[Closed] Gamers- does half life 2 get good?

Pierre - Member
Well now you mention it, Repton 3 had a built-in level editor and you could create your own sprites as well as complete levels. I won a school competition by creating three new space-themed levels...

I remember that! I never had a BBC but I played one the ones at school quite a bit. I'm not sure I ever did much with the Repton 3 editor beyond making enormous rock falls though.

I did have the Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit for my C64 though, and I had a go making at least a couple of games. One was a typical scrolling space shooter but one was inspired by the style of Thalamus's Creatures so involved playing a bubble-firing balloon trying to evade the attacks of various cute things attacking it as it rose into the air.

CS was originally a mod for HL1.
CS: Source was a remake by Valve in the HL2 engine.

There been 2 standalone versions since with CS:GO being the latest and very good.

what was the level where you had to squeeze a bag of powder to attract some beasts or something. very odd

Pheropods, or more commonly known as bug bait. Used to pacify/control the Ant Lions.

Kamakazie - Member
CS was originally a mod for HL1.
CS: Source was a remake by Valve in the HL2 engine.

There been 2 standalone versions since with CS:GO being the latest and very good.

For those that think it's a shiite game, I can assure you that it right shits up my 10year old. He won't even watch me play ravenholm, although he's happy to put some caps in combine ass.

I loved HL1 the first time I played it (like 15 years ago); it was genuinely epic for the time. But I played Black Mesa a couple of years back (when it was free), and it felt like a real grind. I don't know why - maybe it was knowing the major points and having forgotten the platforming and time required to get to them?

But as above, if you're not liking HL2 then it probably won't improve for you

Just went on a nostalgia trip and played through Ravenholm with just the grav gun. Still fun. 🙂

OK, now we've got a bit of a four yorkshiremen sketch thing going on, I think it needs to be topped by someone who hacked April Showers or something similar into Jet Set Willy...

/waves

Inspired to pick it back up. Now I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse to connect the Surface to, and some headphones. It's 2001 all over again 🙂

Half life 2 is still awesome now.
Some games hold up forever. Mario 64 being an example.

The orange box is something every gamer should own.

Still love Quake, or the memory of it. Slower, more about the atmosphere and solving puzzles than just blowing away monsters, and a game I could manage to complete. Nice Trent Reznor soundtrack.

Likewise the Dark Forces series. Nice big maps to wander around, bit of atmosphere, star wars music chucked in, and shoot up stuff when necessary.

As I say, modern "shooters" are just a bit too much action for my liking. Not enough time to soak up the atmosphere. And if it's multiplayer just not enough time to exist. Dead within a few seconds, killed by some spotty kid playing god knows where.

I bought HL2 on Steam about 6 months ago, not played it yet but loved the original.

Recent purchases also include Deus Ex Human Revolution (again nostalgia for the original game) and Civ V as I'd never played a strategy game and Civ V is supposed to be pretty good for newcomers.

Reading this thread it looks like of the three above, only Civ V will stand the test of time...

Rise and shine, Mister Freeman. Rise and... shine. Not that I... wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No one is more deserving of a rest, and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until... well, let's just say your hour has... come again.

The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mister Freeman. Wake up and... *smell the ashes*...

The first Far Cry on PC was also a classic for it's time. Spent hours sniping mercenaries from miles away and accidently hang gliding in to the ocean.

Civ is pants.

Is there any news on HL3??

mrlebowski - Member
Is there any news on HL3??

Yeah - same availability date as the new STW forum.

It's been out 4 years already?

mrlebowski - Member
Is there any news on HL3??

Making gaming great again.

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Is there any news on HL3??

Yup it's not happening.

I suppose the thing about halves, their defining quality even, is that there's two of them.

Half life 2 and Far Cry came out roughly the same time and were both groundbreaking PC games. The fact that they still hold up well to modern games is no mean feat. EP 1 and 2 were pretty good also.

Damit... gona give TF2 a rest and fire up HL2 tonight.

HL3 hype is some high quality cruel fun, much like watching Star Wars fans getting excited for then disappointed by films in the prequel trilogy was.

