Poll: Scariest contest(Half-life 1 vs. Half-life 2)

[kasparov5]

I am just now playing half-life 1 for the first time on steam and boy is the game lonely. creepy, and some parts even make you jump.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Half Life 2 was definitely creepier in my opinion.

 

[hakojo]

Half-Life 1, for sure. It's just so terrifyingly atmospheric, and the grunginess of the graphics, dated as they are now, only helps that. Also, it's just you - there's no Alyx or Barney or adoring rebels waiting for you at your destination to lend you a hand.

Although to be honest, I found Half-Life 2 pretty scary as well, just because I'm one of those sissies who hates hearing the Combine radio chatter around a corner and knowing that it's there it's there oh God when I go around the corner I'm going to get shot at why god why?

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I thought HL1 only because the creatures and some areas felt surreal and tense; dogs that fired sonic waves at you and the bullsquid that would run up behind quietly and whip you, as well as the constant radiation dangers and bosses that felt boss like (I'm looking at the tentacle)

The Zombies and the Hunters were the only enemies that I felt threatened by in HL2+

I'm hoping Valve use the Hydra or Particle Storm that were cut and use them for Ep3

[edit]I was so stupid, I accidently voted HL2

 

[ríomhaire]

I would say HL2 has the scariest part but HL1 has a much more tense and scary atmosphere overall.

 

[Vegeta897]

Half-Life 1, for sure. It's just so terrifyingly atmospheric, and the grunginess of the graphics, dated as they are now, only helps that. Also, it's just you - there's no Alyx or Barney or adoring rebels waiting for you at your destination to lend you a hand.

Exactly this. Very well put.

Being in the cold dark hallways of HL1 is much scarier than the mostly outside environments of HL2.

 

[Darkside55]

How Half-Life 2 does 'scary'

Well, I'm in this small, seemingly deserted town at night. Alyx said people don't come here anymore; I wonder why? Wait, what's that? Oh, it's a zombie. The same kind of zombies you encounter everywhere. I've got a lot of environmental ammo to use with my new gravity gun though, so I feel pretty safe. Also someone left all these traps around.

*Later on*

These new zombies are pretty crazy, especially the fast ones. I've gotta wait for that lift to come back, and they're scrambling up the pipes, but I've got my shotgun. I'll be alright as long as I hold out.


How Half-Life 1 did 'scary'

OH JESUS WHAT THE HELL IS THAT OH GOD HE'S SEEN ME WHY DON'T MY WEAPONS WORK ON THIS THING OH GOD HE'S RIGHT BEHIND ME HE'S RIGHT BEHIND ME SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT

 

[Banana_Bob]

I think I was actually heart racing terrified the first time I ran from the Garg.

 

[Schall]

It's a hard choice. Like Darkside55 said, they're 2 different types of scary. HL1 has the "OH SHIT ****ING **** LOOK AT THAT ****ING THING OH SHIT HE SEES ME RUN SHOOT AT HIM FIRST THO LOL", and HL2 has the more contemporary sense of scare. Let me reference the part in chapter 1 where you are on that staircase and watching the metrocops break into a room. THEN THEY SEE YOU. Oh my god that scared the shit out of me on my first run.

 

[Kyzr]

Although neither game is "scary" bot games have moments where the player might be inclined to shit themselves. The best example of this in half life 1 is when you're turning on the power generator for the rail line, and theres a giant garg in front of you. In hl2, its probably when you call the lift in ravenholm. Now what half life 1 has that half life 2 dosent is the lonliness. You're alone in hl1. Completely by yourself, except for the hecu and the xen aliens. And its that feeling of being by yourself that made me come close to tears when I first played half life 1 when I was 10. Tears of fear.

