Half-Life
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599 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 30.03.20 03:56
Half-Life (1998), which was Valve’s first-ever game, is a first-person shooter where you play as Black Mesa scientist, Gordon Freeman. After an experiment goes wrong, which results in an alien invasion, you find yourself escaping the research facility with various encounters with the military and invading aliens. Half-Life went on to become regarded as one of the most influential games to the first-person shooter genre, as well as one of the best games of all time. This can likely be attributed to its strong storyline and revolutionary gameplay led by non-linear level design. This design allowed players to explore the highly detailed and immersive environments (at the time) of the Black Mesa Research Facility while searching for health packs and ammo to prepare for future fights. However, the level design became somewhat outdated when the player traveled to the borderworld, Xen, where navigation became confusing due to the graphics and overall design of the environment.
After completing my first playthrough of it on hard mode, I noted a few problems that have obviously arisen due to the age of the game. First, the graphics are clearly outdated. The progression through the game could be stalled because of the antiquated details. For example, in one area it took me five to ten minutes to figure out where to go next because the opening to the next area perfectly blended in with the surrounding walls. In addition, the puzzles sprinkled throughout the game seemed a little old, but generally, they could be easily solved with careful thinking and planning. Amazingly, the story holds up incredibly well, which shows why this game is such a classic. Also, its engaging combat keeps the player on the edge of their seat as they fight several types of enemies with different ways to defeat each one using a wide range of weapons. Overall, the storyline and gameplay itself make up for its rough edges and hopefully, it does not discourage anyone from trying the game out like it almost did for me.
Now, for those who do have a problem with the game being old, there is a recently released remake of the game aptly named Black Mesa, created by dedicated fans known as the Crowbar Collective. I have not yet had the opportunity to try out this remake, but it looks absolutely astounding and I heard they even altered some of the weaker parts of the game to make it more modern.
In conclusion, I believe everyone should at least try Half-Life, whether it be the original 1998 version or the remake, as it was truly a big step for the first-person shooter genre and the gaming industry as a whole.
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1115 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 04.04.20 12:43
Half-Life 2 is one of those games that everyone has at least heard of, perhaps only as a part of the meme, nonetheless the points stands. What about the first Half-Life game then? It would stand to reason that such a creature existed, so there could be a sequel to it, yet it has been overshadowed by its successor to the point at which the first game became almost obscure. Frankly, it’s a shame because back in the 1998, when Half-Life was released, it had almost single-handedly shown the world that FPS genre can have a story to tell. The notion is almost absurd nowadays but back when the genre was synonymous with Doom and Quake, FPS stood for raw gameplay and a text panel at the end to sum up your exploits. Using it as a fundament for presenting a complete narrative which on top of that was integrated into the gameplay seemed almost daring. Coupled with innovations in graphics and AI, it had created a formula that many games strode towards in years to come. Today, the graphics are obviously dated and the level design is confusing but otherwise the game still holds up surprisingly well.
It came from outer reality
Half-Life tells a story of Gordon Freeman, a prospering physicist working at Black Mesa – a top-secret research facility capable of using sci-fi literature as schematics for their next project. The player takes control of the mute protagonist and soon steps into the iconic Hazardous EnVironment suit (abbreviated HEV) to join fellow scientists for work on the faithful day. The day when a single experiment gone horribly wrong made a tear in reality sizable enough to allow for an alien invasion. Alas, the quest begins amidst chaos and alien life forms rampaging through the facility. Most of you are well aware what that struggle had ultimately lead up to. Until then, Freeman’s chosen field of expertise had just become the ballistics and there will be dozens of test subjects just dying to further your research.
The extraterrestrial menace that player is about to face comes in many shapes and sizes, all equally deadly. Even the cat-sized headcrab is capable of turning their unfortunate victim into a zombified monstrosity. Much larger, acid-spewing bullsquid or water-faring ichthyosaur aren’t any more docile. Then there are deliberate invaders of Earth, the Vortigaunts capable of conjuring a lightning and their massive armoured counterparts, harassing the player with literal swarms of hornets. Then there are far more mundane enemies. Black Mesa survivors soon realise that the military relief force has arrived with orders to purge all life from the facility, alien or otherwise. This not only makes for a wide selection of enemies but also leads to encounters, where the player enters the middle of a fight between the two enemy factions, allowing for all kinds of tactical play.
