What is up with these soldiers?

[Kirin]

They shoot faster, move faster, have more health, and do more damage, and come in larger numbers than I remember from the original.
Surface Tension was my favorite chapter in the original because it quickly moves from one cool area to another, feeling like you're sticking to the fringes of the Facility to avoid the vast majority of the soldiers while you make your way to the Lambda complex.
Now I clear a room where 3 squads attack me at once, step outside to get attacked by another squad, turn the corner and there are two more squads. Go outside and there are two more squads. Another squad around the next corner. Another around the next. An ambush from two sides past the gate. That's 50+ soldiers with no downtime to explore because there is, frankly, nothing to explore. I have no health or armor because each encounter with marines nearly kills me, I am dying constantly. This simply isn't an enjoyable experience, and I know a lot of people think Surface Tension isn't enjoyable because it already has too many soldiers.
There's also the issue of soldiers shooting while moving. In the original, because soldiers have hitscan weapons, they will almost always hit you. Any fight with soldiers requires either extreme luck or excellent positioning to escape undamaged, even when they stopped to shoot. Now a shotgunner can round a corner and shoot me dead before I can even react. I feel like I'm facing worse odds with less resources playing Black Mesa on normal than I did when I beat Half-Life on hard.

[Cat]

Originally posted by Kirin:

They shoot faster, move faster, have more health, and do more damage, and come in larger numbers than I remember from the original.

Because this is not the original.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by Cat:

Originally posted by Kirin:

They shoot faster, move faster, have more health, and do more damage, and come in larger numbers than I remember from the original.

Because this is not the original.

What wow I never would have guessed

[Power and Wealth]

Originally posted by Kirin:

What wow I never would have guessed

This is not a remaster, its a remake. That should've been obivous.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by Archaos the Mad Bro:

Originally posted by Kirin:

What wow I never would have guessed

This is not a remaster, its a remake. That should've been obivous.

What wow I never would have guessed

[KriKitBoNeZ]

Originally posted by Kirin:

Originally posted by Archaos the Mad Bro:

This is not a remaster, its a remake. That should've been obivous.

What wow I never would have guessed

If you're trying to start some kind discussion or ask a question, this isn't really the best way to do it.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by KriKitBoNeZ:

Originally posted by Kirin:

What wow I never would have guessed

If you're trying to start some kind discussion or ask a question, this isn't really the best way to do it.

I don't really know how else to respond to people stating the obvious?
Like, yeah this isn't the original.
Yeah they've made a lot of changes from the original (A lot of which I think are really good!)
But the pacing of fights from the end of Questionable Ethics to the Dam at the start of Surface Tension is a little much, and I'm not sure there needed to be 2 whole extra fights and more than double the number of enemies.
The soldiers really didn't need to be buffed this much.

[gru]

My personal opinion: It is not that hard.
Yes, I have over 250 hours on Black Mesa. Yes, I played the game a lot to know what is what. It just comes down to using your weaponry etc cleverly. I've struggled more on Half Life hard than I did on Black Mesa. You just can't rush in and expect to do good like Half Life, you need to play differently and adjust.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by MrZGrumpy:

My personal opinion: It is not that hard.
Yes, I have over 250 hours on Black Mesa. Yes, I played the game a lot to know what is what. It just comes down to using your weaponry etc cleverly. I've struggled more on Half Life hard than I did on Black Mesa. You just can't rush in and expect to do good like Half Life, you need to play differently and adjust.

I don't rush in, I usually find myself pinned down because the marines won't hesitate to shoot. Moving from cover to cover can see me go from 100 health and 20 armor down to 40 health in a second with how many bullets I need to take.
Contact grenades are scarce enough, but I've hit right at a squad leader's feet with one and he took it in stride.
Trip mines are good, but soldiers seem rather hesitant to rush you down in general, which mostly makes them good for covering a flank against shotgunners.
I'm not yet used to the un-wonky way grenades get thrown and they rarely seem that effective at damage so I mostly use them to flush enemies out of cover.
I know the shotgun was nerfed because it solved too many problems in Half-Life's boxy, crampped corridors where nearly every fight is close range, but I've hit a guy under 3 yards with a right click without phasing him. The slowness of reloading and firing also discourage me from using it except in an emergency.
Ammo for the tau cannon is scarce, which makes me extremely hesitant to use it, even though it is one of the quickest ways to kill soldiers (And the uncharged shot can make them flinch, unlike most bullet weapons)
I'm really struggling to find a good strategy that actually works against the marines, especially when I'm struggling to get through every fight. I'm not a huge FPS guy, I got no shame about turning down the difficulty, but I'm not struggling with any other part of the game so far, just the wave after wave of 4-8 marines, with no time to relax and explore a little between.

[gru]

Originally posted by Kirin:

Originally posted by MrZGrumpy:

My personal opinion: It is not that hard.
Yes, I have over 250 hours on Black Mesa. Yes, I played the game a lot to know what is what. It just comes down to using your weaponry etc cleverly. I've struggled more on Half Life hard than I did on Black Mesa. You just can't rush in and expect to do good like Half Life, you need to play differently and adjust.

