As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

[Half-Life] End of an Era

2456764

Posts

  • milk ducksmilk ducks High Mucky Muck Big Tits TownRegistered User regular
    chiasaur11 wrote: »
    milk ducks wrote: »
    I think one of the things I remember most about the original Half-Life was that it was the first time I experienced a game where enemies reacted to what I was doing. I remember getting to the surface, being attacked by enemy soldiers, and retreating into a tight alley so they'd have to come at me one at a time. Tactics like that worked in all the games I'd played up until that point, but not in Half-Life. I basically lost my shit when someone chucked a grenade in, rather than charging in with his buddies all single-file.

    I mean, that was the first time in a game where an enemy flushed me out of cover with a grenade. It doesn't seem all that ground-breaking now, because I think that's pretty standard, at this point. But back then? Man, that was crazy.

    Have you ever played Minerva?

    It's got the core Half Life 2 AI, but it can show off better than before.

    Things it's been documented doing:

    Forming search teams to flush out the player
    Running back to cover to find a better gun
    COUNTING YOUR BULLETS and GUESSING when you'd reload.

    Again, guessing. It's amazing.

    That's ... pretty awesome.

  • MongerMonger I got the ham stink. Dallas, TXRegistered User regular
    Third: haven't watched the video yet, but if his criticism is "the game is super linear/on rails" then I don't really see the point. It's like, yeah, nice job, you realized that the game is linear. If you don't like that sort of thing then that's okay, but it's not inherently a failing for a game to be linear. Games are an interactive medium in a lot of ways, but they always have to hold some stuff fixed, and Half-Life decides to be interactive at the level of combat, not at the level of traversing an environment. I'll shut up now since I haven't watched the video.
    The linearity criticism bugs the shit out of me. I mean, sure, it's cool if you don't like to play linear games. That's fair. But it's not necessarily a problem with the game. Half-Life 1 is a game about being a rat in a maze. Half-Life 2 is a game about being a dog on a leash. It sort of has to be linear for thematic reasons. It's the point, and it makes that point in a lot of ways, linearity among them.
    milk ducks wrote: »
    chiasaur11 wrote: »
    milk ducks wrote: »
    I think one of the things I remember most about the original Half-Life was that it was the first time I experienced a game where enemies reacted to what I was doing. I remember getting to the surface, being attacked by enemy soldiers, and retreating into a tight alley so they'd have to come at me one at a time. Tactics like that worked in all the games I'd played up until that point, but not in Half-Life. I basically lost my shit when someone chucked a grenade in, rather than charging in with his buddies all single-file.

    I mean, that was the first time in a game where an enemy flushed me out of cover with a grenade. It doesn't seem all that ground-breaking now, because I think that's pretty standard, at this point. But back then? Man, that was crazy.

    Have you ever played Minerva?

    It's got the core Half Life 2 AI, but it can show off better than before.

    Things it's been documented doing:

    Forming search teams to flush out the player
    Running back to cover to find a better gun
    COUNTING YOUR BULLETS and GUESSING when you'd reload.

    Again, guessing. It's amazing.

    That's ... pretty awesome.
    Most people don't give HL2's AI the proper credit for how complex it is. The actual game places a lot of artificial restrictions on the AI to make Gordon more of a wrecking ball, for reasons of both pacing and narrative. They frequently stop and stand still in the open specifically so that it's easier to hit them with objects with the gravity gun and such. MINERVA simply removes a lot of those limits and puts enemies in environments that compliment their behavior.

  • CanadianWolverineCanadianWolverine Registered User regular
    Portal kinda counts.

    It has the barest of bare connections to the story of Half-Life. While great games, as a fan who wants some resolution to the Combine conflict and Gordon's fate, it's sort of irritating to hear people claim Portal is a legitimate substitution.

    I get what you're trying to say, but it's no substitute for Half-Life 3. That's totally on Valve.

    I still haven't bought Portal 2 because it was just that much of a disappointment for me to not hear the words "And the game we were keeping a lid on announcing till now was ... Half-Life 2: Episode 3!"

    I know, I am silly but yet every time Portal 2 comes up on a sale, I just hang my head in dismay.

    steam_sig.png
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    If you liked Portal 1, you should really get Portal 2. Especially if you have someone to play through the game with.

