one of them was “only one game per series.” So we couldn’t say Thief and Thief 2, or Morrowind and Oblivion – which sounds harsh, but the idea was to ensure as diverse a list as possible. And yet still no-one nominated Big Mutha Truckers 2.
There ended up being a couple of exceptions to this rule, and the one I particularly fought for was Half-Life. I simply don’t consider HL1 and HL2 to be especially comparable games, despite sharing a lead character, partial arsenal and a name. I also much prefer the first game, for all its greater shlockiness.
Why? Because it’s Indiana Jones. HL2 is more 1984-as-action-movie, and while it’s marvellously well-realised, far more polished and thematically consistent, I don’t find that as thrilling as all of HL1’s rip-roaring high adventure.
(note – I’m pretending Xen didn’t happen for the purposes of this post. Yes, it’s a bit crap).
While the events of HL1 are hardly comical – alien invasion leads to massacre, exacerbated by governmental evil – Black Mesa is nonetheless a jollier place to be than the oppression and horror of City-17. HL the first is a b-movie and it knows it, but HL2 comes off, despite knowing comedy beats, as a lot more aloof, a lot more convinced it’s something more than an action game. That has its place and I certainly admire its accomplishments, but collapsing elevators, tentacle beasts and hapless scientists perishing in their dozens is something I’m much more inclined to return to. HL2 doesn’t mix things up anywhere near as, bar the vehicle sections and some physics-puzzling. It’s more like a sci-fi Call of Duty in a lot of ways, and it does it excellently – but it never surprised me as often as its forerunner did.
Oddly, I find HL a much more convincing journey too. Being trapped underground excuses the linearity, while HL2’s more open topography requires more uncomfortable compromises such as being unable to smash through the thin wooden fences throughout Ravenhom. (For all its spooky atmosphere, Ravenholm was the one element of HL2 I actively disliked. It was shooting for the sort of setpiece-based diversity HL1 does so well, but it felt so ghost train-contrived, especially in the maze-like layout of the level).
In Hl1, I’m stuck inside a sprawling concrete mega-bunker, a construct of tunnels and ducts: I entirely appreciate that I don’t have too much freedom of directional choice, and so the annoyances of that quintessential design handicap almost all singleplayer FPses suffer just… evaporates . As a result of this claustrophobia, those moments when I emerge into the outdoors are overwhelming and terrifying: it’s all so big, so exposed. The game entirely takes advantage of this confusion too, hovering helicopters over the open roads like deadly wasps, placing fortified RPG bunkers ominously overlooking the short jogs between shelters. It makes me long for a return to the concrete underworld, back where I feel much more like powersuited master of my domain. HL2 has plenty of outdoor/indoor switching, but there’s never that startling sense of contrast.
The age of the engine means it doesn’t work on me now, but on the first HL1 playthrough, my embarrassing vertigo kicked in when I was shuffling nervously along high-up cliff edges during one of the earlier outdoor escapades. So I faced the wall, walked sideways and refused to look down – a plan that rather fell apart when murderous soldiers started shooting at me. It all seemed so impossibly huge, like I’d been locked in a car boot for three days then suddenly awoke to find myself parachuting out of an aeroplane.
And of course there are the setpieces. HL2 has its Striders, but HL1 has the tentacle beast. The former are an incredible sight, heavy with menace and the defining statement on how the Combine manage to keep Earth in check. But once you fight them, they become just another enemy with so many hitpoints, and even worse the way to take ‘em down involves a magic box of infinite rockets. The Tentacle beast though – that you can’t fight. You can distract the stupid blind thing by lobbing grenades, but you can’t hurt it. Able to kill you in a single strike and fearsomely fast for something so huge, it’s an unforgettable monster.
You can kill it, eventually, by dousing it in fuel and setting it alight with a flame the size of a lighthouse, but you cannot fight it. Now that’s a bossmonster that never loses its threat, one that’s never diminished by falling over once you’ve shot it precisely x number of times. It’s great boss design all told, some annoying back-tracking aside – an entire level of the game is structured around it, with this huge, invincible, terrifying thing at the centre. You hear those dread bangs on its giant talons on steel wherever you are – even if it’s out of your sight, it’s never out of your mind.
