Half-Life (half-bad)

Posted by death on July 20, 2012, 9:25 p.m.

Am i seriously the only one who thinks Half-Life is an extremely over-rated game? I bought the game, thinking "gamers can't be this wrong, it's almost got perfect scores all around, it's the 2nd highest rated game on Steam!" and after playing through almost all of it in a short amount of time, i am incredibly disappointed by this Quake rip-off.

this game has no quality what so ever. it is incredibly buggy. I've had to restart whole levels due to glitches with doors and dialogue, I wasn't able to continue during some of these glitches. no choice but to restart a level? how does this shit get over looked?

The movement just isn't right here either. If it's anything i hate, it's First Person Platforming. You walk too fast to be jumping off of narrow/thin platforms and it always feels like your slipping on ice when you land. Timing and landing a jump is difficult as well. These sections feel so random, as if they've been thrown together for no real reason at all. It's a ton of shooting, than outta nowhere, it's jumping on pipes and ducking under electrical wires.

The combat is flawed as well. There isn't a lot of ammo but there are a ton of soldiers. Man that was random. at first it was a scary horror themed game where you're killing monster/aliens and than it's a shootemup with Tanks and shit.

I'm gonna pin this up as being outdated. Standards have changed. Half Life came out in 1998 and was made on the Quake engine. Valve was still young and they have defiantly improved over the years. Maybe people back in 1998 thought this game had great graphics or presentation, it was also back when FPS games were still blooming. Nowadays we've got way too many of them and so people get a little picky about their shooters.

Do keep in mind, i'm talking about Half Life only, not Half Life 2, or any of the episodic games or spin offs. Since i bought the whole collection (it was on sale so no big loss) I still have to play the other HL games. HOPEFULLY Half Life 2 is better... but i have been fooled before…

p.s. Bioshock sucks too. [/ranting]

Holy shit 10 days left! I'm ……………………… not sure if i can finish in time [-_-]

EDIT: also i feel i should say, i'm not completely bashing the game, i'm just stating that it's not a masterpiece at all. it's not even what i would consider great (imo) but it's also not the worst game ever. I can play it but i'm not enjoying it much.

Comments

Quietus 12 years, 4 months ago

i've been so wanting to get a new copy of Crash Bandicoot. but i MUST have Crash Team Racing first, that was such a fun racing game. i have a friend who worships Spyro 3… i only ever played the beginning though.

idk how we went from FPSs to old 3d platformers but that's fine with me, no arguing there. :)

Juju 12 years, 4 months ago

Crash Bandicoot was a far, far superior game. Its environments were way more interesting and detailed, its sense of humour had a sheen of self-parody. I loved Naughty Dog, shame they went all crappy.

Nice little read about CB here.

JuurianChi 12 years, 4 months ago

Dawwww.

Naughty Dog, wherefore art thou?

Sony raped them with rolls of money after universal studios started cheating.

Cesque 12 years, 4 months ago

Quote:
In 1994, Looking Glass Tech released the original System Shock. It was a first-person game with combat and a story and great voice acting and fantastic graphics for the time. It grabbed you by the balls and didn't let go. The reason people have virtually forgotten about SS1 is that its market was so much smaller.

Oh yeah, forgot about SS1. I wouldn't really say it was an FPS, though - unlike Half-Life, which was first and foremost an FPS. Oh well, to this day, "survival horror" and "FPS" are generally considered separate categories.

Juju 12 years, 4 months ago

The genre is largely unimportant. It's the exposition that made Half-Life and System Shock brilliant and that is virtually genre-independent. Nowadays, unfortunately, designers need to target specific markets for publishers to justify taking their product to market. This happens in literally every mature (some may say stagnant) marketplace. All it takes is for someone to come along and find a new way of bringing a gamer into your world. Y'know, that really easy thing to do :P

PS. I didn't call SS1 an FPS

JuurianChi 12 years, 4 months ago

Quote:
All it takes is for someone to come along and find a new way of bringing a gamer into your world. Y'know, that really easy thing to do :P
I wish I could easily get my thoughts down in a decent manner because I would point out that most people make this harder that necessary and be able to explain what I mean.

Cesque 12 years, 4 months ago

Yeah, what I meant was just that Half-Life put an immersive story in a game that primarily revolves around shooting things (and like I briefly mentioned, Unreal did that too before, but left less long-term impact). Then again, it's probably hard to classify Half-Life as a shooter as it's more of a puzzle game with combat at times. First-person action adventure?

Juju 12 years, 4 months ago

Half-Life was a strange amalgam to be sure.

Moikle 12 years, 4 months ago

Half life 2 is much better

JuurianChi 12 years, 4 months ago

Façade is better than every game mentioned in this blog.

Hands down.