  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    Portal kinda counts.

    It has the barest of bare connections to the story of Half-Life. While great games, as a fan who wants some resolution to the Combine conflict and Gordon's fate, it's sort of irritating to hear people claim Portal is a legitimate substitution.

    I get what you're trying to say, but it's no substitute for Half-Life 3. That's totally on Valve.

    I still haven't bought Portal 2 because it was just that much of a disappointment for me to not hear the words "And the game we were keeping a lid on announcing till now was ... Half-Life 2: Episode 3!"

    I know, I am silly but yet every time Portal 2 comes up on a sale, I just hang my head in dismay.

    Yeah, I second Monger. I was just as disappointed that the announcement wasn't Half Life 2: Episode 3 as anyone else but Portal 2 is still a fantastic fucking game that really shouldn't be missed.

    Though I agree that every time Valve announces something or there's an ARG or whatever I hope and pray that it's an announcement for HL2:Ep3 and when it isn't I get angry and disappointed and WHY ISN'T IT DONE VALVE, YOU FUCKERS? Then I calm down and look at whatever it is and decide if it's something I should be excited about (in Portal 2's case it certainly was)

    JtgVX0H.png
  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    The issue is not whether Portal 2 is a good game, it is.

    It is NOT a Half-Life game, and a few tongue-and-cheek easter eggs do not make it so.

    That was my only point.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    The issue is not whether Portal 2 is a good game, it is.

    It is NOT a Half-Life game, and a few tongue-and-cheek easter eggs do not make it so.

    That was my only point.

    I don't think anyone was disputing that; we just moved onto a new discusion about the quality of Portal 2.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    I like the space sphere best.

  • anoffdayanoffday To be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it. Registered User regular
    I remember playing HL back in Jr. High when my friend got it and we crowded around his parent's computer. I still play it a lot too and because of your thread I totally want to replay it again.

    Steam: offday
  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    I still demand resolution on what happened to Adrian Shepard. That's right Valve, I am not letting you off the hook. Ever.

  • CanadianWolverineCanadianWolverine Registered User regular
    I still demand resolution on what happened to Adrian Shepard. That's right Valve, I am not letting you off the hook. Ever.

    Thank goodness I am not the only one, I kept hoping he would show up in one of the episodes. Along with various creatures from Half-Life.

    steam_sig.png
  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    Isn't he non canon?

    I seem to recall one of the spinoffs isn't canon, and since Barney Calhoun was very much a guy in HL2 and Episode 1, I'm guessing Blue Shift was the legit one? ;D

    Also! I want more Barney. Something about the guy, he's so likeable. I had a creeping dread he was gonna appear in a heroic Whedonesque sacrificial death in Episode 2 but instead he just wasn't there.

    Oh brilliant
  • subediisubedii Registered User regular
    Grief, even Yahtzee's on a Half-Life kick at the moment:

    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6126-Half-Life

  • VariableVariable Mouth Congress Stroke Me Lady FameRegistered User regular
    I really liked the OP. I played half life in 2000 I think and it was one of my first PC games. I loved it to death. OP was well written and helped me remember why!

    nice thread. half life can never be too appreciated.

    BNet-Vari#1998 | Switch-SW 6960 6688 8388 | Steam | Twitch
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    subedii wrote: »
    Grief, even Yahtzee's on a Half-Life kick at the moment:

    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6126-Half-Life

    Serendipitous timing, though I think we're all getting pretty antsy for some news. It's been almost five years since Episode 2. We didn't even have to wait that long for news of Half-Life 2!

    As for the canonicity of the Gearbox content; it basically isn't canon at all.. Now Valve isn't going to outright disown the events, but if they're not going to go out of their way to make sure their current products don't contradict the games.

    The only exception is the destruction of Black Mesa via the nuclear blast, as Valve wanted that put into the game so they wouldn't be tempted to make a Half-Life sequel that's just returning to Black Mesa. (Though it'd be pretty cool if in Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 you were briefly sent to the ruins for a chapter.)

