If you have two steam controller dongles, you can flash them to be vive tracker dongles and use your vive wands as feet trackers. (No, something strapped to your head and hands is not enough, why do you ask?) The dongles seem to have been discontinued with the steam link, though so they're tough to find.
I was already thinking of grabbing index controllers for my Vive for Alyx, and they outright recommend that, so I'm feeling much better about the decision now. And hey, would you look at that, a Steam sale just started. What nice timing :P
I was already thinking of grabbing index controllers for my Vive for Alyx, and they outright recommend that, so I'm feeling much better about the decision now. And hey, would you look at that, a Steam sale just started. What nice timing :P
Sadly the controllers are both 1. Not on sale and 2. Not in stock.
I was already thinking of grabbing index controllers for my Vive for Alyx, and they outright recommend that, so I'm feeling much better about the decision now. And hey, would you look at that, a Steam sale just started. What nice timing :P
Sadly the controllers are both 1. Not on sale and 2. Not in stock.
Sure, but if I order them now I think I'll get a huge amount of tokens, and then I can use tokens for coupons for games that are on sale. Works out to a ~10% rebate, which is pretty nice on Index hardware. Assuming I can buy more than one coupon, anyways, which I'm waiting for confirmation of on Reddit.
As a Rift-y person I can't use them, but I hope support for some of the knuckle-esque straps gets added for the Oculus controllers, I'd love to be able to throw by letting go of the controller.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, I finally installed this because I saw zero point in playing HL1 without the back end of the game.
I got to Xen yesterday and, um, holy shit. I can see why this part took them so long, because it's fucking huge and puts the original Xen material to shame. The rest of the game is pretty much just straight remaster of the original, but Xen is an entirely different beast. It's gorgeous, has a lot more to explore, and has some really great soundtracks to it that I don't remember from the original at all. Not to mention it has a whole pile of material showing the whats-it race as slaves (with the storytelling done in the typical in-game Half-Life way), complete with them covertly helping you get to the big bad guy (instead of you randomly just going that way from the original game).
I always felt the Xen environment in the original was pretty interesting but the gameplay for it was the weaker part of the game, but Black Mesa has totally turned that around for me. The Xen portion is so much more interesting here, and without the late-development-material jankiness of the original. I can't possibly imagine bothering with the original HL1 over Black Mesa, if I ever feel like a replay again.
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited January 2020
Finished up the fully-finished game and yeah, it's just a straight improvement across the board. The final approach to the final boss is a fair bit more like that of HL2, where you're basically scaling a massive alien fortress. The final fight itself is vastly more interesting, visually and combat-wise. It's not a perfect fight and some of it can feel rather arbitrary, but it properly feels like trying to kill a mega-brain telepathic telekinetic alien that controls some weird dimension/planet all by itself. The fight is just so much bigger and more interesting than the original.
Kinda crazy it took so long for this remake to come out, but they basically just rebuilt everything before Xen (which is why it came out so soon) and then decided "fuck it, ditch the old Xen, we're gonna make a whole new one and it will make the first part of the game look really dull in comparison". Just a ton of effort there in making it look and feel like an actual alien ecosystem, with loads of storytelling done through the environment. So Black Mesa is less of a remake and more like everything on Earth is a remake but everything in Xen is a totally new and great game built from the ground up.
In all honesty, if Valve doesn't want to make HL3, they should just let the Black Mesa team do it. They really seem to get the Half-Life setting, I'm entirely certain they would make a pretty great HL3.
I finished it up yesterday as well and in terms of a complete product it's pretty much 98% there. I had two crashes to desktop in my whole playthrough and got stuck on the scenery twice. It's more stable and complete than many modern releases. Also 100% agree about Xen. In fact, in my opinion it's the best part of the game as there are a few frustrating parts before Xen where it's not really clear where to go and there are huge areas with nothing to do in them. Still a great game overall but the work they put into Xen really shows up the rest of the game and highlights some of the dated game design elements of the original game. Definitely recommend in its current state.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I think I ran into one or two crashes and there needs to be a balance pass for a couple of the bosses like
the headcrab queen and final boss
which can both deal randomly and frustratingly high amounts of damage (I think it's probably physics engine issues) but other than that, this felt like an utterly complete game to me. The Xen work really puts it over the top for being a great remake, to the extent that the front part of the game on Earth ends up looking rather bland in comparison. They do so much more to place all the lifeforms in the ecosystem here, and you get so much more of a feel for how this bizarre, beautiful place has basically been subverted by this hugely alien thing.
