/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.6123352]

Alright, /vr/, so what makes it so great? Out of all the retro FPS games I've played it stands out..

[Anonymous No.6123364]

>>6123352
go on...

[Anonymous No.6123376]

story
level design
unique enemies and types
unique and fun weapon selection
amazing sound design

[Anonymous No.6123654]

>>6123376
Pacing as well.

[Anonymous No.6123861]

>>6123352
Fantastic level design and story pacing. I like the idea that you took the longest route through that absolute mess of a facility while literally everything went wrong. It's also immersive in that nothing is defined by cutscene and instead played out events as they happened in front of you which a lot of lesser games treat like it's beneath them.

[Anonymous No.6123868]

>>6123654
>>6123861
>muh pacing
Residue Processing and the entirety of Xen irreversibly ruin the pacing. It's easily one of the poorly paced retro FPS.

[Anonymous No.6123885]

>>6123868
Ok autist

[Anonymous No.6123942]

>>6123868
You can't just put "muh" in front of everything as if that's an argument against something you don't agree with.

[Anonymous No.6123954]

>>6123942
So you're saying that residue processing and xen are well-paced? Interesting hill to die on, but okay. HL2 has the same issue with water hazard, highway 17, and sandtraps. Valve has clearly demonstrated that they aren't particularly good with pacing. Not saying they're bad games, but overall they're poorly paced, and it's all of the other little things that they managed to bring together that elevate the experience.

[Anonymous No.6124160]

>>6123352
>Out of all the retro FPS games I've played it stands out..
How many did you play? This and Doom?

[Anonymous No.6124203]

It does an excellent job of hiding the seams and pushing you forward while giving the impression of a much larger space, this sounds like a bitchy criticism with the general air around this board lately but it isn't intended to be, trade-offs and illusions like this are a really basic part of game design, you just have different ways of accomplishing them, like a Grand Theft Auto or Elder Scrolls game that actually gives you a gigantic map to run around and just enough to do once you reach whatever destination within it that it creates the illusion, or on the opposite end you have Half Life or Call of Duty singleplayer which have a single path you follow but populate it with enough activity that it feels like a believable world. The most ambitious strategy would be the one taken by games like Deus Ex and Stalker, which is sort of a middle ground where the player is allowed to take apart the level as they see fit and the setpieces and events have to be strung together modularly. It's fantastic when it works, but the most prone to missing. It's down to personal preference but the approach taken by Half Life is probably the most reliable, and if you're frustrated or bored by the other types of game you might like that style the best. Also Xen is awesome

[Anonymous No.6124206]

>>6123954
2 sections from 1 and 3 from 2 aren't an overall pacing problem. How does Xen screw up Surface Tension or Unforeseen Consequences? It doesn't. If you're so spastic that a couple of areas in a pretty big game just skews your entire experience retroactively, you have a problem. Not the game. I don't like Ravenholm in 2, I think it's too cramped and relies too much on the gravity gun. I do not think HL2 has a problem relying on the gravity gun and being too cramped.

See the difference?

[Anonymous No.6124216]

>>6124206
The bad sections in 2 make up a third of your playtime. This is a huge issue. The bad sections in 1 are what the game ends on, thus ending on a bad note and spoiling the experience, but if you weren't a literal spastic retarded child buzzword buzzword buzzword buzzword you'd understand this.

[Anonymous No.6124825]

>>6123954

>residue processing and xen are bad
>literally npc rhetoric
>ignores the fact that xen has the best parts

https://youtu.be/gTiU-nzCHUo?t=127

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnhjY4bJynw

>HL2 has the same issue with water hazard, highway 17, and sandtraps.

Highway 17 and sandtraps are some of the highlights.

[Anonymous No.6124870]

>>6123352
the Half-Life series was one of my favorite comfy all-nighter games when I didn't have too many responsibilities. the first Half-Life did not stimulate my curiosity as Half-Life 2 did, but the atmosphere was the most immersive. it's not a game that could be appreciated in today's generation the same way it did back then. the reason for that is people aren't willing to disconnect themselves from real life and expect the experience to be spoonfed to them.

[Anonymous No.6124891]

>>6124825
>Highway 17 and sandtraps are some of the highlights.
Agreed. The vehicles felt great and the exploration of those areas was spooky. I remember being surprised to hear that people hated those areas.

[Anonymous No.6125109]

>>6123352
As much of a cliché as this sounds like, Half-life 1 and 2 were just the most "epic" games ever made. They also managed to execute the "guided linear experience" concept in a way that felt more natural than any other game ever has by far.

[Anonymous No.6125546]

>>6123954
>same issue with water hazard, highway 17, and sandtraps
Holy crap, get lost.

[Anonymous No.6125645]

>>6125546
You must have never replayed the game. Those segments drag on and on and on and require nothing from the player.

[Anonymous No.6125854]

>>6123376
Truly the telltale sign of a game endowed with love.

[Anonymous No.6125993]

>>6123352
The level design is better than 9/10 shits they make today

[Anonymous No.6126076]

>>6123352
Nothing, it was ok but I've never considered it great. The best thing about it was the multiplayer mods it spawned.

[Anonymous No.6126456]

>>6123352
Don't know, it just does a lot of things right. Nice feeling in the controls and weapons, fun action sequences, nice enemy variety and variety in the levels, has SOUL.

[Anonymous No.6126461]

I'm guessing it's not so impressive to zoomers because mostly it feels like a modern fps just with crappier graphics and clunkier gameplay and fewer features. It feels that way though, because most modern fps depend on the template that Half-life helped define. Still, the innovations this game brought to table were kind of subtle and not so obvious to someone looking at it from the future. It's not like Doom where you can look at the antiquated pixel graphics and see it for the quaint birth of a genre it was. And Doom is still a fun, if simple game, with its own distinct personality, making it easy to appreciate.

