/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5710306
It was good but OP stop being a faggot, I know exactly what youre doing

There's this meme going around by people who don't know much about games that Half-Life 1 "ruined" (whatever that means) first-person shooters, or even games in general because (the claim being) it pioneered or created "cinematic" type video games. Personally, I view these claims as being purely false conjecture, and should be discarded as such.

It may come of an interest to you, but Half-Life was actually praised heavily at the time for NOT being a story-focused game, which was increasingly becoming a new standard in the C-D based console era (although story and scenario based games are demonstrably far older than the mid 1990's, as anyone with a brain can figure out). Half-Life 1 gives the player full control throughout the entire game, and (almost) never breaks character from the gameplay, which is presented and introduced completely naturally to the player. Suggesting that Half-Life is bad because of the few mandatory speaking segments is just absurd - the game has less dialogue and waiting time than something like Ocarina of Time, which is also very straight-forward and old-fashioned game from the same time period. Half-Life 1 is incredibly arcadey, fast, free and truthful to classic video games, and its reputation as being otherwise is completely unwarranted.


Further game resources for the uneducated:
>Marathon (1994), FPS with huge emphasis on story and lore
>Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995), FPS with cutscenes and mission objectives
>Duke Nukem 3D (1996), FPS with scripted sequences and realistic environments
>GoldenEye 007 (1997), FPS with variable objectives, items, and important NPC's
>Quake II (1997) and Unreal (1998), FPS games that did interconnected/progressive levels before Half-Life
>Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998), FPS about tactical shooting and military
>System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex, etc (Various), first-person games with emphasis on slow-pace and story
>Ultima Underworld (1992), RPG pre-Wolf 3D
>UT, Q3, Tribes, etc - fast FPS games post HL1

>>5710408
based, handsome, redpilled, rpg codex destroyer

People who think Half-Life is cinematic have probably never played it. It doesn't even have cutscenes! What it actually popularized was "realistic" environments and weapons. The former is only a bad thing when imitated by less talented devs. The latter does kind of suck though. At least they gave us the Gravity Gun in the sequel, which kind of gave devs an excuse to bring back crazy weapons.

>>5710315
>I know exactly what youre doing
What is he doing besides playing half-life?

>>5710408
Dont forget about Medal of Honor

>>5710429
OP is trying to make a flame war thread. Also made evident that his post doesnt really say anything. Killing threads for spam is whats wrong with this board atm

Did those dudes ever finish the remake? What was it called again?

>>5710552
Black Mesa? It was supposed to be finished already but they're still beta testing Xen.

>>5710306
>>5710408
Evidently because this thread is gonna go nowhere. How about we talk about our favourite Half-Life mods? Who here plays ESF or Vampire Slayer?

Half-Life ruined FPS forever. It's pretty much the only modern genre that I can't stand.

>>5711195
Let me guess you think Half Life is the worst but have nothing to say about Medal of Honor? You in/v/aders are all the same

Half life was always trash, grow up and stop being a valve drone

>>5711232
go back to /v/

>>5711235
Nah as long as you fags keep ruining my castlevania threads, I'll keep shitting on threads like this one in retaliation

>>5710408
This

I just hate that enemies dont react at all to you shooting them
why isnt there a mod to fix this? its the only thing keeping me from replaying it

>>5711618

true, even doom/build engine games had that wtf

>>5711626
>>5711618
>>5711232
>>5711239
>>5711195
have sex doomcels

>>5711618
>>5711626
Enemies do react to being shot, wtf are you talking about. Half-Life has headshots, body locations with specific armor, retreat and injured animations, unique behavior, etc. Doom and Duke don't have those things, just noises and blood, which Half-Life also has unsurprisingly.

>>5711673
I mean they dont flinch, I know the smarter ones retreat when injured

>>5711195
Same. The whole CinEmATiC ExPeRieNCe thing just doesn't work for me. Like at all. It just breaks the flow of the game, and the gameplay ends up being super mediocre and not rewarding at all.

>>5711743
ebic /v/

>>5711232
>>5711195
>>5711743
see>>5710408

Can we talk about how bad hard difficulty is? The health bloat on enemies makes the weapons feel really bad and exacerbates the games lack of hit feedback on certain enemies.

Can we talk about the mods or decay instead of zoomers complaining again?

>>5710408
I love you

Someone post all the webms of the AI demonstrations and shit.

BASED JANNIES FUCK HL HATERS AND ZOOMERS
>>5712107
Go back /v/tard.

