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.

November 19th, 2008 at 9:27 am

Sum0 says:

Happy tenth, Half-Life. I have an urge to play you all over again.

November 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am

aldo_14 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.

Half Life 1 is in the Orange box? I never saw it…..

November 19th, 2008 at 9:35 am

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

November 19th, 2008 at 9:43 am

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

November 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am

Seniath says:

Hip hip, hurray!
Hip hip, hurray!
Hip hip, hurray!

My word, ten years. I’ll be damned…

November 19th, 2008 at 10:07 am

Nameykins says:

I’ll have to install and play this today, to celebrate.

November 19th, 2008 at 10:15 am

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?

November 19th, 2008 at 10:29 am

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am

macc says:

Just played the intro again, awesome..

November 19th, 2008 at 10:54 am

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…

November 19th, 2008 at 11:16 am

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

November 19th, 2008 at 11:24 am

Ginger says:

Those frickin nearly invisible ninja birds were bastard hard though.

Happy Birthday HL

November 19th, 2008 at 11:44 am

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 11:58 am

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….

November 19th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

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)

November 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

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…

November 19th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Pod says:

The Ship? Did anyone even play that? :/

In a week I shall celebrate my 10th anniversary of buying half life. HURRAH!

November 19th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Tei says:

RE: Natural Selection 2

Can use the ioquake3 engine, and call it “Tremulous”

November 19th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

The Hammer says:

The Ship? Did anyone even play that? :/

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!

November 19th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Saflo says:

It’s the game I get misty-eyed just thinking about.

November 19th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

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…

November 19th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Larington says:

Happy Birthday Half-Life.

With Left4Dead out the door now I wonder whats next for Valve…

November 19th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

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…

November 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

Irish Al says:

@Tom

Black Mesa Source should release something already.

November 19th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

Tokjos says:

I’ll expect a similiar post the 11′th of august next year, when System Shock 2 turns ten.

November 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

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 :)

November 19th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

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 ;)

November 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

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…

November 19th, 2008 at 6:24 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 7:23 pm

Devan says:

Hey, it’s my birthday today too. I didn’t know that Half Life was that cool! :P

November 19th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

roBurky says:

Nimic: Feels like longer to me too.

November 19th, 2008 at 9:00 pm

Meat Circus says:

Birthday cake administered.

November 19th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

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. ;)

November 19th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

Scandalon says:

Edit – RE: elevator shaft: It crashed the computer/game, it wasn’t an elevator that simulated falling in the game…

November 19th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

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?

November 19th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

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)

November 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 11:18 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

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.

November 19th, 2008 at 11:44 pm

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.

November 20th, 2008 at 12:13 am

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.

November 20th, 2008 at 12:27 am

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.

November 20th, 2008 at 1:02 am

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.

November 20th, 2008 at 1:46 am

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.

November 20th, 2008 at 5:15 am

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.

November 20th, 2008 at 8:39 am

Andrew F says:

Also valve learnt a lot from half life about endings…they realised they can’t do endings very well

??? The last levels on Xen are rubbish, but the actual ending is complete genius!

November 20th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

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

November 20th, 2008 at 8:16 pm