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.
Related Stories:
So everyone here disagrees with me, then. Sigh.
Seeing as this is basically the point of this post I guess I’ll give up arguing.
We shall see though. Alec fans can’t represent the whole PCG readership. In time we shall see…
We be not PCG, dagnabbit.
As a note – I’m not really saying HL1 is particularly a better game than HL2. There’s certainly a lot of things the sequel does better, which is in part a matter of technology and in part Valve being more experienced. It’s just that I personally much prefer the vibe the first game shoots for, and was a little sad Valve have moved on from it.
Honestly, I too prefer HL2. I think it’s the setting that does it for me — instead of a linear labyrinth of concrete tunnels full of monsters that you have to wade through, with little explanation or exposition, you’ve got a big world, with history and interesting conflicts and dystopian craziness. The “Freeman as messiah” message in HL2 gets very old, but the rest of the characters and backstory are way more interesting than the comparative sterility of Black Mesa.
The pace is off in HL2 compared to HL1.
HL1’s objectives are presented gradually and rarely (if ever) explicitly mentioned: launch the rocket and then reach the lambda complex. HL2 always has the player running around on a new mission and Gordon is Alyx’s dogsbody throughout. I thought the gameplay in both games about the same, except for HL2 completely missing the awesome three-way battles of HL1.
As for Xen, I thought it was great. An entirely logical ending to HL1: Black Mesa is a lost cause, and Gordon can’t escape across the desert. The science team has discovered why the portals are remaining open and only one man can do the dirty work for them. The “geography” of the place was suitably alien, and there wasn’t that much jumping.
I think that every game over 5 years old can’t possibly be good because it’s obviously just nostalgia.
The above may be a lie.
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.
Possibly because it was the first FPS which did that (or at least the one that set the trend) so it felt more of an unique scenario than an expectable annoyance.
Halflife 2 I find a bit dull, really. Its fun, but so smoothly blended that despite all its dramatic sequences, it just doesn’t do much for me.
The first game tried to introduce a bit of varied pace to FPSes, and did well for the time but looking back it had a very uneven pace. The sequel’s pacing was incredibly smooth – too smooth in fact, as it was like clockwork.
The difficulty was so evenly balanced that there were no true ‘oh shit’ moments and only a few of the dramatic scenes were memorable. The setting was also far less appropriate for the Halflife ‘brand’ of strictly linear design.
The three-faction dynamic where you’re between a rock and a hard place also appealed to me. It ratchets up the tension throughout compared to the sequel, where this goes rapidly downhill, where the whole ‘up against an impossible foe’ thing just disappears and suddenly you’re blowing up striders left right and centre with unlimited rockets.
I just find the sequel samey – sure it has some good characters, a reasonable plot line and some nice gameplay but it lacks the standout moments and feels too homogenised.
Gotta run, but yes, imho HL OG was better than HL2, if only for the challenge.
You can sleepwalk through HL2 and not get killed (if you know it), shooting some dudes, throwing some stuff, moving some things, shooting more dudes. But in HL, like with FarCry, you had to use cunning. The enemies required conscious effort to evade and dispose of, unlike in HL2 where all you needed was to keep your wits about you, instead of elevating your wits to cunning.
Cunning is what it’s all about. Focus, battling on, trying hard, failing and trying again. HL2 is just an exercise in clicking the mouse buttons at the right times.
I’ve always seen the two as inextricable parts of the same thing… I think that’s the way they’re meant to be seen. I love every part of the saga (which is what it should be thought of, as far as I’m concerned… a saga) – HL1, HL2, the expansions and episodes. My analogy would be that HL2 is Terminator 2 to HL1’s The Terminator. In both cases, the original was more groundbreaking and influential, but the second was an epic step up in scale and ambition, that was much more polished in its execution and maintained, if not upped, the quality.
It’s a good analogy for me because the Terminator and HL series are pretty much my two biggest cultural influences ¬_¬
I still greatly prefer Half Life 2. To this day I consider it the most fun FPS I’ve ever played.
“I still greatly prefer Half Life 2. To this day I consider it the most fun FPS I’ve ever played.”
Most fun why? I thought the story was ‘okey’, but because of the episodes that followed it feels very unfinished in a way. The gameplay is very good, but it feels like they’ve cut some corners when it comes to immersion. The world looks excellent, but it does feel like the space is confined, HL1 did not suffer so much from this. I really loved the disappearing scientists in HL1 who got eaten by monsters and so on. HL2 definitely needs more of that to top HL1.
