I've never played any Half Life games

[evdk]

Xen is awesomely alien and cool change of pace. No amount of shitty platforming will change that, especially after you have already handled Residue Processing - the actual spurious derpy platforming section of the game.

Without Xen HL would be just another FPS exclusively about shooting enemies in rooms full of crates.

Jumping puzzles in first person suck a dick and Xen is a bunch of floating islands. Fuck that.

 

[DraQ]

and Xen is a bunch of floating islands.

And Earth is just a spherical lump of rock. Your point?

Plus I don't see much difference between FPP and side-scrolling platforming (not TPP, though, I always fall on my face a few times when platforming in TPP for some reason).

 

[DeepOcean]

Xen is awesomely alien and cool change of pace. No amount of shitty platforming will change that, especially after you have already handled Residue Processing - the actual spurious derpy platforming section of the game.

Without Xen HL would be just another FPS exclusively about shooting enemies in rooms full of crates.

View attachment 1875
Jumping puzzles in first person suck a dick and Xen is a bunch of floating islands. Fuck that.

The jumping puzzles weren't even the worst but that spider boss is so boring to fight. How about maiking a boss where the only vulnerable spot is the sack but have three stages and eat rockets like candy, it wasn't difficult but just terrible boring.

 

[SCO]

The only half-life game worth playing is Bloodlines. The rest are shooters and automatically disqualified.

 

[DraQ]

SCO wants to see acrania again.

 

[Average Manatee]

And this moment when Barney gives you a crowbar praising GOOD OLD DAYZ is just like the game needed to remind you of being HL1 sequel coz it really doesn't feel like it is... Pathetic.

Jesus christ, I forgot how much I hated that moment. It's on the level of making a "the cake is a lie" joke, 6 years after the fact.

 

[DemonKing]

It's difficult to necessarilly recommend them these days because there's so much water under the bridge with regards to the development of first-person shooters over the last 15 years that playing the original Half-Life will not feel like the revelation it was in 1998. I remember firing it up on my trusty old Pentium MMX and being completely blown away by the level of immersion they'd managed to achieve and the world-building (the gameplay was very good too). The last few levels of the game were disappointing but everything up to that point was mind-blowing. I'm still hard pressed to think of any game level (from any genre) that I recall quite so fondly as "Surface Tension" in Half Life - non-stop balls-to-the-wall action and a pumping sound track - it defintitely gets the adrenaline flowing.

HL2 holds up a lot better today in a graphical sense but is basically a linear corridor shooter with decent physics and lip-synching tech thrown in. What I like about it is the way in which it tells the story via on screen-action rather than cutscenes or the patented Bioshock "everyone in the city leaves every thought of importance lying around on a tape recorder for you to pick up and listen to" approach to "storytelling". You could argue that Alyx walking around and info-dumping on you is a first-person cutscene but it's positively seemless compared to the approach most other games seem to take.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

As everyone already said - HL1 should be a must. Playing it, you will also recognize some Counter-Strike sounds.
HL2 is worth it. Some parts are boring, but there are also some very good parts and gravity gun.

EDIT: oh yeah - try HL multiplayer and get pwned by some seriously fucked up motherfuckers. Cannot have this level of skill in cs.

 

[BaconAndEggs]

Don't forget the mods! That HL1 mod where you played the Xen alien and zapped stuff with lightning was pretty fun. They Hunger was also pretty enjoyable if you like t3h zombies. Might extend the replay value if you like the base game enough.

 

[Stonewolf]

Half Life is a definition of 10/10 game and that's alll, nothing more to add.

So-called 'Half Life 2' has literally NOTHING common with its predecessor. HL1 was an excellent mix of all these conspiracy theories like 'bad goverment is hiding truth about Roswell', X-Files, top secret experiments etc. you know what I mean. Now u lead some rebellion to the victory over some bad aliens and every NPC you met goes with retarded talk like 'You... YOU ARE GORDON FUCKIN FREEMAN, A FUKKING LEGGEND, I READ ABOUT YA I MY SCHOOLBOOK AND I LOVE YA blablahblah TAKE THIS ROCKET LAUNCHER AND GO SHOOTTIN SOME BANSHEEZ' or 'OH NO WERE IN TROUBLE BUT HERE'S GORDON FUKKIN FREEMAN IN DA FLESH BRING US TO THE SLAUGHTER PLS WE'LL DO ANYTHING YA WANT KOZ WERE YOUR SHEEPZ'.

And this moment when Barney gives you a crowbar praising GOOD OLD DAYZ is just like the game needed to remind you of being HL1 sequel coz it really doesn't feel like it is... Pathetic.

Shooting is mediocre, Alyx is annnoying, weapons are generic, AI is dumb, vehicle parts are boring, plot is a joke etc. what a waste of Source engine for this mediocrity. It's not Unreal 2 bad or smt but still one of the most disappointing and overrated games ever.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

The second one is the only good one.

You got the crappy taste in games right there.

 

[Stonewolf]

Nah.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yes you do.

 

[Kz3r0]

Overrated shit series, the first was quite mediocre overall the second is a fucking disgrace, the only must about Half Life 1 is the fuckaton of mods.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Nah.

Says a man who pissed himself while playing Dark Souls.
Go play some Call of Dooty.

 

[zerotol]

Counterstrike was the best competitive fps mp game ever created.

pre steam was prolly where it was at. so cs 1.5

 

[Gurkog]

Half-Life was pretty decent, until the alien world shit. I quit the game at that point because it went full retard, imo. Team Fortress Classic was the best part of Half Life, and it wasn't made by Valve.

 

[DraQ]

Half-Life was pretty decent, until the alien world shit. I quit the game at that point because it went full retard, imo.

I'm not going to point fingers at who's going full retard here.

 

[Amn Nom]

The first is the only one I would say is a 'must play'. The expansions by Gearbox are nice so you could check those out too. I wouldn't even bother with the sequel because it has terrible gunplay and stupid enemy AI, plus those god awful driving sections.

 

[evdk]

DraQ
At least you won't poke yourself in the eye, that would hurt.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Hl 1 and 2 brought lots of new ideas to the FPS genre. They were pioneers in things that are common place now. That's their one redeeming quality, but it means they didn't age well, because everything they did lots of games copied a lot. I imagine anyone who never played them wouldn't be impressed by anything in it.

Play portal 1 and 2, they're set in HL universe. They are puzzle FPS games that are not very hard at all.

 

[Tehdagah]

Hl 1 and 2 brought lots of new ideas to the FPS genre. They were pioneers in things that are common place now. That's their one redeeming quality, but it means they didn't age well, because everything they did lots of games copied a lot. I imagine anyone who never played them wouldn't be impressed by anything in it.

Play portal 1 and 2, they're set in HL universe. They are puzzle FPS games that are not very hard at all.

Like?

 

[Western]

Played HL1 so long ago I can barely remember it, but I vaguely recall thinking it was ok, not trash anyway. As for HL2 I didn't even finish the escape from the city part, due to all the tedious vehicle bits, physics puzzles are a bit meh as well, like a gimmick to show off the physics.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Popamolish ideas. But at the time... no one knew what popamole was...

 

[Lorica]

Popamolish ideas. But at the time... no one knew what popamole was...

Yeah, but at that point you might as well recommend playing: