The Escapist Game Circle: Half-Life

Since this holiday season has been all about The Orange Box so far, we thought we'd go back in time this month to take a look at the original Half-Life, the game that practically reinvented the shooter genre.

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I actually played Half-Life AFTER Half-Life 2...disproving any accusations that I only liked Half-Life 2 because of the original.

Correcting the linked article though, yes, Source's physics start with Havok. They then tear out about 95% of the code and rewrite it to be more efficient and believable. You want Havok, play Doom 3.

If it was HL2, then I'd take part in the community playthrough side, but I tried HL:Source not too long ago, when I got the Holiday Collection of HL2, and found it an exercise in frustration, even on Easy. Now part of that is me not being an FPS fan normally, but I love HL2 so far. I suppose it's partly the lack of the 'generic rat in a maze' feel that HL gave me (sorry, but I'm not a fan of the silent/faceless protagonist concept) and partly because the jumping puzzles were greatly reduced and tightened, plus the Gravity Gun being useful as a holdout instead of the crowbar being your only resort when ammo ran out.

I appreciate the move towards realistic level design and integrated plot that HL made, I just think it's more of an intermediate stage than most.

Katana314, I did the same thing. My first taste of HL2 came through a *borrowed* copy, but after that, I was hooked. When Ep1 came out, I bought the complete Valve pack off of Steam, ripped through Half Life, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift, enjoying them all immensely. This could be fun to play through again. (If only I could ever finish Deus Ex!)

I tried to play Half-Life: Source at some point, but eventually got to Half-Life 2 first. Maybe I had my screen resolution turned up too high or something. No other video game has ever given me motion sickness, but somehow that one did. Maybe I was sick at the time?

Anyway, I should have time to give this a go come December, so maybe I'll blaze through it real fast then.

I remember first playing half-life in 1999, but I didn't buy it until late 2001. I loved that game, it was my second first-person shooter, and it was better than anything I had ever played. My friend owned a copy of Blue Shift, which gave me so much enjoyment with the higher resolution models, as well as Opposing Force.

Then I found Team Fortress Classic bundled with my "Game of the Year" copy, which became an addiction I still haven't gotten over.

Am I the only person uninterested in playing the third gamecircle FPS in a row?? (deus ex so counts)

Makes me wonder how many of the escapist employees are secretly x-bots underneath their sophisticated exteriors....... :P

I really like how the jumping puzzles which use to scare me I now run past without even pausing. Way to much Quake 3 to get tripped up by a few jumps.

Katana314; why would you look at DOOM 3? id Software wrote the physics engine for it. and i would call your statement that Valve rewrote 95% of the physics engine, given it behaves remarkably like other games using Havok and it would be a huge waste of money to lisence something just to go and rewrite 95% of it . . .

I'm moving house at the moment so won't be digging out my copy of Half-life. ^_^

Yay, I think that I can do this one.

My shameful gaming secret: I never finished Half-Life.

It's probably because I tried to play it after Half-Life 2, which I think improves on it's predecessor in every way.

OK, perhaps a better example would be Oblivion. And don't deny Wikipedia's claims that they use it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_%28software%29

http://3dgpu.com/archives/2004/12/06/3dgpu-review-half-life-2/
Take a look at that article, and skip down to Havok mentions.

Now compare these videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPjSjTwu6vk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h34xgynBpL8

I'd love to participate in this thread just to rag on the game, but I couldn't make myself finish the thing in 2000, so no way it's going to happen with seven years of better games I could be playing instead.
Wish I'd been around for the Deus Ex month, though.

I would like to partake in this. I would. But it's November of 2007, and that's the worst possible time you could tell me to go back and play a game I have only experienced on PS2 and never beaten and would love to nab for PC. I have Guitar Hero 3, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed, Mario Galaxy and BWii to collect (two out of five taken care of), not to mention GameFlying Blacksite: Area 51, Trauma Center: New Blood, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and I think a couple more.

Seriously not the month...

What, nobody's going to talk about the game? Okay, let's try this, then.