The only warning I would issue is that I think updates can currently break saves. This won't ruin a whole game because you can just start a new game from the latest level you've played, but it can be rather annoying if you're 90% of the way through an area when an update drops. However, I only had that happen one time and it happened in Xen, so I didn't mind too much going back through the same area. Plus, it's a HL game so you can cruise through anything pretty fast if you know where to go.
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
I've played through most of Black Mesa. I've gotten a bit annoyed at the Xen factory.
Overall Black Mesa feels like a good, modern remake of Half-Life. But you can feel the lack of Valve-iness.
The environments feel expansive and more organic than the original. But there's very little direction for the player. (Like bright lights to signal where you should go.) If I had never played Half-Life, I get the sense I'd be completely lost on the Lamda reactor puzzle. Or getting into the booby-trapped tripwire building. Or finding some of the waste disposal switches/paths. I also got stuck on geometry a few times (load a quick save level of stuck). Also, stuff in tight quarters like pipes and electrical boxes shouldn't collide with the player so your flow of movement isn't blocked.
Some of the weapons also feel unresponsive. The shotgun takes forever to fire with right-click and the crossbow takes 6 years to load the next bolt. (The revolver and crossbow also have a bug with the Black Mesa iron sights option.)
The offices (both Office Complex and Questionable Ethics) were my favorite HL1 parts and I feel like Black Mesa improves them. Xen is still full of "what do you want me to do?" moments. But they do add some neat gimmicks and it looks much, much nicer. Plus way less bounce pad nonsense. It improves Xen, but I feel like that's a low bar. It doesn't improve it enough that I'd want to replay it. Part of that is because it also feels like it's longer.
I'd recommend it as the means of reliving HL1 with a fresh coat of paint. I wouldn't recommend it just to play Xen.
Playing through Black Mesa now, and I'll need to play the original Half-Life to compare, but BM is just not gelling with me this time around. I can only play for little chunks of time before I die or something and whatever small amount of flow I had evaporates.
It might just be a case of my having played HL dozens of times and maybe its time I put that game to bed.
We'll see what happens when I get to Xen. I'm only on Power Up right now.
The marines are a bit too accurate and the guns a bit too unresponsive to do HL1-esque 'bob out of cover and actually hit things'. You sort of have to sit out there waiting for your gun to fire while you get plinked.
The shotgun right-click is satisfying when it eventually shoots though.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited January 2020
I dunno, the game feels exactly like HL1 to me for the Black Mesa section, and Xen has the exact same kind of puzzle issues in a couple points that the Earth part of the game does. The enemy soldier AI feels identical to me (except I feel like it goes for cover better than in the original), up to and including the same aggravating accuracy as the original.
And there are at least a few near-directionless puzzles in the Black Mesa section of the game that are totally lacking in feedback on what you've done and where you need to go. Even then, none of the Xen puzzles stumped me for as long as some of the Black Mesa ones, even though I've played the original HL1 multiple times. The one with the floating ramp and the barrels in particular is just a total lateral thinking puzzle, since Valve was trying to show off their "physics" but didn't really show the player why it mattered at all. Not to mention it's the only puzzle like that in the game, so there's no prior training for it; I only got through without looking it up because I vaguely remembered the bit about the floating barrels.
But if you played the game a ton originally, I could see the Black Mesa section being not at all interesting (it's largely identical, with new graphics and resources), I don't see anything odd or critical about that. I did notice the odd unresponsiveness of the weapons and I wasn't sure if that was a remake bug or not; didn't slow me down any once I adjusted, but there's a definite lag between pulling the trigger and shots going off for some of the weapons.
Ninja Snarl P on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The marines are a bit too accurate and the guns a bit too unresponsive to do HL1-esque 'bob out of cover and actually hit things'. You sort of have to sit out there waiting for your gun to fire while you get plinked.
The shotgun right-click is satisfying when it eventually shoots though.
The Combine marines were utterly lethal in the original HL1, you might have forgotten.
