Master of masterpieces Halflife is 20 today - Rejoice

Halflife, a game definitely better than Goldeneye and Metriod Prime - is 20 years old today. A ground-breaking revolutionary title that changed the life's of pc gamers around the globe, it ushered in a new prosperous golden age and to this day is still imitated., it's DNA felt throughout the gaming cosmos.

It is now very old. Perhaps older than some of you.

Black Mesa celebrates by showing off it's least incredible section Xen, which is almost done (again).

"Our goal is to release Xen on Steam in Q2 2019,"

Still one of the best game ever made.

It was incredible achievement.

Never seen what the fuss was about it tbh...... played the PS2 version and the PC version.

Meh. I played it back in the day on PC and while I did like it I just was never all that crazy about it or the sequel. Good games but that’s about where it ends for me. I’ll take stuff like Halo and Metroid Prime over it any day of the week.

It was ahead of its time. it was released in 1998 when best console game of that time MGS1 where you kill a soldier and body disappeared.

the gameplay especially gunplay was also ahead of its time. easily one of the most satisfying shooting ever.

When I first played it I was very surprised that when you start the game, you weren't killing enemies right away like you did with other fps such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake, instead you start your day at work at Black Mesa seeing your fellow employees and everything is safe. Then all of a sudden you accidentally teleport aliens into Black Mesa when doing a experiment test and now everything becomes a huge danger to you.

After so many years I will never forget that feeling I had when I first played the beginning of the game. To this day Half-Life still has one of the best level designs for first person shooters. Its expansion Opposing Force was also awesome but sadly Blue Shift was a huge disappointment for me. The sequel Half-Life 2 is also a great game but I will always love Half-Life 1 more. I never get tired playing that game. It's too bad that the series stopped after Half-Life 2 Episode 2.

And yet I had more fun sneaking up to soldiers in MGS and putting a C4 on their back then I did playing Half Life.

No need to justify perfection my friend.

Let us just sit back quietly {humbly) to enjoy and appreciate Valve's artistic triumph.

The series is still shit.

Prove me wrong.

?

Overrated

Indeed. As a young man I also keenly remember almost several parts as clear as day. It's ending was just effective as it's opening. I can't recall playing a FPS that had optional endings, least of all one where you outright lose or join "the bad guy".

Seeing AI fight each other had been done in Quake 2 and other games, but nothing quite like Halflife. It was a masterful illusion of a bigger world outside the player. Instead of feeling like the centre of the universe, Gordian merely felt like a cog on a journey, one deliberately shrouded in mystery, hinting but never quite spelling it out.

It also made me aware of the potential of modding. Games like Quake had been modded before, but Valve deliberately handed the community the car keys automatically extending that £29 purchase to something that could last years,

To this day it's still getting high quality SP content, that's probably better than the shit being crapped out by Battlefield 5 right now with it's million-dollar mocop.

Yeah the ending also took me by surprise when I first finished Half-Life. The fact that no matter what you choose, you still lose at the end. There was no happy ending and I give Valve a lot of credit for doing something like this.

Opposing Force's ending was even more sad since your character is never seen ever again. Funny enough Blue Shift is probably the only game in the Half-Life series where you do get a good ending.

I Recently started replaying HL2 in co-op via Synergy. It hasn't aged too well to be honest. The physics were awesome at it's time, but by today's standards, they're pretty wonky. Also, the long unskippable dialog sections were fun the first time but they beg you to not play the game a second time since you're just standing around going "come on already, I know the story, let me play goddammit!!!

I can't say I have a personal best FPS of All Time, I could make a list of the best FPS series but I don't think I could pick a single winner. They all have their own flavor and could all be the best for different reasons. Wolfenstein, Doom, Half-Life, Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, Halo, & maybe even Crysis. Heck, I'd have a hard time just picking through the Build Engine games.

Meh. I tried it (plus Opposing Force) and then went right back to playing Quake 2. Not much of a hubbub to me back then. Of course, I was biased towards fast-paced MP back then.

Half-Life seemed too slow-paced. The only FPS that was slower-paced was Golden Eye. Both were snorefests to me. ;)

I would've loved it if Black Mesa was released by now so I could play through Half Life all over again.

This game changed the way I look at games. Before Half Life I don't think a single game 'immersed' me as much as it did. Always staying in first person, always looking through the eyes of Gordon, the scripted events, ... All of it was a game changer for me.

The industry has changed, Valve has changed. Half Life never changed though, it will forver be a masterpiece.

Twenty years is "very old"? Dude, that's barely out of diapers, relatively speaking.

20 years is old for a game lol

Video games don't date back to ancient greek times.

Oh yes, I would argue Opposing Force is probably one of the best expansion packs made. The content and quality was almost on a par with the original game.