In discussions like these I always ask people to compare Quake 1 and Quake 3 Arena and tell me which one they like best. Usually they say Quake 1 was awesome, but they think Quake 3 Arena is better. I honestly don’t get such statements. Quake 1 was raw, new, brutal and challengingly fun. Quake 3 Arena ain’t really that much more than our average deathmatch shooter. Sure it looks good, plays good enough and so on, but I consider Quake 1 to be the mother of FPS still.
Same goes for Half-life 1, which is sort of the sister of Quake 1 in my opinion.
This article is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell people.
HL2 was interesting, but not as good as the first. Terrible pacing, retarded ending, etc.
The episodes “Route Canal” and “Ravenholm” totally make up for it, though.
Was I the only one who enjoyed the Xen levels?
Perhaps we should start a club “The Appreciation society for Xen” or “We who like Xen”.
I definitely did not like the Xen levels so much as the other levels. I have to say though the last levels of Far Cry weren’t quite it for me either. I guess the alien-ness is cool for a while, but no game has quite put forth a really convincing setting. Halo came close, but obviously that game has a far less realistic style and so on. Most games aren’t really comparable.
For good tentacle beast fighting, play Dead Space!!!! Totally reminiscent of HL1
I loved HL1 the first time I played it. The running and gunning, the underlying story, the hectic and frantic game play; I especially remember the moments being ambushed by an airstrike for the first time and almost pissing myself. Good times. The only part I kind of hated was the Nihilanth. A leader of an entire enslaved alien race is a giant pig/baby?
They also didn’t explain the underlying story a lot, just gave you bits and pieces, though, I suppose that was intended since you play an innocent research assistant who honestly has no idea what’s going on.
HL2 didn’t have the same gun fights or hectic game play, but I immensely enjoyed the sprawling urban and industrial maps as well as the horror elements of Ravenholm and the expansiveness of the Coast. Not to mention the indoor fights in Nova Prospekt. The war like atmosphere during the rebellion was also amazing.
As was the story element: the characters could be sympathized with more easily and had more voice acting to tell the story through (though you only got bits and pieces of what happened like HL1)
I also liked how the game made use of it’s post-processing engine to incorporate thematic elements of a dystopic, Orwellian society, crumbling and being sucked dry of it’s resources. The physics engine was the final touch that made puzzles more enjoyable.
I also feel that HL1 was the better game. I still like to play it it never gets old for me. I think many of todays games still cant do what hl1 did. the atmosphere, the enemies everything was just overwhelming.
i dont think that the combat system in hl2 is that bad but i have to say when i first played hl2 i was actually disappointed because it didnt give me the same feeling as hl1 did. i was actually disappointed to fight the combine and not some freaky looking alien monsters.
i somehow enjoyed playing hl2 more when i played it through the second time. ep1 was a total disappointment to me.
But when i played ep2 through i was actually sitting in front of my pc saying “damn now thats real half life thats how hl2 and ep1 should have been like”
“I think the singular defining characteristic has already been pointed to. Half Life revolutionised the FPS genre by removing the “one man army” feeling prevalent before and for a long time after (something noted often in pcgamer). Half Life 2 returns that tone, you are a one man army, on a mission, not just a man on his own, trying to survive. This was the single biggest problem with the sequel.”
I think this sums up, in much more succinct and non-swearing way, how I feel.
To add slightly, I found HL2 played, to me, like a tech demo. It all seemed to be “look what this engine can do!” not “look what our designers wrote/created!” While Half-Life 1 was on rails, HL-2 was on a damn rope. You climbed, from level to level, and you shot some guys and then moved on. Someone mentioned the ‘but when does it get good?’ feeling, and I had that constantly. All of the ‘puzzles’ felt really gimmicky to me, and just broke whatever tone they’d managed to cobble together.
I think the hovercraft part took about three times as long as I would’ve liked, and really added nothing at all. I love the overall atmosphere, but the actual gameplay itself was pretty mediocre. No single part stands out in my mind as exceptional, because anything I liked at any point was either just after some infuriating jumping puzzle (seriously designers, sort your shit out), or just before one. I liked Ravenholm, but I didn’t like leading up to it, nor after it. It was sort of the carrot dangled in front, that never materialised.