 

[Shem]

I felt Half-Life was creepier than Half-Life 2. You're alone in a facility, you're outnumbered by aliens and soldiers, there are no companions acting as guides to help you out, and you have no idea what to expect every time you pass around a corner, or enter a new area. In Half-Life 2, however, you've got Alyx as a companion to travel with you through many of the chapters. You've also got Barney and D0g in the later levels when Alyx gets captured. That sense of loneliness in Half-Life creates an eerie atmosphere for the player, as well as the setting. You're basically trapped inside of a facility, with seemingly no chance of escape, yet in Half-Life 2, you go to all sorts of places. Now that I think about it, it's funny that you seem to travel all over the place in Half-Life, when you're really just walking around in the same building. In Half-Life 2, you seem to travel all over the place, but you actually do.

 

[Krynn72]

Gargypoo didn't scare me. Not even a little bit. Fast Zombies did though, but only when I saw them jumping around on rooftops and shit and I knew they were around without knowing where exactly they were.

 

[McGooTheWise]

My heart still races when I run from the gargantuas in HL1. Nothing in HL2 really gets my heart pounding. The antlion guards are pretty imposing, but if you have 6 iron rods in the crossbow, they're as good as dead the second you see them. HL1 > HL2 in scary factor.

 

[kupocake]

Half-Life has always been more unsettling than outright fear inducing. The design work is phenomenal, the sound work too, and this goes for both games. But both games never really stack the odds against you enough for any 'horror' to result. The proliferation of saw blades in Ravenholm was a lot less subtle, but I think Half-Life 1 is guilty of basically the same thing. You're conditioned so quickly to seek out the nearest Rube Goldberg machine-esque solution that you never feel like your back is truly against the wall (case in point, I don't think I've ever been in the situation depicted in the above Garg sequence. You see it, and just trot off in search of the solution).

None of which is all that bad, since I don't play the Half-Life games for a horror experience. And if the most 'horror' heavy title is surely Episode One? Yet another contributing reason why Episode One isn't that great.

 

[Ennui]

Half-Life, definitely. HL2 had Ravenholm, but on the whole a much more uplifting atmosphere than the first game. I distinctly remember my first impression of Half-Life (I'm not such a Valve fan for no reason... I was like 12 and I still remember how awesome it was to play HL1 the first time) and one of the things I liked so much about it was the atmosphere. It's claustrophobic, unpredictable, and creepy. I really felt the sense of isolation and submersion - trapped deep in a massive facility, half a mile underground, nothing friendly to count on besides the occasional clueless scientist or guard and an environment populated by hostile soldiers and dangerous aliens. All the vent crawling in the dark with headcrabs jumping at you from side vents was scary as hell back then too... it's become cliche now (of course you expect the possibility of headcrabs in a vent in HL2) but back then it was just awesome.

By contrast, HL2 has a much more open-air, populist optimistic revolution theme, rather than the survival-horror aspects of the first game. You are rarely totally alone in HL2... even in levels where you don't have a squad or guys fighting with you, there are still interspersed encounters with Resistance fighters and other civilians; even in Ravenholm you are accompanied by Father Grigory. You are part of something bigger, a sweeping social movement in which you are a demigod but that still has its own movement that you are caught up in. In Half-Life, you maybe have a half-retarded scientist or guard with you, but generally speaking you are completely alone after the resonance cascade event. You are trapped deep in a facility, with no idea how to get out now that the tram is down, nor even are you sure that it is possible to get out, with the cave-ins and increasing destabilization of the environment; there are scary aliens appearing out of nowhere at every turn, some of which turn your fellow researchers into lurching zombies and some of which are ****ing insane (tentacle monster in blast pit etc).

edit: I agree with Kupocake, with respect to what I mean when I say that HL is survival-horror or scary... in the sense that it is unsettling/creepy rather than actually frightening in most cases.

 

[Beemer]

haha nice point, i felt the exact same with gargantua

 

[Beemer]

Half-Life. It is just more epic; gargantua, tentacle monster, military helicopter. Just think, if both games were on the source engine, which would you prefer? Thats the only thing that took from the game play of Half-Life, the graphics. The only reason i'm saying this is because i first played Half-Life in 2006. That's like never playing Goldeneye for the N64 and then playing it seven years later, it will still be good, but you won't share the same experience as people who played it when it first came out.

