Tell it to me one more time...

[GodlessPagan]

As any *True™ Original Half-Life fan (someone who waited anxiously for years for it to arrive, much like we are all doing now) will tell you, playing Half-Life for the first time was unlike any 3d gaming experience they'd ever had.

Having played shooters like Doom and Hexen up to this point, Half-Life was a very welcome diversion from the typical "kill anything that's not you, space dungeon, no clear plot" shooter. Through the innovative use of scripted sequences, talented voice acting, a simple yet well written plotline, and a team dedicated to divining the best shooter ever, Valve had succeeded in totally immersing the player in the world it had created.

I remember actually getting angry the first time I saw a marine gun down one of my fellows while I was coming down the stairs. I remember that I'd wished I been faster, that I could have saved him, that this was the LAST time I'd let that happen, that every last solder I saw from that point on would answer to the guns in my hands. They gave me s#!t, I gave them lead and fire.

Funnily enough, this anger was reserved only for the human-like soldiers in the game. The aliens seemed to me like pawns that had been drug into this battle against their will. Ofttimes, I would leave them unmolested if they didn't notice me. Seemed like a fair deal.

Assuming there are some other folks out there who allowed themselves to become this involved with Half-Life, do you guys have any similar stories or experiences that would be fun to share?
















*This is just a joke. We're ALL true fans, I've no doubt. :thumbs:

 

[Platinum]

all i know is that i'm on the final boss right now for the first time and he's hard ... **** you nihilanth

 

[Zento]

lol I filled his brain full of shells that's for sure

 

[Homer]

nihilanth wasnt so bad, that rhino spider thing(I cant believe I dont know its name) was harder.

 

[Platinum]

hmmm ... i gotta beat this guy ...

 

[DoctorGordon]

The swinging "sack"? Now he was tough

 

[Sparta]

You know what was a total pain in the ass with Half-life?

the hemorrhoids i got from playing the game for too long














:E

(I thought it was funny ........for a few seconds anyway)

 

[Lazlow]

I just played HL1 for the first time about a month ago. The scientists really creeped me out - what were they up to, just hanging out in the hallways and being mean to me? And their voices were creepy.

The whole atmosphere of the game was strange - playing it gave me that same uneasy feeling I get when I'm watching a low-budget slasher flick that's so low-budget I'm not really sure that the blood is a special effect...

That's a pretty poor analogy I guess. The game was just cool - it made me feel... wierd.

 

[GodlessPagan]

Sometimes weird IS good.

 

[hasan]

well I played it like two years ago, wasn't impressed at all, and couldn't understand why or how is it the best game ever!

yeah well, I think you can understand, in 2002, playing hl for the first time kinda ruins it.
I bet it was great in 1998.

 

[zex]

HL was so overrated


Jk the first time I had a good time and played it straight through, was a lot different than anything I had played before.

 

[Lazlow]

Yes, you do have to accept the technology for what it was back then, and I'm not sure how I would have received it under different circumstances. But I played it right after having played HL2, and since HL1 had the same energy and feel that I had just experienced in HL2, I was able to overlook the dated style a little easier.

It was nice to see that HL2 stayed true to the HL1 experience. (Though I didn't know that until I actually played HL1 - so really for me HL1 stayed true to the HL2 experience... bah, I have a headache.)

 

[hasan]

But I played it right after having played HL2

huh?

Spoiler

You can't discuss the stolen build fromlast year!!!1111one

 

[BrimStone04]

i remember playing it at a friends house, well not playing cuz he wouldnt let me for a while until he really beat it and was done with it for a while. watching him though i was amazed at it, not really into any other fps at the time, messing around with resident evils and stuff on consoles. i was so freaking happy when i got a computer taht could run it and sense then i havnt stopped, everytime i format or get a new pc the first thing i do is play hl, its like a ritual stuck in my mind. and its driving me crazy reading all these new posts everyday with little pieces of info. cuz i want to have the same experience i did playing it for the first time. plz hurry u creators of art!

 

[Eon Blue]

Lol. I hoped I wasn't the only one who didn't kill Vortigaunts if he didn't have to.

 

[Platinum]

JUST BEAT HALF LIFE FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!!!! WAAAHOOOO!!!! THAT WAS A GREAT GAME ... :cheers:

 

[Mujuro]

The title really reminds me of the South Park episode where Kyle admits that Cartman was right...