I liked Half-Life 1 because I felt I was running away from danger. In Half-life 2, I feel like there is no danger, I just need to kill squad after squad of some of the worst A.I. in history, with ‘help’ from friendly NPC’s with the worst A.I. in history.
“Half Life revolutionised the FPS genre by removing the “one man army” feeling prevalent before and for a long time after”
I’m not sure I really see this – you’re still the one single person in the entire facility that somehow has the ability to survive. Even against hardened, trained marines, you are still somehow unstoppable.
It still seems to very much abide by the ‘one man army’ ethos to me, although I should also point out that I don’t see this as a bad thing necessarily.
One thing I noticed with Episode 2 is that it seemed to be making a conscious effort to blend the styles of HL1 and HL2 together in a way they hadn’t attempted with HL2 and ep1. The section in the rebel base towards the end feels very HL1-stylee to me, albeit without cool aliens.
I rather like that they tried a different setting and style with HL2. As has been pointed out, HL1 does what it does with such panache that there’s no point repeating it. I hope that HL3, whenever that happens, takes a similarly radical departure.
You’re evidently the kinda dude who still thinks his first lay was the best, which on some level it always will be, but HL2 definitely took things to the next level with physics and animation(ragdoll) not to mention the cutscenes that you were apart of, i LOVED HL1 (played it with a fever) but HL2 is the stuff dreams are made of, im about to finish ep 2 and now im pissy valve is playing hodge podge on finishing the series
Playing the episodes currently (for the first time) I’m finding Ep 2 is approaching some of what HL1 did very well, but I’m still incredibly annoyed to be shepherding Alyx and the Vort around. In the first game I was a lone wolf, I had no-one to watch out for and that was extremely liberating. In HL2 and beyond, I am now part of a team who seem to use me to open doors for them: their bitch, essentially. For all that Gordon Freeman is supposed to be some kind of messiah, Ironically “the Free-Man”, he really doesn’t seem to have any opinions or Free Will of his own beyond solving the puzzles laid down before him like breadcrumbs. It’s creepy enough from the G-Man but is particularly galling being subservient to the good guys as well.
It’s also annoying that in HL2 Gordon’s objectives are so small and restrictive. In the first game it was a number of smaller objectives contained within one huge plan to basically save the Earth/Black Mesa from alien invasion. In HL2 Gordon is bouncing from pillar to post with no clear objective beyond survival and opening doors/paths for whoever is accompanying him. This is one of the most frustrating things for me about the whole HL2 experience. It doesn’t help that the supposed plot is boiling slower than a bottomless kettle, either.
To be honest I had hoped they wouldn’t implement a companion in the way they did with adding Alyx at all.
In HL1 it works great. Whenever you need someone else to help you get further it’s a great addition, but Alyx is totally not where things should have gone.
It’s far too limiting when it comes to freedom of gameplay and it feels a lot like having to babysit your little sister while going places.
I still don’t quite understand how people can be raving about Alyx and HL2 in general. Yes, it did look good (not anymore, come on those cheap episodes hardly changed the visuals at all), yes most levels aren’t that bad and yes general gameplay isn’t bad either… but damn, there’s so much they could have done so much better.
Why doesn’t valve just remake half-life with the blackmesasource com crew?
Im sure that would be a great way to scam us into buying another valve game. Not that it is a bad thing, every Valve game so far has been quite good. If it was not for Valve in the first place, most games would be bunny hopping DM madness and boring find the key open the door…. type storyline, Valve pushed there limit and I think to this day the map layout of half-life 1 is still the best ive seen in a game and the feeling that the game was never ending…
Valve was trying to do or at least wanted to do with hl1 i think is make it like a 1st person movie, stuff like this can be seen in other titles such as Crysis, Fear, etc.
Anyhow Hl1 story an gameplay etc rocked, but hl2 engine is no doubt much more refined in terms of code and graphics stuff. The ragdoll and other physics is quite smooth, but the size of hl2 maps felt like ambush after ambush.
The Combine felt like “dummy with a machine gun gone wild”
Whereabouts hl1, opp, BS all had that ai type invasion on YOU type feel.
not the everyday serious sam 1 person invades a entire army or empire etc… and wins. I like games to be hard, not in terms of 57 times in the head with a shotgun hard, but Grey matter hard. Thinking, games. What would u do in a life or death situation as supposed to the incident at blackmesa.?
