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probably the fact that it begins like any normal day. Mr Freeman conducting top secret tests as a scientist in the Black Mesa facility.

I was 7 when I bought it and now at 21, its still by far the best game i've ever played.

The gameplay is really smooth and fun. It's like Quake basically, but for some reason more fun. It also has that classic Valve charm to it.

At the time, the scripting and level design was groundbreaking for a 3D FPS.

Enemies were dynamic
Weapons felt good and were perfectly spaced out in terms of power/rarity ratio
The tau cannon
Scripting was used around the player, not as part of what directs the player unlike hl2

Oh and I think some idiots like to believe that it as "revolutionary" in storytelling.

>>22357
Well it didn't have cutscenes, but there wasn't much plot either. The game has a great atmosphere, though.

A whole new engine, full 3D models, a story inside a first person shooter. It's pretty much the revolution of FPS-genre, and I hate to see anyone call it a bad game just because they don't understand how much further Valve was in technology and helped the genre to get something new. I'm pretty damn sure that first person shooters these days would still be similar to Quake without Half-Life.

it was an interesting setting as well as smooth fast gameplay

>>22391
The same thing could be said of unreal.

>>22429
Yeah, but Half-Life is always credited as the innovative FPS of the late 90s.

Still have on my Steam. Never bothered installing it though. Still workin' on HL2.

>>22429
While Unreal's engine upped the ante on the graphics department, I felt the level design was still very doom-like.

>>22393
>I'm pretty damn sure that first person shooters these days would still be similar to Quake without Half-Life.
>Implying that would be bad

Not blaming HL in the slightest, but shooters these days really are nowhere near as good as they were in the late 90s.

>>22473
Innovative in the sense that it did tonnes of shit first, like dynamic loading of large maps, decent scripting, half-decent AI, and for the time, a good story.
There's a reason HL2 was so anticipated in the years before it released, and why you see a HL3 thread literally every day on /v/.

Half-Life is an environmental shooter.
Enemies, while ever-present, are more of an afterthought and are more a part of the scenery. The strength of Half-Life is the methods in which the player is coerced through the levels. Every movement forward feels like an individual discovery. Puzzles, while not necessarily difficult, require some spatial thinking. While it is essentially a directed experience the player never feels the influence of a director. Black Mesa itself is a character that talks every time the player moves through it. This is the strength of Half-Life and a key element that tons of games today have zero sense of.

>>22393
>I'm pretty damn sure that first person shooters these days would still be similar to Quake without Half-Life.
And gaming would be vastly better.

I'm of the opinion that HL helped bring about the style over substance gaming mentality that bogs down gaming these days. It had its moments but it was still a terribly linear game that felt like it was more important to move from one set piece to another to tell its story rather than creating a well-rounded game.

I would much rather be playing more games like Quake than games like HL.

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>>22249 (OP)
You can take our opinion and just go with what everyone is saying, or you can just experience the game and tell us what you think. I can't even comprehend how great of a game it truly was without making the comparison to the other FPS games of it's time.(Doom,Quake, postal,etc.)

But if I had to put one thing that stood out in my mind, it was definitely the settting.

>Underground lab in the middle of New Mexico.
>Shit goes wrong, and help is far away
>Help finally arrives and try's to contain the situation and destroys everything and everyone involved
>fighting for your life just to make get out.

>>22584
Unreal did that first, and better, except for the scripting. Half life did that much better.

Don't get why HL's story is so "unique":

>Military-industrial complex
>Science experiments gone wrong
>enemies from Somewhere Else comes to invade
>one guy has to fight them and eventually go to Somewhere Else to fight them
>sequel is the bad guys invading society
I've heard this story before... Doom.

>>22743
Exactly.

A great setting is all a shooter needs. All the other components will fall into place. Considering the clandestine, military-industrial nature of Black Mesa, every other piece feels more vital. Of course there are aliens, the Area 51 connections are obvious. Of course it's sprawling, of course there are silos with no identifiable ceiling, of course there's this and that research leading to dangerous weapons and teleportation, and of course the military wants to keep it all quiet.

You positively don't need any more story than that. The rest of your energies should be spent on working in that framework.

Think about how all modern shooters recently have fucked up and apply this kind of a principle. It's easy to see why it's goddamn disappointing.

I really can't explain why. Replaying it, it's quite linear and the story is mediocre/cliche.

I do prefer System Shock 2 and wonder why that game didn't take off at the time -- but, that was mainly due to Half-Life becoming dominant.

So many hours spent gaming just because of Svencoop. I fucking loved that.
>tfw no GOOD Source Co-op engine

>>22868
"unique" is not the magic word. It never was and never will be. What's important is that the concept is fully formed. It's seamless. There is little that is unnecessary.

If you herald "unique" as a virtue you get a clusterfuck of bad design choices. like League of Legends.

>>22868
Doom is largely centered around demons, and trudging through the facility, then hell, and then back.

HL is centered around extradimensional entities. Trudging through the facility, phasing between dimensions back and forth.

I mean, sure, when you look at it so simply, they're similar games, but many games can be equated to each other on that level.

>>22349
>level design
>groundbreaking

Half-Life is the game that turned shooters into the linear disappointments they are today. If you want good level design, look for something a little more open, like in every other FPS that came before it.

>>22928
>Sven-coop
>good
no, just, stop.

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>>22956
This shit goes back to Homer. Doesn't make it bad.

>>22949
The idea is that it's always presented as something special. Besides the story being pushed at you up-front, which really doesn't matter too much in the long run, it's all about the same.

>>23027
If the concept is fully formed, it doesn't need to be pushed in your face. I don't think Half-Life does that.

