Half-Life Turns 15 Today

pxc said:
That's a pretty low standard, but probably also untrue. :p

HL had great AI for the time, but it's completely primitive compared to top tier games released in the last dozen years.
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Well sure it was a hamfisted comment lol

I haven't played 99% of all games =P

Compared to:

Mount and Blade
Skyrim
Deus Ex; Human Revolution

HL has better AI

the AI in FC3 seems about on par with HL
 
Such a great game, fond fond memories indeed!

+1 Nostalgia inducing thread
 
Half-life was so groundbreaking and ahead of its time. It was basically the first modern story driven FPS. I was absolutely blown away when I played it back in 1998.
 
ICOM said:
I agree with you on Quake. I missed work for two days because of this game and my Canopus 3d card. My all time:

1. Half-Life
2. Quake
3. Star Craft
4. System Shock 2
5. Elder Scrolls ( all )
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Don't forget Thief I/II. I actually think it was a better game than HL. It still has a large fan base and people are still making levels for Thief II.
 
Biznatch said:
Yup the AI in this game was better than any other game at that time by far. Even like 5+ years later a lot of FP FPS games couldn't compare to the AI in that game. Throw a nade at an enemy? They yell grenade and all scatter. Hiding behind a box? THey either flank you or toss a nade themselves to flush you out. kicking the crap out of an enemy in 1v1? They run away to find help. I remember reading about HL1 in a gaming magazine and anxiously waiting for it to be released a year or so later....
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a "nade"? wtf...
 
And nine years after that we are still stuck with Battlefield: More Explody Edition and COD: Buy This Again, Dipshit
 
i was never really into half life 1, was too busy with the quake series. i only played the hl demo at the time and yea it is wild how far we have come technologically gaming wise.. can't imagine what things will be like in another15 years
 
felt said:
One of the greatest PC games ever, second is StarCraft and third is Battlefield 1942 - Desert Combat
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dude...yes desert combat was amazing. I remember that one air map that I would spend hours and hours dog fighting on. It was so much fun. Nothing was too powerful in DC, you could shoot down helos and aircraft so easily with the stinger. That was such a great game.
 
ICOM said:
I agree with you on Quake. I missed work for two days because of this game and my Canopus 3d card. My all time:

1. Half-Life
2. Quake
3. Star Craft
4. System Shock 2
5. Elder Scrolls ( all )
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Quake was game changing, but wasn't the experience Half Life was. Getting my first Voodoo card and firing up QLquake... awesome.
 
Wow.
Never played it all the way through. My buddies conned me into buying it for Counterstrike, which I played for years, up until it was re-released on the Source engine and the servers fragmented to hell. Half of my friends wanted to play CS Source and the other half wanted to play CS Classic, the clan split up after that and I lost all interest.
But hey it was a ball while it lasted and well worth paying full retail price for after all the hours of gameplay.
 
Super-D said:
Sadly Half-Life was probably the pinnacle of the single-player FPS genre.
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Agreed, but try System Shock 2, original Deus Ex, or the FEAR 1-2 games! All on steam. :)

I love all these old ones. I was 33...15 years ago.
 
The immersion in Half-Life really got you if you had an Aureal soundcard and a quad speaker setup. That was something, especially back then.

RIP Aureal............................and FU Creative.
 
Can't think of any game that had a better SP campaign than Half Life.
I'll remember forever the first time you fight those soldiers, such a good AI.

Can't wait to see what they come up with next... there HAS to be HL3 one day :)
 
Quake, Unreal, HL- PAH!

Doom. In a DOS window, on a windows 3.1 system (to have alt-tab) on a null modem cable IN THE OFFICE.

And then...DWANGO!!

But even better...."Adventure"...on a thermal printer....sigh, used to go back into the office after hours to fire that up on the minicomputer...after loading and mounting the proper Diablo disk pack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
 
I remember when my buddy at work brought in his PC and we installed it. I was working as a computer tech back then for a major electronics retailer that pretty much just sold Compaqs.. Even being a player of Duke, and Doom, etc. I was still blown away at the multiplayer.. I tryed to play the single player and the story scared the crap out of me right after the initial explosion..It seemed too much like real life as the game did nothing until you made Gordon set the world into the crap. I never did play the single player but I still fire up the MP and play some deathmatch.. Too bad HL3 will never be developed and I was kinda hoping they would have made the movie that was rumored, but now Valve into making hardware...
 
haste. said:
In before the kids all rant about how overrated Half Life is.

15 years. Man I feel old. What an experience at the time - I still remember sitting in my bedroom riding the tram into Black Mesa. Just awesome.
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I remember being glued in front of Half-Life in 1998, on my Pentium 150Mhz (overclocked to 200) running on a 6MB Voodoo 1 (Canopus Pure 3D) with an old 486 HSF ghetto attached to the main chip using rubber bands, in order to get a better overclock.