 

[McGooTheWise]

The graphics were awesome at the time it came out. If you want a graphic mod for HL:1, look up Black Mesa Source.

 

[Vegeta897]

Black Mesa Source

graphic mod for HL:1

Ummm. No.

 

[MJ12]

half life 1 black mesa source is goin to be so awesome!

i cant believe they have upgraded the graphics so far in half life1 !! imagine if we knew how 2 do that in 1998 when it came out people woud have been blown away!!

best half life mod ever :sniper:

 

[McGooTheWise]

You guys are dick munchers. 1 is right next to 2. I went for 2 but hit 1 and thought it was right but there is not black mesa source for half-life 1 and now I look like an idiot and you guys are making fun of me and now I'm upset and I'm going to go eat a bowl of ice cream with a ton of chocolate syrup okay bye.

 

[Beemer]

You guys are dick munchers. 1 is right next to 2. I went for 2 but hit 1.

It wouldn't have mattered if you pressed 2. Black Mesa Source is not a graphics mod. And I know Half-Life graphics were good for its time, read what I said.

 

[McGooTheWise]

I know that. I was stating the obvious, and trying to point you to a half-life 2 mod that remade half-life 1 with the new graphics, and I didn't say it right. I was making fun of myself. If you didn't notice, the rest of my post after that is a run-on sentence.

 

[Beemer]

what does the rest of your post being a run-on sentence have to do with anything?

 

[Shem]

Oh yeah, nice one, man.

 

[McGooTheWise]

what does the rest of your post being a run-on sentence have to do with anything?

I was being silly to show that what I said was not thought out properly, and acting like it upset me. I assumed this would lead most to believe that my entire post was not meant to be taken seriously, and just to make sure, I put in the bit about the ice cream with chocolate syrup, and okay bye. I guess my joke was a little too cryptic?

To be fair, I have been doing a shitty job at reading lately, and misunderstanding things everywhere, texts, messages, and screen names. I apologize for my horrible lack of understanding of threads lately.

 

[morgs]

Definitely HL1, the assassin parts freaked me out for some reason, Mainly because they always came out of nowhere and scared the crap out of me. Plus things like the vortigaunts randomly appearing in the office levels were pretty scary.

 

[Polaristo]

Half Life 2 is definitely scarier in my opinion.

 

[valkyr3003]

Actually I thought my first run on HL2 was terrifying in comparison to HL1
HL1, although you were fully alone, the games monsters' design i found a bit cartoony almost, and wasn't scared at all. Also (something common in both games but more so in HL1) the games engine gives you ALOT of control and power, which reduces scariness. I mean, remember blast pit and the tentacle monster, gordon was basically boss, jumping over the huge gaps whilst the sections of the floor were falling off. Compare this to games like silent hill or resident evil or even bioshock where you feel significantly more vulnerable.

In both games, you also find that the character moves super-fast (even without sprinting) in relation to other characters, which in the mostly in-doors environment in HL1 really stood out. The other difference is HL1 had A LOT more guns, (a lot better ones as well). You would never run out of ammo and by the time you get the hornet and gauss gun, you know no monster will get in your way lol.
If you still think HL1 is scary, watch freemans mind