Somebody, justify Half-Life's status as a "classic" to me. I've tried to play the damn thing three times, and as far as I can tell it's a mediocre FPS with really good graphics for the time but terrible enemy balance, boring as hell level design, too many soupcan puzzles, and an innovative mode of storytelling that nevertheless hurts the experience as much as it helps (oh, whoops, I wasn't looking at that generic scientist when he gave me a new mission objective, since there was no warning that he would say anything but the usual spiel, so I couldn't hear a thing he said. Guess I'm in the dark for the rest of the level!). Anybody care to argue the point?

In some ways I'd actually agree. I guess you had to have played the video games of the time to understand. The idea of never leaving first-person, and all the conversations just being from your view, was pretty new.

Oh, I said it was innovative, just not fun. And my first stab at the game was in 2000, making it the first modern FPS I played (I bought it and Deus Ex as soon as I got a gaming-quality computer, and played DX second), so if anything the all-first-person thing was more novel to me than most gamers. It just didn't work very well.

Firstly if you are going to play the game, play Halflife, not halflife:Source as that was more a porting exercise by Valve (between engines) rather than a proper updated version of the game. Yes by todays standards the game does look awful and the AI does seem quaint, but at the time (almost 10 years ago now) there was nothing out there that remotely resembled it, and it's impact upon all subsequent FPS game design since cannot be understated. This was the first FPS game where in the opposition actually possessed some tactical AI and wouldn't just run at you with no regard for self preservation like so many doom clones before it, after Valve delivered it other developers followed suit. That it put you wholly within the game world rather than resorting to cut scenes was also an eye opener at the time and made for a more visceral experience.

I'm also a little disappointed too its the 3rd FPS in a row, ce la vie! It's a good game regardless.

In any case, Half Life was a good FPS - the demo drew me in to start with before I brought it in the store (when it was bundled with CS by that point I recall, I can't remember why I didn't get it earlier, but I was young at the time), anyone remember? Yep, you got an entire *not in the game* set of level*s* which even included the Hazard Course too, and demonstrated soldiers, and aliens, and a ton of typical gameplay.

It was, in a word, compact awesome. I wish more of the game was like it actually. The soldiers were good simply because they were so fun to battle - they shouted, threw grenades, ran around, took cover, fled, which made it pretty difficult to deal with some of them.

One problem was the horrible zen bits - all the last 1/4th to 1/3rd of the game was jumping around in low gravity, barely fighting (and if you were, it'd be against horrible flying "orange thing throwing" things which were impossible to hit. Say goodbye ammo!) and the last boss was a disappointment (more jumping! bah, use a rocket instead). Jump puzzles didn't fit the game very well, Black Mesa was a lot more interesting to look at too (contrasting alien and soldiers in the clean labs and so on).

But, the main things about the game which were excellently done were the intro (playing a FPS, you normally are thrown into kill something ASAP! and it builds a lot of tension) the Hazard Course (good, useful, training, and entirely optional), having guard allies (not too useful, but fun banter with them so I kept them alive), and difficult opponents (assassins; you crazy invisible bitches!)

It was entirely railroaded but kept giving unique areas to explore and the tram levels I found quite fun, although very stop-start.

You had to be an FPS player to get through it (especially the last 1/4th to 1/3rd with the flying things) and that was a problem for general players. The story was simple enough that a few lines explained a lot since it was a confined world - the mysterious G-Man was everywhere, unexplained (and still, currently, unexplained, grrrr) which added a good twist, as with fighting soldiers because they were there to "clean up the mess", that you, the protagonist, supposedly caused, and finding yourself defeating aliens is all very odd, but makes sense within the story confines.

Opposing Force built on the game casting you as a soldier - I liked some of the weapons and set pieces in that too, and the soldier allies were fun to keep around as well (and you fought aliens which were basically soldiers too, which was quite exciting), and the last boss was a lot better then HL's. Boot camp was also good - you got shouted at so much :D

Blue Shift was okay, if short, and had some pretty funny bits in it.

Can I also note that TFC was the most fun I had for hours at the time, and much after, the game was released? :)

I played through Half-life a few years after it came out and frankly it bored the hell out of me. It had some interesting points and the story kicked off well but after that I might as well have been playing any other shooter. People talk about the depth of story but the FPS genre as a whole suffers from being a very poor platform to launch a story and the more highly acclaimed something is by its fans the more focused the microscope hovering above it becomes. At this point I think we all noticed how unremarkable the game was and how the engine could be put to much better use in other pursuits and the mod market boomed. As a result we have people playing counter-strike ten years down the road, in spite of people using hacks and most matches being decided based on who can most accurately click the mouse on the exposed head of a passing enemy while they crouch in the shadows. I think I lost interest about the time I realized I couldn't walk down ramps because someone waiting at the other end of it would end my game by putting a single bullet through my foot with the AWP.