There must have been dozens of false starts by fans on suspected ARGs by Valve, etc., screenshots accidentally showing HL3 project folders on Valve computers ("Oh yeah we kind of gave up on that… twice"), and a series of increasingly obtuse fan theories.

Also this from Reddit yesterday, some people discussing just making their own Half Life 3:
[img] [/img]

Yeah, on most big budget videogames projects, the other 200 - 600 people are just superfluous 😀

I'd love a game of unreal tournament right now

I was discussing gaming with people at work the other day. I was pretty good at Quake back in 97-98, knew all the timings of the power-up and weapon spawns. Deathmatches in the office were dominated by a colleague and I, the other half dozen people just refused to play eventually.

ChrisL - Member

And I made a few levels for the original Doom. I'd have said that Doom led the way when it came to PC games with customisable engines and the ability for significant user generated content. Did anyone play AliensTC back in the day? It was brilliant.

I love that even today, Doom still has a modding scene!

With the prototype for an Unreal and a later Source conversion, we uh, *cough* definitely didn't end up working on Aliens-ish tactical game for six months then stripping every last trace of Fox's IP out of it before showing it to anyone 😀

HL3 hype is some high quality cruel fun, much like watching Star Wars fans getting excited for then disappointed by films in the prequel trilogy was.

It's a curious decision by Valve to walk away from the franchise. I would have thought HL3 would be a massive money-spinner for them. Perhaps they just don't think they could meet expectations?

I was pretty good at Quake back in 97-98, knew all the timings of the power-up and weapon spawns. Deathmatches in the office were dominated by a colleague and I, the other half dozen people just refused to play eventually.

Back in the mid 90s, we set up a mini-network at work (coaxial thin Ethernet!) and half a dozen machines running Doom. The others were masters at it, running it at the highest speed and had all the weapon spawn points memorised. I usually managed about six steps before getting a BFG in the face.

Then Descent came out, so we set that up. Without the benefit of loads of experience it was suddenly a level playing field, and my spacial awareness is pretty keen - I fare far better with that sort of thing than with sprawling 2D maps, I can do the Rubik's Cube but those 4x4 puzzles with 15 sliding plates and a gap baffle the crap out of me. I absolutely dominated it, after a week they refused to play and went back to Doom.

martinhutch - Member

It's a curious decision by Valve to walk away from the franchise. I would have thought HL3 would be a massive money-spinner for them. Perhaps they just don't think they could meet expectations?

Their official position is basically "We don't comment on rumours and speculation". As far as most people in the videogames industry can tell (and Valve employees are tight-lipped even with their friends), there are two main factors.

Owning Steam and taking a cut of every game sale has made Valve more money than they need. Most studios are one flop, if that, from going bust. Valve have enough money that they can probably function as an independently wealthy organisation for a very long time yet. Team Fortress and DOTA2 have only added to the heap of money, and they were both experiments with new things. HL3 might be a money spinner, but not one they really need that badly.

The kind of linear storytelling that the Half Life games did was revolutionary for it's time, but as people have said in this thread, things have moved on. Making something that feels like a continuation of the Half Life games yet reflects modern game design is quite a challenge. At various times, small teams seem to have formed internally at Valve and later given up. As you say, fear of not being able to meet expectations could certainly be a factor in that.

[quote=Cougar ]Then Descent came out, so we set that up. Without the benefit of loads of experience it was suddenly a level playing field, and my spacial awareness is pretty keen - I fare far better with that sort of thing than with sprawling 2D maps, I can do the Rubik's Cube but those 4x4 puzzles with 15 sliding plates and a gap baffle the crap out of me. I absolutely dominated it, after a week they refused to play and went back to Doom.
Descent!!!

Whilst we're on games/series that are quite old there's a new unreal tournament in development which appears to be part-epic and part-community written. It's basically open source, you just have to register with epic to get at the repository. Playing the original UT online over dialup with a ping of ~600 was always fun.

scotroutes - Member

Descent!!!

If you liked Descent, check out Sublevel Zero - it was made by a couple of mates from Manchester.

The kind of linear storytelling that the Half Life games did was revolutionary for it's time, but as people have said in this thread, things have moved on.