I could go on, about the other splendid setpiece monsters, about how much more creepy the G-Man is when he barely speaks, about how it succeeds in making simple humans the creepiest enemies of all… But then I’d never finish this post. Half-Life 1 is the great omni-sci-fi adventure – Indiana Jones with aliens (there’s an Indy film like that, you say? You must be mistaken – there are definitely no aliens in any of the three Indy films ever made). HL2 narrows its focus in the name of tightness and polish, but silly, cocky old HL1 is the rollercoaster I want to ride again and again.
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One thing I’ve been curious about…back in the day I played the original Half Life to the end of ‘On a Rail’, but then had a save game corruption (or something) and didn’t go back to it until after I’d played and finished HL2.
At that point I played all the way through HL:Source. One thing I noticed is that the marines all move at about 10,000mph and slide about on skates, making them bloody difficult to kill even on ‘easy’ setting. It didn’t feel anything like fighting actual humans, it felt almost like it was broken.
Is this a HL:Source quirk, or was it the same in the original? I’ve been meaning to play through it again in the non-Source version to see if the AI/behaviour/animation/etc of the marines is any different.
From my original play back in the day I remember that first marine encounter being thrilling and awe-inspiring, but in HL:Source it seemed strangely irritating and unrealistic. I’d love to know whether the intervening years changed my idea of what an enemy in a game should be like, or whether the Source version is that noticeably different.
HL1 for me. When you finally make it to the soldiers and–hot damn they want to kill you (KILL FREEMAN!!), that was just great, great stuff.
Ummmm….HL2 pretty much hands down. For me, and now the episodes are there, it is just brilliant. Atmosphere, graphically, story, the action and gameplay. Ravenholme is maybe a low point, but still much better than HL1’s low points and difficulty spikes.
Fair enough to be forgiving of the older game for its flaws. It is great. But personally, I never end up replaying it because that on rails bit and Xen really was rubbish.
Thank goodness for PC – unlike consoles we don’t have to choose!
The antlion caves in Episode 2 didn’t really irritate me all that much, other than the monotony of squishing bugs. The end setpiece with the hunters and striders, however, is more work than fun. I’ll play it but only so that I can see the end, but the car’s crappy handling combined with endless Hunter swarms and Yet Another Gravity Gun Ball Puzzle gets old very fast for me.
This has been commented on before, but the worlds of HLs 1 and 2 don’t really fit together at all exactly. Aside from the Xen parts of HL1, the aliens, the bouncing mechanics, and the rather quirky weapons, but above all the feel. HL2 just felt like it took place in a different world. I suppose that was part of the point, but really I think the Combine (not just the troops but the idea) took away from the HL ambience somewhat. 2 is one of the best games ever, don’t get me wrong, but it is basically set in a different world to the first HL.
I think this is one of the things that I will likely never agree with the gaming community at large on. I just don’t think Half-Life 1 is anything special. I will freely admit that I first got a chance to play it (I had only a Mac for years and it never came to Mac) years after its prime. But the way people talk about it, it should still be an amazing experience the way that, say, Deus Ex is today. And it’s not. It’s a bog-standard shooter with some mild scripting and way too many jumping puzzles. There are many pre-HL shooters that I think are far more lastingly exceptional – the Marathon games, for example. System Shock. In fact, I was sufficiently underwhelmed that I was not at all looking forward to Half-Life 2. But you know, I eventually got round to playing that, and it blew me away. The sense of place is almost unequalled (there are a few others now – Stalker, say) and the pacing and scripting are excellent. I don’t know if it’ll continue to be the sort of gold standard that people feel 1 was – it relies quite a bit on the quality of its engine and that will inevitably be surpassed more and more by new technology. But it’s definitely superior to the first game. No question in my mind about that.
And this despite certain missteps (Ravenholm, many of the vehicle sequences), and the episodes being far less inspired as expansion-pack concepts than Opposing Force and Blue Shift. (The episodes are great, they’re just much more standard in their conception.)
I’m hoping that maybe Black Mesa: Source will offer me some of what people see in HL1. If it ever comes out.