Crowbars per second
Half-life’s wide selection of enemies is matched by equally diverse arsenal at the player’s disposal. Chief among them – Gordon’s trademark crowbar. This rather exotic choice for “mandatory weak melee weapon”, as the nickname implies is only useful in early stages of the game. That said, it’s far more practical than most melee weapons in FPS games. Freeman is simply ludicrously agile with it, being fully capable of bashing with the thing 2 times per second – according to the HL wikia. The noise it makes while doing so just adds in on the absurdity, making whacking stuff with crowbar a go-to downtime activity between fights. Jokes aside, HL means of murder do start off easy with, FPS standard-issue buckshot and bullets but then just keep on adding. Soon there is a scoped crossbow, trip-mines, lasers and entirely unique armaments – Gluon gun, which produces a blue beam that vaporizes targets after short period of contact or Hivehand, an organic artifice capable of firing infinite swarm of hornets. It’s not called sci-fi for nothing. If that wasn’t enough, many weapons have some form of secondary fire mode for a good measure.
Physicists on ice
Despite the game’s multiple strengths Half-Life is not all milk and honey. Title’s most glaring flaw is confusing level design. Half-Life is a mostly linear game, though it does allow a degree of exploration. That being said, perhaps “enforces” would be a more applicable word, as time and time again I was simply lost. Now, I would like to emphasise that I am not trying to criticise the game for not being linear. The issue is more complex and perhaps an example will picture it best. If you come across the door there are 3 options: it’s an obvious way forward, it’s a shortcut and the door opens from the other side or it’s a prop with no function at all. Except there is no text pan to tell these apart. Instead the game provides an immersive sensation of wandering around aimlessly. From this, parallels can be drawn to entire sections of the game – at times you can side-track to find extra supplies, and the other time you are supposed to side track, in order to turn a valve that clears an obstacle from the main road. The gnawing uncertainty soon sets in, since you could’ve missed an interactive key element at any point by simply not stepping off the beaten path.
Then there are smaller things, such as Gordon being permanently on skates. The movement in HL is mind-bogglingly fast, to the point where the character keeps some of the momentum even after the player takes their hands off the keyboard, creating a “sliding” effect. While such rapid movement is very useful in combat, the game also has arcade-like platformer sections, where sliding is no longer welcome. Finally, there is a matter of bugs. Admittedly, whether they appear or not is a game of chance but Half-Life can get wonky when played on modern hardware. And I definitely lost that game. Every Ichthyosaur was going through a roid-rage, moving at double the usual speed and clipping through the environment – to the point when during the final battle it “jumped” out of the water and got stuck on the jumping pad. During the fight with Gonarch, the boss couldn’t be asked to transition to the last arena so I could end the fight. I had to literally breach the floor myself by stacking the explosives. Those are just the “highlights” of my HL run but the bugs truly inflated the feeling of confusion. There was no way of telling if it was me doing something wrong or the game.
All in all, Half-life has to be taken with a grain of salt. It was a fun ride and when the game worked as intended, it has done so really well. The title is extremely playable for its venerable age. Half-Life may be at its core a simple story about the otherworldly invaders but it created a framework that allowed to implement all of the best qualities that FPS genre had to offer and more. Diverse cast of enemies, wide variety of weapons, visually distinct environments, all falling into one coherent whole. Valve even went a step further and had given many elements of the game’s convention a logical explanation from in-universe perspective. The enemies spawn out of nowhere – because of the resonance cascade. The supplies are lying around – because Black Mesa fulfilled military contracts and required armed personnel to man expeditions into another universe. The devil is in the details and Half-Life sure has those covered. The expedition to Xen makes for a tremendous final act and even the aged, edgy look does not make a dent in how strange and utterly alien it appears. I highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys the FPS genre. Half-Life is as forthcoming as a 20-year old game can possibly be and if you can’t stomach the game being a little rough around the edges, there is a Source port or modern reimaging in the form Black Mesa as perfect alternatives.
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675 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 17.04.20 03:10
I am writing this a few minutes after beating the game.
Even if i didn't have loyalty to valve, i would consider this a masterpiece.
The AI are surprisingly smart, and the level design is great. The puzzles are challenging yet not frustratingly un-obvious like some other games i have played.
The beginning levels are a bit claustrophobic but the later levels open up.
The ending left me very satisfied.
9/10.
Still amazing, even today.
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1202 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 11.05.20 17:36
To summarize, I really regret not playing Half-Life as a kid. Despite this probably giving me nightmares back then, it would generate lots of nice memories. Well, you can't always experience everything when you want to, at least i played it now and it was extremely fun.
Rating:
10/10 story-wise
7/10 gameplay-wise
6/10 graphics-wise (yeah its old but still you have to load every new little area you walk into which is like having enourmous stutters all the time)
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469 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 24.05.20 09:49
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271293 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 01.07.20 08:27
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2804 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 26.06.20 10:33
And used its SFX for videos which boomed to popularity last year. Glad to be one of those who wrote one of the best meme videos made.
Thank you, Valve!
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910 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 13.07.20 12:56
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1410 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 23.08.20 13:37
I write a Half-Life comic, see – a mightily expensive bit of fan-fiction (if this opens me up to charges of bias, I apologise; hopefully the game’s reputation can supersede them). So professionally it’s taken up a lot of my imaginative space for the past five years, a period of time in which, for most other people, Half-Life was more or less dead. Almost everything I’ve had to say has been poured into that comic and there’s still a few years left on it. Perhaps even another five. I’m conscious of wearing myself out.
