By Alec Meer on November 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am.
Yep, Valve’s unfortgettable opening salvo officially gets a decade under its belt on this very day. This terrifies me in ways I can’t quite vocalise.
Said terror is not simply because it makes me feel so very aged, but also because it’s been so long and yet still most FPSes seem entirely ignorant of what HL did with setpieces, incidental detail, gaming-specific narrative style, pacing and world-building. The straight line to most of today’s shooters that started with Doom seems to almost bypass Half-Life. Fortunately, there is one huge, positive side-effect which does ensure HL’s legacy is unassailable: modding.
Names like Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, Natural Selection, The Ship and Sven Co-Op trip off the tongue almost as quickly as Half-Life itself. The GldSrc engine might look ten years old by now, but it’s still one the driving forces of community and customisability that defines modern PC gaming and the freedom thereof.
In honour of the occasion, Moddb’s mustered a round up of Half-Life’s notable mods, both commerical (the list) and non-commercial (the video). It’s all too easy to fall into thinking HL modding’s just about Counter-Strike clones and grey weapon renders, but even this collection of the more obvious names makes it clear quite how landmark a modding platform this game was and is.
Happy birthday Half-Life, you wonderful old man, you.
19/11/2008 at 09:27 Irish Al says:
I’ve seen quite a few people ask what all the fuss is about after playing this for the first time due to it’s Orange Box inclusion. IT’S TEN YEARS OLD, PEOPLE. The enemy AI was revolutionary, the tentacle beast, the narrative that got away from ‘find key, open door’, the chopper battles, the cliff …
And yes, the mods. Counterstrike. DOD. This is the mother-lode.
19/11/2008 at 09:30 diebroken says:
Heh, I remember sneaking out with some friends at boarding school to buy this in town, and then having to wait weeks to get home to play it (lived overseas, wanted English version, no computers at school with CD-ROM/GFX cards, etc). :)
Good old times indeed.
Natural Selection is still great fun to play, although I wish NS2 Source would hurry up… and don’t even mention Black Mesa: Source…
P.S. DOOM will be 15 on 10th Dec.!
19/11/2008 at 09:32 Sum0 says:
Happy tenth, Half-Life. I have an urge to play you all over again.
19/11/2008 at 09:33 Lukasz says:
Yay. HL can now get his very own Pip Boy.
Congratulation.
19/11/2008 at 09:35 aldo_14 says:
Half Life 1 is in the Orange box? I never saw it…..
19/11/2008 at 09:36 Mike says:
‘Yay. HL can now get his very own Pip Boy.’
lol, very good
19/11/2008 at 09:43 nabeel says:
This game changed my life. It came out around the time I switched from being generally a console gamer to being generally a PC gamer. Everything changed for me: from being aware of quality titles via magazine reading, to learning more about computer hardware because of the looming requirement of 3D accelerator cards, to learning more about what made games and software in general tick thanks to the wonders of modding, and so on. I still love the game itself, but it’s everything else that it brought with it that makes it very dear to me.
nabeel
19/11/2008 at 09:43 Gurrah says:
What an abomination that screenshot is, the original HL shotgun had no folding stock!
19/11/2008 at 09:49 Yhancik says:
I didn’t play HL1 right at its release, but whatever, excellent memories.
The only FPS I had (really) played (and finished) at that time was System Shock. I completely skipped the whole Doom-Quake-Unreal lineage :p
19/11/2008 at 09:52 phuzz says:
Happy Birthday Half Life!
Still one of the best openings of a game ever (remember when you first realized it was all done in game?)
Looks like the Black Mesa Source team have put out another media update to celebrate, and a new trailer is promised soon.
19/11/2008 at 09:53 Schmung says:
I played it many a time and I probably spent more time playing various HL mods than I have done with various retail games. I think a nostalgic mod binge is in order tonight.
19/11/2008 at 09:56 Homunculus says:
That bit in Fallout 3 where you get stuck in the half-pipe and witness the, ah, main antagonists descend in one of their flying vehicles and pile out of it to storm the key location struck me at the moment as being pure Half-Life.
19/11/2008 at 10:07 Seniath says:
Hip hip, hurray!
Hip hip, hurray!
Hip hip, hurray!
My word, ten years. I’ll be damned…
19/11/2008 at 10:08 Bobsy says:
Man… I didn’t get you anything.
19/11/2008 at 10:15 Nameykins says:
I’ll have to install and play this today, to celebrate.
19/11/2008 at 10:21 AndyK says:
Heh nice addition of the hat, that wasn’t there a minute ago!
