xen

[nerdcorerocks]

am i the only one here who didn't mind xen? everyone seems to talk about it like the most boring thing, annoying thing in the world. i thought it was pretty cool. the jumping puzzles weren't hard if thats what threw people off. i dunno, just wondering.

 

[marshmallow]

I didn't enjoy the ball sac monster. And it kept freezing on Interloper. Other than that it was pretty cool.

 

[Flyingdebris]

i liked xen too, you never quite felt safe in xen, it made it more exiting

 

[switch]

I cant say it was all good, but I did like it. Lots of low grav jumping became a bit boring though, but I liked teleporting everywhere.

 

[ComradeBadger]

Xen was arse, cept it was good practice for taujumping madskillz

 

[Yellonet]

I don't really like Xen, nor do I hate it. But it feels "too much". I guess it's a personal issue.

 

[KagePrototype]

It was atmospheric, sure...but the huge amount of jumping puzzles really irritated me.

 

[Lobster]

it was good at first, but the chambers just before nihilinth with all those rotating lifts, just ruined it for me.

 

[Democritus]

They did a good job of making it alien, it just wasn't cohesive as a place. The Black Mesa Facility had sense amd flow. Xen was more jarring, teleporting from one place to a very different place. You never got a sense of what the overall "ecosystem" or "government" was there. It seemed like they designed monster concepts that didn't really go together and then threw them on jumping puzzle maps together.

 

[Bobcat]

Xen in Half-Life lacked detail if you ask me.

I did like "flying" about with the jump-pack though.

 

[G_Man]

It was just a bit to far fetched for me, I rather liked fighting grunts and assassins in Black Mesa. Of course, Xen was an important part of the story, but still, in my opinion, the Xen-levels weren't very good, they were a bit too unrealistic for me.
And jumpingpuzzles, well, I think that belongs to old games, it didn't make Xen very much more exciting or diffucult really. Saddly, the last few levels in Hl was no climax for me, instead, several of the levels down in Black Mesa was those parts where I had the most fun.

 

[Yellonet]

They did a good job of making it alien, it just wasn't cohesive as a place. The Black Mesa Facility had sense amd flow. Xen was more jarring, teleporting from one place to a very different place. You never got a sense of what the overall "ecosystem" or "government" was there. It seemed like they designed monster concepts that didn't really go together and then threw them on jumping puzzle maps together.

Agree.. couldn't put it in words myself.

The Xen-creatures also had machines, those health-increasing booths you know. Where are the intelligent Xeniens who made them? All we've seen is mindless alien animals.

 

[GorgeousOrifice]

Xen was a great idea that the technology simply wasn't good enough to do right. Xen with Source would probably be a lot more interesting, but for HL1 time, the Xen levels simply didn't stand up to the BMRF in terms of realism and immersion.

 

[Foxtrot]

I liked xen just because you had no idea where it was going to lead.

 

[Biozeminade]

Xen was like that one part in Jedi Knight 2 where you go through the caves with all the bugs coming at you over and over. It just ruins the game for you and you don't want to play that part again. The atmosphere was so much better in Black Mesa, and you didn't want to leave. I like how in Opposing Force you fight the final boss inside Black Mesa (IIRC).

 

[Chris D]

Hey guys, can you please make sure threads about Half-Life 1 are all made in the General Gaming forum for the time being please?

In my opinion, Xen sort of broke up the atmosphere for a while. As it was such a core part of the storyline, I agree it should have still been in the game, but maybe not on such a level as it was. Something could have been done about the length of time spent in Xen and then with the right balance, the game would have been just that little bit more better for me.

 

[Ownzed]

what's Xen?

 

[CrazyHarij]

what's Xen?

Alien world thingie, where trampolines and platforms is the latest trend, the last levels of HL were set there.. I think it's some sort of border world, anyhow that's the place the portal opened to and that's were the aliens came from.

I didn't like it in the original HL, it did ruin the atmosphere and was very boring. It just was too much ambition for that engine, a more organic and less blocky version in Source might've been something though.

 

[AmishSlayer]

They did a good job of making it alien, it just wasn't cohesive as a place. The Black Mesa Facility had sense amd flow. Xen was more jarring, teleporting from one place to a very different place. You never got a sense of what the overall "ecosystem" or "government" was there. It seemed like they designed monster concepts that didn't really go together and then threw them on jumping puzzle maps together.

Yep.

It completely changed the feel of the game. If you took that chunk of Xen and made it its own game...you'd have a bad fps.

 

[Feath]

I've just played through Half-Life again (finished it a few hours ago) and I came up with a list of reasons why the Xen levels aren't as good as the rest of the game.

Believibility

The Black Mesa Research Facility facility was one of the most believable places that has been seen a game (in 1998 it was, at least). Every thing seemed to have a purpose and showed that levels could look like they belonged real life. In Xen, you lost all of that. Like Democritus said, Xen wasn't cohesive as a place. You didn't believe that it belonged.

Lack of Scripted Sequences

I know scripted sequences are treated with distaste but these are what made Half-Life great. The wow feeling when you saw a scientist get dragged through a window by a tentacle was great. And there were countless other instances in which scripted which were great. Xen didn't have any of these atmosphere setting things and all monsters just either walked around or shot at you. Even in the Factory thingy in Interloper you didn't really see anything interesting happen.