Hmm, dunno which game I like the most. I fully agree with your original point though, they’re hardly the same series. Yes, both have crowbars and a goatee’d protagonist you never see, but apart from that, they’re goddamn different games, in the same way that Halo and Call of Duty are different.
I know through hours spent arguing this that not everyone agrees with this, but I really don’t feel the gameplay had much in common in the two games. I love both games, but I can’t say one is better than the other, any more than I can say that Dawn of War is better than Monkey Island. They’re just different.
“I know it’s part of its charm but HL1 was an awful amount of just walking around.
For the time it came out it was a genre changing switch of pace but going back to it now after the thrill rides of COD4 or even Episode 2 kind of re-evaluates that pace as a flaw.”
Actually, comparing games like COD4 to Half-Life game reminds me that one reason why any game in the HL series is so far ahead of most other FPS games is precisely because, despite its scripted reputation, it’s not afraid to hold back on the scripting occasionally and let the player take their time and soak up the atmosphere. While COD4 takes scripting to another level and provides some of the best sequences since Episode 2 I find it more akin to a gameplay comfort food; it feels good the first time you go through, but it’s so stuck in railroading a scripted sequence around every corner that it starts to fall apart the moment you get familar with it and make any attempt to “colour outside the lines”.
malkav11: I dunno if I blanked out for a minute and posted under your name or something but you sound exactly like me. Also played HL1 after its prime, and after all the hype it was just so disappointing, probably one of my biggest disappointments. I blame Deus Ex, it completely ruined my expectations.
HL2 on the other hand I really enjoyed, like you say it has an unrivalled sense of place. Every thing about the design of the world just works, from the look of the Combine to the shader they use for those troop transport alien things to give its carapace a subtle slick sheen. The world feels more complete, more believable.
Wasn’t (?isn’t) Half-life 2 just a tech demo? It sure played like one to me. I loved Half-Life (1), but I really wasn’t pleased with 2.
I think the problem one faces is if you are of the age (and I am) to vividly remember playing half life 1 after a complete diet of Doom and Doom-a-likes it’s almost impossible to see it in a bad light (even the Zen levels), and not recognise how it completely transformed peoples perceptions and expectations of the FPS experience (I’d add Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Thief as other bench setters from the same period). With 5 years between games and innumerable other releases that built upon the ideas and principles HL so successfully established in the gamer conciousness, it was always a case that HL2 was going to come off as the ugly sister in some ways. Certainly I think HL2 was/is a great gaming experience, and Valves investment in facial tech as well as making physics a core feature of gameplay was profound, however I do fear the series suffers a bit from Valve not looking to the work of other developers for inspiration/direction. HL like it’s contemporaries still clung to the backpack full of guns approach Doom introduced and it’s sequel inherited it. Where as other developers eschewed it, in favour of tighter approaches that lend more of a tactical attitude to game play (Halo, FEAR being examples). Now that’s not to say I’d like to see Gordon Freeman reduced to a choice of 2 guns in future episodes (gravity gun and…crowbar?) but the ability to carry a small arsenal on your back is pretty antiquated and needs a bit of a review imho. I would also agree that the on rails contrivances in HL2 and the episodes have been quite annoying at times and I actually fear that with more and more open ended games such as stalker and FarCry 2 coming to the fore, peoples lenience towards the series idiosyncrasies will grow less and less over time. If EP3 ships next year I think Valve might just get away with it, but beyond a year, I don’t think so. I thought it was telling that despite the fact that HL2:EP2 was a much tighter product than either HL2 or EP1 and had the fancy Cinematic Physics, etc, etc it was Portal that really stole the headlines.
In multiplayer games it makes sense, as there’s a definite strategic choice there, but in SinglePlayer I never got the fascination with limited weaponary at all (beyond the “realism”); all it does is add pointless trial and error if you don’t have the perfect weapon for a given situation.
While there are various other things that could be taken from other games to potentially enhance HL a limited arsenal is something I’m not interested in seeing at all.