19/11/2008 at 10:29 pauleyc says:
H-L was so good I bought it twice (after lending my first copy to a friend, a situation that became quite permanent). Great memories, especially the intro sequence – it took me a minute to realize the mouse controls were already enabled and I was able to take a look around. Not to mention the AI (playing hide and seek with the marines in warehouses), the Ospreys, the tentacle monster…and Xen.
What better way to celebrate this occasion than to cut the price of the H-L 1 anthology, eh, Valve?
19/11/2008 at 10:30 Optimaximal says:
I can’t agree with that. Half-Life set the bar for game design and narrative that pulled almost every shooter out of the basic Doom game design. For example, everyone loved SiN during pre-production as Half-Life was getting a lot of flack from its delay, then Half-Life came out at the same time and showed just how poor it really was.
High-Def pack.
19/11/2008 at 10:36 subedii says:
I still remember the first time I tried the demo. The cinematic style of the opening was amazing enough, but what really stunned me was the behaviour of the AI soldiers the first I time encountered them.
Up until that point, the extent of enemy behaviour in any FPS was “run, shoot, dodge maybe a little”. But these guys, they dashed from cover to cover, they worked together as a group, they actively tried to flank you. Waiting around a corner for them to come running around to great my shotgun didn’t work anymore because the only thing that came around that corner was a grenade to flush me out. I had to completely re-think my approach to combat when I encountered them.
I must have died around a dozen times the first time I encountered them as they slowly beat the FPS mentality out of my head and instilled in me the need to actually think about what I needed to do. And that was just from two of them.
It really is hard to overstate just how much Half-Life affected the genre. Also, a congratulations to Valve for ten years, and not resting on their laurels but using Half-Life as a foundation to really push things for the genre, and for gaming in general.
19/11/2008 at 10:37 KindredPhantom says:
Many happy returns Half-Life!
I look forward to Half Life 2, 10 year anniversary!
19/11/2008 at 10:39 Alec Meer says:
Optimaximal – I think FPSes were breaking away from the straight door/key thing anyway, but you’re right that it did it better than owt else. Comparatively little seems to have realistically escaped the killing for killing’s sake pattern, though.
19/11/2008 at 10:48 Flint says:
That mod list linked is missing They Hunger, which is a pretty bad omission.
19/11/2008 at 10:54 macc says:
Just played the intro again, awesome..
19/11/2008 at 11:10 sammy says:
Since somebody brought it up, is it possible to get and play “They Hunger” on Steam? Man, I loved those games, and would love to give them another spin.
19/11/2008 at 11:16 manintheshack says:
Ah, good times. One of my favourite, most played games. I remember how depressed I was at school the day this was released, knowing that I couldn’t afford to buy it and then, when I got home, my brother had already made the purchase. What a fucking game.
Still play it through every time a new HL game is released, just to get in the mood… and it never disappoints (Ssshhh, Xen)
But ten years. Ten years, man! TEN YEARS! Yeah, I can make references as well…
19/11/2008 at 11:18 manintheshack says:
EDIT: Here’s hoping that They Hunger makes a comeback following Left 4 Dead’s release…
19/11/2008 at 11:24 Schmung says:
Flint : the list just has the mods that went commerical. If you watch the vid then there are short features on They Hunger, The Specialists etc etc
19/11/2008 at 11:41 diebroken says:
All this talk of They Hunger is making me hungry (delicious pun!) for They Hunger: Lost Souls:
http://www.blackwidowgames.com/
Ravensholm was one bit of HL2 I actually liked, only because it reminded me of that mod (inspiration for L4D?) ;)
19/11/2008 at 11:44 Ginger says:
Those frickin nearly invisible ninja birds were bastard hard though.
Happy Birthday HL
19/11/2008 at 11:50 Gap Gen says:
I can still hear the “tap tap” on the metal walkways…
19/11/2008 at 11:58 ZeroByte says:
RE: Natural Selection 2. The devs have moved away from the source engine and have made their own engine for use in NS2 mostly cause they have pretty specialized needs that’s hard to do in source. They have a video of the engine running a test level, the lighting alone looks fantastic and the hardware target isn’t crazy high so.. yeah off topic. I just loved NS until perhaps combat came around.
NS couldn’t have come about without HL though so there is that to be grateful to HL about. The mods alone have given me so much game play over the years. Best value game ever.
19/11/2008 at 12:02 Aftershock says:
They Hunger is in the video.
The list is only for mods that received a commercial release, ie, CS, TFC, DoD.
19/11/2008 at 12:04 AbyssUK says:
Also valve learnt a lot from half life about endings…they realised they can’t do endings very well so in all there next games they just didn’t add real endings always keeping it open so we never get any closure….
19/11/2008 at 12:13 Urael says:
TEN YEARS??? Good grief!