It was my brothers copy, but for whatever reason he didn't like it, so I played it, and man, it was the best game ever to be released until that day.

I'm sorry, but anyone who says Half-Life is overrated just doesn't know what they are talking about. Sure, today it doesn't seem like much. I replayed it a year or two ago, and was disappointed myself, but that's because these days every other game has been inspired by it in one way or another. The truth is at the time there wasn't anything else like it. It added a new level of story telling to games that just wasn't there before.

Make no mistake, Half Life revolutionized the single player FPS. The only other game that had as much impact on the single player FPS was Deus Ex, which came out a couple of years later.

Prior to Half-Life and Deus Ex FPS games were kind of lame. Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. etc. Just run and gun stupid aliens. Half Life and Deus Ex forever transformed the FPS, and they both deserve some crazy amount of credit for that.
 
infin@ said:
Black Mesa is worth a look for sure, nicely updated graphics.
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More than just graphics. New voice acting, and everything has made the game feel fresh again, while keeping the original story line.

I played it a while back, but ran into some sort of bug, where a "boss scene" just wouldn't end, even after I killed all the opponents. Some sort of bug. I replayed it many times without success, and had to abandon the game. Maybe I'll reinstall it and re-try it again some time soon to see if they fixed it.
 
Megalith said:
Never played it. I was a console whore 15 years ago.
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Shoulda got it on PS2 when they ported it like 12 years ago then. :p

It even had native KB&M support, which was awesome since I still had a crappy P2 Packard Bell at the time and the PS2 looked significantly better than the PC version.

Zarathustra[H];1040397079 said:
More than just graphics. New voice acting, and everything has made the game feel fresh again, while keeping the original story line.

I played it a while back, but ran into some sort of bug, where a "boss scene" just wouldn't end, even after I killed all the opponents. Some sort of bug. I replayed it many times without success, and had to abandon the game. Maybe I'll reinstall it and re-try it again some time soon to see if they fixed it.
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I think I hit some bug like that too at one point, but don't remember having a problem getting past it. I hope it doesn't take another 5 years just to get the last few chapters. :mad: Maybe it'll coincide with the HL3 launch. :p
 
Happy Birthday, HL!

Since we all came to your extravaganza, how about HL3 as a party favor for all your guests? :p
 
DejaWiz said:
Happy Birthday, HL!

Since we all came to your extravaganza, how about HL3 as a party favor for all your guests? :p
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I would like to see the Half Life saga wrap up and come to a conclusion as well, and not end like the last epsiode they released, but I somehow can't help but feel like in today's sea of offerings, Half Life isn't quite as relevant anymore.

HUGELY important in the history of FPS games, (together with Deus Ex) but just not the same anymore.

I'm torn on this.
 
hqdefault.jpg


FINISH THE FUCKING STORY...!!!
 
Zarathustra[H];1040397077 said:
Prior to Half-Life and Deus Ex FPS games were kind of lame. Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. etc. Just run and gun stupid aliens. Half Life and Deus Ex forever transformed the FPS, and they both deserve some crazy amount of credit for that.
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I totally agree with Half-life being revolutionary but Doom, Quake and even Duke Nukem were revolutionary in their time. Without those games Half-Life would have been a console 2d side scroller.
 
I don't remember the 2d card I played Half-Life on at first - but I later traded a Tyan mainboard for an original 3dfx 4MB card to a guy I went to school with. Holy shit it was game on from that point forward. Sweet sweet memories.
 
This is the game that spurred me to build a new PC. I was still rocking a Gateway 2000 P5-75 system with 40MB RAM and a 6MB Voodoo Rush. Half-Life was a slideshow so I went to CompUSA and bought an IDT WinChip 200. I still wasn't satisfied so I saved up for a few months and built a beastly K6-2 450 rig.
I played Half-Life religiously through my golden age of PC gaming, which I moved away from to consoles around 2001.
I still have the Gateway 2000 P5-75 out in my workshop, and it still powers up!
 
XamediX said:
I was a freshmen in college with my first PC ever. Software rendering was fun but I didn't start to really have fun till I bought my RIVA TNT card and used hardware rendering. HL1 MP was awesome until the asians got ahold of it and all it ended up being was people gauss gun jumping all over the place. But then CS started to get really popular.