As an extension, if limited weapon don’t promote trial and error, it tends to promote making the difficulty such that your choices generally don’t matter much. I thought F.E.A.R suffered from that; with the exception of one or two sequences (where what you needed was supplied), it was pretty much a case of choosing whatever method of killing you felt like at the time (E.G. Pin this guy to a wall, blow him away in a hail of bullets, or turn him into a red mist?), and I may as well have been able to carry what I wanted.
Ravenholm was pure fun and is precisely the kind of horror I enjoy playing. I also think that the combat in Hl2 is absolutely ace. Each and every weapon feels just like it should, and it is all oriented to fast paced, close up gameplay.
Jeez, throw out a warning before linking to that Edge Top 100. RE4 at #2? Haha.
Had HL2 thrown a bunch of super-fast Combine versions of the assassins at me, it would have been perfect. HL2 had only one enemy that made me think “oh shit, oh shit, oh sh-” (the fast zombie), but HL had them in droves. The soldiers were tough. The Gargs were tough. The assassins only showed up once or twice, but they’re insanely memorable. The enemies are always tougher than you, but you can always find a way to prevail.
On the other hand, HL2 reverses the equation and gives you lots of chances to show off how much better you are than the enemies. You can roll explosive barrels into the barnacles’ tongues. You can lay an antlion siege on Nova Prospekt. You can run wild through the dread headquarters of the Combine with a gun that can destroy everything in your path.
They’re both great games. Choosing one is stupid because they’re both fun.
Half-Life 2 is hardly the po-faced exercise in gloom that people have insinuated here, it’s gripping stuff! It has strings of astonishing set pieces and leaps genres in such an assured and satisfying way. It is fun and sometimes funny.
The article surprised me, because in Half-Life 2 I did feel like the star of ‘rip-roaring high adventure’ far more than in its predescessor, which had its exciting moments (the bits we all reminisce about, of course), but so often screeched to a halt in a bad idea for a room. To Valve’s enormous credit, I didn’t notice Half-Life 2 being as linear as it, in retrospect, is. It just thrilled and distracted me constantly, then it was over. I didn’t have the chance to feel cynical. Whereas I did sometimes feel reined-in and frustrated by the original, as good as it was and is.
Well both half life’s are bloody amazing in their own ways. But one thing HL2 is missing that HL1 has, is beating innocent scientists and barneys to death with the crowbar and smashing the corpses into gibs…..yeah good times.
HL1>HL2
therefore
Sven Co-op>Synergy (Obsidian Conflict is debatable.)
Unfortunately the sense of wonder that was HL1 will probably never be replicated again. It was the beginnings of FPS narrative for an entire generation (or greater) of gamers worldwide – a simultaneous awakening of games being more than a mere sum of parts, a continuous mix up of glorious set pieces and changes in dynamic that even until this day still have been close to being replicated. HL2 is utterly utterly a lot narrower in vision in virtually every way. Even now there are no AI enemies anywhere near as convincing as the soldiers from HL1. Why didn’t HL2 better incorporate more ‘invincible’ monsters and less predictable characters, even though they are way ahead of virtually anyone else in the field.
This is of course why soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people are hanging for Black Mesa Source to be as great as it possibly can be. HL1 still gives me goosebumps when I go back and play it, from the opening lift ride all the way to Xen. When I play it once through every couple of years or so it really shows you that apart from graphics, development in games has hardly come far at all. Pity that.
HL1 is the best FPS ever. HL2 is the continuation of the best FPS ever. End of story.
I still don’t really get what HL is supposed to have done that’s so epochal. Again, I first encountered it in retrospect, so it’s entirely possible that it paved the way for games that I’m now comparing it to, but I don’t see the sort of seachange in FPS gaming with HL that I do with, say, Quake. (Which I also think is desperately over-rated and ugly as sin, but the jump to true 3D *is* inarguably significant, even if I think 2D games remained a better play for some time thereafter.)
I think anyone who remembered playing Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake has to remember HL1 fondly — it was the equivalent of moving from silent movies to talkies for FPS gaming, the first to really have a semblance of story and pacing, not just enemies and levels.