I remember when HL1 came out very clearly. I was working in a computer retail shop – a local business, not one of the big ones – and had just bought myself a Pentium II 333mhz system with a 12mb Voodoo Banshee card in it. HL1 was the very first game I bought for it. I remember enjoying it so much I talked my sales-floor colleague into buying a copy too!
Once I finish Ep2 I might have to go back and play the HL games through again. If only Black Mesa Source would hurry the heck up!!
19/11/2008 at 12:18 Jon says:
I remember pre-ordering it after following the development.. but due to release delays the game didn’t arrive for another 6+ months! (seems that 10 years on, Valve still have suffer from scheduling issues – although to be fair, the quality of their work is exceptional)
19/11/2008 at 12:27 kert says:
I’ll raise System Shock 2 to your Half-Life bypasses.
19/11/2008 at 12:30 Masterdog says:
I’d argue that Quake had a bigger effect on the modding community (you could almost argue HL was a Quake mod), but HL had a huge effect on FPS gaming generally. What a fantastic game, even if hearing it’s ten makes me feel very old.
19/11/2008 at 12:36 Del Boy says:
What made HL so great for me was that I knew absolutely nothing about it when it came out. I had completely missed any mention of it anywhere.
A friend came to school one day with the CD and said he’d recieved it through the post with one of those ‘games clubs’ things but couldn’t get it too work.
Needless to say, I had the last laugh.
19/11/2008 at 12:50 Thiefsie says:
I still remember bringin home my sepcial box on release day and fondly regarding the fold out cover with hadcrab zombie and soldiers in the black mesa tiled background.
Probably the most memorable and influential game on me as far as PC gaming goes.
To think that was 10 years ago. Wow.
19/11/2008 at 12:55 Crispy says:
Jim still hasn’t explained why he didn’t like Natural Selection…
19/11/2008 at 12:58 Tarn says:
There are a few games from that general era that haven’t had as big an influence as they should have – Half Life, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, to name three obvious ones.
There have been occasional influences, though. Bioshock, of course. Chronicles of Riddick seemed to be very influenced by Half Life. Nothing’s really attempted a Deus Ex though…
19/11/2008 at 13:00 Muzman says:
Somewhere Thief: The Dark Project sits alone humming ‘happy birthday to me’, but can hardly hear itself over the half life din from next door. After tiring of the noise it wanders to a bar and after a few hours of swigging everything transparent, bores any patron who’ll sit still long enough with ‘On the Waterfront”-ish tales of how all the AI, pathfinding, sound, complex level design and interactivity everyone now expects started with it. Those few who deign to acknowledge its raving don’t offer more than a “Sure thing pal. Who do you think you are? Half Life? And I’m fucken’ Wolfenstein 3d”.
Another ten years and it expires alone in some fleabag, undiscovered for days. Half Life shows up at the cremation to give an obituary, railing against the cruel and indifferent industry that knows nothing of its own history and is only interested in the latest fad, rounding off with a heartfelt unacompanied rendition of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’.
19/11/2008 at 13:17 Pod says:
The Ship? Did anyone even play that? :/
In a week I shall celebrate my 10th anniversary of buying half life. HURRAH!
19/11/2008 at 13:20 Tei says:
Lets just make a Monty Python joke here!
Valve? bah… a one trick pony company.
Yes, Valve has created Half-Life.
What else has created Valve. NOTHING,.. other than TeamFortress. Yes, Valve has created Team Fortress and reinvented it again as TeamFortress 2. But other than Half-Life, and Team Fortress, has created nothing.
Counter-Strike,.. yes, Valve has created Counter-Strike.
But other than Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2, .. what has created? NOTHING.
Well… has created “Steam”. TEH internet digital downloads service.
Yea, other than Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2 and Steam … Whas as created Valve?
NOTE: I can continue the joke with Portal, Capture The Flag but I think enough is enough for a joke. Valve has created a amazing stream of good titles, and raised the quality bar for PC gaming. Thanks valve!
19/11/2008 at 13:23 Tei says:
RE: Natural Selection 2
Can use the ioquake3 engine, and call it “Tremulous”
19/11/2008 at 13:24 ETPC says:
@muzman: That’s horribly depressing, but true :(
19/11/2008 at 13:25 The Hammer says:
Played the Source version. Hilarious fun with mates at a LAN.
Bappy Hirthday, Half Life! You’re the quintessential example of PC gaming, I feel. The very pinnacle!
19/11/2008 at 13:43 PHeMoX says:
I still don’t understand why Valve sort of half-assed the HL1 remake that came with HL2.
It’s sort of a nice gesture, but at the same time it feels like they could have done so much better by just doing what lately happened with Tombraider.
I guess the franchise / game isn’t old enough yet?
19/11/2008 at 13:45 Saflo says:
It’s the game I get misty-eyed just thinking about.