    Though, IIRC, Gabe has stated Valve likes the Adrian Shepherd character and wouldn't be opposed to bringing him back if they found the right venue. Back in ye olden days of 2004, I thought might have been an interesting story to have the Gman pull Adrian out of statis to deal with a problem that cropped up while Gordon was in the middle of his Freedom Fighter stuff. (Maybe Race-X return and are poised to strike when the Combine are defeated, or something.) To infilitrate Shephard into the world, and to retain the "opposing force" moniker, he puts him on a train to Nova Prospekt and Shepherd gets the full transhuman treatment; but with the Gman's interference allowing him to retain his free will.

  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    Years ago, I emailed Marc Laidlaw to ask, rather than how much of OpFor is "canon" since they make that up as they go along, but how much of the game Laidlaw actually wrote. He told me that he wrote all of the Gman's lines for that game. Worth knowing, I thought.

    I actually am told all the time now that HL1 wasn't "that great a game" by otherwise sensible people. Most of them didn't play it at the time, and I think like someone else said, it's pretty hard for most people going back to it now to understand what made it so amazing. One thing I tell people to try to point this out is that HL1 was probably the first game I played where the weapons you'd find in the environment weren't floating and spinning in midair. Or how you run from one end of the game to the other without being mysteriously moved to a new location by a loading screen. People forget this shit.

  • MongerMonger I got the ham stink. Dallas, TXRegistered User regular
  • chiasaur11chiasaur11 Never doubt a raccoon. Do you think it's trademarked?Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    I love pet theories ... which reminds me, why is fan fiction a bad thing? It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it were to be discovered various authors have had a go at fan fiction at some point, whatever gets the creative juices flowing. Alpha version writing if you will.

    I used to have a ton of Half-Life setting theories, especially in regards to G-Man, but I don't recall the details anymore.

    I know the current (really good, swear on a stack of bibles) Transformers run's writer wrote a novel length fanfic a decade or so before he actually got a paying gig at it. Legion of Superheroes volume 4 had a similar thing.

    Fanfic's got an even higher ratio of shit then normal writing, but it's good exercise, and sometimes, well...
    milk ducks wrote: »
    chiasaur11 wrote: »
    milk ducks wrote: »
    I think one of the things I remember most about the original Half-Life was that it was the first time I experienced a game where enemies reacted to what I was doing. I remember getting to the surface, being attacked by enemy soldiers, and retreating into a tight alley so they'd have to come at me one at a time. Tactics like that worked in all the games I'd played up until that point, but not in Half-Life. I basically lost my shit when someone chucked a grenade in, rather than charging in with his buddies all single-file.

    I mean, that was the first time in a game where an enemy flushed me out of cover with a grenade. It doesn't seem all that ground-breaking now, because I think that's pretty standard, at this point. But back then? Man, that was crazy.

    Have you ever played Minerva?

    It's got the core Half Life 2 AI, but it can show off better than before.

    Things it's been documented doing:

    Forming search teams to flush out the player
    Running back to cover to find a better gun
    COUNTING YOUR BULLETS and GUESSING when you'd reload.

    Again, guessing. It's amazing.

    That's ... pretty awesome.

    I know.

    Had an overwatch soldier duck into a house as I was shooting him. I was down to a tiny part of my magazine and almost reloaded. Didn't.

    Good thing, since right when I'd be in the middle of the animation, he popped out ready to kill me.

    chiasaur11 on
  • OrogogusOrogogus San DiegoRegistered User regular
    LaCabra wrote: »
    Years ago, I emailed Marc Laidlaw to ask, rather than how much of OpFor is "canon" since they make that up as they go along, but how much of the game Laidlaw actually wrote. He told me that he wrote all of the Gman's lines for that game. Worth knowing, I thought.

    I actually am told all the time now that HL1 wasn't "that great a game" by otherwise sensible people. Most of them didn't play it at the time, and I think like someone else said, it's pretty hard for most people going back to it now to understand what made it so amazing. One thing I tell people to try to point this out is that HL1 was probably the first game I played where the weapons you'd find in the environment weren't floating and spinning in midair. Or how you run from one end of the game to the other without being mysteriously moved to a new location by a loading screen. People forget this shit.

    System Shock was contemporary with DOOM, 4 years before Half Life, and Ultima Underworld with Wolfenstein, and both SS and UU had what you described (although there were loading elevators), so there's that.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Finally got to watch that Yahtzee review and now I'm kinda pissed because it made all the work I put into my OP a little superfluous. Ah well.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    I liked it because it presented an honest, alternate interpretation of the Marine mooks you mow down in the first game.

