Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Fergus on October 04, 2004, 08:47:50 am
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PC Gamer UK
"Friends, gamers and Gordons:This is the easiest decision you've ever had to make. Not only are Rome and Half-Life 2 easily the two best games of the year, they're arguably the best PC games since the original Half-Life"
It got 96%, one of only 4 to get this score. Let the hype bashing begin.
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yeah, now we just need the game to be released
;) ;)
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WTF are they reviewing if it's (HL2) not gone gold, though?
I remember them reviewing BF:Vietnam, specifically mentioning things that were pulled after the beta test, and seemingly missing the massive 'lag' problems it had after release. I believe their Warhammer40k review was also a beta (why would a retail copy have a build number shown onscreen, as their review screenshots do).
This sort of thing pisses me off no-end.
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Freespace is better...
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Its gone gold dont worry, not some cruel trick. (I hope, or PCG's gonna get an earfull)
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Whoop-de-crap, another FPS. When will the game industry actually do something different? :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Mongoose
Whoop-de-crap, another FPS. When will the game industry actually do something different? :rolleyes:
such as?
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Did people complain when Monet painted another painting, they're werent cries of "not another painting!". And what exactly would you recommend that would be a succesfull new genre? and dont say FS3.
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FS3 wouldn't be a genre. :p
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Originally posted by aldo_14
WTF are they reviewing if it's (HL2) not gone gold, though?
I remember them reviewing BF:Vietnam, specifically mentioning things that were pulled after the beta test, and seemingly missing the massive 'lag' problems it had after release. I believe their Warhammer40k review was also a beta (why would a retail copy have a build number shown onscreen, as their review screenshots do).
This sort of thing pisses me off no-end.
so they can plaster Half Life 2 Reviewed!!! on the cover.
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Originally posted by magatsu1
so they can plaster Half Life 2 Reviewed!!! on the cover.
well.....duh
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Originally posted by Mongoose
Whoop-de-crap, another FPS. When will the game industry actually do something different? :rolleyes:
But dude it's Half Life 2!!!!!
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Originally posted by aldo_14
WTF are they reviewing if it's (HL2) not gone gold, though?
I remember them reviewing BF:Vietnam, specifically mentioning things that were pulled after the beta test, and seemingly missing the massive 'lag' problems it had after release. I believe their Warhammer40k review was also a beta (why would a retail copy have a build number shown onscreen, as their review screenshots do).
This sort of thing pisses me off no-end.
I've got to say though, this is due to the internet, paper mags are dying due to the spread of information on the net and they need exclusives badly.
PCGamer UK is without doubt the best computer mag of them all by a country mile, witty writing and consistent reviews. I trust them.
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I went off PCG when they redesigned it. Mainly because it's now physically smaller and doesn't look right on The Pile.
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I still buy PCG, despite the redesign looking a bit **** and also a bit like PC zone (which I don't like... and yet has now been bought by future....). It just annoys me when they review betas, because they should know better.
Generally speaking, I've only once been unhappy with a game i bought on the basis of a PCG review - that was BF:V, and i've mentioned why above.
Oh, and of course - the advantage of a magazine is that you can read it sitting on the bog. (yes, you can theoretically do that with a laptop and wireless, but you risk burning your nuts when the power supply heats up :eek: )
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So it's Half-Life 2. So what? Never played the first one, don't plan to. Same goes for Doom 3.
By innovative, yes, I do mean something like Freespace :p. Even more than that, though, I mean another game like Descent. Since Descent 3, there has not been a single six-degrees-of-motion combat game; meanwhile, the game industry has put out several hundred uber-derivative FPSes. That's a pretty big disparity. Thankfully, though, a small group called HighOctane Software is working on a new 6DOF game based off of Descent II and in close conjunction with the Descent online community; I hope they can pull it off :).
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Supply and demand, man.
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So, it's not really an original idea you want, then?
but what you want, is an innovative take on an existing genre?