The marines are a bit too accurate and the guns a bit too unresponsive to do HL1-esque 'bob out of cover and actually hit things'. You sort of have to sit out there waiting for your gun to fire while you get plinked.
The shotgun right-click is satisfying when it eventually shoots though.
The Combine marines were utterly lethal in the original HL1, you might have forgotten.
I wouldn't accuse anyone of having a faulty memory in this case, because there weren't any Combine in Half-Life...
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The marines are a bit too accurate and the guns a bit too unresponsive to do HL1-esque 'bob out of cover and actually hit things'. You sort of have to sit out there waiting for your gun to fire while you get plinked.
The shotgun right-click is satisfying when it eventually shoots though.
The Combine marines were utterly lethal in the original HL1, you might have forgotten.
I wouldn't accuse anyone of having a faulty memory in this case, because there weren't any Combine in Half-Life...
Were they not? I remember them looking like this, I assumed they were Combine precursors. I don't remember much about HL1's story, I was too young to absorb it.
The marines in Black Mesa are definitely more dangerous than the ones in Half-Life; for one, they can move and shoot at the same time (or move and reload) which is something that the HL1 marines couldn't do. Also the activation ai for HL1 marines was super easy to cheese; you needed to be super in visual range for them to activate; you could snipe them around corners very easy.
That said, on the harder difficulties, you got less health and power from wall units in HL1, but in HL2 you get the full amount on every difficulty, like in HL2. (I think that's how it works in HL2, it's been awhile.) so there's a lot more health and armor to go around.
I'm up to Questionable Ethics and I have to say it's still fun seeing which chapters are slavish reproductions of the originals (Residue Processing) and which ones are go the extra mile to make things seem new but familar (Questionable Ethics)
Man, Lambda Core in Black Mesa is actually a really good update of that kinda bizarre level. Shame they ruin it with that ridiculous battle at the end where they add in Vortigaunts and Houndeyes to teh fight with the Xen Masters.
Got to Xen and holy crap, they weren't kidding about expanding this. I'm still on the first part, but I'm genuinely floored about the quality of the levels and the new puzzle mechancis they introduce feel natural (and I can see the A to B of "Use crystals to power stuff" to "Nihilanth uses crystals to power himself, blow them up."
Can't wait to get home and play through more of it.
We worked with Merle [Dandridge] at the beginning of HL:A development, but in the end, felt we wanted to go in a different direction. We love Merle, her work in Half-Life 2 was instrumental in bringing Alyx to life, and we hope to work with her again in the future.
So that's odd. Oh, her father's voice has been changed as well, but that's because his original actor passed away.
Posts
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Sadly the controllers are both 1. Not on sale and 2. Not in stock.
Sure, but if I order them now I think I'll get a huge amount of tokens, and then I can use tokens for coupons for games that are on sale. Works out to a ~10% rebate, which is pretty nice on Index hardware. Assuming I can buy more than one coupon, anyways, which I'm waiting for confirmation of on Reddit.
Edit: Oh, can't backorder them. Nevermind.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
I got to Xen yesterday and, um, holy shit. I can see why this part took them so long, because it's fucking huge and puts the original Xen material to shame. The rest of the game is pretty much just straight remaster of the original, but Xen is an entirely different beast. It's gorgeous, has a lot more to explore, and has some really great soundtracks to it that I don't remember from the original at all. Not to mention it has a whole pile of material showing the whats-it race as slaves (with the storytelling done in the typical in-game Half-Life way), complete with them covertly helping you get to the big bad guy (instead of you randomly just going that way from the original game).
I always felt the Xen environment in the original was pretty interesting but the gameplay for it was the weaker part of the game, but Black Mesa has totally turned that around for me. The Xen portion is so much more interesting here, and without the late-development-material jankiness of the original. I can't possibly imagine bothering with the original HL1 over Black Mesa, if I ever feel like a replay again.
Kinda crazy it took so long for this remake to come out, but they basically just rebuilt everything before Xen (which is why it came out so soon) and then decided "fuck it, ditch the old Xen, we're gonna make a whole new one and it will make the first part of the game look really dull in comparison". Just a ton of effort there in making it look and feel like an actual alien ecosystem, with loads of storytelling done through the environment. So Black Mesa is less of a remake and more like everything on Earth is a remake but everything in Xen is a totally new and great game built from the ground up.