IM BACK JANNIES BAN ME AGAIN
Moderate platformer threads you mustardrace cunts, Valve is trash and so are you

>>5712181
>>5711994
Dilate

Still no Medal of Honor discussion baka. Only goes to show people hate HL to be hip in a /v/ way. Also if you shoot a monster and blood comes out, that means you hit it

>>5710408
>everybody else was doing it so it's okay

>>5712264
yes doombaby its ok

>>5711743
>>5711195

>>5712273
I never understood the doombaby meme

>>5712264
You missed the point, dumbass. The anon is saying HLfags dont give those games any shit at all for having things they get butthurt at HL for having. Go back to /v/ if you can't admit your inconsistent takes. Actually wait no just go back to /v/ anyway

>>5712285
I'm sorry that my taste is too good for you

>>5712289
I dont know what your taste is, you are just shitposting. You havent really refuted the points >>5710408 made at all; greentext and false apologies means nothing. Go back to /v/

BASED JANNIES

its over /v/ soon the thread will be deleted. hlchads win again.

HOW WILL /v/ EVER RECOVER?

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM ZOOMIES MAD AT HL.

Anyone wants to play Decay with me?

i really hated xen though

I played Black Mesa and judge HL1 by it.

>>5711994
the only thing I hate about hard is how it makes hitscan enemies have insane reaction times. You're basically guaranteed to eat hits when you shoot at them its really dumb

where my /v/irgins at? lets get a sage in the chat

>>5712418
Still better than hitscanners in Blood. Name 3 old fps you can play thru without taking damage

>>5712437
Blood is very poorly designed, it's designed with constant quicksave + quickload in mind. WIth that said, I'm not saying guaranteed damage is bad, its just HOW obscenely fast their reaction times are. Like when you're playing an online shooter and you know someone has map hacks because they shoot in under 100 ms when you round a corner, its what the ai does in hl1. It's dumb and annoying.

doombabbies cant handle hl and blood lmao.

>>5712447
I think doom has the edge on half-life because of flinching.

Half-life is pretty good though...

>>5712447
go back to /v/, all three games are fine

>>5712447
/vr/ hates doom now? sad!

>>5712492
nope. its just /v/

Been playing through this game again on Hard this week. The Alien Slaves (that shoot lightning) are a bit too tough, they deal a lot of damage and their charge-up time is really fast. Although i could be biased, because they make my cheap laptop drop frames, when they charge their lightning attack.
The game is a real gem though, there are just a few sections where the level designer really made a "cheap" trap for the player. Like in "We've got hostiles", there's a part where you walk into a room with two sentry guns and several explosive barrels, and just when you enter two alien slaves spawn right behind you. The chance that either the turrets or one of the alien slaves explode the barrels, detonating you in a fiery blaze, is very high.

There are very few of those parts though. The best part of the game is fighting the marines, their AI is just so fun to engage with. When they lose sight of you, they go searching for you or toss grenades. There's a lot of shenanigans that can happen, for example i fought 3 soldiers, defeated the first two but couldn't find the third. Finally i found him being eaten alive by a barnacle monster.
When you throw a grenade at the marines, and they can't escape in time, you hear them call on the radio "Oh shi-" ... That's just an incredible little detail to me.

Why don't delete the entire thread instead of individual posts, retarded janny?

>>5712516
Also there's actually a surprising amount of semi-secret areas in the game. Mostly places that give you ammo and weapons. It's fun to go for a playthrough on Hard, and try to find all of these nooks and crannies, to stock up on as much ammo and bombs as possible.

A few details that i noticed now, that i didn't at all realize when i played this game as a kid:
>The Gauss Gun goes straight through walls (and enemies), line up 3 alien grunts and you can vaporize them all with a shot
>The crates that have green tarps on them often contain very powerful military equipment like bombs and rifle grenades
>The Alien Grunt "arm" weapon is amazing for taking out Snarks.
>Trip mines work splendid against the female assassins.
>Both marines and aliens will run and hide from grenades, a good strategy is often to distract enemies with a grenade and run past them instead of fighting
>The three-headed snake monster (?) can be distracted with grenades. He can't see - he won't attack you when you sneak. Yeah, i was retarded for not realizing this as a kid, and it made the Blast Pit section a lot harder than it should've been.

>>5712418
It makes the firefights against the marines feel really hardcore. Like you are really fighting trained soldiers. The most dangerous ones are the shotgun marines. They will destroy you at close range. You have to use your wits to take them out, for example luring them around a corner into a tripmine, as i like to do.

However, there is at least one part in the game that i could not imagine surviving on my first playthrough. It's in "On a rail", where you are riding on the train and suddenly a crate bursts, revealing 2 marines, one of which instantly shoots a rifle grenade in your face. That's probably the worst section of the game, because when you know about it you can totally blow them up, but when you don't know about it you are 100% dead.

