Half-Life is still the most amazing game I've ever played

[AshleyAshes]

That is, in my own personal experience, it's a game that had a huge impact on me when I played it first in early 2000 and it's still amazing to me.  Something about this game, it was such a massive and lived in world to explore with the power of my ATi Radeon 128.  I remember playing that game over and over and my mind being blown as I crawled through ever corner I could discover.  I don't so much feel that Half-Life is a game I played in 2000 as that Black Mesa is a place I visited and experienced in 2000.  Since then I've loved it.  Opposing Force, BlueShift, the 'HD' model pack that was ported from the canceled Dreamcast port.  I waited for someone to port the PS2 exclusive 'Decay' content to PC.  Half-Life 2 came out it wasn't quite the same.  It's a solid and great game but it wasn't The Black Mesa Research Facility.

It was that tram ride for the opening, the place just looked so utterly huge and cavernous, how could my Pentium III even render this?  I still remember in We've Got Hostiles, thinking I could maybe walk up to some soldiers and somehow team up with them. It worked with the scientists and security guards up until then, though I quickly learned that they would only shoot me in the face.  And shoot me in the face they did!  They used squad tactics, they through grenades at me, they'd drop grenades at their feet and run away from me (Unless I killed them in the middle of that sequence, then it went off next to their corpse! :3), and they could even communicate with each other.

After HL2 came out and 'Half Life' was ported to Steam, it was the old school Half-Life just running on the Source engine, so modders set out re-create the game proper on the Source Engine.  I followed Black Mesa for years and dreamed of playing Half-Life with souped up graphics and physics.  I skipped college that October day when Black Mesa dropped.  This was my Half-Life day... that tram ride, again, at 1080p in DX9 armor and it was amazing.  The tram ride left me in the same state of awe that I felt back in 2000 . it was the same but different, familular but my memorization of the classic game did help me and it felt like a new experience.  They took Half-Life and cranked it up to 11.  Then Black Mesa hit steam as a paid product, somehow it hit 11.5.  I was able to play it on a 1440p monitor with 'Virtual Super Resolution' engaged and...  I just love this game. 

So, yeah, Half-Life = Awesome and few games have ever amazed me like it did.

 

 

[Chrysocyon]

This makes me want to play Half-Life yet again.

Also, they just re-released Sven Co-Op on Steam.  Good times.

[Newt]

Just finished Half Life for the first time. Combat doesn't feel as satisfying as it did in HL2, but it's much better in terms of enemy variety and level design. I heard Opposing Force is pretty good, so I'll play that sometime. I might give Blue Shift a try as well, in the future.

[AshleyAshes]

52 minutes ago, Newt said:

Just finished Half Life for the first time. Combat doesn't feel as satisfying as it did in HL2, but it's much better in terms of enemy variety and level design. I heard Opposing Force is pretty good, so I'll play that sometime. I might give Blue Shift a try as well, in the future.

I really suggest 'Black Mesa' which is a Valve sanctioned mod remake of Half-Life using the Half-Life 2 engine.  it's truly professional quality and really amps it up.   Not to mention, it's at least as pretty as Half-Life 2 where as Half-Life 1 itself shows it's age a bit badly.

[Azu]

I never finished it because I felt it was dragged out way too long

[Newt]

1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

I really suggest 'Black Mesa' which is a Valve sanctioned mod remake of Half-Life using the Half-Life 2 engine.  it's truly professional quality and really amps it up.   Not to mention, it's at least as pretty as Half-Life 2 where as Half-Life 1 itself shows it's age a bit badly.

Black Mesa sounds neat, but it's still in Early Access and I don't have a clue when it will actually be finished.

[AshleyAshes]

7 hours ago, Newt said:

Black Mesa sounds neat, but it's still in Early Access and I don't have a clue when it will actually be finished.

Ehn, in this case 'Early Access' only means that the Xen levels have not been completed yet... Which always bored me anyway. ^_^;