19/11/2008 at 13:53 B Rad says:
One of my all time favorite games, happy birthday half-life!
I want a remake now!!
19/11/2008 at 14:23 Tom says:
Hmm, so do I now go ahead and install and play the original game, or do I go for the Goldscr engine…oh wait, my cdkey never got accepted in steam, and it would cost me 10$ to have it ‘unlocked’, so I could just as well buy the bloody thing via steam, oh wait, I live in Germany, which means I wouldn’t be downloading half-life at all, merely a ‘quarter-life’, were everything is bright and beautiful and people don’t die. They just sit in the corner…which is exactly what I’m gong to do now, and bang my head against the wall for good measure…
19/11/2008 at 14:30 diebroken says:
Cool thanks for the NS2 vid, hadn’t visited the site in a long time – didn’t realise that they were moving away from Source engine, just that the game wasn’t out yet! ;)
I’ll take your vid and give you DOOM HDR! BAM!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BpDWGJX4xH4
19/11/2008 at 14:30 Larington says:
Happy Birthday Half-Life.
With Left4Dead out the door now I wonder whats next for Valve…
19/11/2008 at 14:33 Ben Abraham says:
Happy Birthday old chap. Good times we had together. Good times. (Except for that bloody giant tentacle-thing boss. That can go to hell and die a painful, screaming death)
19/11/2008 at 14:35 Downloads_Plz says:
I know I’m in the extreme minority with this opinion, but I really never saw what the big deal was with Half-Life. From what I remember, it just bored the hell out of me to be honest. Maybe I never got far enough in the game, but from what I’ve the first part of the game was supposed to be the best, so I don’t think that’s it. And yes, I did play it near the time of it’s release, so it’s not as if I just played it last week expecting it to be a revolutionary thing.
Perhaps I need to go back to it and try again.
19/11/2008 at 14:40 Tom says:
Sir, you must certainly do so! This is not about a game, it is about character, your character to be precise. So get cracking!!
19/11/2008 at 14:42 manintheshack says:
I’m guessing the next thing will be more TF2 updates and the next HL instalment. Hmmm… really want to know what they’ll do after that though. A new single-player IP would be ace, story-driven and fresh and not from the modding community…
19/11/2008 at 14:48 Tom says:
Oh, just in case anyone is still unaware of this baby:
http://www.blackmesasource.com/
19/11/2008 at 14:59 MacBeth says:
Happy birthday. The Uplink demo turned a game I vaguely knew about into the best thing I’d ever seen on a computer, and the full game followed very shortly afterwards… replayed the Source version recently and was astounded how big and deep it is, so full of places and things…
Those frickin nearly invisible ninja birds were bastard hard though.
Satchel charges FTW. Put them at a convenient corner, await arrival of said invisible ninja bird (possibly having wandered out into the room a little to tempt her in, then retreat again), trigger satchel charge.
Rinse, repeat.
=> No more invisible ninja birds.
You would have to hoard satchel charges, admittedly, but so worth it for that bit alone. And the bit at the end of on On A Rail where another train comes alongside with marines on. If you’ve gone ahead on foot and planted a satchel charge on the other train first… it’s very amusing.
Incidentally using the cite tag messes the preview up no end… randomly centre aligning stuff… very odd.
19/11/2008 at 15:07 JakeB says:
Pro-tip: Kelly Bailey (Valve’s sound dude) worked on levels before programming Half-Life’s Sound system, which then they stuck him in the sound department.
19/11/2008 at 15:34 Irish Al says:
@Tom
Black Mesa Source should release something already.
19/11/2008 at 15:46 pepper says:
I deeply love this game, i started making my own content for it, and now im following a gamedesign course ^_^. I still mod for it and play the DM with friends. Time seems to freeze around this game.
19/11/2008 at 15:46 Tokjos says:
I’ll expect a similiar post the 11′th of august next year, when System Shock 2 turns ten.
19/11/2008 at 15:48 The Hammer says:
Oh, you System Shock 2 fans, diverting the conversation to other games! What next, Fallout?
19/11/2008 at 16:01 El_MUERkO says:
a friend of mine got it for me for christmas, we both agreed to get each other something for £20, he got me HL:GOTY Edition and I got him something for the Dreamcast I think, it was bundled with CS 1.0 and Opposing Force
gaming nirvana :)
19/11/2008 at 16:11 Pags says:
Bring on Black Mesa Source is all I can say. Who knows, they might even be able to make the Xen levels playable.
19/11/2008 at 16:14 Pags says:
Also, are they any other people (besides Del Boy) who knew absolutely nothing about HL when it came out? I remember it arriving in the post and thinking “what the hell is this gaudy orange monstrosity?” and then practically falling in love the second ‘Inbound’ faded in.