There are things that I like about HL that I missed about HL2; the sense of humor is different, the feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the sort of moral confusion — on the one hand, you want Earth’s forces to save humanity from invasion. On the other hand, you don’t want to die. The sense of being trapped in the middle of this conflict with no one to turn to but yourself was great. And some of the set pieces were great too (tentacle beast is a particularly nerve-wracking example, and the emphasis on sound there was shades of Thief). On the other hand, there was Xen. HL’s problem was that it could lose you here or there with difficulty or boredom, in which case you never went forward and enjoyed the rest of the game. Granted, going forward would take you to Xen, so it could be considered a blessing in disguise.
HL2, in contrast, was pretty black and white from the get-go: Combine Evil, Resistance Good. And some things just aren’t as shocking or surprising the second time around (say, headcrabs and barnacles). The combine, as enemies, weren’t as compelling. Woo, future nazis. Unlike the Marines (or even the shackled vortigaunts), they were inhuman and evil enough to elicit no sympathy. However, they (and their gunships, tanks, striders) were too human or mechanical to elicit that fear of “monsters” that the headcrabs and barnacles did. All too often, when there was a factional battle, you had a “side” (allies, resistance, antlions), which made things a little less bleak. All that said, I still prefer HL2; overall, it’s quality was more consistent, and the strides it took in character, animation, speech, pacing, and storytelling went above and beyond the original. It also did a lot more than shooting and hitting switches (vehicles, gravity gun, siege battles, etc.) and mostly hit the mark.
(Unlike some commenters, I enjoyed the end sequence, mainly because I just finished a lot of hard fighting with Striders, unwound a bit with the intro to the citadel, and I was emotionally primed to enjoy the massive destructive power trip they were putting on the menu. There’s also, the first time, a major sense of relief after the fake “fuck you” of vaporizing all your weapons, only to inadvertently give you the Gun of Doom.)
I’m a pretty die-hard PC gamer, and I’ve been around for a while (back before HL). I often have feelings like this as well: where I’m looking back and realizing that HL had something HL2 does not. That may be true, however after closer consideration I’ve realized that what I’m REALLY noticing is just nostalgia which I try and back up with “points”, which is exactly what this guy and many others have done. For every point I can come up with about why HL was the best game ever, I can come up with about 3 more for why HL2 was the best. HL2 was a far greater achievement. When I look back now, I still might say “I enjoyed HL1 more”, however I either could be wrong because of misleading nostalgic feelings, or it could just be because I was younger and less jaded back then. Either way it all involves time affecting what we are thinking. If we all would have played HL2 back around the same time as HL1 (such as right after), I don’t think we’d even have discussions like these. I know it is just opinion and everything but… I’m right.
Are you kidding? Xen was the best part, it was amazing and so unexpected (I played it when it came out and had no idea that there was a “another dimension” world at the end of the game.
It was just so Giger like and fun to explore. And when you got close to teleporters you could hear humans in black mesa speaking, it was creepy and perfect.
However, in HL2 they went the “if you can’t see it it’s scary” way and never shown us anything too strange or different.
WE WANT THE COMBINE HOMEWORLD.
Er, HL1 is so, so far from being the first shooter with pacing and story.
Everyone should agree with me on every issue concerning gaming. Or else.
Although I fully understand why HL1 was viewed as genre changing, and I agree in theory, as a game I found it tedious. There were some very fun moments (the tentacle beast, the first run ins with the marines), but there was many more repetitive and dull ones. I could appreciate the good design, and the humour, but it wasn’t fun to play. I never finished it and I have no intention of going back to try.
I fiddled with my friend’s copy of HL2, and that seemed good (and not dull); but that was only half an hour, and the start. Maybe one day I will play it.
HL1’s way of story telling was limited to the technology at that time. Character conversations were limited, and the cutscenes were in-game with other characters and enemies. HL2 uses a lot more character speech, but in the same way, uses the game engine to utilize in game cutscenes, such as explosions.
I would agree that HL1 was the more revolutionary game in its time, but a lot of you seem to be suggesting that it’s just plain better than HL2.
I mean, really, if you just compare the two games as if you’d never seen either before, regardless of when they were made… HL2 has a lot more going for it.
There’s a bit of rose-tinted nostalgia creeping in here, I think.
