Is the love for this game just nostalgia?

[Wickednick]

I'm an old school gamer, I've played through the Marathon games, all the Doom games, Wolfenstein, Unreal, Duke Nukem, Halo, etc, but I've never played Half Life, and now that I have I feel kinda let down.

Level design is decent, not great, some areas were down right frustrating. Graphics are what they are for that time period, so no issues there. Decent AI, especially for that time period. Weapons are kinda average, nothing really stood out to me. Shot gun is kinda lousy. Machine gun is nice, but ammo is annoyingly scarce, especially for the grenade launcher. The two energy weapons are cool but get kinda underused because of the scarce ammo and because they share ammo. Harpoon gun is lame, give me a real sniper rifle. Magnum is cool but I wish it had a sight. Enemy design is decent, and like I said the AI is good.

So all this stuff isn't terrible, but where I kinda felt left down was the overall game play and the story. Movement is a lot faster than Doom I thought, but not well controlled, it felt like I was walking on ice a lot of the time. There was nothing to explain to me how to crouch jump or super jump, so that was annoying trying to figure that out. Lots of annoying sudden death parts where you had to jump out of the way before the floor fell through. All sorts of bugs. As old as this game is I would have thought they had ironed these out. Having to restart because the idiot npc won't open the door for me is annoying, or getting stuck in a wall during a fight.

The story and missions I thought sucked. I always got told this game had a great story, but I'm sorry but there's no real story. After beating the game I have no idea what it's even about. So Gordy creates an accident which opens a portal to another dimension, then inter dimensional aliens start invading, the military for some reason wants to kill me, I have to launch a rocket for some reason, run around killing bad guys while starting up reactors and riding a rail system, jump into another dimension and fight a giant floating baby, and then some guy at the end tells me he wants to hire me. What the ♥♥♥♥ is this game about?

At least Doom kept it simple with a very basic plot that you don't need a lot of explanation for and very well thought out levels. And Marathon despite all it's limitations, manages to tell one of the greatest sci-fi stories about artificial intelligence purely through text, and you know exactly why you're doing what you're doing. But Half Life, with talking npc's and all the ability to tell you what is going on and why it is happening, explains almost nothing. The game is just missions, and no real story.

I'm glad so many people love this game, but I think it's also just a lot of nostalgia.

[Ffabbia]

some areas were down right frustrating

That means you were struggling with some areas, but as you didn't say what and when we can't help.

Machine gun is nice, but ammo is annoyingly scarce, especially for the grenade launcher. The two energy weapons are cool but get kinda underused because of the scarce ammo and because they share ammo

What? How can anyone run out of ammo for the machine gun? The game literally throws it at you! I can only assume you're just spamming bullets like crazy and paying no attention to ammo management.

I'll accept that the grenades are a bit more scarce, but again you should not be spamming them, they're designed for specific situations when a machine gun grenade is the most appropriate solution.

Harpoon gun is lame

I'm assuming you're not trollinig here. How anyone can call the crossbow "lame" beggars belief.

After beating the game I have no idea what it's even about

Were you actually paying attention? The story is made clear as you progress.

[PsyWarVeteran]

No.

[Samdan9]

Short answer: No.
Long answer: The game was made with so much love and dedication to both level design, game design and story development. It isn't nostalgia because I didn't even get to experience Half-Life when it came out in the 90's, It was only until about 2019 that I finally played it and consider Half-Life my favorite game of all time.

[paulaus333]

a lot of love for Half-Life (HL) comes from what it offered, that was more original for a FPS back in 1998.

doom was divided into distinct levels, with the same basic task done over and over: find the keys, kill monsters, get to the exit.

games like quake II also had distinct levels, but they were sub-divided into smaller areas that it was sometimes possible to move back and forth between, adding an element of player freedom to the original linear progression of doom.

in addition, FPS games of this era (1997 / 1998) started to add more objectives to the player's actions*. instead of merely looking for keys and finding the exit, it was: shutdown the satellite dish, navigate the mines, destroy an enemy in order to use something obtained from them as a key. the evolution of tying tasks to story driven levels.