Like if half-life 1 could be put into a movie perspective Gordon Freeman in hl1 always felt like a John McClane type character. Whereabouts Hl2 was more of a Terminator or im a supreme being!! cos i get praised 90% the time by NPCs.
But yeh like ditch the sequels because games are going the way of movies, sequels might have better graphics but that doesn’t make them better games.
Its not often in games, like movies, where you can say… I liked the sequel better…
its like most action/shooters all fell into a rut six years or so back and the only thing they can think of to add is Physics, Normal maps, bloom, etc But we are still yet to see some code that has a NPC ai code that doesn’t stand right behind u when u stick your head out and cant walk backwards for cover cos the NPC “following” code just acts as normal and is not really alerted to what is going on around its surrounding. The only game to fix this was Assassins Creed with the push person mode and the alert mode for peds.
Soz went a bit of topic there but yeh I just hoping Valve will make up some Cheesy teleporter accident that makes u appear back in time at the start of the blackmesa Thus having the Hl story a whole one big never ending story driven event, the end is the beginning of the end?!? Valve you all know we want it……… =)
Valve won’t collaborate with the Black Mesa mod because that’s utterly ridiculous. Why should a company give a single penny to someone who is plagiarizing their work wholesale? I think it speaks volumes that Valve are the kind of company generous enough to allow the mod to exist at all.
And Alyx is in the Episodes as a constant companion because Valve wanted to actually try something new. Which is why people apparently love Half-Life 1 so much… Get thee to Residue Processing.
My only problem with HL2 is that they didn’t bring back enough of the aliens from HL1. There are some aliens that I would love to see in HL2, although the houndeye that got took out of HL2 just looked…. terrible….
I think the main thing with HL1 over HL2 for me was the clear sense of over all purpose in the quest “I need to get out and get help.” rather than the more fragmented “I need to go over there and do this, now I need to go to this other place and do something else.” That said I still really life HL2.
I also quite like how HL1 never directly told you anything, it was all for you to pick up yourself from hints and messages and whatever. You feel really clever when you peice together your own little theory of what’s going on which may not agree with anyone else’s. HL2 manages that a bit but nowhere to the same extent.
Why should a company give a single penny to someone who is plagiarizing their work wholesale?
It would be “plagiarism” if they were trying to pass Black Mesa off as an original work.
I love this article. It went and inspired me to go back and play through Half-Life 1 again – I’ve been playing various shooters of late farming for ideas and seeing what makes them tick, if for no other reason than to farm for ideas and see what makes them tick, but having only played it once many many moons ago (and having played its sequel pre-episodes so many times more that I didn’t really need to consider playing it again) I’d forgotten about Half-Life. I’ve only just passed the dam (pictured up high somewhere) and I don’t remember a great deal about what happens later, but I’ll share my thoughts so far.
Oh, some quicky background first, incase I get that silly “first lay” treatment I saw somewhere up thread: I grew up with shooters, but I avoided HL1 like the plague not understanding what the fuss was about, yet was also too foolish and stubborn to read up on the game to understand it. I bought HL2 mainly to play CS Source with friends and didn’t play HL2 itself until some time after its release, didn’t have the time initially, and later bought HL1 to play CS 1.6 and some other mods. When I finally got around to playing HL2 I ended up staying up until 3am one night finishing it, when I needed to get up early the next day. Upon finishing, I ignored the need for sleep and started playing HL1 instead. And I haven’t listened to alot of the dev commentary from the games yet, nor do I remember much of what I have heard.
Half-Life 1 is the better challenge, but that doesn’t inherently make it the better game. Tedious comparison time!
Both games start off with the same quite nice hook – starting you in an environment that seems to live on around you, then proceeding to set the scene by having things go badly wrong and out of control for you. I think HL1 does it better: the Black Mesa labs felt huge despite you not seeing much, while HL2’s city is kind of obvious in scale being a city and all, and making the player trigger a catastrophic event that you’ve been assured was highly unlikely to happen and having to crawl out through the wreckage was a pretty gusty start. HL2’s approach is very interesting though: I found the chase sequence pretty exciting when I first played it, and loved the fact that it stripped away any remaining sense of strength and delusions of power you may have had when you first arrived in the city. You were vulnerable when you least needed to be, while in HL1 you were never really quite that vulnerable.
They seem to diverge quite wildly from this point onward though. They both tell their stories well, and great stories they are, but they approach the task from very different directions.