I still think Unreal is the better singleplayer game.
Not that I dislike Half Life, it was a cool game, fun singleplayer, but mods were what sold it.

>>22583
>>22594

I don't mean that I hate Quake and that's why every game should be like Half-Life. I still play Quake 3, Live and Warsow from time to time, and love all of those, and I'm happy that some people still create games similar to Quake. But that doesn't mean that the FPS-genre would be perfect with only one type of games.

At the same time, saying that Cawadoodys are games like Half-Life. Only thing they have in common is the first person shooting. You can't blame Half-Life for ruining FPS as a genre in 2013, when it's clearly the consolization of video games.

And before anyone calls me a "Valvedroid", I admit it by myself. I mostly play Counter-Strike these days and think that Half-Life is one of the best games ever.

>>23092
>but mods were what sold it.
nope

It was groundbreaking for its time and both graphically and technically. After a short time a great range of mods were made for it and its still has one of the best stories in vidya.
While the sequels were pretty cool at the time they haven't aged as well as the original.
However if I wanted to get anyone into Half Life, I'd show them Black Mesa which does the original justice compared to the shitty Source port.

>>22249 (OP)

Game play variety. At the time, Quake, Unreal, and some other action FPS were shoot and key hunt. HL was the first game to be a sort of hybrid action/puzzle/platforming FPS that did everything well along with great set pieces that had structure.

>>22249 (OP)
Well you have to view it in a time frame when it was released.

Graphics were gorgeous for that time, but also something very important is that intro where no shooting happens, but you spend like half an hour or something just driving on the train and doing an experiment.

It was the first time an FPS did that. Before that FPSes were OK here's your quick recap of what's going on, a cutscene or whatever, here's your gun now go and kill everyone and everything that moves. Half Life was the first FPS that attempted to do more.

>>23169
Here's what I think.

Half-Life was truly a groundbreaking shooter for sure. I just don't think anyone that modeled their games after Half-Life "got" it, because I can't really name any games that model themselves that way and succeeded.

Call of Duty is an entirely different beast in the way it was constructed. Half-Life's mood and Call of Duty's vicariousness are two very different concepts, and I think most games have opted for the vicarious route. There's more ways to contrast them than compare.

>>23169

*saying that Cawadoodys are games like Half-Life is just stupid

I can't read.

No weight

>>22594
>style over substance

Uh, no. Having enemies duck for cover and flank you was a pretty big innovation for that time. Hell, even newer games have trouble getting that right these days.

>>23305
You can't compare CoD and Half Life because CoD's inspiration doesn't come from Half Life, but from Medal of Honor. Whereas Half Life had a variety of different gameplay aspects, MoH was a pure shooter that took Half Life's story telling to provide a cinematic experience (that D-Day landing scene for example), but aside from that it was FPS to the core.

>Half-Life
This experience is YOUR experience. You are the catalyst for everything that happens in this game.

>Call of Duty and the rest of the rabble
This is an experience, but it's not YOUR experience. It's either someone else's, or it's shared. You're paying for the privilege to witness this sequence of events that we have created for you.

Modern FPSes spoil the conceit. Half-Life doesn't.

>>22310
>>22391
>>23291
Agreeing with these; the part that fascinated me the most about HL was its athmosphere.
Everything initially felt pretty normal, even if it was a highly-advanced science complex. There were locker rooms and people having their lunchbreak and whatever, everything was all chill. But then things went wrong and the place got infested by aliens. You'd learn that all the areas you had visited just a moment ago had suddenly turned into chaos, so you'd grab whatever weapons you find so you could defend yourself.
I think seeing the research facility all calm and peaceful before the resonance cascade made the alien infestation feel more powerful.

Also, the mood and some themes of the game sort of reminded me of "Aliens", which I'm very fond of.

>What made this game so good?

It wasn't very good. I thought it was overrated even in 1998.

>>23672
What makes it not good?

>>23272
Yeah and have no boss fight for another 8 years of development. gg.

>>23698
bland

>>23272

Speaking of Black Mesa: Xen when?

Why do people say HL, counter-strike, x scapegoat is the fault for modern FPS?

The original Call of Duty is a good cinematic shooter; the latest Modern Duty is an interactive movie. There's a difference. Try thinking.

>>22391
A game like doom doesn't have much plot either but the map designs were actually meant to resemble bases, outposts, demon lairs and whatnot. half-life was really a story told by environments, events and character placement. These simple plot devices prevoked the player into perceiving their own story of what has happened as they discover it, you really participated as the role of Freeman rather then being obliged to.

>>22524
I should install windows half-life and play it as I remember

>>23942
Because Half Life was so hyped and loved by so many, all other game developers after that tried to take elements from it and use it in their games. Imagine what WWII shooters like Call of Duty would have been like if Half Life hadn't been around with its linear level design? Then after that, developers continued to try and make their games unique from the last, and now what you have is a bunch of developers stealing each other's bad ideas and making shittier and shittier games.

>>23769
Can you back that up with actual points or are you just going to continue sounding like the average /v/ kid who hates something because it's popular.

>>24148
Hey, I didn't like it because it was bland too. The entire game is railroaded SHOOT EVERYTHING with a couple of puzzles thrown in. It's seriously not that great.

>>24212
Saying
>it's bland
Is not a valid point. It's just stating an opinion

Saying
>it's bland becase...
Can be a valid point, because you're backing it up with reasoning.

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>mfw Freeman's Mind will probably never be finished.

>>24409

I stopped watching a while ago, how far along the game is he?

If soldiers were sent to silence to a science team but encountered aliens along the way that they were sent to cover up from human knowledge, then what happened to the soldiers who made it back?

>>24567
If you recall in Opposing Force, they sent some other secret OP assasins to kill those soldiers