I dabbled in TFC but after playing Counter-strike it felt too loose and unstructured, it wasn't until I got around to playing Unreal Tournament that I came to accept objective oriented gametypes like CTF and so on, having been brought up on pure singleplayer/team deathmatch variants.
The game and its mods didn't age well for me and the fact that there are people in the world who actually win money by playing counterstrike makes me a little sad. The fact is that Half-life and its bevy of gameplay mods didn't age well, though for some reason this only boosted its popularity by making it accessible to people who didn't want to upgrade their PC in order to play something that looks good. I don't want to upgrade my PC every six months, so I've moved to consoles and never looked back. The only game installed on this thing right now is Galactic Civilizations, my one dark, guilty throwback to the platform that served me so well not only as a comfort for but also leading contributor to my socially awkward teenage years.

I've yet to play Half Life. To be honest, probably never will. But I got the Orange Box (mostly for TF2)(Actually, entirely for TF2) and I've been playing Half Life 2 off an on. Let me say this:

It bores the crap out of me.

I don't know, maybe it was a "right time, right place" kind of game, that needed to be played during its release, maybe a year or so after, and never again. At any rate, it's just boring. I try really, really hard to like it, but at this point I'm just grinding through the game just so that I can tell hardcore gamers I beat it. I mean, who hasn't?...? I just don't see the appeal. Prime levels that pissed me off-

The boat level. WTF was that about? You drove that damn boat for near half the game, and its just DUMB. Without a doubt the worst part of the game.

The Sand Trap(?) level, where you just run across the sand and avoid the Ant Lions. Whats that? Your supposed to jump on strategically placed boards and rocks and boxes, as to not call Ant Lion wrath down upon you? Eh, why bother. I played along with that mindset for a while, then I realized they where easy as hell to kill and just ran across the sand. At one point there where like 4 seesaw puzzles, and bunch of buildings to hop on, a stranded boat. I just ran across the sand past them all. It was at this point that I realized I hated the game. Nearly any other FPS I would have explored the boat, the buildings, or would have HAD to do the seesaw puzzles to survive. Not this game, though.

Maybe I'm alone, and maybe I shouldn't be ranting about HL2 in a HL topic. Sorry, but I needed to put this out there. HL2 is boring, its that simple.

Ranzel; interestingly, you hate the game because you didn't explore the potential side bits? The stuff with the ant lions, usually all the houses and stuff just have boxes in to stock up on.

Some simply don't like the FPS genre - Kermi and Ranzel; it'd have been more interesting reading your rants on the game if you put forward good alternatives, ways to improve it, or anything else.

I dislike other games (for instance, don't get me started on JRPG's like Final Fantasy!) but it's a bit better to say not just that you hated it, but perhaps what you would have liked instead.

Andrew Armstrong:
Ranzel; interestingly, you hate the game because you didn't explore the potential side bits? The stuff with the ant lions, usually all the houses and stuff just have boxes in to stock up on.

Some simply don't like the FPS genre - Kermi and Ranzel; it'd have been more interesting reading your rants on the game if you put forward good alternatives, ways to improve it, or anything else.

I dislike other games (for instance, don't get me started on JRPG's like Final Fantasy!) but it's a bit better to say not just that you hated it, but perhaps what you would have liked instead.

I hate the game because there was no INITIATIVE to explore the side bits. I didn't explore them for exactly the reason you said- I KNEW all that was going to be in the homes where ammo and boxes. No game should be that predictable.

What would I have liked instead? Its hard to say, because I think any game that bores you= a complete failure, and in that case I think near everything needed to be changed. This leads me back to the idea that maybe if I had been a huge FPS fan when it came out, and had been able to compare it to worse titles, I'd like it. At this date and time, its just not fun.

I much preferred Half-Life 2 to Half-Life though at it's release it was an epic. I especially like the Co-op, and the whole interactivity of Black Mesa. Repeatedly messing with a microwave and causing it to explode casserole may not sound like much, but back then it made all the difference. It was one of the first games that actually integrated you with the world.
But I digress. I'll never finish Half-Life. I just don't like the whole feeling of being trapped in Black Mesa and all the puzzles. Half-Life 2 was a much nicer mix. Bah, maybe some day...