In all honesty, if Valve doesn't want to make HL3, they should just let the Black Mesa team do it. They really seem to get the Half-Life setting, I'm entirely certain they would make a pretty great HL3.
The only warning I would issue is that I think updates can currently break saves. This won't ruin a whole game because you can just start a new game from the latest level you've played, but it can be rather annoying if you're 90% of the way through an area when an update drops. However, I only had that happen one time and it happened in Xen, so I didn't mind too much going back through the same area. Plus, it's a HL game so you can cruise through anything pretty fast if you know where to go.
Overall Black Mesa feels like a good, modern remake of Half-Life. But you can feel the lack of Valve-iness.
The environments feel expansive and more organic than the original. But there's very little direction for the player. (Like bright lights to signal where you should go.) If I had never played Half-Life, I get the sense I'd be completely lost on the Lamda reactor puzzle. Or getting into the booby-trapped tripwire building. Or finding some of the waste disposal switches/paths. I also got stuck on geometry a few times (load a quick save level of stuck). Also, stuff in tight quarters like pipes and electrical boxes shouldn't collide with the player so your flow of movement isn't blocked.
Some of the weapons also feel unresponsive. The shotgun takes forever to fire with right-click and the crossbow takes 6 years to load the next bolt. (The revolver and crossbow also have a bug with the Black Mesa iron sights option.)
The offices (both Office Complex and Questionable Ethics) were my favorite HL1 parts and I feel like Black Mesa improves them. Xen is still full of "what do you want me to do?" moments. But they do add some neat gimmicks and it looks much, much nicer. Plus way less bounce pad nonsense. It improves Xen, but I feel like that's a low bar. It doesn't improve it enough that I'd want to replay it. Part of that is because it also feels like it's longer.
I'd recommend it as the means of reliving HL1 with a fresh coat of paint. I wouldn't recommend it just to play Xen.
It might just be a case of my having played HL dozens of times and maybe its time I put that game to bed.
We'll see what happens when I get to Xen. I'm only on Power Up right now.
The shotgun right-click is satisfying when it eventually shoots though.
And there are at least a few near-directionless puzzles in the Black Mesa section of the game that are totally lacking in feedback on what you've done and where you need to go. Even then, none of the Xen puzzles stumped me for as long as some of the Black Mesa ones, even though I've played the original HL1 multiple times. The one with the floating ramp and the barrels in particular is just a total lateral thinking puzzle, since Valve was trying to show off their "physics" but didn't really show the player why it mattered at all. Not to mention it's the only puzzle like that in the game, so there's no prior training for it; I only got through without looking it up because I vaguely remembered the bit about the floating barrels.
But if you played the game a ton originally, I could see the Black Mesa section being not at all interesting (it's largely identical, with new graphics and resources), I don't see anything odd or critical about that. I did notice the odd unresponsiveness of the weapons and I wasn't sure if that was a remake bug or not; didn't slow me down any once I adjusted, but there's a definite lag between pulling the trigger and shots going off for some of the weapons.
The Combine marines were utterly lethal in the original HL1, you might have forgotten.
Were they not? I remember them looking like this, I assumed they were Combine precursors. I don't remember much about HL1's story, I was too young to absorb it.
That said, on the harder difficulties, you got less health and power from wall units in HL1, but in HL2 you get the full amount on every difficulty, like in HL2. (I think that's how it works in HL2, it's been awhile.) so there's a lot more health and armor to go around.
Righto.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/57848/
They're not listed in that announcement, but Opposing Force and Blue Shift are also free.
And Half-Life: Source if you want to play that version for some reason.
Got to Xen and holy crap, they weren't kidding about expanding this. I'm still on the first part, but I'm genuinely floored about the quality of the levels and the new puzzle mechancis they introduce feel natural (and I can see the A to B of "Use crystals to power stuff" to "Nihilanth uses crystals to power himself, blow them up."
Can't wait to get home and play through more of it.
They do realize it's just going to be 50,000 people asking about Half-Life 3, right?
Is this AMA about HL3?
naw, it'll be 25k that, 50k people asking about non vr ports
So that's odd. Oh, her father's voice has been changed as well, but that's because his original actor passed away.