 

[GodlessPagan]

OFF TOPIC:

Over on the Fan-Fiction section, I wrote an intro to a fan-based retelling of the original Half-life if anyone's interested.

 

[ne0_shiny]

Lol. I hoped I wasn't the only one who didn't kill Vortigaunts if he didn't have to.

i killed em all

 

[Crash Happy]

The creatures pretty much were pawns. In Op4 when you see Xen they act differently and are not aggressive. I thought that was a nice twist.

 

[$niffy]

The title really reminds me of the South Park episode where Kyle admits that Cartman was right...

Lol such a good episode.

"Just...once more Kyle"

lol new episodes being made in november. Lovely

 

[darkmistx]

JUST BEAT HALF LIFE FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!!!! WAAAHOOOO!!!! THAT WAS A GREAT GAME ... :cheers:

Congrats. :cheers:

 

[Danimal]

The swinging "sack"? Now he was tough

nah that was Gonarch or Big momma or as I call it 'The walking testicle'

Nitlhilath or however you spell it or pronounce it is, when I first saw it, a baby with a metal base on it's ass...

lol hes a bug to see:

Right before killing Nithiliath turn on noclip and when he dies you just sit there, you dont get taken to the G-man or anything

 

[Dougy]

The only game i ever felt like "wow this is amazing" from the very first minute of the game was GTA 3.

i honestly played half life and didnt hear any PR at all about it, wasnt as great as some people would like to belive.


I think that a game needs a certain amount of PR for somebody to realy appreciate the features in it.

eg.

if you take a guy who knows nothing about HL2 and put him in the first level he probably wont notice as much things as somebody who does know about it, the physics the facial animations the interaction between characters etc...

 

[hasan]

that applies if you bring someone who doesn't know much about games.

When I played HL the first time I didn't know much about fps games, I was more interested in FIFA ..
so I played it and felt like, what's so special about it, isn't this how all fps games are? what's the difference between half-life and any other regular game?

tbh I still don't know the diff =P

but I know it for HL2, that's for sure.

 

[Animal]

You can't expect to play HL1 now and be as impressed as we were back in 98. It's been copied so many times now that it doesn't seem anywhere near as unique as it once did.

 

[KagePrototype]

To appreciate Half-Life the most, you really need to think back to 1998 and realise that pretty much all fps games were working off the same Quake-inspired formula, i.e. run around frantically in various brown environments and shoot everything that moves. Half-Life introduced a suprising sense of immersion and narration, something you didn't really see outside of an adventure game, and certainly not in an fps game of all things. The whole chapter system really helped this, instead of using the traditional level by level idea, chapters were made up of a few maps stringed together, giving the whole thing a great sense of pace and consistency. Unlike Quake, in which you're fighting in a space station in one level, and the next you're in some gothic cathedral.

 

[Cynical]

You can't expect to play HL1 now and be as impressed as we were back in 98. It's been copied so many times now that it doesn't seem anywhere near as unique as it once did.

true. and PR has nothing to do with it either. in fact the best games i enjoyed were games that i heard very little about. i saw system shock 2 on the shop and was bored so i bought it, turned out to be one of the best fps i eva played. its soo under-rated. even with hl, when i saw it in the shop on its release day i remembered reading about it in pc zone once so i bought it. every other game that came after was borrowing elements from it, so if u played hl recently for the first time u might not see it for the greatness that it was. i think this is gonna be the same story with hl2, u will enjoy it way more if u playe it when it's first released!

 

[Logic]

i honestly played half life and didnt hear any PR at all about it, wasnt as great as some people would like to belive.

I think that a game needs a certain amount of PR for somebody to realy appreciate the features in it.

I disagree... to quote myself from another thread:

HL was a surprise to me.. I'd never been that big on FPS games (I never played Unreal or Quake 2, for example) but by complete chance, someone on IRC or ICQ (I forget now) asked me if I knew HTML. I had put together a few horribly amateur websites by then, so I said "yes" or "a bit" or something, and he asked me to help him out with something. It turned out to be a menu on an Australian PC magazine cover CD (Internet.au I think it was called), and in exchange for helping him out (not that I did all that much in the end, I think the guy was just after some inspiration rather than actual help) he sent me some copies of what the magazine were previewing\reviewing at the time. The first thing I tried was labeled "Half-Life OEM", and it contained 'Half-Life: Day One'. This was before the game was out, and I hadn't even read about it, so I didn't know what it was all about. Needless to say, I was blown away (I'd never felt such tension in a game before) and obviously, I bought HL when it became available.