And Ranzel, I don't see why you hate Water Hazard. It was probably the best segment of the game, perhaps beaten by Ravenholm. But no other part ever set the pace or kept the action flowing as well as Water Hazard did. And yes, you can run across the sand in Sandtraps. The point of using the objects is so you don't waste ammo and health, AND you have more fun doing it. Can you honestly say you enjoyed running across the map instead of strategically jumping?
Half-Life 2's combat, i'd say, is it's weakest link. But it keeps the game flowing so well that you move almost instinctively, rather than your usual waiting-20-minutes-to-find-exit so common in games.

I have played through both games several times. Those who have said flat out the game is boring, well I sat flat out, you are wrong. First off there is a LOT more to the first game then the fact that it kept you in 1st person that made it innovative. The enemy AI is a big one, as Andrew noted. It was also the first FPS to put you in a real world setting with believable graphics and enemies It was also the first game to give you a continuous experience, where you could throw grenades through 'levels' and such. As a whole they kept things fresh and interesting through the whole game.

As for fun, well, enjoy what you will if you really hated it nothing anyone can say will change that. Don't slam the graphics, they were SOTA when the game came out. You are playing a 7 year old game, I think we can all agree you can't compare them to current standards. But what about it makes it boring? As I still think they stand two of the best FPSs ever made I am really interested in what you think was missing from them, and why you didn't enjoy them. Also, Knight.. I don't recall any point in the game where an objective giving NPC dies. If anything I would occasionally get annoyed that the scientists wouldn't shut up about my objective and just let me get to it. I'm not sure what you mean by 'soupcan puzzles.' I'll take it in context to mean generic. But many of those puzzle types became clichés because of that game. And others, well, Valve was new to the party and you can't blame them for sticking to some conventions that literally EVERY other company was doing.

Half-Life changed how I thought about games. It was the first game to ever really scare me as I played. Not just shock scares, like the occasional head crab, but really make me worried about dying despite the accessibility of the quick save/load. I set permanent save spots at major marine fights just so I could go back and replay them.

And yes, I agree the boat level in HL2 goes on way too long (it is not actually half or ¼ of the game, it just feels like it) it is pretty universally disliked because it long overstays it's welcome.

Since this is this month's game circle, can we just say that when you go to Zen the game is over? That is how I like to think of it.. go to Zen, Gman inducts you into the secret alien defense league, roll credits. It makes me a lot happier to pretend that the Zen level, the Matrix sequels, Highlander 2, and Alien 3 never happened.

Also, Knight.. I don't recall any point in the game where an objective giving NPC dies.

He didn't die, he just gave the objective while I wasn't paying attention (there were something like half a dozen scientists in that area, and I'd gotten used to tuning out their lines), and by the time I realized he was saying something other than the usual filler conversation he'd finished and wouldn't repeat the objective.

"Soupcan puzzles" means puzzles that have no point or purpose in the game world other than to make the player work harder to finish the level.

As for what was missing, first of all, balanced enemies. Human AI is good (Although, speaking of that demo, did you ever try running into the human-alien battle? Both sides immediately join forces to attack you.), aliens that teleport next to you without warning and cause damage merely by being nearby are not. Headcrabs are a colossal pain in the ass and roughly as scary as hangnails. Level design railroaded you without actually providing clear directions, combining the lack of options of on-rails levels with the "where am I supposed to go NOW?" annoyance that open-ended gameplay is prone to. Not a scintillating combination. The running/jumping puzzles are just bad. Also, much as you and I might wish otherwise, Zen exists.

If your not going to listen to the narrative as it's delivered to you in game, you might as well not bother playing in the first place tbh. The point of the game is it requires you to pay attention to what's going on, and what people say to you, and that way you understand what exactly is occurring at Black Mesa, and are fully immersed in the experience. This approach hadn't been tried before, narrative was normally delivered through cut scenes, FMV sequences or immersion breaking dialog choices. The idea of having your cinematic's in game was a revelation.