>>5712416
based retard

>>5710306
Have fun OP, you're in for an intense game that's a little more arcade feel than some other Half-Life games. It's all around about getting through the levels and trying to survive. I say it's a little bit more like playing on a computer compared to when I played in the arcade.
Some of this is a little off in how it's presented, but I like the idea of jumping from one level to the next, but you never really learn the locations the way you do in an arcade game.
I love the game controls for Half-Life so much I just wanted to do a little bit of a tutorial video on using them to my advantage. It's really the biggest thing you really learn in Half-Life, when you play in the game you have these two control schemes where you have to be at exactly the right angle, and you can't change direction. It's super important and you have to do two things at the same time to get in the right kind of way.

>>5710552
I assume you're talking about black mesa, the first 3 of 19 xen maps just came out for testing and it looks rad

Im looking for a half life map where you spawn in a room with glass and outside there is a big arena. You can't shoot trough the glass but players from outside can.

>>5712546
The sniper female ninja bitches in the warehouse. Took me multiple attempts.

>>5715049
They're cake with the crossbow. Assuming that you know where they are at least.

Not a huge fan of the "oh look, a series of platforms in the form of industrial machinery that are conveniently placed to get me out of this building in the most elaborate way possible, yet I can't go through a fucking door" sections. This starts to become an unfortunately recurring theme mid-game. The first few chapters feel more like you're trying to survive in the aftermath of a disaster. Like you're trapped in this giant underground place that's almost unimaginably big and you just want to escape more than anything else. The times when the game feels like that are amazing and probably as incredible as anything I've ever experienced in a video game. Then all of a sudden it's PLATFORMING. There's a conveyor belt level, a water level, etc. A lot of bullshit that feels like the devs wanted to force you to do shit for the sake of doing it and not because it made any sense. Once it stops relying as heavily on this stuff it starts to improve again. Chapter 12 (Surface Tension), despite being hard and ludicrously long, is fun as fuck and one of the best chapters in the game and possibly the best in the latter half.

Overall some of the set pieces are among the most memorable in gaming ever. The rail-cart (whatever it's called) level, the ride in to work at the beginning, the whole mad frantic panicked escape from the base after everything goes wrong and you have no idea what's going on, etc. That last one in particular might be my favorite part of any game ever.

Overall it's just one of the best games ever.

>>5715113
Yea, that's what I ended up using but they have a tendency to hop away after you fire.
I think I may use the other anons idea, plant trip mines around corners and lure them in.

>>5710306
Way better than 2, all 2 has against it is Graphics.

>tfw normal is too easy and hard is just tedious as fuck

>>5716294
Shooting feels way more satisfying in 2 thanks to ragdolls and physics in general.

Keeping scientists alive for as long as possible.

>>5710408
> blablabla i'm retarded
Meme game wich was only good because:
- The engine
- Ayyylmaos story of aliens pouring into our reality in a complete ripoff of Stephen King the mist.
Basically a really engaging concept with good delivery and an engine wich was the best for that time.

That's why HL3 will never be made, because Valve can live up to the expectatives.

>>5711994
>for many years i thought the combat in HL1 was meh because i was playing it on hard
what the fuck was valve thinking

vortigaunts needing a secondary fire from the shotgun to die is terrible

>>5716335
You can just edit enemy health values to your liking, you know. Simple stuff.

What do you guys think about the Xen chapters?

>>5718678
plebfilter

>>5718678
They are fun and all, I like the platforming aspect of low gravity, but its undeniable that its a huge step down from previous chapters in terms of quality. All you were doing before culminated in Lambda Core, and the general idea is that things are escalating, the chapters become harder and harder, then you get to Xen and theres a huge drop in the pacing and difficulty of the game, very anticlimatic. The very fight against Nihilanth isnt as memorable as other parts of the game.
What I liked in Xen the most was using it as a setting for creating skirmishes between human soldiers and aliens, I probably spent more time doing this than playing the game itself.

>>5710426
Did Half Life really have a more realistic set of weapons than its contemporaries? Most FPS arsenals consisted largely of guns that had some sort of real world counterpart. HL1 had about as many exotic weapons as I would expect.

>>5718678
I've honestly never understood why people seem to have such a big problem with them. They ooze atmosphere, and there's maybe one or two places where it's not clear how you're supposed to progress. Otherwise the level design seems about on par with the rest of the game, as long as you know how to long jump.

>>5710430
Medal of Honor was actually good though

Does anyone else think Black Mesa is trash?

The delay on shooting after zooming in that makes revolver sniping clunky, the lack of crosshair on the fucking CROSSBOW SCOPE, classic terrible source engine shooting AI, marines nearly never damage flinching, the hivehand..

>>5716659
>a complete ripoff of Stephen King the mist
??

>>5717910
vortigaunts are such an awful enemy type, valve is horrible at designing fair enemies to fight

vorts are only bearable because they're used with some restraint and never in open areas in large numbers, they're basically mini arch-viles from DOOM. they also used to have the ability to res eachother, so they used to literally be mini arch-viles

>>5711994
Damage sponges are not very fun anywhere, but with hitscan it's just terrible. Maybe if they'd have headshot mechanic it would be bearable, but no.