    From Gordon's perspective, they're a bunch of masked killers whose idea of containment is to kill everyone and everything on sight.

    From their perspective, they're trying to contain an alien invasion of horrible magnitude, and the scientists types are the selfish idiots who opened Pandora's box.

    It's not exceptionally deep, but it is worth noting.

  • MetatradMetatrad Registered User regular
    LOL, I just remembered the reason it took me so long to finish HL1 after I bought my first copy in late '99. Back then my grandma's house had the sickest computer, so I played it there. For some stupid reason I left the disc on the computer room couch amongst some papers/manuals, and it promptly got sat on by grandpa, haha. Oh man, that was rough.

    It wasn't til I got a better computer at home in fall 2000 or early 2001 (It could run Quake 3 engine games!!!) that I bought another copy, in the bundle with Counter-Strike, and I finally got to finish the amazingness.

    At the time, HL1 definitely had some of the sickest action setpieces in gaming. Only Metal Gear Solid compared. I don't think anyone who played it back in the day will ever forget taking out the helicopter on the cliffs. That part, getting taken out by the black ops, and fighting amongst the tanks and getting bombed by the military are burned in my mind. The gameplay balance and flow are so utterly perfect as to be...'poetic' is the best I can come up with. Well, poetic in the way a James Cameron or Ridley Scott movie is poetic. With HL1 and MGS1, we were finally starting to see those visceral cinematic thrills in 3d gameplay form. Some levels were better than others, but the overall package is incomparable. It's more than worthy of a play today, just maybe put on some of your favorite late 90s albums beforehand to get yourself in the mood for the pixely goodness.

    HL2 is damn fuckin good. I think I blazed through it in under 48 hours when it came out. It's packed with memorable set pieces to be sure, but is probably a few percents less iconic than the best HL1 stuff. I remember thinking on my first playthrough that messing with all the physics objects in zombietown was fun, but not quite as cool as it seemed in my imagination, watching the previews. Oh well. Fighting across the bridge is probably my favorite moment, and all the various weird shit on extreeeemely long journey along the coast. HL games give a better tangible sense of a long ass linear journey than any other modern game series. Fighting the combine in little Cape Cod style shacks was cool as well.

    In fact...I think I was here, tarding out with all the PA-ers all night in anticipation on BOTH September 30s, haha! Oh man, I can't believe the powers of the bored 18 year old mind to believe in bullshit release dates...

  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    Orogogus wrote: »
    LaCabra wrote: »
    Years ago, I emailed Marc Laidlaw to ask, rather than how much of OpFor is "canon" since they make that up as they go along, but how much of the game Laidlaw actually wrote. He told me that he wrote all of the Gman's lines for that game. Worth knowing, I thought.

    I actually am told all the time now that HL1 wasn't "that great a game" by otherwise sensible people. Most of them didn't play it at the time, and I think like someone else said, it's pretty hard for most people going back to it now to understand what made it so amazing. One thing I tell people to try to point this out is that HL1 was probably the first game I played where the weapons you'd find in the environment weren't floating and spinning in midair. Or how you run from one end of the game to the other without being mysteriously moved to a new location by a loading screen. People forget this shit.

    System Shock was contemporary with DOOM, 4 years before Half Life, and Ultima Underworld with Wolfenstein, and both SS and UU had what you described (although there were loading elevators), so there's that.
    Yeah, Half-Life didn't do anything new, except perhaps the whole "no guns, normal life" opening scene, but it did everything in a straight up action FPS, which brought it to the masses in a big way.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    You got a tiny bit of that in the original.

    "I didn't sign I for this shit! Monsters sure, but civilians? Who ordered this operation?"

  • KruiteKruite Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    How many 3-d shooters can you say are not linear....

    The only ones I can think of are the more modern adventure rpg shooters of Borderlands and Fallout 3. But even they have the linear "go here and fight this to continue the story"

    Kruite on
  • chiasaur11chiasaur11 Never doubt a raccoon. Do you think it's trademarked?Registered User regular
    Kruite wrote: »
    How many 3-d shooters can you say are not linear....