HL was known for dividing its world into tiny little bits that loaded very fast compared to games like quake II & unreal. While it had visually diverse areas, they were not separated by cut-scenes or long loading screens. You barely had to wait at all, so the world felt continuous and sprawling, as if you were in one big place.

HL had few cut-scenes, everything was communicated to the player through their own eyes. there were a lot more exciting set-pieces in the game than previous titles - scripted events and scenarios that made each moment and situation different from the last. rather than simply repeating the same game-play loop over and over.

I remember thinking during 'Unforeseen Consequences' - with the environment blowing up around you, collapsing, sparking particle effects etc.. - that it was the first game to make you feel like you were really in a dynamic, dangerous place, where the world was volatile and could hurt you unexpectedly. especially compared to what we had seen before.

1996 to 1998 was also the time that 3D accelerator cards - something that everyone takes for granted today - arrived on the scene and transitioned us from software (solely CPU powered) mode to hardware accelerated (CPU & GPU) mode. These cards allowed people to experience visual effects and frame-rates that had never been possible before. It was an exciting time.

I can understand people who have played newer games - people who take certain features and technology for granted - not being that excited by Half-Life, but it was a big deal.

*This had been done by earlier games (System Shock, Ultima Underworld) but not nearly as often

[Snake Eater]

I think the game is still good, but it's also obviously not that mindblowing anymore, it's a 27 year old game.

[Cat]

No.

[Dawnsong]

HL today can feel raw in a lot of parts, but if you compare it to the other games of its time, it was different from the average FPS that were a lot more simpler and straightfoward. Much of the things like the puzzles and timed situations were new in the pure fps games.
From other side, is true that the gameplay in general stands in the genre canon of the time, with some ideas that were already seen in older other games like Duke Nukem 3d (like the laser sensored mines).

[Ikagura]

Nostalgia helps but claiming that the classics like MGS, OoT, FFVII and many others are loved solely out of nostalgia is bad faith imo.

[alienux]

You have to understand, which you should if you're an old school gamer as you say you are, that back then, story was almost non-existent in games like this. So while the story may not match up to what current games have, for the time it was released, it had much more story and many more story elements than other games of the time.

[Garrec]

Most of us are still playing Half-Life and enjoying it. So it's not really nostalgia. Sure, nothing it does is remarkable by today's standards, but it's a solid game that holds up.

I didn't play Half-Life until a few years after its release, around the same era as Halo. I think it's aged quite well. In the years that followed, up to present day, Half-Life has been one of the few shooters I've returned to on a regular basis.

If you came into this game after playing tons of other games, then sure maybe its problems stand out more. I think Half-Life is better with experience. Most of its bugs and annoyances can be avoided or mitigated once you know what they are.

Half-Life never had a strong story. That's true. It was just enough mystery to drive the premise. That's all it needed.

[Augusto La Boutique]

For me the reason for this game is so good is because de graphics NDHEA

[Doom Punk]

I believe so yes. The game does not hold up well at all, and neither does the sequel. I played the games when I was a kid and liked them, but when I played them as an adult, they're tedious and mostly boring. I don't think they're bad games at all though, but when I see people putting HL1 or 2 as the best or one of the best FPS games of all time, I roll my eyes.

I think its mostly millennials that overrate these games beyond belief. Good games, revolutionary for their time, but don't hold up so well today. Goldeneye is one of my favorite games ever, but that didn't age well either. Perfect Dark on the other hand, still an amazing game.

[OutSIdeOfTheBoX (chrisvig71)]

no, this is my favourite game and i played it "recently", so there is no nostalgia...

[beeiscool1232]

no, got the game today (technically yesterday since its midnight) and i love it

[Snark]

Probably nostalgia. HL was one of my first fps games I played when I was little, for a long time I was obsessed with it. However nowadays I notice that it really hasn't aged very well at all. The soundtrack and creature design is still good though.