Like Half Life 2 is supposed to do for FPSs?
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It doesn't necesssarily have to be something that's new; it could also be something that's, comparably, so rare that it seems new. Take space sims, for example; there haven't been that many made, so a new one would create quite a stir. Most gamers have never even heard of Descent, so seeing a trailer for a Descent-like game would probably leave them saying, "Whoa! What was that?" I'm not against making games like older ones; I'm just against taking it to the extreme that the game industry has over the past few years, with the FPS/RPG of the month. I want more good adventure games, like the Myst series. I want space sims and Descent-like games. I want some new platformers with radical gameplay differences, like the Ratchet and Clank series and its focus on weapons of mass destruction :p. In short, I want to see more variety. I really haven't bought a PC game made in the past three years; there hasn't been a single one that interested me, and besides, the system requirements have become so absurdly high that I don't have the machine to run them. Out of all the gaming industry, I think the RTS genre may have done the best; each game seems to have something innovative, like the rich storyline and god powers of Age of Mythology, the great environmental interaction of the upcoming Battle for Middle-Earth, or the strategical combat of Rome: Total War. I'm not a huge RTS fan, but I have played a few, and from what I can tell, the genre is still innovating and still creating new gameplay concepts, something that seems to have halted in the FPS club. By the way, you speak of HL2 as being "innovative": what specifically are you referring to? I don't know any real specifics about the game.
Something else may explain my behavior: those of us who play the Descent series generally look down on people who play FPSes; we call them "groundpounders" and decry their lack of trichording skeelz :p. In the words of the old D1 trailer, "360>0, Descent>Doom." :cool: Elitist, possibly arrogant attitude? Yep. Well deserved? Oh yeah :p.
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There are a few new space-sims in the works, Homeplanet and Dark Matter: The Baryon Project for example.
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Homeplanet ain't getting released outside of Russia, tho.
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Homeplanet looked good, except for the Newtonian physics. /me shudders :p. If I wanted real physics, I'd study for my class. I just want to have fun and blow **** up, not blow past something for 250 km, do a U-turn, and blow past it again for another 100 km ad nauseam :p.
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EXACTLY!!
The demo gave me no end of trouble..
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Originally posted by Mongoose
Elitist, possibly arrogant attitude? Yep. Well deserved? Oh yeah :p.
Overcompensating inferiority complex at having realized you put all that effort into mastering a game that tries to be a corridor shooter AND a flight sim, and does a half-assed job of both? Oh yeah.
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Half-assed? My friend, you've yet to be enlightened. Let me just set up a packed 4-way CTF in a level like Polaris, and you'll forget about any other game :D.
And by the way, Descent's neither a corridor shooter nor a flight sim; it's one of a kind. It's 6DOF combat; the FPS taken to an entirely new level. It has the highest learning curve of any game I've played; I've been playing for 5 years, and I'm at a mediocre level. Oh, and D1/2 were far from unsucessful; each sold over a million copies in the 1995-96 era, not too shabby. As for D3, well, I believe you know of another great game that was killed by Interplay's marketing :p.
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On the subject of Half Life - I heard a lot about the original game, so a while ago I decided to play it, not to be left behind when Half Life 2 was released. What was my surprise, when I find out that the game sucks. The gameplay is barely acceptable, and the storyline (what little is it of one, that is) is utter crap.
I didn't consider the graphics, of course, because right now that would be unfair (though System Shock 2, from around the same time as Half Life, looks amazingly better and has infinitely greater immersion factor - this last thing holds up comparing to any present-day FPS too).
Seriously, I was baffled. Maybe I just happened to entirely miss the fun parts of the game, even though I tried to look into every dark room and every corner. Add to that the half-assed ending (the game should have been called Half-Ass), and you have just another FPS piece of crap. I mean, the Freespace 2 ending took you by surprise, and may have felt a bit rushed, but Half Life's just seems like the guys making it couldn't care less how the damn game ended.