Can't say I see a decently-made linear (or semi-linear) game is necessarily a bad thing. The massive open-world games have their place, but I must admit on some of them (Fallout various and Far Cry as examples) I got bored of grinding resources almost straight away.

Valve can afford to indulge us!

Just bought and installed the counter strike bundle on the back of this! Pure awesomeness! I don't think there's a better FPS level than de dust, they should have just stopped there, no point going any further! 😆

I'm a tad rusty though, kill death ratio sitting about 1:4, awful and unacceptable! Need to get good at this carry on again, how to mighty have fallen! 😆

Just reloaded Portal 2 (It's about 3x the disc size of HL2!!) had to get out it was about to consume me....

If you liked Descent, check out Sublevel Zero - it was made by a couple of mates from Manchester.

That looks pretty cool, though I've an inherent dislike of procedurally-generated levels.

Just reloaded Portal 2

Portal 2 (and 1) is brilliant. The 2-player co-op is especially good.

Portal is a work of genius.

“When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your Damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”

Can't say I see a decently-made linear (or semi-linear) game is necessarily a bad thing.

+1, although I'm not sure you could get as many hours of gameplay out of a linear story as an open world.

If you really like Portal then check out The Talo Principle. It's a FPS puzzle game with a cool, interesting, story. I really enjoyed playing it and will likely play through it again soon.

Can't say I see a decently-made linear (or semi-linear) game is necessarily a bad thing.

Certainly did The Last of Us no harm.

Cave Johnson in Portal 2 is one of the greatest ever game voiceovers. Portal 2 in general is just a fabulously funny game.

Oh, in case you got covered in that repulsion gel, here's some advice the lab boys gave me: DO NOT get covered in the repulsion gel.
We haven't entirely nailed down what element it is yet, but I'll tell you this: it's a lively one, and it does NOT like the human skeleton

Cave Johnson in Portal 2 is one of the greatest ever game voiceovers

+1. Hilarious.

That's a bold claim in a series that gave us GlaDOS and Wheatley.

martinhutch - Member
Can't say I see a decently-made linear (or semi-linear) game is necessarily a bad thing.

It's not, it's just that they're made differently now. While there've always been experiments in non-linear story telling (Colony Wars, Erasmotron, Deus Ex), big budget games tend toward linear stories because otherwise, making all that extra stuff gets really expensive, and most players don't replay enough to see a fraction of it. Doing the kind of simulation that could improvise stories is a really hard problem that we haven't solved yet.

Half Life 2 had the same mute protagonist as many games that went before, but put a lot of resources into building systems from scratch to [url= ]simulate body language[/url] for non-player characters. Instead of cinematic cutscenes, the player was free to move around, and the NPCs would do certain things automatically like maintain eye contact, body position in relation to the player camera, etc.

Some techniques got copied by other studios, some didn't, everything moved on. Cinematic cutscenes have survived much better than Valves approach at the time. Along with voice acting, studios and writers seem to prefer that for telling more emotive stories, with a bit more complexity than just casting the player as saviour. The Last Of Us is a good example.

Valve could make HL3 feel like a modern game, or they could make it feel like a Half Life Game, but doing both at once is probably a really difficult design problem. And maybe boring! Unless they start talking a lot about it themselves though, we'll never know for sure.

They did do something with HL2 I wish more studios would copy, or could afford to: They hired an architect named Viktor Antonov to design City 17. With him, the developers wrote stories about each location, sometimes down to individual rooms, about what had happened there a few days ago, a few months ago, a few years ago and so on. Instead of dumping all that text in diaries or such for the player, they just used that as source material for design and built in all the physical details those stories implied.

(You might recognize a similar visual style from Dishonored, because Arkane Studios hired him too).

If we're going for Cave Johnson quotes...

Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts.

Oh, and if it makes you feel better, I loathed the Ravenholme bit of Half Life 2. Loved the rest of the game though.

I enjoyed Half-Life and played it through, but I gave up on Half-Life 2 after a relatively short time. I can't remember why.

I gave up on Half-Life 2 after a relatively short time. I can't remember why.

I've a vague memory that I got frustrated with it very quickly because it was from the era where you can't walk somewhere that it looks like you should be able to because there's a blade of grass in the way. It's entirely possible that I could be confusing it with something else though.