Jumping puzzles and respawning monsters

Not so much the jumping puzzles themselves but when they had respawning monsters it was just frustrating. The jumping puzzles meant that if you made one mistake you had to start again, but every time you started again you had to kill the same Alien Controllers. So they just wittled down your health and ammo. Or they'd respawn when you were doing the puzzle, and you'd have to shoot them from a distance without being able to move around much. Black Mesa didn't have as many spawning monsters but when they were there you could just run straight past them and that's the end of that. You didn't spend 10 minutes trying to do something whilst being shot at. And any jumping puzzles in Black Mesa were usually quiet, at the very least you could've shot the monsters and THEN had some quiet without having shoot them all over again thirty seconds later.

Gonarch

When you encounter the tentacles or the Garg in Black Mesa, you have to deal with them in a way that involves switches and actually being a bit cleverer than just shooting them. But when you encoutered the Gonarch, all you had to do was spend a lot of time shooting it until it either ran away or died. I liked the idea of the Gonarch but a better way to kill it would've been nice.

It's worth a mention that Xen did have it's good points. The way that the Alien slaves ignored you for a bit in Interloper. I also enjoyed the tentacles being in Xen. Also, I liked the Blue Shift Xen levels because it felt you had more of a purpose, and it showed some human presence beyond just dead bodies.

Here're some things I would've liked to have seen in Xen.

Alive scientists in HEV suits.

Maybe one or two trapped ones from the earlier survey missions. They could've added a quick break and giving you some human interaction.

Marines in Xen.

The ending shows that there were marines in Xen. A few 3 way shoot outs like in Surface Tension would've been nice. Or maybe just hints of dead marines.

Scripted sequences

Xen aliens actually doing something other than shooting you and walking around.

 

[killahsin-[CE]]

<KillahSin-[CE]> thats a nice look at xen
<KillahSin-[CE]> you forgot silly level design =p
<KillahSin-[CE]> Xen seemed to lack the uncontrolled world feeling in the design that black mesa areas had

It's not just the scripted sequences of charcters, but the enviornments in black mesa were completly scripted. Levels were no longer static, but ever changing. so you never knew what to expect next. Xen was very lacking in this respect.

 

[Brian Damage]

Agree.. couldn't put it in words myself.

The Xen-creatures also had machines, those health-increasing booths you know. Where are the intelligent Xeniens who made them? All we've seen is mindless alien animals.

Um... how about the Vortigaunts and Controllers?


Xen... I really enjoyed it. That's all I can really say...

 

[Yellonet]

Um... how about the Vortigaunts and Controllers?


Xen... I really enjoyed it. That's all I can really say...

Sorry for not remembring all the names but, who are they?

 

[ThomasToad]

I didn't like Xen basically because it didn't feel like the rest of the game in any way. I thought it was extremely ugly and just badly designed. Just imagine if the whole game was like Xen and then you might start to hate it! Plus the giant retarded baby at the end didn't fill my cup of tea.

 

[hokai]

Xen was fun, but nowhere near as fun as the BMRF. The assasins, when you first encounter the marines, the whole feel of the place... It was just so much more beleivable. And surface tension... well, enough said really.

 

[Brian Damage]

Sorry for not remembring all the names but, who are they?

Vortigaunts: The electricity-throwing slave people of Xen.

Controllers: The mean little floating mini-Nihilanths with the huge heads, overseers of the Vortigaunts and the animalistic Grunts (the armoured insect-launching dudes).

 

[Xenome]

I liked xen

 

[Shippi]

Xen was a lot of fun... definately a breath of fresh air after all of Black Mesa. It got a tad repetitive though, but I still enjoyed it

 

[Mechagodzilla]

I liked the idea behind Xen. I cluster of asteroids floating in a nebula certainly beats the generic "Dune-ish desert planet" or "Endor-ish forest planet" or any other "insert-geological-feature-here planet."

Also, I loved the little touches. The light-bulb plants that were frightened of you, grass that looked like hair and the organic growth covering everything. Xen was a place completely different from any other alien world ever invented.

The problem came from how that awesome concept was implemented though. Polygon restrictions, texture problems and some somewhat poor level design in parts.

The actual shape of the Xen landmasses was too alien. Instead of looking like actual floating islands, the asteroids were pretty much just blobs of rock in the shape of the overall path you needed to go. The lack of polygons made the organic-themed world look blockey and angular, instead of smooth and natural.

The rocks really lacked sense of grandeur or scale, because the polygon limits kept them too small. None of the rocks were any bigger than a shopping mall, and looking off the edge, you would see no other islands anywhere close. As a result, the Xen rocks took an entire continent and tried to squeeze it into a space the size of a house.

Because of that squeezing, everything was bunched way to close together. You'd have a tentacle five meters away from Vortigauunts using mining devices, five meters away from a garg, five meters away from some grunts. In an area the size of a parking lot, you'd have three different caves, two large tunnels, a valley, three pits, two hills, a plain and one mountain, bordered on all sides with a cliff leading to sheer nothingness. It's so self-contained that it's almost a theme-park attraction.

They did their best with the polygons they had, but every Xen landmass should at least have given the illusion of being 5 times bigger, and it would have helped tons to see an entire continent floating by in a sea of rocks and space.

 

[cadaver]

didn`t like xen