What a waste of time. Thankfully I got it on a bargain bin, so there's not too much monetary loss to regret.
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Oh forgive him, Almighty One. He knows not what he says. :(
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Oh forgive him, Almighty One. He knows not what he says. :(
Ok, tell me what's good about the game, then. Because as I said, I think I missed every single instance of coolness in it.
:p
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It was all cool. The whole sequence of the game built an amazing amount of suspense and I found it to be an engrossing experience. And bashing that last boss in the brain was fun as hell.
It's Half-Life, for crying out loud! Who doesn't like Half-Life?!
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Apparently Styxx doesnt.
Half Life was great because it was ALSO immersive. You felt as if you were in a destroyed facility that has been invaded by hostile aliens! Gun battles with Marines was fun, grenades flying, machine guns blaring, and the story was not as half-assed as you made it sound. Ive seen worse, and while it could do better, it wasnt bad.
Not to mention the EXTREMELY fast multiplayer it brought with it! I played Half Life Deathmatch for the first time a year ago, and had a complete mind-boggling BLAST doing it.
It also added puzzles in a FPS perspective that felt more interactive, as well as more stuff you could play with in the game.
I just had fun doing it!
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Eh, the immersion was poor at best. Everyone looked the same. You got a tiny little story advancement every two hours of shoot'em-up, and that was it. The couple of clever puzzles (I can only remember one that I enjoyed, actually) didn't even start to compensate for the boredom of the rest of it. There isn't a single actual character in the whole game, just repetitive enemies and friends. System Shock 2 (and System Shock, too) did a far better job at it than Half Life could hope to claim. Better than any other game I've ever played, in fact.
Now, for the multiplayer - we play Counterstrike at work (because it's just about the only thing that'll run on all computers there), and it's incredibly fun (though Battlefield 1942 would be lots better, but let's not compare), but I'm not talking about the multi aspects here. When this game came out everyone acted like it was the best thing since onion rings, but it's just like the horde of other FPSs out there.
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I played through it a few months ago, and I didn't think it was so great either. Maybe it would seem better if I played it when it first came out, but everything in the game has been done better by other games. And the dialogue without subtitles was really annoying, sometimes I would miss what people would say and then I couldn't figure out what was going on :wtf:
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To be honest, my opinion on Half Life was about the same as Styxx's.
Now for the unwashed masses of Doom, Quake, and Unreal players Half-Life having some shreds of a story with continuity and consistentcy inside the game must have been awesome.
However for folks like myself who played games like System Shock, Hexen, Daggerfall, etc. it wasn't really anything new.
I do think though, that the fact you can activate or deactivate a mod in game easily helped made the modding community much more accessible to new players.
What is sad is that games with strong single player narratives such as Heretic 2 and System Shock 2 (IIRC) came out at the same time as Half-Life and were ignored.
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I always thought deus ex was a better game. But then deus ex 2 came out and ruined that warm fuzzy feeling I had for the storyline
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Yeah, I couldn't bring myself to finish DX2. I'm glad I didn't buy that game ;)
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I have a similar opinion of HL as Styxx, although I did enjoy the early part of the game, but once the Mercs showed up it got boring and repetitive real fast. But I'll still probably buy HL2, if only for the mods that are going to come out for it. As for DX, while I accept it is a high quality game, I didn't enjoy it or the story. Needless to say DX2 wasn't any better.
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Originally posted by Styxx
On the subject of Half Life - I heard a lot about the original game, so a while ago I decided to play it, not to be left behind when Half Life 2 was released. What was my surprise, when I find out that the game sucks. The gameplay is barely acceptable, and the storyline (what little is it of one, that is) is utter crap.
Well I agree that's why I'am not gonna buy HL2, anyway H2 comes next month and I'am going enjoy that one loong time
However for folks like myself who played games like System Shock, Hexen, Daggerfall, etc. it wasn't really anything new.
Those games were awesome
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I was never a particularly big fan of either Half Life or Deus Ex myself, to be honest.