HL1 does a brilliant job of making the task of getting from A to B interesting, and a game in itself in a way. A large portion of the game is movement puzzles, and not just of the jumping kind. Getting to the other side of a locked door in most games is simplified: find the key or switch to open the door, maybe fight some people on the way there and back. Instead HL1 screws with you. Door’s locked from your side, so you’ve got to jump some tables across a pool of electrified water and climb through some vents to get to the other side. Or you can see the switch on the other side of a bit of glass, but you’ve got to worm your way around the place while surviving just to find _the route_ to the switch. Even the simplest of tasks (go through vent shaft in the only direction the vent shaft goes) is made interesting by the odd headcrab or two to keep you on your toes [brief note: I'm aware HL2 used this too, but it felt more predictable somehow - maybe they did it too often?]. There’s some nice combination stuff in there too, mainly in the Tentacle and Gargantua. If you want to focus on killing the beast you’ll stumble upon the way forward on your journey too, yet if you’re just focused on opening up the next route along your journey you’ll quite neatly stumble upon the method of killing the creature too (this is less obvious yet very apparent with Gargantua). The game’s just one big puzzle, with more puzzle layered on top.
It dries up occasionally in its quality of execution though, though thankfully not permanently: someone already mentioned Residue Processing and “trying something new” in the same sentence – for those unaware, Residue is a level consisting of running through a processing plant, hopping over pits of toxic waste and stuff, dodging and ducking through machinery, and occasionally shooting headcrabs and bullsquids – no idea whether that kind of thing had been done before, but it was a little underwhelming. Some areas turn into plain old gun fights too with little attention towards anything else, and the pacing is weird at times – suddenly being assaulted by gun turrets and artillery strikes after you’ve been calmly working your way through some puzzles for a while can be a little jarring. And then there’s Xen, which I wont discuss as I never worked out whether I liked it or not.
HL2 takes a different approach. It focuses far less on how you get from place to place and looks more at the story being told. Getting around the levels is still interesting, but it overall feels a little more like your standard cinematic shooter – get given the task, shoot the evil dudes in your way to carry out your task, get new task and repeat. What makes it interesting is less the way levels are designed – they’re designed well, but not in the same way as HL1 – and more to do how the plot winds around and permeates everything. Characters feel somewhat alive and give you a reason to care (or at least try really hard), each environment in the game is crafted to give a specific feel and to tell the story through its artistic direction. Everything has a story behind it, somewhere, and the game’s not shy to let you know what that story is. It does mean some stuff is lost: with less need to tell the story more through the level’s construction and more money and tech available to do more artistic things, some of the more wonderful moments of HL1 (I want to profess my love for the Tentacle monster at some point in my life without it sounding dirty, so now’s a good time!) are seemlingly lost, but some beautiful scenes appear instead.
Half-Life 2 tries new things in different places to Half-Life 1, which is a good thing in a way – they’re not retreading old ground and focusing purely on level construction, and experimenting with storytelling and “feeling” elements (some experiements aren’t entirely successful too – the whole unlit area in Episode One was slightly odd and pretty different, yet it was incredibly interesting to see attempted). And it seems like now they’ve gotten a hang with some of that they’re coming back to mix it in with other proven elements: I’m in agreement with whoever said Episode Two had more HL1-esque elements in it, and it was nice to see some older style ideas come together with the newer additions in play (the level where you first get the car is pretty nice in how its laid out, as an example). I’m interested to see what Episode Three tries to do.
But which is the better game? As I said before, HL1 was a better challenge: Valve playing by their strengths at the time ended up making lots of very tight and interesting levels, that had to tell some sort of story with a minimal amount of effort and did it well. But HL2 might be the better overall experience: its a little less involving and not quite as mind bending, but there’s alot more going on, you’re always made aware of the state of the world around you (adding to the impression its going on without you), and it stays coherent. At the end of the day it comes down to what you prioritise as making a game into a game, which will always be personal preference.
