I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, Maeg.
The fact of the matter is that I couldn't stand Half Life. It didn't help that I played it immediately after System Shock 2. After that, Half Life was just Shock2 but without the all the good things. Your character was generic, the music couldn't compete, the game simply wasn't at all scary, and the story (as presented in the beginning) just couldn't compare at all. It felt like Quake. It moved like Quake. It played like Quake*. My opinion of Half Life is based entirely on playing it and hating it enough that I uninstalled it within two days.
* Sorry. Its superior to Quake in one way: there are things that move that you shouldn't shoot (like the Barnies). Whee. Big improvement. If our standards are so low that Half Life is a great game, its no wonder that studios like Looking Glass can't survive. They don't churn out the same derivative crap over and over, milking people's wallets endlessly.