To me, the defining aspect of playing Half-Life for the first time was a genuine feeling of vulnerability... of being confined in a building with who knows how many of who knows what. Not hearing any of the hype was an advantage to me, since I had no idea what to expect, or what to look out for. That resulted in me getting so involved in the game, I actually feared for my (Gordon's) life. I treated the situation with as much caution as I would have were I really there. No other game had ever prompted such a reaction from me. I was utterly immersed.

If you didn't get the same from the game, you must simply have had slightly different tastes to those who did, or perhaps a different state of mind at the time. All I know is that for many people, including myself, it was an unrivaled experience. regardless of any hype or PR.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

To appreciate Half-Life the most, you really need to think back to 1998 and realise that pretty much all fps games were working off the same Quake-inspired formula, i.e. run around frantically in various brown environments and shoot everything that moves. Half-Life introduced a suprising sense of immersion and narration, something you didn't really see outside of an adventure game, and certainly not in an fps game of all things. The whole chapter system really helped this, instead of using the traditional level by level idea, chapters were made up of a few maps stringed together, giving the whole thing a great sense of pace and consistency. Unlike Quake, in which you're fighting in a space station in one level, and the next you're in some gothic cathedral.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I fully agree.

 

[L337_Assasain]

I remember playing marathon, now THAT was a great game (for it's time i mean, because when i played HL, it was my favorite game from there on out). Marathon was the first game to not have you kill everything in sight, it had puzzels and stuff, and...just so great, o the memories...
Back on topic: I LOVED HL

 

[She]

The whole chapter system really helped this, instead of using the traditional level by level idea, chapters were made up of a few maps stringed together, giving the whole thing a great sense of pace and consistency. Unlike Quake, in which you're fighting in a space station in one level, and the next you're in some gothic cathedral.

dont know what you are talking about..
anyway, quake2 used the "" chapters were made up of a few maps stringed together, giving the whole thing a great sense of pace and consistency"" thing...

you're fighting in a space station in one level, and the next you're in some gothic cathedral.

what? you mixed q1 and q2 together...

q1 = gothic cathedrals
q2 = spacestations

 

[Lazlow]

huh?

Spoiler

You can't discuss the stolen build fromlast year!!!1111one

No, I played it at Valve. Funny thing is, I was never into PC games until maybe last year, so when I was offered the chance to play HL2, I was like "Half-what now?" So I got to play it with absolutely no hype whatsoever, much like people first experienced HL1, and it blew my mind.

I think thats one of the things that makes a great game a legend - when it comes out of nowhere and surprises you. But when I finally played HL1, I was officially a rabid HL2 fan, and HL1 held up very well as a prequel. So the experience should be even more positive in the other direction, even for people who have been HL-crazy for the past five years.

 

[koncept]

As any *True™ Original Half-Life fan (someone who waited anxiously for years for it to arrive, much like we are all doing now) will tell you, playing Half-Life for the first time was unlike any 3d gaming experience they'd ever had.

Having played shooters like Doom and Hexen up to this point, Half-Life was a very welcome diversion from the typical "kill anything that's not you, space dungeon, no clear plot" shooter. Through the innovative use of scripted sequences, talented voice acting, a simple yet well written plotline, and a team dedicated to divining the best shooter ever, Valve had succeeded in totally immersing the player in the world it had created.

I remember actually getting angry the first time I saw a marine gun down one of my fellows while I was coming down the stairs. I remember that I'd wished I been faster, that I could have saved him, that this was the LAST time I'd let that happen, that every last solder I saw from that point on would answer to the guns in my hands. They gave me s#!t, I gave them lead and fire.

Funnily enough, this anger was reserved only for the human-like soldiers in the game. The aliens seemed to me like pawns that had been drug into this battle against their will. Ofttimes, I would leave them unmolested if they didn't notice me. Seemed like a fair deal.

Assuming there are some other folks out there who allowed themselves to become this involved with Half-Life, do you guys have any similar stories or experiences that would be fun to share?

*This is just a joke. We're ALL true fans, I've no doubt. :thumbs:

wow dude you played hexen? that game was shit back then. first it was wolfenstein, then doom, then heretic, then hexen, etc. etc. then came goldeneye... then came half-life. yeah, i'm a hardcore first person shooter fan.