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Eh. Half Life had story going for it, but the gameplay...I played it for the first time, and Doom 3 for the first time, on the same day. I can safely say that Doom 3 is HL1 sped up and with nicer lighting effects. (But much crappier overall lighting. I know dark is supposed to be scary, but it just ain't working for me and the dark is annoying.) It didn't feel immersive, but I've never played a FPS that felt really immersive outside of Halo. Of course, I didn't play it when it was still fresh, so my opinion is skewed.
I do like Opposing Force, though I'm not totally certain why. Perhaps it's the seeing HL's story from another perspective, perhaps not.
As for Counterstrike, I can sum it up entirely in the words of someone who played Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast multiplayer. "Go play Counterstrike. That's where the ***holes are."
I'll get HL2 anyways, though, because I have hope for a decent game with decent story. Although, with my luck, it'll have pulled a Doom 3 and just be crappy all around.
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The mental malfunction of people who think Half-Life sucks is exactly that they're comparing it to first-person RPGs like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Daggerfall, etc. Get this through your heads, people--
HALF-LIFE IS A FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER. It is of the same genre as Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake. If you're looking for an engrossing story and memorable characters, you're playing the wrong kind of game. Half-Life is all about the linear, scripted, explosion-filled, hail-of-bullets roller-coaster ride.
The fact of the matter is that Half-Life popularized elements of FPS gameplay that are now considered standard. It did away with floating spinning powerups and replaced them with realistically-placed equipment. It had NPCs who could actually help you out (even if they never did buy you that beer). It got rid of EXIT doors, in favor of levels that flowed continuously one into the other. It had combat AI better than any that had been seen before. It told its story entirely in-game, through conversations and events, rather than through immersion-breaking cutscenes or briefings. It supported mod-makers to an unprecedented degree.
But of course, none of this will mean anything to you if you basically don't like FPSs.
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I like FPS'. I just don't remember enjoying Half Life. Sue me*
Not an invitation
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Interesting thing about Half Life.
The AI was such that enemies couldn't move and attack at the same time, but you never really notice it due to clever scripting.
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Half-Life was ub3rness when it came out.
Now its just part of the crowd.......
Freespace wins in either case anyway :p
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Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Interesting thing about Half Life.
The AI was such that enemies couldn't move and attack at the same time, but you never really notice it due to clever scripting.
Oi! You ripped that straight out of a PC Gamer preview......
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Yeah, as far as innovation in FPS goes, there are two games that have always stood out to me. Half-Life, and Unreal. You had to play them at the time to get it.
Half-life was one of the first FPS games to have location spectific damage... ie: headshots. Both HL and Unreal had mult-purpose, interesting weapons. If you weren't there before it's hard to realize how cool this was, but in HL you had CLIPS that you could RELOAD... even before the clip was done!. The AI was revolutionary at the time. It could be a challenge at times even.
It had story, immersion through puzzles... etc...
Now every game worth its salt has these things. It wasn't the first to do any one of these things, but it was the first to combine them all into a smoothly flowing package. And it was made more successful through its mods, something that I wish had happened with FS2.
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I rate Goldeneye64 as the best FPS I've played, for the record.
4-player deathmatch, locational damage, sniper rifle, reloads, leaning, decent enemy AI, lots of guns, cinematic & realistic locations, dual-weapon wielding, innovative use of puzzles (i.e. the watch laser in the train), vehicle based missions (using the tank), replayability
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Oi! You ripped that straight out of a PC Gamer preview......
Balls. Rumbled.
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
HALF-LIFE IS A FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER. It is of the same genre as Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake. If you're looking for an engrossing story and memorable characters, you're playing the wrong kind of game. Half-Life is all about the linear, scripted, explosion-filled, hail-of-bullets roller-coaster ride.
Well yes, that's what I always thought. The problem is a lot of people seem to claim Half-Life has the things you mentioned it doesn't have. The story, at least.