Personally, I found HL2 boring. Not entertaining. I found everything except the moments that had anything to do with the plot bland. Half Life 2 starts off in a way that leads you to believe it’s very atmospheric, so you go in expecting that. Instead you get long strectches of honestly pretty bad action scattered with the odd fun moment (taking the pier from under Combine soldiers is very entertaining :D) and every now and again a computer/TV of Breen explaining the vaguest of vaguest of vague details about the plot. I was very interested in the plot, as it seemed pretty good. Guys in gas masks run a city like a prison while some old bloke gibbers bankerspeak on TV. The plot does eventually trudge on, usually with those lovely first-person cutscenes which drove me to continue playing. These became less and less frequent and I just lost interest. My last save file is is being stuck in a wrecked building with a strider using flying cameras to see you. I imagine it’ll stay there for a long time.
tl;dr Only really enjoyed the cutscenes in FP
I have to agree.
While the sequel was a highly polished and highly enjoyable game, it just didn’t have the same impact. For me, Half-Life 1 was a quantum leap in gaming. Especially after playing games like Quake II, Duke Nukem etc…
The one-game-per-series rule in PCG’s top 100 has always really pissed me off. It really makes absolutely no sense. For instance: Thief 1 and 2 belong in the Top 100 and Thief 3 (probably) doesn’t. GTA1 and GTA3 are completely different games and both belong there.
Alec, you are wrong. HL1 is not Indiana Jones. HL1 is Die Hard. In a top secret science facility.
With aliens.
@Itsallcrap
What more does Half Life 2 have than Half Life 1. It has a forced in story which wouldnt be up to par in a movie. But it does its best to make you feel like you are in a movie. The player is forced along in this supposedly fantastic story, you cant kill anyone whom is important to the story. You have to sit back and watch these scenes play out.
The whole ravenholm section is a cliche ripped from movies and books. They’ve added these characters which expouse lines, to me they dont really exist, nor do I to them, because you have no interaction with them, you cant poke or prod them.
Half Life 1 challenged you more, it pushed you, you would see these situations and think “I’ve gotta do WHAT?”. But they were doable, gradualy, you could climb that clifftop, or navigate those laser tripwires. The sequel they wanted everyone to complete, so instead of having lots of peaks and troughs its close to a straight line.
You dont even use the grav gun and physics to a great degree. It involves you picking up the the conveniently placed objects and throwing them at the enemies, which makes it like a gun. You dont set up barricades. It has lots blanket set up situations, where you must use it to proceed.
The last difference is the purpose. In the first one the only reason you are playing or going any further is for yourself, to save yourself, or to see whats next.
Half life 2 you are a superhero who must save the world not because you want to, but because everyone keeps telling you to. I cant identify with the Freeman in Half life 2.
Here here! I agree completely with this articles sentiments.
I still cherish my memories of running through Black Mesa the first half dozen times I did it. I could probably have played through the uplink demo blindfolded after the number of times I completed it. I can’t wait for the Black Mesa mod to release to do it all over again in source with all of the extra goodies it promises. I just hope it doesn’t become vapourware.
I notice the dev blogs are appearing further and further apart in time.
I wonder why so many great enemies from HL1 weren’t brought forward to HL2 (Gargs, bullsquids, those cool little piranha-like critters you can use as weapons but be careful they don’t turn on you.) Great days.
Just completed Half Life for the first time yesterday, previous playthroughs having stalled around ‘Forget about Freeman’. Its aged remarkably well and is still a blast to play through, I particularly like the little touches in the behaviours of the Scientists and the Barneys (for instance, shooting a headcrab you’d just killed and exclaiming “I got one!”). About the only area where its age is problematic is in regards to PHYSICS! and the shonky grenade arcs; given that the graphics are consistent throughout I can easily live with the low levels of detail.
I can’t help but feel that if I’d completed it when I first picked it up I’d treasure it over its sequel, as Alec does. As it stands they both have their places and having them as two separate titles in a Top [arbitrary number] list makes perfect sense to me.
@itsallcrap: No, HL *IS* the better game. I’ve always thought that and am glad to see so many have the same feeling here.
