Topic: Half Life added to the greats list on gamespot

[PyroMenace]

HL added to the list of Greatest games of all Time. Thoughts?

I played through it. It was damn fun and amazing, but just like with HL2 the ending was just horrible. I'm honestly not sure if it did something innovative. I think it was the first FPS to flow the entire game together instead of chopping it up into levels. It was cool, but I really didn't think it added that much to the experience. I don't know, my vote still would go to Deus Ex.

[MysterD]

Deus definitely deserves to be above HL, as great as HL and HL2 are...

[idolminds]

HL deserves its spot for doing the whole "cutscenes happen around you as you're still playing" thing. It really helped add to the immersion of the game. Before that it was mostly cutscenes that took you out of character. Plus Black Mesa was laid out pretty well in one "seamless" facility, the marine AI was pretty cool, and the game was just overall good. Sure Xen levels kinda sucked and the ending was WTF, but the rest of it was quite good.

I would mention mods but I don't know if HL helped them more than it harmed them. Helped by propelling modding into the spotlight, but along with that we got a lot of "pro teams" that weren't interested in making a good concept come to life and were more interested in creating something generic/standard/commercial in hopes of being bought out.

[MysterD]

HL deserves its spot for doing the whole "cutscenes happen around you as you're still playing" thing. It really helped add to the immersion of the game. Before that it was mostly cutscenes that took you out of character.

Agreed.

Plus Black Mesa was laid out pretty well in one "seamless" facility, the marine AI was pretty cool, and the game was just overall good.

Agreed.

I would mention mods but I don't know if HL helped them more than it harmed them. Helped by propelling modding into the spotlight, but along with that we got a lot of "pro teams" that weren't interested in making a good concept come to life and were more interested in creating something generic/standard/commercial in hopes of being bought out.

Making modding popular and commercial was no easy feat. HL did that -- and did it well, like it or not.

It's pretty much standard for many games to come w/ SDK's -- even independents.

[idolminds]

I dont mind making modding popular. Making modding commercial is really the exact opposite of what modding should be.

[MysterD]

I dont mind making modding popular. Making modding commercial is really the exact opposite of what modding should be.

Oh, do you mean like 3rd party companies selling their mod for a price...?

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, HL1 was a pretty amazing game for the time.  It was definitely groundbreaking, but mostly in a lot of little ways instead of any really big ones.  But it had it where it counted.  I have little respect for Valve now, and I have no intention of ever supporting any of their products ever again, but HL1 was a positive experience.

[sirean_syan]

Yeah. There's little denying that the game belongs there. You can hate the makers, but the game still stands.

[idolminds]

Oh, do you mean like 3rd party companies selling their mod for a price...?

No. I mean like in the "old days" of modding people just made mods out of ideas they thought would be fun. No one was concerned with the graphics and everything was just like different colored skins on the game objects. Capture the Flag started in Q1 as a mod, and the flags were the silver and gold keys. It didn't matter, they wanted CTF and released it as quickly as they could and then evolved it later (by adding real flag models). We also had stuff like the grappling hook, runes, Rocket Arena...just stuff that diidnt have a lot of new content and was all about trying new ideas. Quake Rally, Quess (chess in Quake), and other kind of "out there" ideas were fine. Mods were made by one person or at most a small team.

Since CS got popular, that all changed. Now everyone makes mods with bog standard gameplay so its popular. They don't really try to do anything new. They hire large teams to work on the models/maps/textures to make it pretty. They hold the release back longer and longer to make it a "professional" release. So what you end up with is a nice looking mod with standard or crappy gameplay that gets one release and is never touched again.

The trick to mods: release early, release often. Be concerned with your gameplay. Get it out there to the players, get feedback, tweak as necessary. Once you've got the gameplay down, now you can go in and throw on those layers of polish, the textures, the models, etc. When you're done you will have a nice looking mod with well tested gameplay that the players like and a playerbase/community that you built up over time.

[Quemaqua]

What idol said.  I remember getting heavily involved in the Quake mod scene and it was just fucking amazing.  It truly was a golden age for mods.  There were tons of them, and all of them were really entertaining, simple, accessible, and vastly different.  Sure, there were some more complex ideas and some TCs, but on the whole there were just tons of little things to look at.  And I've never since had that much fun with mods, not ever.  That was the height and it's only gone downhill from there for me.

Also, I'd like to point out that HL1's plot was basically exactly the same as Doom's.  Instead of a Mars military contractor installation you have Black Mesa.  Instead of a teleportation accident you have a resonance cascade.  Instead of demons you have aliens.  Instead of going to Hell you go to Xen.  The main difference was the addition of the human forces working against Gordon.  Still... the similarities are a bit much.

[MysterD]

What idol said.  I remember getting heavily involved in the Quake mod scene and it was just fucking amazing.  It truly was a golden age for mods.  There were tons of them, and all of them were really entertaining, simple, accessible, and vastly different.  Sure, there were some more complex ideas and some TCs, but on the whole there were just tons of little things to look at.  And I've never since had that much fun with mods, not ever.  That was the height and it's only gone downhill from there for me.

I didn't do much on the mod scenes for Quake 1, 2, or 3, but damn -- did I play lots of MP for those; heh.

I think the height for modding for me was NWN and Morrowind days -- I don't think I played so many mods for one damn game was with either of these two games.

These days, I don't play many mods. I play a game -- then, not too long later, it gets uninstall. Unless I know or have a feelin' it'll get an expansion.