opinions from a long time half life fan

[cJ]

i love the aesthetics, i love the variable gravity, i love active ragdolls on living creatures. very good. you've done an -ok- job at emulating basic half life gameplay on a non-source engine base (more below)

not a big fan of how the game feels. back when this project was originally announced, i feared a half-life game on the unreal engine would feel like a cheap imitation of the source engine. after playing this, that fear has been confirmed. it -vaguely- feels like the source engine, but one can immediately tell things aren't right. physics are very inconsistent and little nuances like gordon's accelerated speed when jumping somehow feel even more "fake" than they do in the source engine, idk how else to describe it. i also noticed prop physics lagging while using the gravity gun, which may be due to my performance (i ran most of this at 30fps), but its not a good look when props smoothly attached to the gravgun in the 2004 build of source engine

and then there is the obvious issue of performance, mentioned above... they say its due to bugs which i understand as this is an unfinished product... but in my opinion, if i was a member of the team, i wouldn't be comfortable releasing such a teaser/demo with so many optimization problems... you'd think they would want this to be a good showcase, not a 30 fps showcase. that's just how i'd do it though, maybe these devs have different ideas

this is all my own opinions, i don't have any negative feelings towards the dev team in fact i hope they read these criticisms and use them to improve the final product. but as it stands rn i dont think this game would hold up against other fan games like black mesa, and especially not valve's own half life games. aesthetically speaking, yes, but gameplay speaking, no

[mastercoms]

In terms of performance, that's our number one goal as low FPS can destroy the impression of smoothness people know from Source. We knew performance would be rough on some systems, but generally up to release we were getting good performance testing internally. We are seeing a lot of people experience some performance bugs where the engine is entering a degenerate state that causes much lower FPS than a system is capable of. Some people aren't experiencing these bugs, and are getting 70 to 110FPS on highest settings, with a smooth experience, while others on even the exact same hardware are stuck at 20FPS. We definitely want to solve these inconsistencies and figure out their root causes, as well as expand the performance to help run it well on more hardware than the original recommended set.

Thanks for the feedback, it really means a lot to see someone take the time to write something like this up.

[Raion]

Originally posted by seee_jay:

i love the aesthetics, i love the variable gravity, i love active ragdolls on living creatures. very good. you've done an -ok- job at emulating basic half life gameplay on a non-source engine base (more below)

not a big fan of how the game feels. back when this project was originally announced, i feared a half-life game on the unreal engine would feel like a cheap imitation of the source engine. after playing this, that fear has been confirmed. it -vaguely- feels like the source engine, but one can immediately tell things aren't right. physics are very inconsistent and little nuances like gordon's accelerated speed when jumping somehow feel even more "fake" than they do in the source engine, idk how else to describe it. i also noticed prop physics lagging while using the gravity gun, which may be due to my performance (i ran most of this at 30fps), but its not a good look when props smoothly attached to the gravgun in the 2004 build of source engine

and then there is the obvious issue of performance, mentioned above... they say its due to bugs which i understand as this is an unfinished product... but in my opinion, if i was a member of the team, i wouldn't be comfortable releasing such a teaser/demo with so many optimization problems... you'd think they would want this to be a good showcase, not a 30 fps showcase. that's just how i'd do it though, maybe these devs have different ideas

this is all my own opinions, i don't have any negative feelings towards the dev team in fact i hope they read these criticisms and use them to improve the final product. but as it stands rn i dont think this game would hold up against other fan games like black mesa, and especially not valve's own half life games. aesthetically speaking, yes, but gameplay speaking, no

200% this, except for the performance part, somehow, somewhere I made a deal with some devil to have the game run a constant 60 on my 3060 on high settings, but besides that the gameplay feels incredibly off, and not like half life at all. Especially my biggest gripe: the crouch jump feels like it has a timing to it to make it work for some reason on my end. Also physics are not working correctly, I shot a engine block at a walker and it bounced off him like it didn't register.

[Vertex]

I'm a long-time HL fan as well and still keep coming back to the series and the multitude of mods it has spawned every few years or so. As opposed to others here, I'm very impressed by how much this feels like Source, though I do agree that things still feel off. That's not unexpected since this is an entirely different engine and I understand it will never exactly match Source. I don't see that as a serious detriment, but it's at the back of my mind, given the goal seems to be to closely imitate HL2. Regardless, overall I liked the experience, especially the visuals, and can't wait to see what's next. Performance wasn't an issue on RTX 4070, where I got a consistent +80 FPS at 1440p with everything on full and frame generation enabled. With that in mind, here are some notes from my first playthrough.

Notes (mostly nitpicking):

• Crowbar feels off
  
  • No impact decals occasionally
    
  • Impact decals not always where you aim, but around it
    
  • No decals on props (melee or guns)
    
• Physics
  
  • Saw blade stuck on wall has no physics with player. Can't jump on it (does interact with other physics objects though)
    
  • Picking up and throwing objects feels bad
    
    • For instance, a brick doesn't carry your momentum when you throw it with first click while running (does if you drop it with E)
      
  • Wooden planks and cardboard boxes don't break
    
  • Can't pick up gas canisters from wall with gravity gun (applies to some saw blades too)
    
  • Headcrab corpse can get stuck on itself (or ground) and go full poltergeist (moving around on itself seemingly forever)
    
  • Door in the nature room doesn't interact with physics. Has to be opened with E. Looks like it should
    
• Effects
  
  • Barrel explosion seems underwhelming
    
  • Bullet impact effect on enemies feels bad: black droplets/splinters like if hitting wood
    
    • Shooting an enemy with shotgun ought to cause some meaningful effect, but only similar black splinters (or none at all!)
      
  • Dead enemies don't seem to leave any decals when hit/shot (at least with melee and pistol)
    
  • Hitting/shooting ice leaves no decals and the effect seems off
    
• UI
  
  • No popup for successful quicksave or save
    
• Sound
  
  • Shotgun sound effect feels very underwhelming
    
• Immersion
  
  • Character movement being stopped while performing suiting up animation
    

Noteworthy good additions:

• Explosive barrel leaving behind detailed physical wreckage
  
• Snow deformation
  
• Gas canister movement and effects when shot
  
• No-gravity zones
  
• Headcrab physics
  
• Godrays and lighting in general are really good
  
• Very fast loading

In summary, my main negatives relate to gameplay feel and immersion. While I know it'll never be exactly like Source, I hope for a gameplay feel that at least matches (and ideally surpasses) Source, as there seem to be fewer engine limitations in UE5. I would recommend aiming for more freedom of movement, responsiveness and visceralness instead of realism. The gameplay feel and immersion are among the main aspects that have kept me a Half-Life fan for so long.