19/11/2008 at 16:17 itsallcrap says:
The main thing that struck me about HL was that they put stuff in that seemed like ‘unnecessary work’. The train ride intro, for instance. That didn’t actually affect the gameplay at all, and yet they clearly spent ages on it. That’s where it pushed things forward in my opinion.
The other thing I always remember is that it’s the last decent FPS that had a software rendering mode. That’s perhaps less significant, though…
19/11/2008 at 16:23 Man Raised By Puffins says:
Happy Birthday Half Life!
It only seems like last month that I was gamboling around your headcrab filled corridors and repeatedly falling to my death in some of your more ill-advised levels. Oh wait, it was last month. Carry on.
19/11/2008 at 16:25 Smurfy says:
although I wish NS2 Source would hurry up
That’s probably because they’re developing their own engine. They decided not to use Source. If they release this engine for free it’s going to revolutionise free gaming, you should take a look at some of the devlogs. Graphically, it surpasses Source.
19/11/2008 at 16:42 diebroken says:
@Smurfy: I’ve been out of the loop :( As ZeroByte pointed out earlier, the engine that NS2 will be using looks fantastic, and I don’t mind having to pay for it on Steam this time round ;)
19/11/2008 at 16:57 rei says:
I feel so old suddenly. Where have the years gone? :’(
19/11/2008 at 17:35 Tei says:
That’s probably because they’re developing their own engine. They decided not to use Source. If they release this engine for free it’s going to revolutionise free gaming, you should take a look at some of the devlogs. Graphically, it surpasses Source.
The engine don’t grown on trees. Almost all are evolutionary. Source evolve from GoldSrc that evolve from QuakeWorld, that evolve from Quake1.
I fail to see how non-professionals can create something from thing air, that will better on everywhere…
Sure you can start from scrach, remove(ignore) all the legacy crud, and you will have a amazing render, faster, and all. But you still have to add the new crud: the support for lots and lots of broken drivers, different settings, etc… Is not easy, or short.
19/11/2008 at 17:37 Nick says:
@Tei: Valve didn’t create TF or Counterstrike.
19/11/2008 at 17:51 Nimic says:
Am I the only one who thinks it feels like more than 10 years? I mean, I’m only 21 years old, so that’s just about half my life, but still!
Command & Conquer, though, is 13 years old! Dune 2.. well, I won’t even go there.
I hate/love nostalgia.. it seems to hit me all the time, and just makes me sad.
19/11/2008 at 17:54 pepper says:
Valve hired people to create TFC, i believe the original creators from TF. CS has been developed by modders, and then professionalized by Valve. So saying they didnt create it is a bit bland.
19/11/2008 at 18:24 Korolev says:
I remember getting Half-life 1 for my birthday in 1999. It is without a doubt the game that has been on my computers the longest. The betas of Counter-strike and Day of Defeat were tons of fun and other mods like Firearms and Natural Selection just added to the value of this game. The mod community only started to slow down when people got used to the Source engine mod tools, which was basically from 1999 to 2005; the freaking golden age of mods.
Valve’s game design philosophy is simply this: The way to accomplish your goal should be clear but getting there should be a challenge.
Now if only Black Mesa Source would come out by 2010…
19/11/2008 at 19:08 RichPowers says:
The heyday of HL1 mods was one of my favorite times in PC gaming. Only the great BF1942 mods, such as Desert Combat, Forgotten Hope, and BF: Pirates, come close for me.
Looking back, I’ve probably played a round of Dustbowl at least once a week since 2000. I’m just a sucker for all things Team Fortress.
19/11/2008 at 19:23 Pidesco says:
I played HL1 after System Shock 1(obviously), System Shock 2, NOLF and Deus Ex. Needless to say that I was very underwhelmed.
19/11/2008 at 20:05 Paul B says:
The main thing I remember about Half Life, apart from those pesky, grenade throwing soldiers, was the intro which really set the tone for the game. At the time I thought – if the rest of the game lives up to this, it’s going to be good.
The only thing I can remember that was less then steller, was when you went to Xen and fought that great big, pink abomination Nihilanth. Which was a bit of a rubbish ending – thank goodness for HL2.
19/11/2008 at 20:13 Devan says:
Hey, it’s my birthday today too. I didn’t know that Half Life was that cool! :P
19/11/2008 at 20:23 Mman says:
As a side-note, Black Mesa Source released a bunch of new media today: http://www.blackmesasource.com/
19/11/2008 at 21:00 roBurky says:
Nimic: Feels like longer to me too.