Also, I enjoyed those other FPSes you listed. However, I did not enjoy Half-Life.
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By the standards of its peers, Half-Life does have a story. It's not a terribly complex story, but it's more complex than a lot of people give it credit for, simply because it doesn't rub your nose in it. You have to listen to the conversations and pay attention to the things you see to put together a lot of it yourself.
Obviously, this is beyond a lot of gamers.
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Well, it was the same with Unreal. You had to read the translator logs or there was literally no story aside from the beginning and the scripted sequences.
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Zylon, I love you.
I thought Half-Life had an excellent story (especially considering the time it came out and what passed as a story in an FPS prior to it) and I really enjoyed the subtle delivery. Personally, I though Halo did a similar sort of thing very very well, theres a lot more to the story, but it's up to you to dig it up.
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I played HL when I bought it to get a key for CS. Didn't bother finishing it. Some action sequences scared me at first, with a bit of atmosphere, but it get's repetitive indeed.
The engine, though, revolutionised something, somehow.
Anyone play The Specialists? (HL/CS mod, awesome, like playing in a B action movie with all the unbelievable stunts, but with better explosions)
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Originally posted by 01010
I thought Half-Life had an excellent story (especially considering the time it came out and what passed as a story in an FPS prior to it) and I really enjoyed the subtle delivery.
I wonder how many gamers got to the end and never realized that Gordon was essentially the bad guy of the story? After all, Black Mesa invaded Xen, abducted their citizens, and performed medical experiments on them. Once Gordon enters Xen (which I admit mostly sucked) he's the invader-- slaughtering everyone he meets and eventually assassinating their leader.
I look forward to discovering how the humans and Xenities became allies by the time of HL2.
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Been keeping tabs on the lengthy HL2 thread at Preys-World, where people have been posting various reviews and whatnot, and apparently PCZone say the game is about 18 hours long, which is pretty good, imo.
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That'd be good, although Doom 3 was supposed to be 14 hours long (I think - some two digit number anyway) and it turned out being more like 4, so I'm skeptical on that.
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
That'd be good, although Doom 3 was supposed to be 14 hours long (I think - some two digit number anyway) and it turned out being more like 4, so I'm skeptical on that.
Obviously you were playing the demo. I've put about twenty hours into Doom3 before I got thoroughly bored of it.
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Were you using the duct tape mod, or suffering under the default setup?
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I actually enjoyed the tension that the flashlight brought. It was more that I got to hell and the "story" kind of ran out, the gameplay was boring me for a while before that but I kept going because I was interested in finding out what had been going on, once I got to the Guardian in Hell I lost interest (hadn't even got the soulcube).
Advanced graphics engines are nice and all but tacking Quake 2 era gameplay onto it certainly isn't. I know it's a homage to Doom and all but I think the spawning monsters let the game down, especially after the first hour or so of proper play which had monsters coming from ducts and the ceiling and under stairs. It's like they couldn't be bothered to keep up that intensity all the way through.
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Originally posted by 01010
Obviously you were playing the demo. I've put about twenty hours into Doom3 before I got thoroughly bored of it.
Uh... I finished it before there was a demo. And yes 4 hours may have been an exaggeration, but it definitely wasn't any more than double that, and certainly not twenty hours. Doom 3 is not a long game.
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I think I finished DX2 in about 8, including all the little errands and sub-missions.
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You people play games too fast :) . I think I was about halfway through DX2 at about 12 hours.
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I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, it was such a travesty.
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Half-life...*sigh*...the FPS of all FPS's...Name another game that has 3 different versions of (roughly) the same story...Half-life had Blue-Shift (which wasn't that bad..but...WAAAAAAAY too short) and Opposing Force, which...IMO was BETTER than the original, and the High Definitions pack that came with Blue Shift was an added bonus.