At the same time, it’s important to stay rooted in Half-Life so I don’t risk straying too far from the franchise that kick-started the whole endeavour.
And so roughly every couple of years I revisit the series to check in with the characters and world. It runs the risk of tedium, but luckily for me Half-Life is still as playable and entertaining as ever.
[h1]DOCTOR FREEMAN THE PRUH-FESH-UH-NL[/h1]
A watershed moment for the first-person shooter, Half-Life would instil in Valve the belief that in order for the series to go forward, it would consistently need to reach the heights of the game that started it all. A tall order, but one they have proven time and again they’re capable of meeting.
Revisiting it last week, I was reminded of how I experienced Half-Life as a 10-year-old (11?) kid. I was so enthralled with the prospect of being hapless theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman that I’d effectively role-play specific sequences. It was a way of corralling the narrative to fit my desires – a testament to the relative elasticity of Valve’s design, the potency of the game’s immersive setting, and, clearly, an early warning sign as to my latent obsessive tendencies.
When the tram came to a stop outside the Anomalous Materials lab where Freeman works, I’d keep shift pressed down from the moment the door opened to the eventual test chamber disaster. I knew Freeman was late, but I didn’t imagine him running through the steel corridors like a madman; I wanted him to be a professional. (Now I crouch-jump through the lab and hop on tables when characters are speaking, studiously turning my back on them.)
And when a certain crucial decision had to be made, I’d walk Doctor Freeman to the end of the tram to gaze into the colourless void in mock contemplation. (Now I make my choice the moment it’s available for me to do so, checking off another completed playthrough.)
I had more time, then. Now I’ve got other, more adult things to be getting on with.
Like writing comic-books based on video-games.
[h1]LEGACY[/h1]
Valve’s achievement was, and remains, monumental. With its tale of science-gone-awry unleashing interdimensional chaos on a top secret facility, there was nothing unique in and of itself about Half-Life's story. But in terms of the way that story was told, in immersing players in its smartly realised setting and placing them at the heart of the unfolding drama, they created something unforgettable.
Its story was a simple one, but it changed the way developers approached how they thought about storytelling – especially in the domain of the first-person shooter.
It changed the way I thought about them, too.
The moment you push the crystal into the beam and split the world, I get chills. As arcs of green energy lash angrily across the chamber and glittering particles of light materialise above, drawn to the crystal like a moth to the flame, I am reminded of what it was like to experience Half-Life for the very first time. And in doing so, I am reminded of how what came next shaped who I am today.
I didn’t know it when I was a kid, but Gordon Freeman’s mishap would resonate far beyond Black Mesa, rippling through time and space and giving birth to a cast of characters I’ve been proud to spend a good chunk of my adult life with.
It’s impossible to experience Half-Life without them. I’m grateful for that.
And here I am now, nearly 800 words in, having only planned to write a short piece about how Half-Life still holds up today. But you’ve read enough about that. You already know that. The Resonance Cascade left a sizeable dent, impossible to ignore, secure in its legacy – an inflection point, from Freeman’s dim prospects as a theoretical physicist to the very shape of the first-person shooter. And to my professional life as a writer.
Twenty years later, and apparently I still have plenty to say about bloody Half-Life. I don't know whether or not I should be embarrassed about that, but at least the 11-year-old (10?) me would've been happy.
In a way, I'm still pressing down shift.
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154 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 12.09.20 13:34
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351 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 04.10.20 16:31
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801 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 06.10.20 04:50
I AM SHOCKED that this game came out in 1998, this game has so much depth, lore, and I can see why it has such a huge following. I imagine this game was a leading force in gaming in general, I can't even think of a game that would've been this good out in 1998, amazing amazing amazing. I'll be playing the rest now.
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941 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 06.11.20 19:33
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810 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 10.12.20 18:57
in the end i highly recommend this game because of the story and the creativity that represents valve to its bone.
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1127 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 18.12.20 23:07
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1849 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 07.01.21 21:43
This game is the 1998 game, but it is way ahead of its game time.Don't take it lightly for the 1998 game.Because its game has a good story,good chracter and weapons.The story of the game is already incredibly good.Doesn't have a monotonous gameplay.It doesn't have extremely good graphics, but it has an artificial intelligence that puts a stone in today's games.Weapons incredibly diverse by year.It never bores.
Graphics:8/10
Gameplay:9,5/10
Story:10/10
Characters design:9,75/10
If you haven't played this game you must forget all the games
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Steam
Release:31.10.1998
Genre:Ego-Shooter
Entwickler:Valve Cooperation
Publisher:keine Infos
Engine:keine Infos
Franchise:keine Infos
Einzelspieler
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