HL2, when it finally arrived, wasn’t even as good as Far Cry for me, never mind it’s illustrious forebear. As lovingly crafted and polished as HL2 undoubtedly is, the first game just seemed to have…more…of everything, including fun. I disagree with many of the choices made for HL2 and it’s city 17 setting, not least is the constant feeling of being on rails – the ghost train ride between set-pieces, as someone put it earlier. In HL that feeling wasn’t so prevalent. And as a recent play of Ep1 showed me, the underlying tech has been bettered by many more recent releases (Stalker comes to mind). Graphically I have no complaints, but the AI is looking shoddy, particularly when I had to keep bumping Alyx out of my way all the time to simply move around a room. She’s not bad, but she rapidly became a complete irritation and I found myself wanting her to just go away so I could explore/fight by myself.
HL2’s self-importance annoys me, too. Much like the Matrix sequels did once the first film did so well.
HL was fun, footloose and fancy free, and just what gaming needed at the time. And no, not even the much-maligned Xen levels spoiled that for me.
HL1 up to Xen was like Crysis up to the alien ship for me.
HL2 is great at story telling, but many sections feel so contrived. I hated everything involving vehicles, the prison shootout while “waiting” for Alyx, and Ravenhom. I vaguely remember being slightly less annoyed at Ep1 and Ep2 though.
I’d really like to see a Xen re-appreciation article but it seems the ‘Xen-not-that-bad’ crowd are a firm minority.
I was going to do a paragraph about how, conceptually at least, Xen is great, and a fitting resolution to the game, so long as you can stomach the irksome, jumping-based execution. I was already rambling on far too much though. Maybe in a later post.
I really like the concept and idea of Xen, it’s the gameplay I thought sucked; if they actually make it enjoyable to play I would love to see a next-gen return to Xen. Actually, as the Black Mesa Source developers have specifically said they are improving Xen a lot it’s actually one of the remakes I’m most interested in.
I thought Xen was one of the worst design decisions in gaming history. It’s one thing to go to an alien world in an alternate dimension but platforms floating in a black void?
Jump puzzles just do not belong in FPS games, especially fps games where you can’t even see your feet when you look down.
For those who don’t know about it check out this site.
Full Half-Life 1 Remake
It’s taking it’s damn time but I can’t wait to play it.
Hey you stole our title :) http://www.ozsource.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1661
The speed of the Hl1 gldsrc engine in comparison to the Source engine is probably the main factor Why I seemed to enjoy HL1 and HLDM so much over the HL2 universe.
Thinking back on it, I can name some bullet points where HL2 does lack in some respects:
-The weapons list wasn’t as interesting in HL2 lacking the interest of the later HL1 weapons. The snark, the laser tripmine, the hivehand were all fun to use.
Both titles sorely lack a decent assault rifle though!
The gravity gun is the obvious exception though, but you usually just end up using the gravity gun and then whatever weapon the combine are using at the time.
-The enemies were a lot more repetitive in HL2.
I didn’t care for HL1’s floating babies, but the ninja assassins were brilliant and always intimidating, the Gargantuan, the heavily armoured Alien Grunt, and the other Xen creatures were far more interesting that different coloured Combine Soliders.
But probably because of its consistent enemies HL2 feels more like a story and less like a game where the bad guys are made deliberately harder as you progress.
HL1 is the only game where I’ve not felt cheated by “forced failure” though. Being knocked out and left in the garbage crusher was brilliant.
i almost stopped playing hl1 when i entered the xen level. too much try and error fro me.
ewwww high-res pack ewwwwwwww
I love Xen – probably the best exploration of a truly alien (and therefore incomprehensible) environment in an FPS I’ve ever played. The Nihilanth is hard to beat as a conclusion too; killing the baby from 2001 is probably the most suitable ending possible to such an epic and atmospheric SF game. HL2’s big explosion is just cliched (albeit beautifully foreshadowed).
Also, my favourite part of HL is the jumping puzzles, so I was happy to have more in Xen. Screw those malfunctioning jump pads though.
Totally agree with the HL1 better than HL2 thing.
“(there’s an Indy film like that, you say? You must be mistaken – there are definitely no aliens in any of the three Indy films ever made)”
Heh. Yes, the apparent 4th Indiana Jones that was a sci-fi flick in disguise.