never got into FPS games. rarely played them at all outside of some multi-player Goldeneye on N64 and 1 Medal of Honor game as a kid. outside of that, my knee-jerk observation on FPS was "this seems really boring. ur just shooting at waves of enemies". but instead of leaning into this hate, I decided to try out some FPS games first before casting them all aside
my research into FPS led me to Half Life 1. this was apparently a seminal FPS (according to the internet). so I decided to start here.
Man... this game does NOT hold your hand. i started gaming again recently after a 10+yr break. im used to yellow paint. HUDs. Objective markers. Aloy from Horizon telling you what to do next. But from the very start, HL1 forces you to pay attention and use your head from the moment they tell you to go to the lockers and change into your suit.
I found HL1 very frustrating at times for those reasons. like... there are no glowing indicators or markers on interactable items to advance levels. it's on YOU to observe and interact with common sense items like valve wheels. but by the time I completed Half Life 2, I felt confident in my ability to complete levels.
HL Episode 1 and 2 were my favorites. I completed these without a guide or without lowering difficulty. I am not ashamed to admit I lowered the difficulty in HL1 one or two times. They were very stingy with Health and also I found aiming VERY difficult partially because I have trouble aiming using a controller, and partially bc I just suck at this game
But by the end of HL Episode 2 I felt confident in my aiming. and they also provide WAY more health and armor drops compared to HL1.
i'll also say: Half Life series was very well-paced. i rarely felt like I was shooting at waves of enemies in monotonous repetition. Battles didnt overstay their welcome. they space things out well. Good mix and sequencing of Puzzles, shooting waves of enemies, enemy types, etc.
One thing i'll say: i found the final missions in all the Half Life games really frustrating. HL1 specifically has like 2-3 missions where i felt "a health bar on the enemy would be REALLY helpful IF ONLY to let me know if I'm doing the right thing". And the amount of work required in Episode 2's final mission was genuinely dumbfounding. I cant imagine how people beat that mission on the hardest difficulty.
Overall a great game and I'm glad I played it (HL1, Blue Shift, OF, HL2, Ep1, Ep2). Glad it was my intro to FPS!
Last point on the game not holding your hand: there's a moment in HL2 where you're driving and the road is blocked by a force field. Me being the caveman gamer I am, my first instinct was to go backwards because I must have missed something to clear the force field. But no. IIRC you have to exit the vehicle, squeeze past the wall on foot, and the force field's power cables lead to a car on wheel chocks. I shot the wheel chocks from the car's rear tire and then it rolled of a cliff, disabling the force field. I felt SO smart after completing that!
Playing an old fps with a controller is really hard. They are made for mouse+ keyboard. I dont blame you for bumping down the difficulty.
Ironically, Episode 2's gnome achievement is nigh impossible without the analog triggers on a controller. That little guy slips out of the Jalopy so easily that the only way I found to make this fun instead of frustrating was grabbing it and simply driving slower and making wider turns than a keyboard allows. It made me really appreciate how good the vehicle physics really are despite always having thought of them as super stiff and janky.
Funnily enough, Half-Life on the PS2 is actually fantastic. It has a really generous aim assist and lock-on system that lets you preserve the fast feel while letting you actually hit things
Yeah I played HL2 on the OG Xbox and it was fine (I think...it was 20 years ago).
Half Life 1 is great, but to the credit of the time none of the games from that era held your hand as noticeably in the "yellow paint" way that moderns games do. While hand holding is "worse" today, quite a bit of that is to do with higher information density. Things like yellow paint exist because games are so dense with detail that it's harder to identify the game over the graphics. HL1 and friends use the the same tricks: a flickering light over the door you should go through next for example. But it's easier to get away with it being more subtle when there is less noise to make it through.
Ironically enough, the complex at the start has coloured lines painted along the walls to help you find your way around just like it would in the real world!
Oh yeah true lol. I actually remember how revolutionary that felt, because you could go in multiple directions and you had to decide where to go. In reality it was very linear but they did an amazing job making you feel like it wasn't
And I hadn't noticed that until like my 3rd playthrough of the game!