19/11/2008 at 21:07 Gabanski83 says:
Didn’t realise this, but I’ve just finished playing through Blue Shift again tonight. Started Opposing Force at first, but I’ve hit a looping sound crash bug error annoyance thingy, so I’m stuck at a door keypad just after encountering the first batch of Spec Ops ninja bastards. Tough as nails they are, even after all this time.
19/11/2008 at 21:13 Meat Circus says:
Birthday cake administered.
19/11/2008 at 21:16 Calabi says:
I’m not sure if anyone has already posted this but valve is now selling Half Life at the might price of 99 cence or 66 pence.
Buy it now, not now, NOW, do it quick, before they change their minds.
19/11/2008 at 21:22 subedii says:
Calabi I would buy that if I hadn’t already bought the game ten years ago. :)
Awesome factoid: Valve allow you to register even your original, ten year old copies of Half-Life with Steam. As long as you’ve got your original CD key, just plug that in, and it’s in your Steam account.
19/11/2008 at 21:24 Scandalon says:
On sale for 98cents until friday:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/
19/11/2008 at 21:26 Scandalon says:
And…of course, Calabi beat me to it. (But it’s 98 cents, so perhaps my superior reporting made a difference in someone’s life. ;)
19/11/2008 at 21:39 Scandalon says:
And now for my HL story (order/dates may be a bit wrong…)
I wanted to play it. Oh, how I wanted to – but I didn’t have access to a machine that could run it properly, and had at that point switched to a Mac at home. (Quakeworld on a Voodoo2 that cost me like $200…).
Eventually, HL:Uplink came out, and I got to play it on a work comp, and that made me want it all the more. Then a co-worker got it, and showed me the intro…and the desire grew yet again. And then…they announced a mac version of HL! Happyness and joy.
And then they canceled it when it was nearly ready.
And then I was introduced to the Dreamcast, and I bought my first console. And then HL for DC was announced, and it was going to have higher-def models and new expansion pack!
And then they canceled that when it was almost ready.
“Damn you valve, why did you taunt me so? Is my money not good enough for you? I WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY!”
And then my roommate bought it (this was UnrealTournament/HomeWorld/WheelOfTime) era by now) – and I played, and was happy, until I got to an elevator shaft that crashed every time I went up it… Finally, years later I found the GOTY edition in the mall for $10. And like Subedii says, it’s now available to me in Steam, along with a ton of mods that I’ve never played: CS, Ricochet, etc.
And I still haven’t finished it.
It eventually got boring, actually. I suspect that’s because it really doesn’t hold up as well as nostalgia suggests. As in, “you had to be there, you wouldn’t understand.”
Of course, it will never be as wonderful and earth shattering as DOOM.
What?
19/11/2008 at 21:41 Scandalon says:
Edit – RE: elevator shaft: It crashed the computer/game, it wasn’t an elevator that simulated falling in the game…
19/11/2008 at 22:00 Pags says:
Speaking of elevator shafts in Half Life, my favourite bug/quirk in any game ever was around the first 10 minutes after you’ve tits’d everything up and opened the portals to Xen; I walked up to the elevator shaft, see the elevator falling with all the scientists screaming and I hear a voice say:
“Ah a fellow scientist”
Followed by a bang and an explosion. I’ve told this story before on RPS actually, but I love it and no-one paid attention to it the first time round so it’s okay.
19/11/2008 at 22:01 MetalCircus says:
I love you guys, you mentioned Sven Co-op. Don’t play it much anymore, but many, many happy memories of that mod.
You lovely buggers.
19/11/2008 at 22:19 David Amador says:
Looks like valve is celebrating with a 98 cents promotion
http://blog.differentpixel.com/archives/734-Half-Life-1-For-98-cents-On-Steam.html
19/11/2008 at 22:20 Saflo says:
I suspect that’s because it really doesn’t hold up as well as nostalgia suggests.
Why is it always “nostalgia”? Why can’t a critical appreciation of a game be trusted if that game is relatively old?
19/11/2008 at 22:25 Nick says:
I’m with Saflo, it really irritates me when anything positive said about a game that is old is instantly described as rose tinted or whatever, load of bollocks for the most part.
19/11/2008 at 22:47 Larington says:
The rose tinted goggles thing is, to some extent in my mind, equivalent to people who might say “don’t take this the wrong way but…” and then says something really insulting (Or whatever). I don’t think its ever intended to be an irritant, like that darned hacker in system shock… (Insert other choiciest SHODAN demeaning titles as ye desire)
19/11/2008 at 22:48 Larington says:
Then again, nostalgia is correct in the sense that it makes it easier for someone whose already played the game to replay it even after a long time has passed. Recently tried to get someone who’d never played Deus Ex to give it a go and he couldn’t get passed its age.