To me, there are three types of people in the world, the people who love HL, the people who love Halo (which is pretty close to Half-life if you think about it...Aliens attack...the good guys attack back...the story infolds before you...you kill more guys...it's the same ****ing thing over and over again!) and those people who don't like Half-life...and those people can GTFO of the thread this isn't a debate thread between the FS2 fans and the FPS fans...it's a thread about Half-life 2...you don't like it...don't post...simple as that
As for me...HL2 all the way man!
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
The mental malfunction of people who think Half-Life sucks is exactly that they're comparing it to first-person RPGs like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Daggerfall, etc. Get this through your heads, people--
HALF-LIFE IS A FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER. It is of the same genre as Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake. If you're looking for an engrossing story and memorable characters, you're playing the wrong kind of game. Half-Life is all about the linear, scripted, explosion-filled, hail-of-bullets roller-coaster ride.
The fact of the matter is that Half-Life popularized elements of FPS gameplay that are now considered standard. It did away with floating spinning powerups and replaced them with realistically-placed equipment. It had NPCs who could actually help you out (even if they never did buy you that beer). It got rid of EXIT doors, in favor of levels that flowed continuously one into the other. It had combat AI better than any that had been seen before. It told its story entirely in-game, through conversations and events, rather than through immersion-breaking cutscenes or briefings. It supported mod-makers to an unprecedented degree.
But of course, none of this will mean anything to you if you basically don't like FPSs.
Bollocks. You're basically saying that it's awesome because it's a little bit less crappy than the other games in the genre. None of the features you listed were first introduced by Half-Life - sure, some of them were neat, but nothing about it felt groundbreaking (I actually played it a bit when it first came out on a friend's computer, and didn't get past the first hour of gameplay because I couldn't stand the boredom). And if you remove the RPG elements from System Shock 2, for example, it'll still be several orders of magnitude better then Half-Life on all aspects. Hell, Duke Nukem 3D had almost as much of a story as Half-Life, with a much better ending at that.
:p
I'll agree on the mod support, though, but that's beside the point - my rant is about everyone who went all ape**** about Half-Life having the most awesome story ever and being the most realistic game up to that point.
Originally posted by ZylonBane
I wonder how many gamers got to the end and never realized that Gordon was essentially the bad guy of the story? After all, Black Mesa invaded Xen, abducted their citizens, and performed medical experiments on them. Once Gordon enters Xen (which I admit mostly sucked) he's the invader-- slaughtering everyone he meets and eventually assassinating their leader.
I look forward to discovering how the humans and Xenities became allies by the time of HL2.
They just about rubbed that in your face by the end, pasted on a piece of rough sandpaper. You gotta be pretty thick to ignore it. Still it was one of the two or three moments in the game where there's an actual storyline, and it was incredibly shallow.
But hey, to each his own. I saw some Half-Life 2 movies and they had a cool weapon that grabbed stuff from the ground and threw it around, maybe I'll give it a try just because of that.
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The gravity gun excites me in a way that has me worried.
The idea of repeatedly slamming enemies into the wall and then firing their dead body at another enemy quickly follwed by a filing cabinet and a few crates for good measure is positively spooge worthy.
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Originally posted by Styxx
Bollocks. You're basically saying that it's awesome because it's a little bit less crappy than the other games in the genre.
Y'know, if you'd just admitted up front, "I don't like a game that's in a genre that I don't like", it would have saved a lot of confusion.
None of the features you listed were first introduced by Half-Life
And I didn't say they were. I said they were popularized by Half-Life. A game doesn't have to invent something to do it extremely well.
And if you remove the RPG elements from System Shock 2, for example, it'll still be several orders of magnitude better then Half-Life
Now this... THIS is true bollocks. I'm a pretty big (http://shtup.home.att.net/) SS2 fan myself, but I will readily admit that Half-Life's combat walks all over SS2. This is unsurprising, since SS2 runs on an engine that was originally designed for the decidedly non-combat-oriented Thief games. By the way, did you know that SS2's training section and scripted sequences were directly inspired by HL?
my rant is about everyone who went all ape**** about Half-Life having the most awesome story ever and being the most realistic game up to that point.