And then there's Tarkov, that says "find a book in the bookstore". It doesn't tell you where the bookstore is, or how to find it, and when you get there there are hundreds of high fidelity books all over the place and you more or less have to look at exactly the right one to do the quest
You can do a lot of fun things when the fidelity is lower.. Like I quite enjoy the environmental destruction (even if it's cartoon) with the crates and boxes stuff.
When I played Thief:Gold it was super cool stealth mechanics with paying attention to the floor surface (ex. Tiles make it MUCH harder to creep around), or hiding in shadow. It worked because there were like 4-5 floor textures all the levels shared. And lighting was very stark shadowmaps that are either totally bright or totally dark.
Can't imagine trying to do that in a modern game... guess "What noise will this one-of-a-kind texture will make when I walk on it". Or try to guess what's in light or shadow when there's RTX shit changing the reflections or w/e when you move around.
I think Half Life went the extra mile with it though (not that it was a bad thing). I played it when it came out, and My English wasn't as good back then, so I remember getting confused about what to do in the beginning with the experiment. I had to ask my friends and ask some guidance. When the game truly starts it is more straightforward thankfully, but at the beginning I was truly lost. I didn't have this experience with other games, even Morrowind was easier to figure out in the beginning.
Great! Now you're ready for Portal and Portal 2
These are next for sure. Even though puzzles irritate me lol
And Half-Life Alyx is a must if you manage to get a VR
It has entered my top 3 games after Half life 2 and Half life
It left me wanting more…
Man I really need to play HL2. Been playing games since the 90s so I have no clue how I missed it growing up, given I’ve always been into shooters.
I don’t know how I could get my hands on it these days though. I only have a Mac and a PS5. And I’m not a fan of gaming over streaming services.
Half Life 2 has a MacOS port, doesn't it? Or can you not play those on newer Macs?
edit: apparently you can't, lol apple
Indeed. Can’t complain about the M processors at all, but they did completely destroy the backwards compatibility.
🤷♂️
I have to give Steam all the credit because i wouldnt have been able to play Half Life without a Steamdeck. it has been my intro to PC Gaming. previously I only had Playstation and then Nintendo stuff (GBA) as a kid. i dont have space for a gaming PC
i paid something silly like 71 cents for each of the 6 Half Life games during a "Steam sale". credit to those guys
Steam deck + the Black Mesa remake made me appreciate HL1 even more.
Firstly, steam deck rocks.
And then, the remake made me think about all the gameplay innovations of the original game.
Where Quake 1 was impressive technically but also boring, incoherent, almost incompetent as a game, Half-life reinvented the genre, made it interesting, showed how an fps can tell a story (and no text walls).
I might look into steam deck! Do you use it in handheld or docked mode?
I use it both docked and handheld
I’ve been really wanting to replay, and I just have a PS5, so I’m in the same boat.
If you're ever able to play it on Steam I have a HL2 gift sitting in my inventory that I'd be happy to send you
It's worth playing, but personally I never got the hype for HL2 really. I played it when it came out and while I loved the Source mod and the possibilities it brought (adored Counter-Strike and loved CS:S which of course shipped with HL2)... Half-Life 2 itself always felt rather bland to me.
I very much enjoyed the first game and its expansions too, but HL2 fell flat. The episodes were better, but not amazing to me.
Since you enjoyed half-life 1 you should play Black Mesa it's a fan remake of half-life 1 that's really good.
i have violent flashbacks of HL1.
On A Rail, The Ninja things that are super hard to hit, and the helicopter mission where it's shooting at you with no cover.
As much as I admire that game, I never want to experience those missions again LOL
The remake is more of a reimagining of Half-life 1. On a rail for example is shortened and tightened, helicopter mission i remember there's cover now, zen got a total overhaul and bosses are revamped. If you don't want to play it cause of HL1 PTSD it's fine, you can check it on YouTube if you want.
The remake is iffy, it's good at the start but there's a group of people who complain about xen's length
The length would be fine if it maintained the same level of quality as the Black Mesa section of the game.