I don't rush in, I usually find myself pinned down because the marines won't hesitate to shoot. Moving from cover to cover can see me go from 100 health and 20 armor down to 40 health in a second with how many bullets I need to take.
Contact grenades are scarce enough, but I've hit right at a squad leader's feet with one and he took it in stride.
Trip mines are good, but soldiers seem rather hesitant to rush you down in general, which mostly makes them good for covering a flank against shotgunners.
I'm not yet used to the un-wonky way grenades get thrown and they rarely seem that effective at damage so I mostly use them to flush enemies out of cover.
I know the shotgun was nerfed because it solved too many problems in Half-Life's boxy, crampped corridors where nearly every fight is close range, but I've hit a guy under 3 yards with a right click without phasing him. The slowness of reloading and firing also discourage me from using it except in an emergency.
Ammo for the tau cannon is scarce, which makes me extremely hesitant to use it, even though it is one of the quickest ways to kill soldiers (And the uncharged shot can make them flinch, unlike most bullet weapons)
I'm really struggling to find a good strategy that actually works against the marines, especially when I'm struggling to get through every fight. I'm not a huge FPS guy, I got no shame about turning down the difficulty, but I'm not struggling with any other part of the game so far, just the wave after wave of 4-8 marines, with no time to relax and explore a little between.

That sounds more like an over exaggeration. Unless you're playing on hard (and even then), you can't drop from 100 health and 20 armor to 40 health in a second.

Which also makes it sound like you're trying to move from cover to cover without trying to take at least one or two of them out. You should have no issue killing an HECU firing at you.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by MrZGrumpy:

Originally posted by Kirin:

I don't rush in, I usually find myself pinned down because the marines won't hesitate to shoot. Moving from cover to cover can see me go from 100 health and 20 armor down to 40 health in a second with how many bullets I need to take.
Contact grenades are scarce enough, but I've hit right at a squad leader's feet with one and he took it in stride.
Trip mines are good, but soldiers seem rather hesitant to rush you down in general, which mostly makes them good for covering a flank against shotgunners.
I'm not yet used to the un-wonky way grenades get thrown and they rarely seem that effective at damage so I mostly use them to flush enemies out of cover.
I know the shotgun was nerfed because it solved too many problems in Half-Life's boxy, crampped corridors where nearly every fight is close range, but I've hit a guy under 3 yards with a right click without phasing him. The slowness of reloading and firing also discourage me from using it except in an emergency.
Ammo for the tau cannon is scarce, which makes me extremely hesitant to use it, even though it is one of the quickest ways to kill soldiers (And the uncharged shot can make them flinch, unlike most bullet weapons)
I'm really struggling to find a good strategy that actually works against the marines, especially when I'm struggling to get through every fight. I'm not a huge FPS guy, I got no shame about turning down the difficulty, but I'm not struggling with any other part of the game so far, just the wave after wave of 4-8 marines, with no time to relax and explore a little between.

That sounds more like an over exaggeration. Unless you're playing on hard (and even then), you can't drop from 100 health and 20 armor to 40 health in a second.

It's very possible when being shot at by 4 soldiers for daring to move from where the fight started.

[gru]

Originally posted by Kirin:

Originally posted by MrZGrumpy:

That sounds more like an over exaggeration. Unless you're playing on hard (and even then), you can't drop from 100 health and 20 armor to 40 health in a second.

It's very possible when being shot at by 4 soldiers for daring to move from where the fight started.

I can't really comment on this. At no point I had all 4 soldiers shooting at me at the same time or chip me like that. Without seeing how you play, I also can't tell what you could be possibly doing wrong, besides the thing I mentioned where you might be not doing much in regards to fighting back.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by MrZGrumpy:

Originally posted by Kirin:

It's very possible when being shot at by 4 soldiers for daring to move from where the fight started.

I can't really comment on this. At no point I had all 4 soldiers shooting at me at the same time or chip me like that. Without seeing how you play, I also can't tell what you could be possibly doing wrong, besides the thing I mentioned where you might be not doing much in regards to fighting back.

Like I said, I'm not an FPS guy. I often need to close the gap a little in order to land hits, but the enemy is far more accurate than me. It's not like I'm just not fighting back, the enemies simply do a lot of damage that I can't mitigate the same way I can with other enemies.

[Kirin]

I also do not have issues with other enemy types. I haven't encountered any alien grunts but I doubt they will present as much of an issue as the human grunts do. Most of my problems are simply how many marines there are and how quickly the humans can react with their excellent accuracy and hitscan weapons, making it very difficult to get through any fight with them without taking a lot of damage.

[Power and Wealth]

Save & reload, don't stand still and get shot.
In-game there is only very few situations where you can't fall back to address the situation before re-engaging.

[Kirin]

Originally posted by Archaos the Mad Bro:

Save & reload, don't stand still and get shot.
In-game there is only very few situations where you can't fall back to address the situation before re-engaging.

I don't think reloading because I didn't win a fight well enough to survive the next one is very fun.