Forcing you to use it every five minutes honestly made HL2 and its episodes half as great as they could've been.
The defense of White Forest would've made for a great fucking climax if it wasn't just so fucking annoying because of the Magnusson devices.
It would have been better if most of the guns didn't feel terrible and look terible and also if 90% of it wasn't fighting dudes in gas masks who die from a strong breeze
I disagree
I thought Magnusson devices were pretty great. I liked what they did with striders too, ones in HL2 are incredibly tedious to fight.
Git gud
>As seen in the playable Half-Life 2 Beta, it was at some point possible for the player to assault Striders, ride them and take their gun after killing them. Noclipping to the Strider's head, then pressing the Use key results in the player seeing through the creature's eyes. At that point the only thing to do to free oneself is to kill the creature, for instance with the RPG (as the only way to kill a Strider in the playable Half-Life 2 Beta is by standing inside its head), or reload the game. When killing it, the Strider collapses, releasing the player. At that point, the red ERROR model appears. When walking through it, the player acquires the Immolator. This suggests the Immolator acts here as a placeholder for the Strider's warp cannon, and that resuing it was at some point considered, a role that the Combine Guard Gun was already filling. As a side note, the Immolator worldmodel exists and should appear instead of the ERROR model.
The combine were great, shut up.
Did you find the gravity puzzles fun enough to be used as extensively as they were throughout the games? Legit question, maybe it's just me getting sick of them after playing through the games so many times.
I don't know. On one hand I loved fighting the striders and hunters, on the other hand it was incredibly frustrating to have to go back and forth between safe houses getting the devices one at a time.
I never said it was hard, just annoying.
Well, you have a car.
I hope HL3 focuses more on cool guns and enemies, and well designed combat setpieces like HL1 and less so in physics puzzles.
>well designed combat setpieces like HL1
Like the Episodes, you mean.
Forcing you to use it every five minutes honestly made Portal and its sequel half as great as they could've been.
The final fight with Wheatley would've made for a great fucking climax if it wasn't just so fucking annoying because of the Personality cores
Yeah, the episodes had some pretty fun parts too. The highway hunter ambushes in Episode 2 are great.
Ravenholm is the only chapter you need to use it aside from the last chapter where you get the leveled up version.
I mean, I don't actually remember when I played HL1 and saw a setpiece fight. I don't think they did those back then, it was just about making the environment and putting in some enemies, the player comes into the environment, sees enemies, shoots them - pretty simple. Sometimes enemies teleport in, Blast Pit is a great setpiece, but it's not really a combat setpiece, is it, it's the whole level being an exploratory puzzle. That's something Black Mesa did, they introduced more setpiece fights in the game, like everybody's favorite in the end of Questionable Ethics.
Not saying HL1 is a bad game here, obviously.
I didn't think it was frustrating at all, I think you need to git gud.
I still to this day do not understand the hype of Half Life 2. Was it good? Yes. Was it the best game ever? Half Life 1 is better and so are other games.
i stopped half way through ep 2 of HL 2 cause I couldn't stand another stupid fucking vehicle driving segment.
Nah, there are dozens of setpieces in HL1.
What does getting good have to do with finding a mechanic annoying? OP never said it was hard.
Like what, for example? I guess the first fish fight, and maybe the dam, but the dam doesn't really feel like it, though it's cool how there are hazards in the air and in the water and you have to deal with them both somehow - though when I played HL last few times I'd just shoot the Apache with the tau cannon to death and have a nice quiet level until it respawns.
Almost every encounter with the marines is a setpiece encounter. You rarely encounter them like the other regular aliens, just wandering the corridors. They're always tactically positioned in these bigish arena maps.
The game is basically a huge series of mini-setpieces, I can't imagine why anyone would say there aren't any setpiece combat segments in HL1. It's part of what put it above and beyond shooters of its time.
Just out of the top of my head, one of my favorites is the one with the first tank, in this big map full of underground passageways you can use to go around, pop up, take a shot, and then drop back in;
The soldiers are placed logically, but they never felt like setpieces to me. I guess the part with the underground passageways fits, it's enemy placement plus the environment which you exploit, yes.
