Can we have a Half-Life thread?
I just finished replaying the series for the first time in 10+ years (including finished Black Mesa but excluding OpFor/Blue Shift) and they were all really fucking great. That being said:
HL2 > Episode One > Black Mesa > HL1 > Episode Two
I also want to talk about the lore too. I feel like HL2 has too much of a breakneck pace and we don't get to explore City-17 as much as I would have liked.
why havent you played Op4?
play op4 and come back later
I wasn't interested in the side content, I wanted to follow Gordon Freeman.
Back in 2012 I would have agreed with you but I found myself just enjoying Black Mesa a lot more. The exception is Xen, however. Ironically, I actually really prefer Xen in HL1 to Black Mesa. BM preserves the soul/spirit of the original Half-Life perfectly up until that point, then it becomes an overindulgent wankfest into James Cameron's Pandora.
It absolutely annihilates the surreal cosmic aesthetics that Half-Life has for its space stuff (which is tributed to the fact that Alyx refers to the original Xen aesthetic for its alien stuff) and Xen no longer seems completely and totally foreign to humanity but rather a planet from Star Wars. Gameplay wise its a slow slog and totally unfun.
Other than that Black Mesa is the definitive way to experience the incident, maybe next time I will install that "Improved Xen" mod that restores the original level design.
man I loved black Mesa but I’m with you, hl2 is supreme. Chilling in abandoned houses alongside the ocean listening to the waves was supreme
>I wasn't interested in [mute character], I wanted to follow [mute character]
lol it's the same you autist
If that makes me autistic but sure, I got immersed in the story at Black Mesa and I didn't really give a shit what happened to Barney or random HECU marine.
This. There is no character arc. It's just you dropped into empty shoes to experience an event.
You say this but I gurantee you if the actual, full Half-Life 3 had Alyx as the exclusive protagonist this board would go absolutely insane over it
post your favourite hl mods
>cry of fear
>poke646
>they hunger
Alyx isn't a mute self-insert protagonist. How is that the same?
Half-Life 2 has a lot going for it outside of the core gameplay too. The art-direction and atmosphere are absolutely excellent. The Combine and City-17 are easily my favourite dystopian/sci-fi aesthetic.
My point is that you'd find out very quickly how many people care about playing as Gordon Freeman if that were the case.
You haven't made an argument as to why you disagree and have a different opinion so far. Care to explain?
Xen is shit and the HECU AI is a more bugged version of the Combine but I really can't see any downsides other than that.
Your point is flawed. Also this is 20 some years later after people have had a chance to obsess over Gordon. When Op4 came out, Gordon was just some guy you played a year ago. Nobody cared, and you shouldn't either.
i found hl1 to be really long with not enough variety in gameplay/story to warrant it
I'm sure Op4 and Blue Shift are good, because basically every Half-Life game released has been cream of the crop shooter wise. I didn't play them just because I was eager after playing through the Black Mesa incident twice to get to Half-Life 2 and those games just being random off-shoot side-stories didn't compel me to play them.
Not sure why I am being flamed for it, desu
Did you enjoy HECU and wanted to see their side? If you answered yes no need to reply just start dling Op4
Because you're a casual secondary who prefers black fucking mesa to the original game.
Y'ALL
I CAN'T BREAVE Y'ALL
You still haven't made an argument though, you just keep expressing your apparently huge bafflement without explaining anything.
"Random side stories" is a really shitty way of looking at "more of a good thing." Like someone who is trying to blaze through the games and not enjoy or take them in.
If you enjoyed HL1 even slightly, play the expansions. If you didn't, I'm not sure why you're forcing yourself to play them in the first place.
Science and Industry
Sven Coop
Team Fortress Classic
god damn this stellar taste
hl2 has an excellent atmosphere, soundtrack and setpieces but it's bogged down by unskippable cutscenes that you don't even take part of, and simplistic puzzles that weren't used to their full potential because they didn't want to alienate new players with their physics engine, and a disappointing final section that boils down to M2ing everyone you see
The episodes have greatly improved on everything in HL2 and I consider them the true HL2 experience
My only complaint is that I wish Half-Life 2 was longer.
The beginning portion in City-17 is great but I feel you're rushed too quickly out of the city when it's under Combine control, thankfully Alyx really scratches that itch. Similarly whilst the Nova-Prospekt teleport time skip is a clever plot device I always felt like the uprising beginning and ending was too quick. I would have liked to have seen Gordon there at the start of some of the more riot-y civil unrest rather than cutting straight into the battlefield.
I'm playing through the first game for the first time, I feel weird admitting that this fucker kind of scared me.
I disagree with the cutscenes but that's because I enjoyed the characters and story and was pretty heavily immersed. I can see why they're annoying if you're playing it as a fast-paced pure shooter. In some regards I always feel like Half-Life 2 create a tonal split where it is a shooter but the setting and format almost lends itself better to a Deus Ex/System Shock immersive sim type game.
>The episodes have greatly improved on everything in HL2 and I consider them the true HL2 experience
I was actually pretty shocked at how good Episode One was. The resource scarcity was amazing and the exploration of the Citadel was exactly what it needed to be in default HL2, where it was ultimately super brief and disappointing. Alyx was also really, really fucking good in Episode One and Two whereas she is basically an afterthought in HL2.
I feel like we explore City 17 way too much. I am more interested about what happened outside the city, and what's going on in the wasteland even beyond. That's one of the reason i think Episode Two is the best of the bunch aside with every great refinement of gameplay it had.
BREENGRUBS
Dude what? Episode One is terrible filler full of nothing memorable. At least it's short.
HL2 > Episode One > Black Mesa > HL1 > Episode Two
I mean, it's called a "wasteland" for a reason. The headcrab infested roadside houses and shit was cool, but we only need a taste of that to pick up on what everything is like for thousands of miles around.
I will say that the fauna is what interests me most about HL though, and I want to see more species of alien that settled into Earth like the antlions.
yikes
Weird to explain but as an example whilst I think the Antlions section of Episode Two is more memorable than most of Episode One, having literally just replayed them Episode One is better designed. Ep1 is tight as fuck, the citadel reactor sequence, the car tunnels, the hospital are all peak HL2 gameplay.
>Episode One
>Episode Two
remember when this was supposed to be a thing? and supposedly there were more episodes to come?
Cs 1.6