The Xen remake is a visual spectacle for about fifteen minutes before it settles into a slog of repetitive puzzles and ends with those awful elevator shooting galleries. It's where the game goes from feeling like a quality HL remake to a just decent Sourcemod to me.
If anything it's authentic because Xen was by far the worst part of HL1. It'd be anathema if it was actually good in Black Mesa!!
I love Black Mesa and even I don't like Xen. It looks phenomenal, easily the best alien environment I've seen in a game, but it sucks to play.
That said, it's still an incredible game and I heavily recommend it. And if new fans come out of it saying "the game was incredible but Xen sucks" then they're really getting the authentic HL1 experience.
I remember Xen was the moment that soured me on the game lol
It's a visual spectacle, sure, but my Lord was it a repetitive slog. I remember it taking 2-3 hours to finish, and 90% of that was platforming and plug puzzles.
What's wild to me was that apparently they shortened some chapters to preserve the pacing, but then turned around and made the Xen sections four times longer for some reason.
Literally any game has a group of people who complain about anything
Okay but the people who complain about xen aren't a negligible minority, there's a lot of people who complain about the length, repetitive puzzles and changed artstyle
Hey guys today we declare all games iffy since there’s always a group of people who complain
Which heli encounter do you have in mind, the one at the dam after exiting the facility or the one in the cliffside? Or another if there's one I don't remember
The one at the dam. Iirc I remember saving rockets “just in case” which I used to take down the helicopters. I remember thinking “wow, what if I had used those earlier? I’d be f-d”
It's really, really well done. Though people have gripes with how they did Xen. I loved their take on it, personally.
Xen
Thanks, corrected.
i rarely felt like I was shooting at waves of enemies in monotonous repetition.
The crafting of the combat-scenarios in Half-Life 2 is always the most artful thing about it to me.
Like instead of on-rails, the design is by-suggestion. You end up employing a spectacular, cinematic solution to a combat scenario, where even the angle at which you're standing to observe the carnage feels precisely calculated and playtested, but you have just enough freedom in your execution of the cool thing you're clearly supposed to do that it still feels like you're the clever protagonist who thought of it.
The game always used to be compared with Halo 2, because of PC vs Console wars, both being Sci-Fi, and, most importantly, both starting with an H. But I always thought they were fairly opposite styles.
Games like Halo or Doom are more about the core loop of thrilling gunplay in a series of arenas against a set roster of enemies, while Half-Life achieves an interesting balance between scripted battle scenes and playground arenas, where the placement of enemies, weapons, tools, and traps almost inevitably combine into a specific "action sequence" that the developers clearly had in mind, but it feels like you're spontaneously coming up with it all as you play.
This is such a good comment, no FPS that I've played since has come close to HL2's immaculate level design and choreography.
This is so true. So many memorable encounters, hard-wired into my brain. In City 17, one sequence against the combine, every encounter is unique. They are above on the streets, you are in the canals. You shoot some barrel and start a chain reaction where everything goes boom, they fall with revolutionary ragdoll, everything is choreographed but it still feels like you are the hero who saw that barrel and made a smart move.
Also out of combat everything is cinematic. Sometimes you reload because you realized you missed something you should have watched, like a Strider walking by or Father grilling zombies or sth.
I love it, I love HL2 but the game that put me on track to be a lifetime gamer was HL1 and will always be my GOAT.
I played a lot of shooters before HL1; MI, Doom, Duke, all that stuff, all epic and replayed until today, but HL1 hit different. For me, it was revolutionary. I actually like to replay HL1 more than playing Black Mesa despite BM being an awesome homage. But the original HL1, as it is, aged perfectly and still feels great. I just love the direct responsiveness of the Source engine. Nothing comes close. Only part I find annoying is the conveyor belt section but that's a small gripe.
You should play halo, made for controller and a great experience that varies between large action and smaller corridors
Half-Life was hugely important to me as a kid when it came out. But I never figured out the puzzle near the three headed monster to unblock the ceiling ventiliation fan by shooting the wooden planks. It just didn't occur to me to shoot them to fix the airflow.
It was 1999, and I just replayed the game over and over until that point where I was hard locked. Really broke my heart I could never finish my favorite game. Nowadays that would be a quick youtube search and I'd be on my way...