>The soldiers are placed logically, but they never felt like setpieces to me.
That's part of the charm of the game. It feels like you just naturally stumbled into that arena, because of its organic narrative pace.
If you stop and analyze things though, you'll realize that most encounter with the HECU marines are set in some very cleverly designed arenas that make the most of the AI and force you to move around and use all your weapons.
Try playing on Hard, and you'll soon find yourself making clever use of the proximity mines and other items you'd rarely use in the easier difficulties. This you'll make you pay more attention to the map and setpiece layout in the first game.
I hope HL3 ever exists.
I've always played on Hard, though. The only time I used proximity mines was in Black Mesa (2011), because there the Marines were really able to fuck you up in a heartbeat, even if your weapons were buffed as well.
Well, your experiences vary greatly from mine then, because I found Black Mesa way easier than HL1.
I never really played HL1 using autosaves only, to be fair. I think it only autosaves on loading a new part of the level, right? BM autosaves pretty often so I never used quicksaves... except for platforming sections, I am unable to do platforming of any kind.
>I never really played HL1 using autosaves only
Do it, or at least make a "no saving during a combat encounter" rule, and you'll see what I mean.
how fucking retarded are you? this is a complete false equivalence
Hey, I didn't save THAT often. I think, anyway.
I think what I mean by saying Episodes do setpieces more often and more clearly is the way the combat and maps in them often work. You see an environment, get into it and then combat happens, enemies appear from different sides, environment changes etc. The finale is obvious, but there's a lot of battles like that which ensure that you experience them on very specific terms set by designers, you don't run away and fight the enemies one by one, etc.
.... oh user
>being this retarded
wow, gabe newell is such a genius.
Then it's simply not for you. The best part of the Half-Life games are that they feel like an actual "Epic" story. I'm travelling through the world while there is a greater conflict going on around me. It never leaves Gordon's eyes so it's like my own actual journey.
The Citadel high up at the beginning of the game? Through your own hard work you manage to make it all the way to the top at the end of the game.
The thing I hate the most is how they handled combine soldiers.
They are so fucking weak, their firepowers is low (except the combine shotgunners who are probably the only ones who can actually manage a kill if you are not careful), and their AI, although smart, handled the player like they would handle random NPCs, making them rush out of cover to pick their target, which always result in a quick death against the player.
gottem :PPPP
Aren't they just the HECU except with less health and actual reaction times?
I know, that's what I mean by set pieces too, and HL1 has a lot of them. HL2 does set pieces better, since they could script a lot more stuff with the technology of the time, but HL1 started it out.
I hope you're not being ironic, because Half-Life literally changed how games were made. It was the first game to feature a real time, linear narrative that put player immersion at the forefront of its priorities, with the use of clever scripting and "realistic" AI over "gamey" AI.
I love the combine, but I also think they're pretty weak. The main problem with HL2 is that they just put the combines in these tight corridors, when their AI was made for big open arenas, and that makes them act dumb and rush the player. They kinda fixed that on the Episodes though, and the AI is much better in them.
Yeah, probably.
Choose 1
>have to use this weapon the whole game is designed around most of the time. have people complain that they have to use it too much.
or
>introduce it and only use it for the first level it is introduce and then make it completely optional for the rest of the game. then have people complain that it is a just a gimmick.
trust me, if valve sucked your dick, people would still complain, hell, you'd complain too.
truly a visionary of our time.
They are smarter than HECU, but a lot weaker (less health, less damages, smaller less various squads and slower).
It really doesn't fit an army of transhuman soldiers with high-tech armor, their elites could at least be more equal to the player in term of mobility and firepower, there they are just alt-trigger happy with 20 more hp than regular soldiers.
OR, make a few levels spread throughout the game that make use of it, but don't overdo it. Why is that impossible?
There are a few puzzles that require the use of a grenade once in a while, but the game never makes grenade puzzles its "thing". The same could have been done with the gravity gun.
Agree. I love the combines, but they should feel as scary to take on as the HECU did. Those guys did NOT fuck around.
