"Half Life 1" review

in Hive Gaming2 years ago

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Although I sometimes hear from friends or people on the Internet, slogans like - "I envy your knowledge", "You remember the titles that most have forgotten" etc. I have a lot of iconic titles in my head that I have never met. Relatively, I had the opportunity, but for various reasons, I did not take advantage of it. It usually comes down to the fact that I didn't start watching a movie or series from the beginning and I don't want to follow it from the inside or in the case of games - I didn't like the gameplay or the controls, it was too difficult for me, I didn't consider the game too attractive. In the case of Half Life, it was controls and puzzles. I have usually been poor at dealing with them since I was a child, and if I come across an obstacle, I often tire of it longer than the average player. About 2 years ago, I decided to make up for all the cult (or the ones that are extremely intriguing to me, but never gave them a chance) games, anime, series. Gradually I do this and my "shame list" gets smaller and smaller. This year I decided to buy "Orange Box" on Valve and ... It is one of the best decisions I made last year. Recently I had so much fun with my computer or PS4, with "Quake 1" or "Witcher: Wild Hunt" (I do not count FighterZ, because in fights I am as thin as spider's urine - although yes, it ranks 4 right behind them). I hadn't felt this pain in years when it was over and I had to stop playing because I had to go to sleep. Unfortunately, I am a greedy fat man who needs to take toys, like a little child, because I will play with them to the stop ... Suffering at the same time the next day.

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The game captivated me from the very first moment. Sure, I've heard most of these things from colleagues, reviewers, and later YouTube users, but to be honest, I only remember many of them during the game. As I explore the Black Mesa Lab, I refresh my memories. Most of them were buried deep in my memory, but thanks to the trigger in the form of this game, I immediately remembered them. I am surprised how much I remembered from over 20 years ago, because on November 19 I was an 8-year-old boy. Despite this knowledge, the game arouses my sincere admiration. It is even bigger when I recall once again that it was the title from 1998. "Half Life 1" started or developed a lot of things that I will write about in a moment. Then such hits as "Metal Gear Solid", "StarCraft 1", "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", "Grim Fandango", "Thief 1", RE2, "Crash Bandicoot 3" + several others, popular brands for PS1, "Xenogears", "Fallout 2", "Oddworld: Abe's Exodus", BG 1, "Blood 2", "Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines" or "Shogo Mobile Armor Division". Most, if not all, of these titles, in my opinion, deserve the cult with which they are surrounded.

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Just as philosophy is the foundation of all science, the foundation of all innovations introduced or popularized by Half Life is realism. Sure, there were already titles that stood out from the "Doom-like" games (something like today's trend with "Souls-like") - they had more interaction with the environment, tried to somehow stand out from the competition and from "Doom" himself, but often these were either cosmetic or minor changes. Kind of like MOBA games that wanted to repeat the success of DotA and LoL. Some people managed to do it, the creators earned money from their work, but the market eventually clogged up and something new had to be introduced. At the time, Valve's game was a far-reaching step into the future that was felt at every turn. Starting with the plot and immersion - in the end, we could play the role of an ordinary man who came to work, not a soldier, strongman-chad like Duke Nukem, or another monster hunter. It was an ordinary scientist who worked for a government organization. In addition, thanks to several aspects, such as the fact that Gordon Freeman does not speak even once throughout the game, we could have succumbed to the illusion that this is us. Weapons, ammunition and first aid kits did not hang in the air or were scattered in various places, such as in "Doom" or other games. All items lie as if it is real life. If we step into a puddle or, for example, a room flooded with water, with a cable hanging, we will lose a few health points. The armor also works differently - if we fall from a great height, we will lose health points, not our armor. If we lose some health points by staying under water for too long, we will regain them when we surface. If we hide behind a wall or in a sewage system, the soldiers throw a grenade there to kill or smoke us out. The physics and advanced AI of the opponents are also important, but I will not describe it, because I do not know myself. For the same reason, I have left out a few of the innovations that the HL1 introduced or popularized. Today, it may not impress me (it does to me every time I turn on this game), but it was Valve who introduced it to the world of games.

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This can also be seen in the design of the levels. Each time I praise both parts of "Doom" for their level design - they are properly developed (i.e. neither too simple nor too complicated, which, contrary to appearances, was not so easy and some companies have artificially extended them to deliberately extend the game. titles and manifested itself in various cases - eg "Tomb Raider" has too large boards, on which nothing is done, "WarCraft 2", in turn, had not very impressive farms, so the expansion of the base partially covered the shortness of the game), the game is dynamic , they generally made a huge impression on players in their time. However, "Doom" and many games of this type had one "drawback" (I deliberately put it in quotation marks because some people don't mind it) - they were usually unrealistic. If this does not bother you, then I agree with you - after all, we are talking about a product that is supposed to give us fun and distract us from the problems of everyday life. On the other hand, however, it is equally legitimate to complain about the lack of realism. Judging from the perspective of those times, HL1 was probably the first game in which it felt like we were walking around a real research complex. The buildings were not as empty as in other games, which were often made of large pixels, and when you stepped inside, you found that there were few corridors, items etc.