My vote? Right now I’d say I prefered Half-Life 2. I like games for the overall experience rather than specific parts, and I think HL2’s was a smoother one that I was just able to enjoy with less strings attached, and is a bit easier to relax to than HL1. That said, I just played both Crysis games very recently (for the first time ever, oh yes) which may be affecting my judgement a little, and there’s this little niggling thing in my brain about HL1. Hmm…
Oh right, Xen! I kind of liked the feel of it when I first got to it and it didn’t really annoy me all that much. Jumping around in it was strange, but it was an alien world so my mind let it slide. Ending on a confusing boss fight made me a little bitter about it though: I’d gotten so far (played through the whole thing on Hard the first time too) and I was so close to the end, yet this giant baby kept stomping me to death, so I eventually cracked and cheated through the fight because – having played through HL2 first and wondering how it all began – I just wanted to know how the first game ended at that point. In many ways I prefer the ending fights to (oh dear, I’m listing these games together, that can’t be good) HL2 and the Crysis games. They’re nowhere near as complicated, though they still manage to be interesting, and they don’t feel like a massive barrier in the way of you reaching the end of the story. They’re not much of a challenge maybe. But for me at least, a better experience.
Now I could have been playing HL1 instead of writing this, but I needed to lose some adrenaline before going to sleep. Don’t think it worked. I’m just excited about coming home tomorrow and playing more Half-Life (on easy just so I can see the game again, and maybe beat the baby this time). Bah!
Oh, before I forget, a mandatory disclaimer. I spewed my brains out then didn’t re-read it before posting because I was too tired to check my own writing with confidence, but not too tired to hit the post button. If it loses coherence somewhere, blame biology. Also, my opinion may be horribly wrong. That’s because I’m human, and possibly also because I’m male. Also blame biology.
Just in case anyone else has come back to this article as late as me…
Yeah, I understand the difference. But in the first sentence of the original post you mentioned the upcoming PCG top 100. I meant I bet that’ll show that I’m not alone in my pro-HL2 standpoint.
Although, since I’ve replied so late, I fear history will record that I simply didn’t know where I was. Ho hum.
Consider history rewritten ;)
And you’re far from alone – I’m willing to bet the vast majority of folk who read this post thought “what a load of rose-tinted nonsense” and ignored it. But the general agreement that HL2 is better is why I wrote it, y’know?
This is all a matter of opinion, i found HL2 more inmersive and just more cinematic. The gravity gun is just incredible, absolutely awesome.
While i love HL1 a lot (my first FPS) HL2 blew me away just took everything great about HL1 and took it to the next level and the last Episode #2 is the BEST HL YET
Everything is just so right you have sections being alone, section with the Vortigaun and Alyx (best NPC in gaming) and simply and more inmersive epic cinematic great story, all with the best FPS gameplay there is…
IMHO HL2 > HL1 but just by a little bit
HALF-LIFE is VERY BEAUTIFUL
ANDREHL=BRAZIL
I CREATED ONE MOD FOR HL.
tank you!!!
HL1 or HL2? Thats a tough one. For me it’s an engine-vs-engine thing. HL1 set the standard for multiplayer gaming, mod creation, the most convincing AI ever in a videogame and the first game i ever played that gave me that ‘cinematic experience’ i look for ever since. But even considering it’s age, the textures were bland and had washed-out colours. (Not to mention horrible tiling.) The source engine, on the other hand, gave (what used to be) next-gen graphics (with physics) running great on outdated hardware and managed to update it over the years to support multi-core and new graphics features (HDR, blooming etc). Your average company would reserve those improvements for a new title. Not Valve. Still, i vote HL1, for what it did for gaming in general.
game induced vertigo? guess Mirror’s Edge will be impossible to play for you :)
I couldn’t tear myself away from either. But of the two, HL1 was drooled upon because it was right in line, as many have stated, with the vertigo induced feeling as in Jedi Knight. We all looked forward to HL2 and what the boys and girls could deliver. But because HL2 wasn’t the first in the HL series it just gets a click below HL2 in my book. Both are breath taking, and action packed. And who really would have though 3/4 of the way through HL2:ep1 we would have been thrown across a chasm by DOG. (that was ep1, right?) or the friggin Strider fight at the end of ep2. Come on, seriously. It was moments like that in the HL2 series that are jawdropping. Well that’s just what i think.
Cheers everyone. Great topic (sorry if i stepped off it, if ep1 and 2 didn’t count).
I didn’t like HL2 that much. I think Portal captured the proper spirit of the original and I’d consider it a true sequel. That’s why my hopes for EP3 are quite high.
As for ending of EP2 – this was one of the few most intense gaming moments in my life, but it made EP2 non – replayable for me.
Portal captured the proper spirit of the original? WHAT?!