Heck, Gearbox best game along with Road To Hill 30. Rather play that than Borderlands (X).

It's worth mentioning as well Halflife Decay, though flawed, this is something of a precurser to Portal. The failed Dreamcast port is interesting. It seems like at the time, it would have been the definitive experience. Albeit without modding.

A wonderful game, even today.

magical game. part 2 was even better.

i used to kill the time by crouching in front of alyx's crotch, particularly when her dad was in the cut scene. he was cool though, didn't seem to mind

@uninspiredcup said:

Oh yes, I would argue Opposing Force is probably one of the best expansion packs made. The content and quality was almost on a par with the original game.

Heck, Gearbox best game along with Road To Hill 30. Rather play that than Borderlands (X).

It's worth mentioning as well Halflife Decay, though flawed, this is something of a precurser to Portal. The failed Dreamcast port is interesting. It seems like at the time, it would have been the definitive experience. Albeit without modding.

I actually own the Playstation 2 version of Half-Life and I had fun playing co-op on Decay with other people. I always felt that Gearbox did a great job with the PS2 port of the game and Opposing Force. It's too bad that Gearbox sucks now.

I still remember reading PC Gamer (UK) magazine articles hyping it to high heavens leading up to its release.

I feel old.

It was a game I loved before I knew about good fps games.

If I remember correctly, the UK version deemed it, "THE WOODSTOCK MOMENT OF GAMING", in bold red lettering.

They were right, which is great.

But they do to the late 70s-early 80s.

20 years later and you still can't spot a quality game.

I've gotta play that game one day. Maybe snatch up the orange box on ebay.

The 13th century doesn't nullify the 16th century being old.

I wished I played it back in 98 but I didn't get into PC gaming until 05.

Incredible story-telling. So beautiful, such haunting. A masterful hinting at a much bigger picture,

Oh!

MGS1 is stealth game, a different type of game from Half-Life. While they were both cinematic, and had cyberpunk and military themes, that's where the similarities end.

The best console game in 1998 was Ocarina of Time, by the way. Which came out this month as well (on the 21st). Either way, 1998 was one of the best years in gaming history.

@uninspiredcup: Um, ok. Like I said previously I liked it but just wasn’t crazy for it. There were and are other games that I’ve enjoyed more.

1. No

2. For it's day

3. No

4.No

Nope. HL = godly.

I remember booting it up and not expecting what it was. It was really the best game for me from that generation, beating out a lot of the competition pre-2000s. Oh, and HL2 is still one of the best games I've played. It's just sad that Valve never had the motivation to finish the series. I'm still hoping HL2 EP3 or HL3 or whatever gets released some day.

It revolutionized the FPS genre in a lot of ways. Many of the things we now take for granted in FPS games go back to Half-Life. I don't really see how anyone could say it's overrated. It's was a damn near perfect game for its time, other than maybe the Xen levels, which were a little strange and experimental. It's one of the few legitimate 10/10s I've played.

And then there's Counter-Strike which started as a HL multiplayer mod. It's arguably the most popular, longest lived multiplayer shooter of all time, and still extremely popular almost 20 years on.

LMAO at people calling it overrated and again surprise it's the same faction. Where will their precious cinematic games be if it weren't for Half-Life. The thing is as cup once pointed out HL did it right while the later copy-cats just became lazy with it.

I'm not surprised Gamespot doesn't have an article on this subject.

They are far too busy writing 50 Red Dead Redemption 2* articles per day

*replace with Fortnite/Destiny or whatever else is popular at the time.

Commandos 1 had that feature months earlier.

And Wolf 1 also had this feature don't know why you are so crazy about it.

And MGS 1 wasn't the best console game of that time. Final Fantasy 7 and Tekken 3 were far better.

Kojima did that cinematc games sooner than Half Life with Policenauts.

Such a classic game. It actually aged surprisingly well, because great games don't age.

Tekken 3 was good game. final fantasy?? meh JRPG.

so yes MGS1 was best PS1 game by very large margin. its still best MGS game ever. only MGS game where story is good and make sense.

@ghosts4ever: Yeah right. MGS 1 had a great story.

The story that Snake blows up walls underground the base without the full base going alert.(Or having gun fights with bosses without others realizing)

the story that like other MGS games added more retcons to the franchise.(Big Boss was never Snake's father also Miller was a black person in Metal Gear 2)

The story that Snake(Which was 33) fells in love with a 17-18 years old girl by looking at her ass.

The story that a guy that could fly and read minds couldn't beat Snake.

MGS story was never great, if you take them seriously you aren't playing them the way they are meant to be played.