HL2 on the other hand, was really atmospheric. I still remember the first time i played it, exiting out of the station and just looking at the surroundings and the dark reality, then this dark cryptic music starts playing.. it was just..wow. By the time I started battling zombies I knew the game was different in some way, i jumped in my seat when the zombie threw a barrel at me for the first time!
Ravenholm was really the pinnacle there, the dark music there, combined with the setup for the while level: eli saying: 'whatever you do, don't go to ravenholm!'. That was sort of the point where Alyx started getting annoying as well, always making Gordon do the hard work. That annoying factor was really developed on in the episodes: 'gordon do this, gordon do that'
Anyways, ravenholm was really a sick level. The most terrifying part of the level was the more open map before you have to call the cart. Zombies coming out of everywhere and I couldn't find the frickin switch so I was panicking like crazy, I climb up a few boxes and out of nowhere a poison headcrab launches itself! You go to the lower level, to activate one of the 'fan' traps only to discover its broken as it shoots into you. And then you hear the heavy grunts of the poison zombies coming.
When playing this on hard, I found this level the most difficult of all actually. The fast zombies take at least 2 well aimed shots in the head to take down, and when theres 3 of them coming and shreeking at you, its hard to concentrate.

This post turned out way too long, but this just shows what atmosphere HL2 created. HL1 really lacked that I think.

 

[DocCorvid]

I voted HL2 because Ravenholm honestly scared the crap out of me. Funny enough it was the first toxic headcrab you see that is right behind you. I did that thing where I move my body instead of controlling the character. Like I actually jumped to the side. So scary.

But people make really good points here about HL1. I haven't played it in so long, but you're right about how lonely and claustrophobic it is, and you have no idea what's going on. So good. Like, remember the weird screams echoing in On a Rail?

 

[Dead Phil]

I found that the loneyness was happening to me in ravenholm chapter much more then in HL1, in HL1 i new there were HECU soldiers and scientists around which at least gave me an idea of others in the building.
But in Ravenholm the only person was Father Gregori who is crazy even if he is cool, but most of the chapter he isn't with you and there was blood literally evarywhere; of coarse this is just my opinion.

 

[THE GMoD]

Half-Life 1 had more scary moments for me, most notably every time I see a Gargantua, besides the first time it always scared the hell out of me.

 

[WorldDman97]

Half life two was very creepy especially in Ravenhome...Geez

 

[dannylaz]

Both games are scary in different ways. The original Half Life was psychologicaly scary, making you think that there was no escape as well as putting you in claustrophobic spaces, but Half Life 2 and it's episodes make you jump more. Here are some examples.

As I was driving along in my Air Boat during the chapter "Water Hazard", I came across a sewage tunnel with a Lambda logo outside, signifying a supply cache. I went inside and swam a short distance through some murky water. As I came out of the water, I saw the ammo and health I had come in search for. I began to walk forward, and a Head Crab Zombie suddenly burst out of the water in front of me, almost making me drop the controller.

In an unsettling moment at the beginning of the chapter "We Don't Go To Ravenholm", after climbing out of an abandoned shaft, I came across a pair of legs hanging from a rope on a tree. This wasn't the scary part, the music in the background was.

While inside the Citadel, you meet some new characters, Stalkers. While not scary in a make you jump way, you just have to feel sad or afraid, knowing that these limbless monsters used to be Human.

During Half Life 2: Episode One, you and Alyx are stuck inside an underground parking lot, filled with debris. Eventually, you find an elevator that will take you to the surface. After activating it, all the lights go out. What follows is one of the most frantic battles in any game ever. You're suddenly attacked by an onslaught of Zombies. With nothing lighting the place except a few flares and some burning Zombies, it's a long wait.

As you're driving along in Half Life 2: Episode Two, you notice a Fast Zombie running along a road above you. Trying to escape the Hunter Chopper that is firing at you, you just keep driving. All of a sudden, the Zombie throws itself off of a bridge and lands on top of your car. Screaming and moaning, it's just horrific stuff. Luckily, Alyx soon takes care of it with a well placed kick to the face.

 

[texjdsimon]

Half-life 2s is more scary "nuff said"

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Half-Life 2 wasn't even close to being creepy for me besides the first run through of Ravenholm. After that it became a joke. HL1 still continues to exploit my fear of water. The music/ambiance is a lot creepier too.

 

[Acepilotf14]

The only thing I can think of being terrifying in HL2 is the sound poison headcrabs make.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

I found it therapeutic. The little chirps they make when idle are cute.