Portal is a great game in it’s own right, but damn … nothing truly HL2-ish about it. The setting is a lot more sterile, you’re basically a lab-rat trapped. HL2 had much much more variation, obviously the whole first person shooter deal instead of the first person puzzler thing that’s only cool as long as you can crack all the puzzles within say half an hour.
I don’t think EP3 will feature anything from Portal, it’s likely they’ll simply make a Portal 2 and make even more money.
Portal is a great game in it’s own right, but damn … nothing truly HL2-ish about it.
He said (and you said) “the original”. I think there’s an article at The Escapist that expands on this idea.
Do you have a link Saflo? I’d like to know what exactly you’re hinting at. :)
I know Narbacular Drop is more or less what became Portal and so on, but I wasn’t hinting on the originality of Portal… more so hinting at the originality of Half-life (1 and) 2.
What I meant was thtat HL2 didn’t capture the spirit of HL1, whereas Portal did in many ways feel similar (or familiar). It was the feeling I’d been yearning for long, and I didn’t get it from HL2 at all.
In that case I fully agree with you gaarrett. Portal did have the same mysterious, claustrophobic and linear but interesting feeling of wanting, needing to escape.
In fact, Portal did this slightly better than Half-life 1, the last few levels of Portal really stood out and made it all excellent.
I think what were looking at here, like with so many older vs newer games, is the imponderable fact that in the era of Half Life 1 PC games were ‘organic’. By the time Half Life 2 came around PC gaming had become ‘corporate’. Half Life 2 is a business suit game and therefore has a feel completely different from the organic feel of Half Life 1. It is for this reason these games cannot be compared. For example, while Half life 2’s graphics are undoubtedly better, they are also more ‘clinical’ in their perfection – souless you might say. Half Life 1, even when it came out, more more ‘rough around the edges’- and was loved all the more for that. I also feel that originality will always get an ‘extra score’ compared with what comes after. Hence the failure of so many book, TV and movie sequels.
Oh, and my first vertigo feeling was Castle Wolfenstein, having to clamber about on the top of that cable car!!
Man, thanks for bringing back some nostalgic feelings for me. The tentacle clanging is one of those great gaming moments in my book.
Though, I have to ask, what’s really the point of comparing the two games to choose which one’s best? From what I’ve read in this article a lot of people have mixed feelings about both games. Things they like/didn’t about one and others that they liked/didn’t about the other. Both games stand on their own as good games during their time and as unique experiences despite their shared franchise.
It’s fun to think of what HL2 would be like if Valve stuck to their HL1 themes. I don’t think the “shlocky HL2″ would have been as well received. Games had moved on in narrative depth. I really gotta hand it to Valve for trying all the things they did with HL2’s story, rather than falling back to what they knew how to do with HL1.
I mean just look at the Kleiners and Barneys from HL1 and compare them to Kliener and Barney in HL2. Funny, though, how Kliener and Barney are the remnants of those olden days.
Problems with HL2:
Combines:
horrible AI, did not feel like a threat, everything including their gunships felt like toys/cartoons from a kids show. Marines were hardcore GIs that needed to contain Black Mesa at all costs. What’s the point killing a bunch of masked alien drones that had no personalities? Valve so strongly wanted people to be wowed by its facial expression system in HL2 yet they made their enemies more faceless than ever. It would have been better if they were smarter but the AI in HL2 was so easy I bet I could kill and dodge every combine with just a crowbar!
Hero:
HL1 put you in the middle of a freak accident while a fight is being bled out on 3 factions. HL2 just completely ruined everything for me. It was you vs the combine. The Xen creatures were not a factor at all. It felt like the world of City17 was a lame broadway show that was made up for Gordon Freeman, unlike Black Mesa where Gordon went to places that he was not supposed to go into. As a protagonist, the fictional world of HL2 felt pre-discovered and everything was staged. Between the boring enemies, you also had to deal with numbskull NPCs that all had the same voices and cheerful tone whenever they saw you (”OMG IT’s FREEMAN LET’S ALL BOW TO HIM!”). I can’t stand being the center of attention. Seriously, how in the world did all these fockers got to know Gordon Freeman and ALL praise him as a god? That’s just lame. Too much hero worship.
Too much self awareness destroyed the possibility that one felt in HL1 when they played it the first time, that you MIGHT end up crawling out of Black Mesa alive and live to tell the world about it. In HL2, there is none of this feeling, it was just one melodramatic set piece, then a long boat/buggy ride through repetitive NPCs, then another melodramatic set piece. The sense of SURVIVAL was strong in HL1, and there was NOTHING like it in HL2.