All shooters can only go from bad to tolerable on controller, the entire genre was made for mouse and keyboard. You should've probably used those
I actually tried but moving with wasd felt unintuitive and finger crampy
Spending more than 5 minutes with it might help
If you actually want to experience some of the most definitive PC shooters ever made you play them on m&k. You know, the actual input method shooters were made for. Millions of people (including very young kids) have successfully done it before you without getting cramps, you can learn WASD movement in like 30 minutes and you'd be comfortable with it before you finished the game
Or maybe, just maybe, people vastly prefer one method of input over another regardless of 'objectivity'?
But of course pc gamers go full on the condescending path.
right. so weird
Why do you assume I only spent 5 minutes using wasd? I spent an entire HL1 level using Keyboard+Mouse and it took about it 20mins. I prefer controller but the aiming suffers greatly
I don't know if there's a new alternative, but there was a product called the FragFX Frag Chuck, which is basically half a controller, with d-pad, analog stick and some other triggers, that you can map to standard keyboard keys, so you use do WASD with the stick in your left hand, then use a standard mouse in your right hand for aiming, so you get the best of both controls.
They didn't literally mean exactly 5 minutes. Haha saying "it wasn't 5 minutes, it was 20" is missing the point completely. The implied suggestion is spending a significant number of hours with the new control scheme over the course of days or weeks.
As someone who doesn't use controllers, I guarantee you I have zero hope of becoming proficient with one in a day, much less a single 20 minute level. That's basically nothing.
i prefer controller dude idk why this is so controversial for you.
This is not a "me" thing dude. Literally every person who plays tarkov will tell you this is not a game that is controller friendly. Anyone who has learned a new input method will tell you it takes more than 20 minutes.
Bizarre reply, to be honest.
yea but i dont play Tarkov or competitive shooters dude.
in those cases, KB+M is preferable. but that's not me
Lmao I'm a dumbass. I thought this was a reply I got in the tarkov sub. Pardon me, I thought you were insane but this makes way more sense in this context.
HL1 Normal and Hard are practically different games in terms of game play, even more so with a controller. HL1 hard is a combat puzzle, where you enter a space with X health, Y ammo and Z enemies, and you have to work out how to make it to the other side. Copious use of quick save and loading is recommended. I definitely would not have recommended it on Hard for a first play, but for a 2nd play through, sure.
my 13-year old self back in the day somehow made a "take zero damage" challenge out of every encounter. It's funny if I think about it since it wasn't some "I can do this" mindset, but instead I made it out of fear: what if I take 50 damage now and waste my underbarrel nades and then the next encounter is also super hard and I won't make it? Game was super scary back then, the soldiers were so clever, flanking, taking cover, nades. God, I loved it. And still do. "Foxtrot, niner. - Okay, mission, zero niner." Hardwired lol.
I'm conditioned to reload if I feel I lost more health or used more ammo than I should have in an encounter, in almost any game.
I went through the same FPS thing as you did although for me it was triggered by trying Bioshock.
After this, I went on to play the Halo series. It took me awhile to warm up to it due to how different it was. Using your words, we mainly just shoot stuff in it. I still ended up liking it though.
This motivated me to give HF1 a try again. I dropped it because I found it too difficult for me.
I started HL1 on normal then played on easy lol. Episode 1 and 2 are the better games, played those on normal
Did you play Blue Shift before OpFor? If so, what did you think about that?
I played them in order of release date. I remember being reallymrelieved playing Blue Shift because it was a lot shorter and easier lol
I have never played Half Life.
But I've seen at least half of all Freeman's Mind episodes.
I believe I always stop watching at roughly the same point and think "Damn, I should just play this".
I also ignored HL and the FPS genre as a whole for a long while. Played HL1 not so long ago, and wow... so much details in such an old game! That must've been the AAA title of its time. Quite hard too, I agree, I had to look up a few things. But otherwise it was rather pleasant, even given the age of the game. I haven't beaten it, dropped on the last boss, but still I was happy to experience such a legendary game and find it not bad even by modern standards.
You should play Blood. It will kick your ass and make you smile