>>5717910
Even on other difficulties combat in Half-Life is meh. Its pacing feels all wrong. Like it's not fun trigger happy action like older shooters, but there's not much sense of tactical combat either.

>>5719173
there is a headshot mechanic, headshots deal bonus damage, it's just that damage flinch is extremely rare

Jesus git gud.

>>5711148
A bit new to Half-Life mods...but:

I play ESF but have no idea how to play it. The controls confuse the shit out of me even when playing with bots.

I tried playing Vampire Slayer but bots kicked my ass. Good mod though. I wonder how it actually plays with players on it. Can't seem to find any servers most of the time.

I also tried playing Syndicate Black Ops but I was so astounded by how over-the-top everything was that I took a break to process everything I saw.

Half-Screwed is a personal favourite of mine. Because multiplayer maps, players and weapons all reek of old /v/ and it's fucking amazing. I wish more people played the multiplayer because it is beyond underrated. The single-player is just the same shitpost shit as Crack Life. But the Multiplayer has way more weapons and the maps has a lot of stuff that reek of the old /v/ aesthetic. I love it.

Currently on They Hunger Episode 3. I kinda feel as though Episode 3 is a bit of a downgrade compared to Episode 1 and 2.

I plan on playing Afraid of Monsters Director's Cut after this.

>>5711148
A bit new to Half-Life mods...but:

>I play ESF but have no idea how to play it. The controls confuse the shit out of me even when playing with bots.
>I tried playing Vampire Slayer but bots kicked my ass. Good mod though. I wonder how it actually plays with players on it. Can't seem to find any servers most of the time.
>I also tried playing Syndicate Black Ops but I was so astounded by how over-the-top everything was that I took a break to process everything I saw.
>Half-Screwed is a personal favourite of mine. Because multiplayer maps, players and weapons all reek of old /v/ and it's fucking amazing. I wish more people played the multiplayer because it is beyond underrated. The single-player is just the same shitpost shit as Crack Life. But the Multiplayer has way more weapons and the maps has a lot of stuff that reek of the old /v/ aesthetic. I love it.
Currently on They Hunger Episode 3. I kinda feel as though Episode 3 is a bit of a downgrade compared to Episode 1 and 2.
I plan on playing Afraid of Monsters Director's Cut after this.

>>5711148
A bit new to Half-Life mods...but:

>I play ESF but have no idea how to play it. The controls confuse the shit out of me even when playing with bots.
>I tried playing Vampire Slayer but bots kicked my ass. Good mod though. I wonder how it actually plays with players on it. Can't seem to find any servers most of the time.
>I also tried playing Syndicate Black Ops but I was so astounded by how over-the-top everything was that I took a break to process everything I saw.
>Half-Screwed is a personal favourite of mine. Because multiplayer maps, players and weapons all reek of old /v/ and it's fucking amazing. I wish more people played the multiplayer because it is beyond underrated. The single-player is just the same shitpost shit as Crack Life. But the Multiplayer has way more weapons and the maps has a lot of stuff that reek of the old /v/ aesthetic. I love it.
>Currently on They Hunger Episode 3. I kinda feel as though Episode 3 is a bit of a downgrade compared to Episode 1 and 2.
I plan on playing Afraid of Monsters Director's Cut after this.

>>5718678
Pleb filter, but Black Mesa is gonna improve them significantly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAIJich73NY

>>5710430
>>5719153
you boys ever play MOH:AA online?
clan servers like VX9, Holyland, Choppers?
i miss my kar98k

Halflife was my first real 3D FPS, prior to that I played Dark Forces and Delta Force 2. I was absolutely in love with the online WON system those of you who never got to play HLDM before Steam I'm so sorry but you missed out, map download times be damned. There were so many good servers, and OZDM was just nuts. I would be up until 4am playing on my old AMD K6-2 rig, with an 8mb Rage Pro Turbo

Fun fact, the Rage Pro Turbo could not render fog, so if you had one and was in gasworks you could snipe people from across the map underwater who could not see you if they were on a newer Hardware T&L card like a GeForce or Rage 128

>>5718678
They're not that great but their shittiness is exaggerated

>>5719345
you exploiting FAGGOT

>>5718678
Too short, feels like an afterthought

>>5718678
it's ok, but some maps have a terrible sense of direction. for years i thought you were supposed to go inside the trampolines and take damage to progress in interloper. turns out the solution was hitting some brush with your crowbar and crawling into a tiny hole.

>>5719728
That sounds like fun and having multiple paths. I think I did it that way first time.

Complaining about this makes them remove stuff like the right hand turn because it's too confusing.

>>5719345
I remember my old Geforce 440 overheating or some shit and being able to see through walls in counter-strike.