[aldo_14]

Homeplanet ain't getting released outside of Russia, tho.

[Mongoose]

Homeplanet looked good, except for the Newtonian physics.  /me shudders .  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 .

[Rictor]

EXACTLY!!

The demo gave me no end of trouble..

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Mongoose
Elitist, possibly arrogant attitude?  Yep.  Well deserved?  Oh yeah .

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.

[Mongoose]

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 .

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 .

[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.

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.

[Ford Prefect]

Oh forgive him, Almighty One. He knows not what he says.

[Styxx]

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.

[Ford Prefect]

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?!

[.::Tin Can::.]

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!

[Styxx]

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.

[RadioactiveYeti]

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

[Ace]

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.

[DarkWolf425]

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

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, I couldn't bring myself to finish DX2.  I'm glad I didn't buy that game

[Ransom]

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.

[Gloriano]

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

[aldo_14]

I was never a particularly big fan of either Half Life or Deus Ex myself, to be honest.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[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.