Remember in CS beta days when the COLT M4 had a zoom on it? Remember AS_Rooftops? Remember the first time you played de_dust?
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Yeah, I LOVED CS. I still remember that when I was on dialup the only time I could play, and have a decent ping, was like between midnight and 6am, but since I was a night owl that wasn't a problem. Then I not to long after I got my first DSL hookup (384/128) and suddenly my ping at 3pm was better then it used to be at 3am so I played CS for 48 hours straight. :D

I have massive amount of playtime for years, until my favorite server shutdown. It was called Atlantamaps.org and was a custom map server. It had all the standard maps, but also as I recall over 100 custom maps. Sure most of the custom maps were shit, but there were a dozen or two that were awesome, and since you would nominate and vote on maps you would also see a nice variety.

That variety, more then anything, kept people playing there for hours on end. I'd say to myself, I'll just finish out this map (unless voted to end early each map would last 20 or 30 minutes, I can't remember which) but a few minutes before it ended and the nominations and votes for new maps would take place and it always seemed to be for one I loved and hadn't played in a couple days and then suddenly several hours have gone by. LOL!

I rarely play CS anymore, I still love the gameplay but it seems all the decent servers, which actually have players on them, simply play the same map 24/7 and while I like dust, dust2 and office, I am not interested in playing for over and over for hours on end.


Dr. Righteous said:
Well, HL1 on the SOURCE engine is worth a a replay.

BLACK MESA...........

http://www.blackmesasource.com/
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I've been meaning to check it out, maybe I grab it and celebrate HL's anniversary by giving it a go this weekend.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Yeah, I LOVED CS. I still remember that when I was on dialup the only time I could play, and have a decent ping, was like between midnight and 6am, but since I was a night owl that wasn't a problem. Then I not to long after I got my first DSL hookup (384/128) and suddenly my ping at 3pm was better then it used to be at 3am so I played CS for 48 hours straight. :D

I have massive amount of playtime for years, until my favorite server shutdown. It was called Atlantamaps.org and was a custom map server. It had all the standard maps, but also as I recall over 100 custom maps. Sure most of the custom maps were shit, but there were a dozen or two that were awesome, and since you would nominate and vote on maps you would also see a nice variety.

That variety, more then anything, kept people playing there for hours on end. I'd say to myself, I'll just finish out this map (unless voted to end early each map would last 20 or 30 minutes, I can't remember which) but a few minutes before it ended and the nominations and votes for new maps would take place and it always seemed to be for one I loved and hadn't played in a couple days and then suddenly several hours have gone by. LOL!

I rarely play CS anymore, I still love the gameplay but it seems all the decent servers, which actually have players on them, simply play the same map 24/7 and while I like dust, dust2 and office, I am not interested in playing for over and over for hours on end.
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Your experience was my experience as well. Fucking greatness the trip down memory lane. CS invented the GunGame and now new games are copying it.

But let's take this back to vanilla HL Multi. Those damn Snarks though! Some of those stock levels were just awesome. Remember the low gravity levels?
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Yeah, I LOVED CS. I still remember that when I was on dialup the only time I could play, and have a decent ping, was like between midnight and 6am, but since I was a night owl that wasn't a problem. Then I not to long after I got my first DSL hookup (384/128) and suddenly my ping at 3pm was better then it used to be at 3am so I played CS for 48 hours straight. :D

I have massive amount of playtime for years, until my favorite server shutdown. It was called Atlantamaps.org and was a custom map server. It had all the standard maps, but also as I recall over 100 custom maps. Sure most of the custom maps were shit, but there were a dozen or two that were awesome, and since you would nominate and vote on maps you would also see a nice variety.

That variety, more then anything, kept people playing there for hours on end. I'd say to myself, I'll just finish out this map (unless voted to end early each map would last 20 or 30 minutes, I can't remember which) but a few minutes before it ended and the nominations and votes for new maps would take place and it always seemed to be for one I loved and hadn't played in a couple days and then suddenly several hours have gone by. LOL!

I rarely play CS anymore, I still love the gameplay but it seems all the decent servers, which actually have players on them, simply play the same map 24/7 and while I like dust, dust2 and office, I am not interested in playing for over and over for hours on end.
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CS was definitely my game for a long time as well. I discovered it in the early betas some time (beta 4?) and despite it's teething problems I was hooked. It IMHO revolutionized multiplayer FPS gaming. No more of that lame death match nonsense.

I took over and ran the official "Yoda's Barn" Umass CS servers for a few years. It was a gaming highlight for me.

These days going back though, CS is far too run and gun like for my tastes, after having experienced such magnificent Titles as Red Orchestra 1 & 2. True masterpieces.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Well, HL1 on the SOURCE engine is worth a a replay.

BLACK MESA...........

http://www.blackmesasource.com/
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I downloaded this forever ago, and after reading all the posts on here, I went home and spent a few hours playing it last night. It's a really cool game, and they done a great job on it.

I wasn't much into PC gaming back when HL came out, back then I couldn't afford the fancy computer stuff, so I had to stick to whatever console I had at the time.
 
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