MGS 1 wasn't that good and is hugely overrated.(it had more cutscenes and filler dialogues than gameplay)

And JRPGs are life. MGS 1 was never the best PS1 game.

We had MGS on PS1 setting that standard....without Half Life...... not that it matters as Half Life's story was shit in comparison to other games of the time.

Final Fantasy 7...... Ocarina Of Time....... Resident Evil...........Now there's a f'kin story!! And done before/better then Half Life too!!

Cinematic games started well before Half Life and other games did it way better then Half Life...

Actually thinking Half Life started the cinematic game movement.......HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....

Half Life, a perfect lesson on how to ruin your game with a stupid platform jumping section.

But did Kojima ever made a good game? Nothing in Kojima games are praise worthy apart from may be cinematography and music.

Speaking of cinematic games, Wing Commander happened way before HL or MGS was a thing. Me giving credit to HL is how they interlinked cinematics to core gameplay without taking away control from the player much. All games after that tried to copy its style of storytelling, cinematics and gameplay while very very few succeeding as it did.

Your current cinematic games are pretty much either all cutscenes, taking control away from the player at every opportunity or QTEs. All extremely lazy compared to HL.

Case in point, look at the below example. It's comparing HL2 to Bioshock: Infinite but the comparison holds true for HL vs your modern cinematic games:

I just played the Project Lambda UE4 demo. Very cool re-imagining of the tram sequence, but it runs like absolute shit. Worse than BFV with ray tracing. LOL

@pc_rocks said:

@dorog1995 said:

@pc_rocks said:

LMAO at people calling it overrated and again surprise it's the same faction. Where will their precious cinematic games be if it weren't for Half-Life. The thing is as cup once pointed out HL did it right while the later copy-cats just became lazy with it.

Kojima did that cinematc games sooner than Half Life with Policenauts.

But did Kojima ever made a good game? Nothing in Kojima games are praise worthy apart from may be cinematography and music.

Speaking of cinematic games, Wing Commander happened way before HL or MGS was a thing. Me giving credit to HL is how they interlinked cinematics to core gameplay without taking away control from the player much. All games after that tried to copy its style of storytelling, cinematics and gameplay while very very few succeeding as it did.

Your current cinematic games are pretty much either all cutscenes, taking control away from the player at every opportunity or QTEs. All extremely lazy compared to HL.

Case in point, look at the below example. It's comparing HL2 to Bioshock: Infinite but the comparison holds true for HL vs your modern cinematic games:

wow thats an incredible read.

No matter why i consider bioshock infinite as one of the worst AAA FPS ever made. comparing it to masterpiece like Half life 2 is just an insult.

@pc_rocks said:

But did Kojima ever made a good game? Nothing in Kojima games are praise worthy apart from may be cinematography and music.

Speaking of cinematic games, Wing Commander happened way before HL or MGS was a thing. Me giving credit to HL is how they interlinked cinematics to core gameplay without taking away control from the player much. All games after that tried to copy its style of storytelling, cinematics and gameplay while very very few succeeding as it did.

Your current cinematic games are pretty much either all cutscenes, taking control away from the player at every opportunity or QTEs. All extremely lazy compared to HL.

Case in point, look at the below example. It's comparing HL2 to Bioshock: Infinite but the comparison holds true for HL vs your modern cinematic games:

interesting.

Agree with every thing praising HL but I gotta defend this. That Kojima has not made even 1 good game and all is known for is cinematics is not quite the full story. It sounds quite the usual SW ignorance to me I guess Im a fan. PSX MGS or even some of his OG japanese personal computer works, MGS3 are quite beloved in the industry. From his peers to many gamers with an open mind. Its not because of cut scenes this and that. The games appear on many lists of folks greatest games. MGS5 if one is allowed to use konami debacle as an excuse for its incompleteness was almost his BOTW before BOTW. There is some genuine creative systemic gameplay there. Ofcourse as creator hes got his problems. There is his love of cinematics for example. Or he thinks hes got Rock* budget. Aside from that though Kojima strength come in the form of systemic gameplay and interactions beyond the hardware sort of known controls. That classic doing this and that will effect this especially when it comes to boss fights tie in. Of course who can forget those boss fights. Which is a very video game thing when we think about or talk about things like boss fights. His other work like the silly small shit like GBA Boktai or PT are imbune with his signature design. His games will have some form of interactions beyond the given controls. Some sort of creative feedback to the players action. I don't want to say he is a pioneer because quite often we are all ignorant when it comes to these stuff. Like the arguments of types of cinematics witch seemed to exist even during the NES days for example. With him I think your worried about how far he will take his cinematics but your also trying to look forward to what crazy inventive interactions his games will have. To me hes up there as creator and hes made 1 or 2 good if not some of the greatest games already.