Half Life

anyone played portal prelude yet? it's pretty great. quite a challenge!

  lumpenprol said:

Portal was the best. Half Life 2 and episodes are aight, certainly a 90+% game, but it could have been even better

Agreed. The beach levels got a bit too long winded

I liked the beach stuff ok. For me various other things dinged it from being the perfect game:

- cliche characterization. Can't stop the sneaking suspicion that Valve is getting rather superficial, even Hollywood-y here. The spunky female love-interest, her goofy robot protector, the benevolent, bumbling scientist...The only character they put any effort into was Eli. Dr. Breen was ok I guess, if rather typical verbose Matrix-y archvillian. Anyway I think there's a lot of room for character development here, more nuance, less caricature. They seem to be aiming squarely at the teen demographic, which makes me a bit embarrassed to be playing a game that aims low. I miss the days of Thief.

- too many "on-rails" driving sections, particularly the hovercraft. Funny to have you start out in an interesting city and almost immediately you're crawling around in narrow sewers.

- reduction of interesting enemies from the first game. Who thought it would be a good idea to remove houndeyes, bullsquids, and all the other cool characters from the first game and replace them with more fucking headcrabs? It's like they're trying to be annoying/boring

- overreliance on stupid physics puzzles, especially by the time you get to the Episodes.

- general lack of intelligent RPG elements. They could do it, they just choose not to, which I think is a shame. You meet a new character, and all they have to say is "here chap, take this rocket launcher."

I would love Half life to be intelligent, eerie, visceral, with a strong undercurrent of black humor, like the first HL game. Instead it's become melodramatic and predictable (how many times can Eli and Alyx be put in jeopardy?). Shame really. At least the environments are still good, I think Dario Casali and the rest of the Valve level designers are pretty genius at getting the most out of the dated Source engine.

i pretty much agree with you. by striving to make it stupid-proof they've gone way too far and made the game too easy and even more linear. puzzles appear obvious.

otherwise i love the sounds, the soundtrack and the overall art direction. i loved deteriorated environments especially by the shore, but missed that horror sense. like some alive non-zombied humans feeling utterly depressed, horrified, and depraved of food, left out alone....halflife 1 is noir in much deeper sense.

and the biggest cliche that could be evaded for the sake of realism: the arsenal you're carrying. it would be much more cool to be armed with just a crowbar, an AR2, the shotgun and some grenades with the ability to manage your inventory. that would force players to consider employing more tactics and less shooting spree...

  Godwin Austen said:

.halflife 1 is noir in much deeper sense.

yes, exactly! The dark humor is almost missing entirely now. In the first game one of the first things you did was accidentally lead to the death of a number of people in an elevator just by pressing a button. I think that sort of humor would be removed from HL2 and the episodes for being too sick.

I think they (read: the tool Marc Laidlaw) just take themselves too seriously now. They need a kick in the pants to move outside their comfort zone.

  Godwin Austen said:

otherwise i love the sounds, the soundtrack

One thing that Valve never seem to get right are the soundtracks. Their ambient tunes are alright but the fast paced semi drum'n'bass like tunes are absolutely horrific.

i love how you see the guy in the black suit everywhere, if i remember correctly lost seemed to be inspired by this in one of the first episodes when the guy with designer stubble see's his dad or something.

its defiantly one of the mist immersive games i've played along with dues ex, when you finish it yu dont feel as if you've ultimately wasted your time like with most games and even though its linear game it never seems like that. brilliant.

same apply s for portal, i haven't played a game that good or inventive since it came out. its one of the few games that skeptics have enjoyed and even my mother seemed interested!

Guy in suit = The G-Man

deus ex was far superior to Half Life 2 in terms of story and gameplay imo, the only thing that stank about it was the graphics. I wish someone would do a remake in a cutting edge engine, with all the extra content that would allow them to cram in.

deus ex source would be incredible.

screw graphics if everything else is amazing

I heard Deus Ex was amazing but at this point I don't have patience for those graphics.

  assegai said:

I heard Deus Ex was amazing but at this point I don't have patience for those graphics.

thats a really lame reason not to play the game, your really missing out.

edit: the word pathetic was harsh, im in a terrible mood, sorry.

  messiaen said:

deus ex source would be incredible.

as long as they kept in the "death gargle" i'd buy it

Let's just hope they keep it out of Deus Ex 3

oh c'mon, can't you hear it in your head right now? The serene twang of some fake synths in the background, when all of a sudden *bang* "aragagagaggahhhhhH!"

Edit: the animations were so class, too. I remember reading some dev diary where they were talking about how they cut corners by making the hit boxes just tall cylinders, which is why all the characters had those really rigid postures even when firing and running. I can see it in my mind's eye, some MJ-12 soldiers going into alert mode with their stiff armed firing and scuttling back and forth as the action music plays...lol

I have owned Half-Life, Opposing Force and Blue Shift for years, but haven't played them much, as I've been young and disinterested untill recent years :on2long: . I now have beat HL, HL2 and both episodes. I I even bought HL2 for PC and could barely run it, so I bought it for Xbox, then bought The Orange Box .

I love these games, they are very well done imo (compared to Halo and such). I have yet to play Opposing Force and Blue Shift much.

I've played through HL1, HL2, HL2 EP1 & EP2 recently. Fucking brilliant. Can't wait for Episode 3.

Played through Portal and Portal: Prelude too, not as fun as HL. Portal was too easy though, but Prelude gave you quite a challenge. It made you miss the portalgun in half-life when you were in some kind of trouble.

the Half-Life games really captures you, it's like you just want to continue playing. And I love those puzzles! Just a simple one like you have to put bricks on a board to make it flip over so that you can continue. Makes it much more fun, so that it's just not killing all the time.

haha I tried Left 4 Dead yesterday, such a crap game. Just killing Zombies? Whats the fun in that?

  funkaholic said:

  assegai said:

I heard Deus Ex was amazing but at this point I don't have patience for those graphics.

 

thats a really pathetic reason not to play the game, your really missing out.

dosent prove anything

  assegai said:

  funkaholic said:

  assegai said:

I heard Deus Ex was amazing but at this point I don't have patience for those graphics.

 

thats a really pathetic reason not to play the game, your really missing out.

unfortunately in 5 years Fallout 3 will look just as dated.

Half-Life 1 beats most of the new games with "astonishing graphics".

  lumpenprol said:

Edit: the animations were so class, too. I remember reading some dev diary where they were talking about how they cut corners by making the hit boxes just tall cylinders, which is why all the characters had those really rigid postures even when firing and running. I can see it in my mind's eye, some MJ-12 soldiers going into alert mode with their stiff armed firing and scuttling back and forth as the action music plays...lol

Lol, that's brilliant. The characters were almost as stiff as Jackie Estacado's lips from The Darkness.

Plus, what a shame that Deus Ex 2 turned out the way it did.

so far the main character for deus ex 3 is looking abit lame, i hope they dont go for the grey/green/brown dystopia look but also try the perfect bright colour look of mirrors edge, we meets do andriods dream of electric sheep drawn by mobious music by vangelis, also sort of like portal, how the first half is the perfect white rooms then the second half all mechanical and shit, oh yes, and maybe non of the boring realistic graphics crap

  Squee said:

Plus, what a shame that Deus Ex 2 turned out the way it did.

yeah I've blocked that from my mind, apart from the holographic chick, I seem to remember she was well done. My god, the load zones!

Funny how the brother-brother relationship in Deus Ex 1 was so much more compelling than the father-child dynamic in Fallout 3. That game is exemplary in so many ways.