19/11/2008 at 23:18 matte_k says:
I must admit, i’m loving some of the Gravatars that the RPS Community are touting, sterling stuff. :D My favourite 3 at the moment are Sly Boots, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider and Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time.
Also, was a bit of latecomer to the HL experience, I first remember seeing it when Opposing Force was reviewed on Bits on Channel 4 (incidentally, what happened to those 3, anyone know?).
Two favourite bits that spring to mind are the first time you see the beast in the Blast Pit, and spend ages trying to work out how to get past it, and a random line from one of the Dr. Kleiner clones after getting the suit: “They’re waiting for you, Gordon…in the…TEST Chamber…” . Something about the way he says it puts such weight on those two words, you KNOW it’s going to go tits up soon.
19/11/2008 at 23:23 Larington says:
I’m going to use this as my gravatar forever and ever and ever. As characters go, hes so much more interesting than say, Duke Nukem, or whatever silly over macho cookie cutter stuff that the games industry is addicted to churning out.
And his flaws make him sorta love-able, in a characterisation sort of way.
19/11/2008 at 23:35 malkav11 says:
I think in Half-Life’s case it really is nostalgia, though. I mean, the game’s solid enough and it holds up fairly well considering that it’s ten years old. But presumably ten years ago it was some sort of OMG revolutionary thing (I can only assume, the way people talk about it) and speaking as someone who has no problems getting into old games when they’re genuinely something special, Half-Life isn’t anymore.
19/11/2008 at 23:36 Mman says:
“Why is it always “nostalgia”? Why can’t a critical appreciation of a game be trusted if that game is relatively old?”
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks this; “nostalgia” has become such an overused buzzword in the last year or two it’s on the way to discrediting itself.
“Then again, nostalgia is correct in the sense that it makes it easier for someone whose already played the game to replay it even after a long time has passed.”
This is one of the few context the usage of nostalgia makes sense; but it just as easily overlaps with experience, in that you already know what awesome the game has to offer later, when you don’t the first time (with Deus Ex as an example I’d say it especially fits there, in that I found the game to only really get going after the first couple of levels, and I could easily see people getting put off by the starting areas).
19/11/2008 at 23:44 Saflo says:
@Larington:
That’s a good point, and there’s even a blog which covers that exact situation (click my name). However, the nostalgia accusation is usually just a cheap way to toss out someone’s argument in favor of a game, and an insulting one at that.
And just to throw a wrench in those gears, I played Deus Ex for the very first time a couple of months ago and loved it.
19/11/2008 at 23:49 Larington says:
Yeah, its a question of someones ability to look past graphics and see the joy beneath. In my particular case, I don’t think it helped that the chap used to be a console gamer and had switched across in the past 2/3 years after discovering the joys of modding.
20/11/2008 at 00:13 Saflo says:
But presumably ten years ago it was some sort of OMG revolutionary thing (I can only assume, the way people talk about it)
You can do more than assume: you can actually read what people have to say about it.
20/11/2008 at 00:22 malkav11 says:
I have done. What I’ve read often bears little resemblance to the game I played or indeed gaming history. It’s people so carried away with fond memories that they ignore what’s actually there.
20/11/2008 at 00:27 The Hammer says:
The origin of a LOT of genre-standard stuff, yeah, done in a highly professional and competent way. That’s what’s there.
20/11/2008 at 00:30 The Hammer says:
Also, iconic cornerstones of PC gaming – the sheer nerdiness of the setting, the numerous memorable characters and enemies (houndeyes, for Christ’s sakes, and Kleiner!). You rarely get a game that sets a more personal tone for PC gamers. As it’s rooted in science, and has a sort of insane feel to the gibs and gore, and explosions, it feels very much a game of its time, and a game of its playerbase. A b-movie which resonates incredibly well, especially now, in these diluted times.
20/11/2008 at 01:02 Cycle says:
I played Marathon and Goldeneye before I played Half-Life, which made it seem not all that impressive. Sure, it has some awesome bits, but I found most of it to be pretty tedious to be honest.
Half-Life Uplink was a great demo, though… it pretty much has all the awesome stuff from the full game condensed into ann hour or so of gameplay. That also probably made me feel a bit dissapointed… the full version had lots of boring bits between awesome bits, and the demo made me expect NON-STOP AWESOME, which I don’t think iti delivered.
20/11/2008 at 01:32 sinister agent says:
There is one thing that almost every shooter since copied wholesale, though, and pretty much the worst – the opening level where NOTHING HAPPENS, SLOWLY. And of course, you know you’re not going to be truly threatened as you’re unarmed (or merely unable to use a weapon or any of your abilities or equipment for no apparent reason until the tutorial gets to that point), and you’re just going to be led by the nose through a tiresome, unskippable intro that would be much more enjoyable if you could just sit back and watch it instead of jumping through its hoops.