No one but the most slobbering fanboys ever claimed that. If you happen to see any, please direct your rants toward them. That being said, remember that prior to HL it was exceedingly rare for a pure FPS to have any plot at all. Usually there was a premise ("Aliens have invaded! Kill them!") and that was it. HL at least threw a couple twists into the proceedings. Heck, it even divided the game up into "chapters". The ever-elusive G-Man stalking you through the entire game was a brilliant inclusion, as was the complete absence of combat in the first section of the game. What other FPS let you wander around, say hi to people, eavesdrop, suit up, report for work, and then experience things going to hell first-hand? In an era when most FPSs cast you as a wisecracking supersoldier, HL put you in the shoes of a scientist who just happens to be wearing a really kick-ass suit. And you're not nameless either-- you're Gordon Freeman, and eventually everyone knows who you are. And the pacing... the pacing was exquisite. Every enemy and every weapon was introduced in a memorable way. You don't just find your first rocket launcher laying in a hallway-- you find it tucked away in a cave just as a helicopter looms into view. The first (dangerous) headcrab beams into the room before your eyes. The first zombie is being desperately gunned down by your good buddy Barney. The first vortigaunt beats down a metal door to get at you. And so on.
In the end I suppose you can choose to reject any argument regarding Half-Life's quality, but you're still stuck with the fact that it won over 50 Game Of The Year awards. That's a few dozen more than hype alone can account for, don't you think?
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
In the end I suppose you can choose to reject any argument regarding Half-Life's quality, but you're still stuck with the fact that it won over 50 Game Of The Year awards. That's a few dozen more than hype alone can account for, don't you think?
I presume that, by that metric, you'd accept that Call of Duty was far better than Half Life?
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Beats me. I've never played Call of Duty. But I would accept that it's probably an excellent game within its genre.
It would of course be ignorant to claim that more GOTY awards means Call of Duty is better than Half-Life, because the two games didn't come out in the same year. They were competing with different games for those awards, and there are probably more people handing out GOTYs now than there were then.
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
Y'know, if you'd just admitted up front, "I don't like a game that's in a genre that I don't like", it would have saved a lot of confusion.
None of the features you listed were first introduced by Half-Life
And I didn't say they were. I said they were popularized by Half-Life. A game doesn't have to invent something to do it extremely well.
And if you remove the RPG elements from System Shock 2, for example, it'll still be several orders of magnitude better then Half-Life
Now this... THIS is true bollocks. I'm a pretty big (http://shtup.home.att.net/) SS2 fan myself, but I will readily admit that Half-Life's combat walks all over SS2. This is unsurprising, since SS2 runs on an engine that was originally designed for the decidedly non-combat-oriented Thief games. By the way, did you know that SS2's training section and scripted sequences were directly inspired by HL?
my rant is about everyone who went all ape**** about Half-Life having the most awesome story ever and being the most realistic game up to that point.
No one but the most slobbering fanboys ever claimed that. If you happen to see any, please direct your rants toward them. That being said, remember that prior to HL it was exceedingly rare for a pure FPS to have any plot at all. Usually there was a premise ("Aliens have invaded! Kill them!") and that was it. HL at least threw a couple twists into the proceedings. Heck, it even divided the game up into "chapters". The ever-elusive G-Man stalking you through the entire game was a brilliant inclusion, as was the complete absence of combat in the first section of the game. What other FPS let you wander around, say hi to people, eavesdrop, suit up, report for work, and then experience things going to hell first-hand? In an era when most FPSs cast you as a wisecracking supersoldier, HL put you in the shoes of a scientist who just happens to be wearing a really kick-ass suit. And you're not nameless either-- you're Gordon Freeman, and eventually everyone knows who you are. And the pacing... the pacing was exquisite. Every enemy and every weapon was introduced in a memorable way. You don't just find your first rocket launcher laying in a hallway-- you find it tucked away in a cave just as a helicopter looms into view. The first (dangerous) headcrab beams into the room before your eyes. The first zombie is being desperately gunned down by your good buddy Barney. The first vortigaunt beats down a metal door to get at you. And so on.