[Anonymous No.6126490]

>>6126461
>Still, the innovations this game brought to table were kind of subtle and not so obvious to someone looking at it from the future
Half-Life only had a single real innovation. It combined the continuous level design from Quake 2 with the in-engine storytelling and movie realism of Goldeneye.

[Anonymous No.6126549]

>>6123868
Residue processing is a whole new game again so a slower pace due to lack of weaponry is justifiable.

Xen was an entirely different world with different physics and is a design choice to shake up gameplay to the n-th degree. Not sure how it affects pacing either since it’s not that long.

Naturally, you’re entitled to an opinion but at least try to argue a point somewhat or evert a discussion; this isn’t /v/ and it would be nice to keep it that way

[Anonymous No.6126550]

>>6124216
You bleat on about “buzzwords” but all you have is “bad section is bad”. That’s stupid - I think the vehicle sections are great on the whole. I also don’t think you have the same definition of “pacing” as the rest of us

[Anonymous No.6126558]

>>6123352
mods

[Anonymous No.6126675]

>>6126490
I don't think the james bond console game had animated reloading?

[Anonymous No.6126692]

>>6126675
Animated reloading is a poor 'innovation' for Half-Life fans to hold onto. Older games like Duke had animated reloading.

[Anonymous No.6126749]

>>6126490
>this autist again.
Give up no one cares about goldeneye.

[Anonymous No.6126758]

>>6126461
>And Doom is still a fun, if simple game, with its own distinct personality, making it easy to appreciate.
lol

[Anonymous No.6126829]

>>6123352
I just beat this game for the first time over the holidays. I think the story and presentation are what make this game memorable. One of the coolest and most immersive first 30 minutes of any game I have ever played.

That magnum pistol was also pretty sweet.

[Anonymous No.6126873]

>>6123868
>muh Xen

Truly a plebfiter.

[Anonymous No.6126887]

>>6124825

I have recently beaten Half-Life with no prior exposure.

Those segments from Xen are cool cinematically but are rather tedious gameplay-wise. As most people consider gameplay more important (although Half-Life being highly cinematic does slightly mitigate things) I would say that those are not, in fact, the "best parts."

[Anonymous No.6126936]

Top 5 Retro FPS Games:
1. Doom 2
2. Duke Nukem 3D
3. Quake
4. Shadow Warrior/Blood (tied)
5. Half-Life

[Anonymous No.6127109]

>>6123352
Shit I've heard that I agree with

1) Scripted cinematics and friendly AI. Guards and scientists were a huge chunk of half-life's first impression even though they become less common as you progress in the game.

2) Uses a more or less realistic setting when sci-fi and fantasy settings with abstract architecture were more common

3) Disaster survival aesthetic of traveling through decrepit industrial areas is neat. "Go fix the thing that's not working" really took your mind off the Hallway/Arena/Hallway loop.

Xen was shit either way, but those last 2 reasons show why even more wind is taken out of it

[Anonymous No.6127116]

>>6123868
>using pacing as a buzzword

Pick a word that people don't know the meaning of

[Anonymous No.6127252]

>>6123352
what MADE it so great.
looking back with zoomervision is hard

[Anonymous No.6127506]

>>6126873
>xen is good
I get that you're a contrarian eurofag but this is taking irony one step too far.

[Anonymous No.6127748]

Honestly from a purely gameplay perspective, I think Half Life is overrated. Or, more likely, it just hasn't aged well.

It was undeniably influential as fuck, but I don't think that necesarrily means it lives up to its reputation as one of the best shooters ever. And furthermore, I think the influence it had was negative overall, rather than positive- Half Life was the game that pushed us into heavily scripted "cinematic" story-shooters. It was revolutionary at the time, but looking back? I honestly think the simpler gameplay first approach of games like Quake holds up better.

There's also mods. That's a whole different story.

[Anonymous No.6127757]

>>6127109

Actually yeah, even though I just made a post saying it feels overrated as a shooter, I was kinda forgetting the game is probably equally about exploration as much as shooting, and that's probably something today's developers could STILL learn from. The way it paced itself was almost perfect, you'd get action just as you were getting bored of vent crawling, and vice versa.

When I think about it though there are still more levels in HL1 that I think "ugh fuck this" and console skip it than I actually play, though. HL2 is just way better at doing the same things HL1 pioneered, I think.

[Anonymous No.6128102]

the graphics had color in an fps for the first time.

[Anonymous No.6130145]

>>6123352
I love this game
I got a friend who tried to play it and it was really funny watching him die to every trap and enemy for the first time

[Anonymous No.6130265]

>>6127506
>noob-filtering platform phase
>ezboss
>kyslet-filtering platform phase only real people know the shortcut of
>by far the best yet overlooked map in the game
>quake-tier action phase
>a boss you can stealth
Unironically, if you think Xen's the worst part of the game, you're one of those people who play on HL:S and still need 8 hours to finish the game.

[Anonymous No.6130482]

>>6123376
>level design
>unique enemies and types
>unique and fun weapon selection
>amazing sound design

All done better if not just as good in dozens of other FPS's at the time.

>story

That's one thing it had above most.

[Anonymous No.6130526]

>>6123352
I was never into pure FPS's because that's all they are: running around and shooting. Half-life had an interesting and literally colorful setting, environmental challenges, "puzzles" (not really), and while it was linear, each area was distinct and had a bunch of things you hadn't see previously. It was clearly a work of passion.

In the same vein, I really like deadspace 1 and bioshock 1 as well.

[Anonymous No.6130569]

>>6130265
I love this level of contrarianism.

[Anonymous No.6131180]

>>6130482
Wrong.