    The only ones I can think of are the more modern adventure rpg shooters of Borderlands and Fallout 3. But even they have the linear "go here and fight this to continue the story"

    S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

    System Shock.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    The way that HL1 told its story 'physically' rather than through direct exposition remains amazing. They packed so much meaning into simple little things.

    There's this bit that still sticks in my mind where freeman sees the last helicopter out of black mesa starting to take off, and he runs around the corner to get outside to catch it, but no matter how fast he runs around the corner or how quickly he ducks, he can't quiiiite make it through the blast door that's coming down in front of him. It captures the desperation/panic of the first chapter of the game perfectly.

    Even when they did resort to dialogue, it was super minimal and complimented the atmosphere, like when you found the soldier corpse at an abandoned listening post and heard 'forget about freeman' crackle over the radio.

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    I tried playing HL1 a year or so ago, just to see what it was like. Most of my interest in the game died the instant I touched my first sliding crate.

  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    Kruite wrote: »
    How many 3-d shooters can you say are not linear....

    The only ones I can think of are the more modern adventure rpg shooters of Borderlands and Fallout 3. But even they have the linear "go here and fight this to continue the story"
    In addition to S.T.A.L.K.E.R, System Shock and System Shock 2, Far Cry 2, and BioShock, there are games with lower amounts of linearity compared to Half-Life/CoD/etc. like Crysis, Crysis Warhead, BioShock 2, Deus Ex 1-3, RAGE, Thief 1-3, DooM and DooM 2 to some extent, Duke Nukem 3d in some levels, Dark Forces in some levels... hell, lots of old games in some of the larger levels were quite nonlinear compared to Half-Life.

    TychoCelchuuu on
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    The way that HL1 told its story 'physically' rather than through direct exposition remains amazing. They packed so much meaning into simple little things.

    There's this bit that still sticks in my mind where freeman sees the last helicopter out of black mesa starting to take off, and he runs around the corner to get outside to catch it, but no matter how fast he runs around the corner or how quickly he ducks, he can't quiiiite make it through the blast door that's coming down in front of him. It captures the desperation/panic of the first chapter of the game perfectly.
    That was Shepherd in Opposing Force, actually.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Bioshock is pretty linear, actually. It just gives you the illusion of non linearity by allowed you to backtrack to grab collectables. Occasionally you'll get multiple objectives and you can choose the order you complete them in, but Half-Life did that too.

  • KruiteKruite Registered User regular
    Kruite wrote: »
    How many 3-d shooters can you say are not linear....

    The only ones I can think of are the more modern adventure rpg shooters of Borderlands and Fallout 3. But even they have the linear "go here and fight this to continue the story"
    In addition to S.T.A.L.K.E.R, System Shock and System Shock 2, Far Cry 2, and BioShock, there are games with lower amounts of linearity compared to Half-Life/CoD/etc. like Crysis, Crysis Warhead, BioShock 2, Deus Ex 1-3, RAGE, Thief 1-3, DooM and DooM 2 to some extent, Duke Nukem 3d in some levels, Dark Forces in some levels... hell, lots of old games in some of the larger levels were quite nonlinear compared to Half-Life.

    I wouldn't call Doom non-linear....it dropped you in a level for you to roam around, often times returning to the start of the level. Rinse/repeat. But yet again, you did say to some extent.

    I suppose what I just want to draw attention here is that just because it's more linear doesn't make it a bad game. See CoD Doom III, Wolfenstein 3-D.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    I think people just have different definitions of linear.

    For me, a non-linear game is like Grand Theft Auto: you're given access to most if not all of the gameworld and can pretty much go and do whatever the hell you want. You want to do the story? Go ahead! You don't, then go do something else!

    A game like doom is still fairly linear. Every map is some variation of

    -Explore Area A to find Key 1 to open Area B
    -Explore Area B to find Key 2 to open Area C
    -Explore Area C to find Key 2 to open Area D
    -Explore Area D to find the exit.

    You had free reign in your exploration, but it was still ultimately A -> B -> C -> D

  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    I enjoy finding Half-Life references in other games.