Forced:
In HL1 you were forced to go through some scripted sequences. But they felt legit, choatic, if not humorous at times because throughout the whole time I felt giggly knowing EVERYTHING around you was falling down but you had JUST the right amount of vents and boxes to get you through an otherwise NON PASSABLE AREA in which you’ll be stuck in forever. After you’ve finished the game you couldn’t hep but laugh at how one little table top that allowed you to jump into a vent, and literally, allowed you to save the world from a Xen invasion.
HL2 on the other hand had too many areas where it was obviously staged for you to fight “another large lame boss” where you had to do certain things to take away from its large hitpoints. The “mission” was too transparent. Add to that, the lame friendly NPCs that just kept respawning and coming to your aid until you kill the enemy, telling you what to do (”Come on Freeman!”…). It was like Valve was giving you a hand and telling you “hey don’t worry we’ll help you beat the game!”. At no point in HL2 was I really taken by the fact that the story progressed to where it did, it was all very predictable.
If they made HL1 and HL2 into two movies, HL1 would definitely be the better one, being less “epic” and “grand” yet very intelligent and VERY concise and cohesive. HL2 would a movie that is all over place trying to encompass everything and really accel’ing at very few things.
There is hope though, EP2 near the end REALLY brought back some good storytelling elements that were missing from HL2. Parts of Black Mesa East reminded me of HL1 and hopefully Valve will move more into that direction with EP3. They need to make a shorter game with less “stretch pieces” like boat rides and car rides but make everything more intense and more about discoveries. Less is more.
There are two more little rants I have to talk about.
Weapons:
This has been said before but I think Gordon’s ABILITIES in HL2 made him WAY too strong. They gave him the sprint ability that allowed him to go pretty much anywhere and dodge through so many fights that are otherwise not possibly had they gave him the HL1 HEV suit that didn’t sprint. On top of that you had a lot of uninspired weapons that didn’t have the punch of the HL1 weapons. The guass gun/tau cannon was 10x more fun than the Gravity Gun, which near the end when the Combine accidentally supercharged it, felt more like this toy that they FORCED you to play with rather than allowed you to choose to play with.
Xen:
I for one LOVED Xen. I loved how in the middle of some of the most tense battles of Half Life, Valve suddenly decides to send you up to an Alien world where all the rules were bended and all logic were re-written. Especially for its time, Xen was AMAZING to behalf. The sound, the atmosphere, the “wild life” and other odd things like little eyeballs coming up from the ground (and retracted when touched/scared) which lighted up things like a light bulb, human corpses in HEV suits, dead scientist (and ONE hidden alive scientist in the final level) really made me feel like “wow I might live through this to tell the world about these aliens and what I’ve seen”. In the beginning I disliked Xen but since then I’ve played HL1 many times and REALLY APPRECIATE what Valve tried to do and the SHEER amount of imagination they had put in those levels. In the beginning you saw those Alien slaves as nothing more than scared creatures but once you got to one of Xen’s “factories” you saw the Grunts were CONTROLLING the slaves which didn’t attack you unless you attacked them first. It was like human scientists being controlled by human grunts. Great concept.
Characters:
Ravenholm.. what’s the point of adding all these ninja zombies and that old man with the shotgun. It’s like Valve is TRYING SO HARD to add in horror elements they saw in a film but can’t seem to do it right without devoting an ENTIRE chapter to it. It’s stuff like that it pisses me off, it’s completely 180 away from Half Life which FLOWED better.
And someone else already mentioned this but in HL1 you felt like you HAD to survive, there was a threat, a danger, looming over your head and the lives of all the barnies and scientists. In HL2 there was no hurry, no rush. I didn’t see a real “reason” to fight, other than the fact that a bunch of stupid friendly NPCs told me I was there to save them.
And yeah, hate to go on and on but I HATED Alyx until EP2. In HL2 and EP1 she was useless. Basically invincible and I had to babysit her. EP2 made her stronger and more interesting.
If I were to write HL2. I would make it so NPCs are all the same. These friendlies would have their own opinions. How about some of them actually HATING you for pushing the test sample into the portal? You opened a door that the combine eventually got through. God I can’t stand the fact that now Gordon is suddenly a HERO when all along he’s just a rogue. Sure you wanted him to be a good guy but let’s not make him out to be jesus in a city full of Christians.