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I have already mentioned the plot, but this topic is worth elaborating on. According to Harry Teasley (one of the game designers), "Doom" had a huge impact on the production of this game. I found this information while collecting information for the text, but it was felt from the very beginning. For example, the experiment itself, which is a much more developed idea from the ID game. Overall, throughout the gameplay, you get the impression that Valve's development team was inspired by the title and wanted to expand it to a serious story level, rather than simply murdering aliens and zombies possessed by demons from Hell. Although it may be to a greater or lesser extent, only my impression is that I am a fanatic of the ID games in this series. The gameplay is divided into chapters, there is no contractual (or not) combination of random episodes, where the sequence of stages does not matter and, in fact, they could be arranged differently and probably no one would pay attention to it. At the beginning we have a long intro that gradually introduces us to the atmosphere of the game. Even though it's been about 23 years since its premiere, its cinematic quality is still on the same level - as in the case of "WarCraft 3". It may not be the best director or script, but it's hard for me to find a comparatively good title. However, it may be because of my ignorance. Nevertheless, even if there are such titles, and I showed ignorance, HL1 and WC3 will probably easily find their way to the top-10 of the most cinematic games. As I wrote in many articles about games and anime - some of them reject me at the start and I have to force myself sometimes to give them a chance to show their beauty. The HL1 did this from the very first minutes, I was very involved as I took the cable car deeper into the US base. The climate did not diminish even for a moment - quite the contrary. When I'm playing on my headphones and suddenly something happens or I suddenly hear a new song, I empathize with this story even more. However, maybe it is still ahead of me, because at the time of writing these words, I have not reached the most criticized stage yet.

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Developing - "Half Life" presented the story in an unusual (then) way. We not only walk, shoot and collect keys to unlock the next fragments of the level. Quite often we have to use our brains, solve simple puzzles, or collaborate with scientists to move on. Of course, it was already in "Quake 1" (apart from the last aspect), which I mentioned in my review (by the way, HL runs on a heavily modified engine of this game), "Duke Nukem 3D", maybe in a few other games, but I cannot recall another such game. Likewise, I cannot recall any other title that would bet so much on scripted sequences. Later, gamers and reviewers complained about it because the producers uploaded too many scenes like this, but before that happened, most were delighted with the scripts. We can also use the help of security staff who will kill monsters from another dimension for us, thanks to which we will save ammunition. It may not be unusual today, but then ... Brains exploded. By the way, did you know that in the original version of "Doom 1" the ID developers also wanted to implement this idea? In a sense, we were supposed to have other Doom Marines with whom we could interact (talk, give commands), but due to computer limitations and developer capabilities, this was dropped. It was the same with storytelling - at the beginning of "Doom 1" we also had to first explore the base on Mars, get to know the battlefield. There are even some fragments of these stages that we can see in the videos on YT. Unfortunately, it was abandoned, which is a pity. Yes, I know, that last point matched a different paragraph, but I remembered it as I was writing and I don't want to spoil the structure of the text. And while we're at it, I remembered a very important thing during the proofreading. Carmack's games and the rest of ID laid the groundwork for creating your own mods for games, don't forget that. However, we should not forget that Valve (like Blizzard - see "DOTA2") has slightly less merit in this field. Thanks to their decision, we got "Counter Strike" from one of the fans of the game + lots of other add-ons that extended the life of the game, and thus - more copies of the game were sold. No additional advertising campaign, no need to create additional add-ons (which were - let me emphasize that no one malicious will remind me of the mistake). Not to mention that thanks to this decision, we got one of the most popular multiplayer games.

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In summary, the game fully deserves the cult that surrounds it. I will definitely come back to it again sometime, this time going through its revised version. It has been a long time since I have been so surprised and I have not enjoyed discovering new surprises that the creators have prepared for me. Sure, it's not that impressive in today's games, HL1 is a bit poor in some respects, but we're talking about a late 1998 game. As I wrote, for example, on the example of "Command and Conquer 2020", many old games are empty compared to products from today, but this objection practically does not apply to the title discussed here. If you did a global brainwash to make players forget about it + expand it a bit (the base itself, gameplay, not the plot) and adapt the graphics to today's times, probably no one would get the impression that this is a revised title from years ago. For me, 10/10.

Screenshots are from https://www.filehorse.com/download-half-life/screenshots/

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this was one legendary badass game

 2 years ago  

Es una saga que tengo pendiente, vi gameplays pero la verdad nunca lo jugué todavia lo tengo en mi lista de pendientes ajaja pero claramente el juego marco un antes y un después en jugabilidad