In the end I suppose you can choose to reject any argument regarding Half-Life's quality, but you're still stuck with the fact that it won over 50 Game Of The Year awards. That's a few dozen more than hype alone can account for, don't you think?
I admit that FPSs are not the first genre I think of when I want to buy a game, but there's several of them that I enjoyed thoroughly, but Half-Life wasn't one of those.
About the System Shock 2 thing, maybe the combat engine wasn't as good as the one on Half-Life, but I didn't have any problems with it. You can configure the controls to be just about the same, and it behaves on a very similar manner so for me it's more or less a non-issue. Now, the story, ambience and overall immersion on Shock 2 are superb, and that's what made the game for me. Half Life was, at its best spots, so-so. It just didn't make me believe on what was happening, while on Shock 2, at some spots, I ran for the first table I found and hid under it hoping that the zombies would go away.
For the "plot being rare before Half-Life" thing, yeah, you can argue that. But it wasn't unheard of, and they could have done a much better job at it on Half-Life than they did. It just feels like they decided a plot would be a good thing, spent ten minutes talking about it, wrote what they had down, and then never raised the issue again.
And yes, I can't deny that it won a truckload of awards. And I can't say that all of them were due to hype, but a good amount of them probably was.
I'll go see if I can find some real fanboys to pester now. ;)
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Originally posted by Styxx
It just feels like they decided a plot would be a good thing, spent ten minutes talking about it, wrote what they had down, and then never raised the issue again.
On the contrary, Valve had a dedicated writer on staff during the production of Half-Life.
It sounds like you're one of those people who doesn't think HL has much plot because it's all experienced instead of told (ie, spoonfed). When you take into account everything that Gordon sees, hears, and does over the course of the game, I'd say there's at least as much plot as your typical Hollywood action movie. Which, considering HL's design goal, is just about right.
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Er... id had a writer on staff during the production of Doom 3. Doom 3's story was almost nonexistant (And as you mentioned on another board, a lot of the development stuff, i.e. audio logs were inspired/ripped from SS2 anyway). However: I enjoyed Doom 3's story, however basic it was. But I did not enjoy Half-Life's story.
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Funny how when a new "best ever" FPS/FPRPG/FPwhatever appears people start talking about System Shock 2. There's a good reason for that. If there's anyone left out there who hasn't played the game - take the hint ;)
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Especially with the high-res texture and high-poly model replacements that are available. The graphics hold up pretty well even today, and of course the gameplay is as awesome as ever.
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SS2 co-op is always fun, but my connection seems to hate it, causing much ****ings-up.
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Originally posted by IPAndrews
Funny how when a new "best ever" FPS/FPRPG/FPwhatever appears people start talking about System Shock 2. There's a good reason for that. If there's anyone left out there who hasn't played the game - take the hint ;)
It's just a shame there's nowhere you can buy the bloody thing from.......(and before anyone mentions it, the HoTU link doesn't work for me)
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I'd happily play through SS2 again..........but it refuses to work under WinXP.........:(
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Hmm. See if this helps: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60930
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Originally posted by aldo_14
It's just a shame there's nowhere you can buy the bloody thing from.......
There are almost always a few copies (http://search.ebay.com/system-shock-2_W0QQsofocusZbsQQsbrftogZ1QQfromZR10QQsatitleZQ22systemQ20shockQ22Q202QQsotrZ2QQcoactionZcompareQQcopagenumZ1QQcoentrypageZsearch) going on eBay.
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I don't trust eBay, though. If it isn;t in the shops, I don't buy it.
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Oh, you're one of those people. :rolleyes:
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I've never had any problems with stuff I've bought from eBay. It's a good place to get stuff that isn't in shops, in fact that's about all I use it for.