    Off the top of my head:

    1) There's an e-mail in Deus Ex: Human Revolutino that is essentially the intercom speech from when Gordon rides into Black Mesa at the start of the game.
    2) There's an enforcer in RAGE that demands you "pick up that can"
    3) Headcrab avatar in Super Meatboy.
    4) Achievement in FEAR 3 called "headcrab removal" for killing 20 enemies with the crowbar.
    5) "Freeman" written on the crowbar in Penumbra Overture.

  • GMaster7GMaster7 Goggles Paesano Registered User regular
    I'm so glad this thread exists. The Half-Life games (plus Portal 1 and 2, if you'd like) were so damn revolutionary and ambitious. The AI, the moment-to-moment gameplay, the consistent art direction, the atmosphere... HL2 had a completely different feel, and when I think about the differences between HL1 and HL2, the shift from secret scientific facility to oppressed-Eastern-European-city seems more out of left field than I realized, but it was all so well executed that I can't fault the designers. HL2 is my favorite game of all time, hands down - I have so many memories of playing it, but it was the genuine experience that merits that honor, not the nostalgia. I remember creeping through that destroyed building, or parking garage, or whatever it was, moving so slowly, trying to avoid the flying gunship and sniper fire... I remember diving into a concrete pipe in the depressed center of the town square, right under the striders, peeking out, biding my time... and when I finally worked up the courage to make a break for it out of one end and made my move, a strider leg slammed down against the cylinder's opening and trapped me inside...

    So many memories, and they're still so vivid. I do have one Half-Life-related regret, though: I ordered, through the Valve store, a poster of Gordon (and Alyx? or Dog?) standing at the crest of a hill or on a cliff, peering out onto a ruined City 17 and the destroyed tower. It came in the mail, but someone in my family misplaced the tube during our move and it was somehow lost before I even had a chance to open it. I was saving it to be framed - it was signed by the HL2 team, I believe. I don't know where it could possibly be - it isn't anywhere in the house - and I've been looking for that print online ever since. I'd love to buy a new one, unsigned. Can anyone help me?

    Edit: Ah, here's a pic of it. http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/File:City_17_destroyed_Citadel_forest_view.jpg

    PSN: SKI2000G | Steam: GMaster7 | Battle.net: GMaster7#1842 | Twitch: twitch.tv/SKI2000G
  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Freeman's Mind is the best Lets Play on the internet. Just sayin'.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    The way that HL1 told its story 'physically' rather than through direct exposition remains amazing. They packed so much meaning into simple little things.

    There's this bit that still sticks in my mind where freeman sees the last helicopter out of black mesa starting to take off, and he runs around the corner to get outside to catch it, but no matter how fast he runs around the corner or how quickly he ducks, he can't quiiiite make it through the blast door that's coming down in front of him. It captures the desperation/panic of the first chapter of the game perfectly.
    That was Shepherd in Opposing Force, actually.

    oh yeah, you're right.

    I guess people didn't like opposing force that much? I thought it was a neat spin on a shooter expansion/sequel and I always wondered why more games didn't do it

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • expendableexpendable Silly Goose Registered User regular
    You know, I just realized that when I was a kid I never finished OpFor because I had this hangup about water monsters, so I stopped the first time I had to get in the water with one.

    I should rectify this.

    Djiem wrote: »
    Lokiamis wrote: »
    So the servers suddenly decide to cramp up during the last six percent.
    Man, the Director will really go out of his way to be a dick to L4D players.
    Steam
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    The way that HL1 told its story 'physically' rather than through direct exposition remains amazing. They packed so much meaning into simple little things.

    There's this bit that still sticks in my mind where freeman sees the last helicopter out of black mesa starting to take off, and he runs around the corner to get outside to catch it, but no matter how fast he runs around the corner or how quickly he ducks, he can't quiiiite make it through the blast door that's coming down in front of him. It captures the desperation/panic of the first chapter of the game perfectly.
    That was Shepherd in Opposing Force, actually.

    oh yeah, you're right.

    I guess people didn't like opposing force that much? I thought it was a neat spin on a shooter expansion/sequel and I always wondered why more games didn't do it

    It was probably one of the most critically acclaimed expansions of the era. It even won PC Gamer's (Or was that PC Games'?) Game of the Year that year, IIRC.

Sign In or Register to comment.