As a game for it's time it wasn't perfect (jumping in Zen was very much trial & error), but it was leaps and bounds above the competition, and genuinely raised the bar in terms of game player expectations from other developers afterwards (I'd put System Shock 2, Deus Ex & Thief in the same category as well). Because it has had such a resounding influence in the FPS genre, time hasn't been good to it in many ways as so many developers have built upon its lessons so comprehensively, it's hard to see the wood for the trees. Certainly it's one of those games that I think is really worth a complete graphical/gameplay reimagining, in the same way that Tomb Raider anniversary rejuvenated the original Tomb Raider. The Black Mesa Mod (http://www.blackmesasource.com/) looks to be quite promising, but as to when it might see the light of day..who knows.

Also I think people need to stick on topic and not drag the thread off into discussing the Pros & cons of the sequel.

Andrew Armstrong:
Some simply don't like the FPS genre - Kermi and Ranzel; it'd have been more interesting reading your rants on the game if you put forward good alternatives, ways to improve it, or anything else.

Half-life simply felt like a pointless grind. I've played many worse FPS', and as far as design in and of itself goes Half-life has few faults. But I've played far more enjoyable FPS games as well.
Now maybe it's supposed to feel like a confusing, desperate situation where a clueless reluctant hero has to battle his way to freedom with whatever tools are at hand. I can get that.
But it doesn't make the game enjoyable. It's in fact reminiscient of when I was forced to read The Year of Living Dangerously in high school. After setting us the task of reading the first few chapters over the weekend, my English teacher cunningly explained on Monday morning that it was supposed to be a difficult bordering or unbearably boring read. you were supposed to subconciously empathise with the protagonist and feel constantly restless and uncomfortable.
This did not make the book enjoyable. It's an interesting but seldom effective narrative construct, and in both these cases I simply didn't appreciate it.

Maybe that's my problem. When I play a game I want to be engaged and entertained. Not beat a path through needlessly convoluted obstacles and be led vaguely towards my next subobjective that has little apparent impact on my overall objective of getting the hell out of there. In the end, my preferred method of escaping Black Mesa was exiting the game and doing something else.

I don't know how to explain what I would have preferred to see from Half-life without changing some basic characteristics that apparently contributed to Half-life's success. I can only list games I had a much better time playing, and hope that aspects of these games that made them poor games to other people are not collated and presented in some attempt to discredit my opinion, as though me preferring them to Half-life is some personal affront to every person who installed the game and completed it with a sense of satisfaction. So here goes in no particular order. For the purpose of this list I will only list games that had some sort of narrative driving them as opposed to games that rely solely on the principle of "kill things to continue to the next level" (e.g.: Unreal Tournament, Quake 3)

- System Shock 1 and 2
- Deus Ex
- Halo 1 and 3
- Duke Nukem 3D

Oh yes. The Duke, in all his cheesy action hero trash talking, womanising, take a steaming dump in the recently excavated cranial cavity of your enemy glory.
You'll notice I also included some Halo games in there. I hope this apparent example of intellectual impairment doesn't exclude me from this discussion.

I haven't seen anybody bring up the storyline that is embedded within Half-life 1, which is one of the greatest things about that game. It was built with a fantastic engine, using top of the line AI (for its time), and it still managed to have a fantastic back story to it. I'll even use the word "deep", in this situation.

I also hear people using the word soupcan puzzle to describe this game. I've played through Half-life 5 times now, from start to finish on Easy, Medium, and Hard and I can't really say I know of any soupcan puzzles in that game. Hmm, there's the part where you have to move a box over 3 feet to get into the rafters, but that's definitely not soupcan, nor is it difficult in any shape or form. There's the part where you have to navigate through some conveyor belts, but all you have to do is look ahead a little bit and you'll see its not much of a puzzle. Zen might be considered a puzzle, but then I guess so would Mario? I don't know. I wonder if I played the same game as some of you. The "puzzles" in Half-life were not difficult to figure out, at all. I actually thought they integrated quite well with the game, and always had something to do with the story.

Merry Christmas everyone. It looks like we didn't get a game circle game for December, but to be frank, it's not like we were short on games to play. My "to play" list is still huge, and will take me months to get through.

Still, I hope we resume the game circle discussions come January. Hopefully, though, we can get back to the origional point of playing under-appreciated games. Halo and Half-life, though worthy of discussion, are well recognized titles.

Also, a non-FPS seems to be in order.