In Half-life, it was original, set the scene superbly, made great use of the time to show you around the facility, gave an impressive sense of setting (how much of the facility appears in the intro, and then never again?), and for most of it you were ferried about anyway, so could sit back with a cup of tea. Almost every game since that’s copied the concept completely missed the point.
I remember playing half-life a couple of years after it came out, and thinking the fuss really over the top. I still think people overestimate it, but it was a great game, and its original approaches are to be commended.
20/11/2008 at 01:46 malkav11 says:
The origin of very little genre-standard stuff, really. About the only thing I can think of that I’d definitely associate with Half-Life first would be having all the cutscenes in-engine while you’re wandering around. And I’m not that fond of that. As theoretically immersive as it may be, it also means they’re a) unskippable and b) it’s easy to miss the cool stuff by looking the wrong way.
They were originally advertised as being interactive (e.g., you see a scientist being dragged off into the vents by a zombie, blow the zombie away rescuing the scientist), and that would have been really mind-blowing. But they just weren’t.
Well, okay, and the tram ride. Although it seems like that’s just now really coming into vogue.
20/11/2008 at 01:55 Cycle says:
“They were originally advertised as being interactive (e.g., you see a scientist being dragged off into the vents by a zombie, blow the zombie away rescuing the scientist), and that would have been really mind-blowing. But they just weren’t.”
That’s one of the reasons I was more impressed by Goldeneye. That also had in-game cutscenes, but there were also interactive, even if it was very minor in some cases… such as getting slightly different text if you met someone with very little health remaining.
20/11/2008 at 05:15 MadTinkerer says:
“Said terror is not simply because it makes me feel so very aged, but also because it’s been so long and yet still most FPSes seem entirely ignorant of what HL did with setpieces, incidental detail, gaming-specific narrative style, pacing and world-building.”
That is why most of the FPSs I own are Valve games. Games like Prey and UT3 pale in comparison (the latter I played for less than half an hour before uninstalling and never looking back). Only hybrid games like Bioshock, which is just as much an RPG as an FPS, are capable of entertaining me as much as the Half Life series.
20/11/2008 at 06:16 Juggernath says:
I remember when this first came out, I was in elementary school and found a magazine with some beta screen shots. I became obsessed with it. Unfortunately I wasn’t a gamer then. Didn’t have a computer or anything. Until about 2 years ago, I had forgotten about this game. I bought it on impulse and decided to play it. My thoughts? It is probably the greatest game I’ve ever played. Half Life was my introduction into PC gaming and I loved every minute of it, and it sequels.
20/11/2008 at 08:39 Psychopomp says:
@Pags, I wish I could have luck like that with glitches…
As for Nostalgia, bullshit.
First off, I’m 18.
I played Thief: The Dark Project two years ago, thought it was brilliant.
I played Half Life 1 on both expansions just before Half Life 2 came out for the original Xbox(Shitty PC back then). Thought it was brilliant.
Played Deus Ex 1 a few months before Deus Ex 3 was announced. Yet again, thought it was brilliant.
Discovered Xcom last year. Brilliant is too kind, possibly my favorite game ever.
System Shock 2, a few months before Bioshock came out. Brilliant, though I liked Bioshock more.
MY theory is that the cause of people not going past the first few levels of an established classic is the same thing that leads to, after talking someone who has never played Half-Life 2 before into trying it, you feeling physically ill as you watch them attempt to barrel through the opening of the game, not paying any attention to anything. Eventually you just say “FUCK IT! STOP, LOOK TO YOUR LEFT! WHY ARE YOU BARRELING FORWARD LIKE THIS? STOP AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE WORLD AROUND YOU! SEE THAT GUY? TO YOUR RIGHT! HE’S BEING INTERROGATED, THAT’S WHAT! DON’T JUST WALK AWAY, GO TOWARDS HIM!”
Uhmm…
So yeah.
20/11/2008 at 10:46 Mooey Poo says:
Kotaku stole your joke!
http://kotaku.com/5093625/happy-birthday-half-life-now-you-are-ten
You should sue
20/11/2008 at 13:18 Andrew F says:
??? The last levels on Xen are rubbish, but the actual ending is complete genius!
20/11/2008 at 16:50 Cooper42 says:
Aww, that’s made me just that tad less jaded today and a bit misty eyed, thinking back to just how good half life was.
Happy Birthday…
20/11/2008 at 20:16 Fumarole says:
For those of that haven’t done so, be sure to check out Freeman’s Mind. It really changes the way you’ll see this classic game. There are five episodes so far:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J80KD4BG7M
06/01/2009 at 03:11 Jimmy says:
Ive beat both parts and im playing it again. Very fun and interesting game with a twist.