I have life, but i seek Half-Life!!!!

[Raxus]

Hi there boys and girls, im a newbie here and generally a newbie in the half life world.. To take things from the beggining, it was just recently that i got my hands on a game with a promising title called portal... I was amazed by the great graphics, gameplay, story, backstory everything!!!!! I then realised that black mesa was involved (saw it in projector that was comparing aperture science with black mesa or something like that) and remembered that that name was involved with a game i had played once in a demo (half life or half life 2 im not sure) and to sum up i had a big headache. Anyway to make a long story short, i finished portal sometimes i played all the bonus stages i could find i read all the developers commentary but now i thirst for more!!!!
So i ask of you guys if you can inform me of all the games updates patches and the rest that i have to play, and mostly in which order to play to understand the story line and take the most out of my gaming experience-adventure!!
Thanks in advance, a wannabe Half-Life Fan!!!!!!!!:thumbs::thumbs:

 

[sharkyshu]

Play Half Life , then Half Life 2 , then .... you already played Portal , so go to Portal 2 .
I also recommend playing Half Life Opposing Force and Half Life Blue Shift after you played Half Life .

 

[ríomhaire]

Half-Life is very different to Portal. They take place in the same universe but there isn't much overlap at all. In fact only the most recent of all the Half-Life instalments even mentions Aperture Science.

Half-Life is not a similar experience to Portal. It's an old-school style FPS. That said they're still really really good. Just totally different and it's not going to shed any light on the Portal storyline but it has its own story.


You can get the Half-Life 1 demo here. It's called Uplink and it's made of levels not in the original game.
You can get the Half-Life 2 demo on Steam. Just click the download demo buttons on this page.

 

[Raxus]

Thanks a lot guys, i guess ill find out how the story goes by my own now, but for now i'll just get busy with the demos.. I smell an addiction here!!! :naughty:

 

[Raxus]

I have one more question though, are half life 2,half life 2 episode 1 and half life 2 episode 2 different games?

 

[ríomhaire]

I have one more question though, are half life 2,half life 2 episode 1 and half life 2 episode 2 different games?

Yeah. The order is:
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two


Half-Life 1 also has expansion packs made by a different company (Gearbox software) that take place concurrently with Half-Life 1 but you play as different characters. They're called Opposing Force and Blue Shift. They're also on Steam.

 

[Adabiviak]

You should expect to hear this from members of this forum, but if you haven't yet played that series of games as laid out above, and you enjoy FPSs at all, start playing. You won't be disappointed - they're very well done, and besides the graphics, they age well (great story and fun to play).

 

[Shem]

If you're pleased with the demos, get the Orange Box. It's a great deal and contains five wonderful games you don't want to miss.

 

[undeadleo]

I tryed to download half life but I can't get the cd key. help

 

[Robbo]

I tryed to download half life but I can't get the cd key. help

http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/
Good Luck!!

 

[Raxus]

Amazing!!!!! Just Finished half life and half life blue shift and right now im playing opposing force and im at the part where i see freeman jumping through a portal, then i tried to follow him inside.. Well appearently i fell into the abyss but i laughed at the comment, subject tried to create a paradox, lol!!
Anyways, im not sure i got the whole story, all these creatures and stuff appeared when black mesa tried to develop a portal device and accidentaly stumbles upon xen??
And what has the guy whith the blue suit has to do with it?
(This may be a little off-topic but what the hey?? )

 

[ríomhaire]

Basically Black Mesa has been exploring Xen (the alien world) and taking samples of crystals and living creatures back for an unknown amount of time. The crystals are very important to the teleportation technology and the start of the game is you taking part in an experiment to analyse one. Something goes wrong and it creates random portals between Xen and Black Mesa, causing havoc in both worlds.

The aliens (who know that humans have been capturing them for experiments, the final boss says "you are all thieves") think that they are being invaded and launch a counter-attack which is the fighting you see between the alien forces and the military in Surface Tension (you can see the aliens are much more organised at this point that at the start of the game). Eventually you travel to the alien world and kill the Nihilanth (the last boss) who was the one who was controlling the aliens' portals.

You find out a little bit more about the crystal sample that cause the resonance cascade in Half-Life 2: Episode Two.