curiously undead
tuned to a different freq
not really it was made for both simultaneously just like bioshock, or summoner.
I am not a huge HL fan in general, but understand the perspective - it did things in a different way than had been done in terms of no cutscenes and whatnot. Remember it is ~9 years old now in a genre that is very tech-centric. That said, I'm just polishing Jedi Knight for a 10th Anniversary article and it is still brilliant ...Playing Half Life. A friend had a copy that he didn't want anymore so I took it. What was the big to-do over this game?
I am not a huge HL fan in general, but understand the perspective - it did things in a different way than had been done in terms of no cutscenes and whatnot. Remember it is ~9 years old now in a genre that is very tech-centric. That said, I'm just polishing Jedi Knight for a 10th Anniversary article and it is still brilliant ...
I'm just not seeing it doing anything that I hadn't played before in my (albeit limited) FPS playing history. Lots of corridors, shooting stuff, the usual. I guess the more interactive environments and reliance on puzzles more than firepower to defeat main baddies was the revolutionary turning point, but that's all I can really come up with.
Graphically it's pretty amazing for a game of it's age, too. Which, as you said, in a tech-centric genre, would be a colossal selling point.
You need to keep in mind that 9 years is a very long time in the world of gaming, I think your opinion would be a little different if you had played it when it first came out.
I still didn't think it was the world-shaking game that many attribute to it, even back then. Good shooter, bit different than most others at the time, but not totally different or a 180 turn or whatever else is attributed to it ...
I'm not sure if my opinion would be any different if I played it when it came out. I'm not a total stranger to shooters, and Half Life isn't really that different, 9 years ago or now. System Shock came out, what, 1994-95, and I think did a far better job of re-defining the genre than Half Life did. Thief: The Dark Project was also a 1998 release and was more innovative than HL as well.
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Half-Life was innovative in the way they did the AI, it was the first game where enemies effectively communicated with each other in a manner to show teamwork. The way the marines used cover and attempted to run from genades, as well as warning each other when they were about to use one, was unique for the time.
Besides that, the game was just damn great. It won over 50 Game of the Year awards and is the highest selling pc shooter of all time. It didn't accomplish that on hype or graphics alone.
But this I am not getting. How is it damn great? Scientific experiment goes awry, bringing other-dimensional aliens into the high-security base, and scientist-turned-army-grunt has to save the day? Where's the greatness? It's a bland story with rote shooter gameplay, AI notwithstanding.