HL2 was a fucking shadow of what it could have been.
>While the playable game leaked in 2003 is quite similar to the retail product and already heavily trimmed, this earlier period of development of the game shows a quite different style. At this point, City 17 was an American East Coast-like city based on Washington, D.C., with many huge skyscrapers, and had a very basic, blocky FPS design. It was more faithful to the concept art seen in Raising the Bar: darker, gothic, sinister, rainy, foggy, gritty, with a lot of brick, metal, and glass, getting along well with the cut concept of the Combine replacing the air with poisonous gas and draining the oceans. It was therefore a much more dystopian, Orwellian universe (even though the final product is still quite Orwellian) even with touches of cyberpunk/steampunk style, in the vein of the book/film 1984 or other films such as Dark City, Blade Runner, City of Lost Children, or Avalon. It was also more faithful to Viktor Antonov's early concept art and work on the game.
Goes for most games desu.
>Through your own hard work
I hope you mean the work that allowed you to buy the game and a PC to run it on.
Actually I don't think HL2 had a lot of great setpieces, it's the Episodes that really shine.
>realistic AI over gamey AI
I wouldn't say that.
>I wouldn't say that.
That's literally what they did though. By 1998 standards, HL had mind-blowingly realistic AI for a real time 3D shooter.
Enemies that could think for themselves, plan their moves, fall back when hurt, call out and communicate with other NPCs, etc.
That was never-before-seen stuff at the time.
Unreal came out half a year earlier. And there was MP bot for Quake that could do pretty advanced stuff, ReaperBot.
And surprisingly they could be real bitch on their own,for instance, no matter how often I play, I always get caught by shit like grenade drop.
Anyway, what I was saying that HL1 AI is pretty gamey overall, they do stuff that seems smart occasionally, but then they do really dumb stuff like running with their back to you to plant a grenade in the floor and then explode on it.
Fuck you the climax was great
git gud
the gravity gun was never half-life 2's problem.
you suggesting the best part of the game is half-life 2's problem is actually pretty annoying.
>concept looks better than final release
it goes for almost everything
The Gravity gun was sort of mishandled, but I think all the other pace breaking shit (especially those cutscenes) hurt the game much more.
At least the gravity gun was fun to use.
They were scary because they would force you to retreat and then chase you to finish you off, making it difficult to deal with them with frontal attacks.
Combine soldiers were set to give chase and have an aggressive set of tactics in general, making them easy to kill if their original charge failed to get you. Plus the tendancy of the game at putting them in one-way corridors didn't give them any room for squad tactics.
The only scary combine soldier was the shotgunner due to his tendancy to rush you while you are busy/hidden or backing away full auto if you gave chase.
(Combine elite would also be scary if the energy ball dealt more than 10 hp damage on hit, due to their tendancy to fire them everywhere)
The AI in both Unreal and Quake were HARD, but they weren't realistic at all. They behaved like players playing a game, not like real world humans.
The thing is that Half-Life AI had a lot of little touches that didn't really affect gameplay at all, but made you feel like they were actual real characters instead of just video game enemies. Stuff like the marines having squad behavior and radio chatter, vortigaunts running away from you when wounded and Houndeyes having a lookout sentry awake while the rest of the pack takes a nap don't add to the gameplay that much, but they add TONS of the immersion and the narrative.
That's not what I meant by gamey AI, that's just an example of the AI being dumb because it's fucking 1998.
except in the hl2 leak there's a rough but nearly complete set of maps in the style of the old concept art and they scrapped pretty much all of it.
This. The Combine Soldiers had excellent AI, but they were so weak and slow that you'd never actually SEE that AI in action. Black Mesa and Underhell put the AI to really good use in making their human enemies threatening, all things considered.
I wish more games had enemies that felt as good to fight as the HECU in HL1.
For Underhell they even managed to couple that with stealth mechanic in chapter 1 (combine ai had this implemented, they don't attack unless you make a noise, get in view, trigger another soldier or hit a trigger to start detection, although they don't move at all until fight start and there's no way to go back to hiding as every soldier on the map will know where you are)