They are right.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rockpapershotgun.com/amp/how-half-life-killed-the-first-person-shooter
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbr.com/half-life-duke-nukem-retro-shooters/amp/
No self respecting Doom, Quake, Duke and Unreal fan likes this garbage.
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HALF LIFE FANS ETERNALLY BTFO
Bump
>schizo making the same thread for the 100th time in 5 years mad nobody responds anymore
>Gankerigger acting like a contrarian
woa... shocking...
phone poster purge when?
half-life is a very respectable game. its the gap between duke nukem 3d and story-driven fps. to this day there are no hl1 clones
Not really
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/which-game-killed-the-shooter-genre.138957/
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/half-life-and-half-life-2-list-of-recommended-modifications-and-mini-campaigns.97752/page-2
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/halflife_or_quake_which_style_of_fps_do_you_prefer/page1
Bump
Even CRPG gays hate it
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2021/01/game-396-lagoon-1990.html?showComment=1611501445720#c4855213384485723412
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2021/01/game-396-lagoon-1990.html?showComment=1611576607721#c2184831489058872574
"I figure developers who made their games this linear either had different design philosophies or they just figured that's what the players wanted. They may have been right--look at the love Half Life gets despite barely offering a stray corridor to check out."
I hate Half-Life for this. Exploration in FPS games improved from Doom to Unreal (which has some magnificent nonlinear levels with wonderful secrets), and then Half-Life changed FPS level design into linear roller coaster rides.
(Some people argue that HL is not completely linear because there are situations where the player needs to do something at location X first before backtracking to location Y. But these situations in HL never leave any choice to the player; there is always only one path to continue. So it's completely linear in my view.)
As an oldschool FPS fan, I think Half Life is really overrated and its restrictively linear level design is pretty terrible. I recently replayed Half Life 2, and while it's decent fun in its mechanics, there really isn't any exploration at all. And while the physics engine is fun to play around with, it's only ever used for linear puzzles that have only one specific solution. There is always just one way forward, and it often feels completely artificial in its structure.
Meanwhile Doom, Quake and Unreal often had open levels that could be approached in several ways, keycards could be hunted down in any order, etc. Yet for some reason Half Life managed to convince people that it's the "thinking man's shooter" due to having a bunch of puzzles and a greater focus on story than was usual for the genre back then. But its level design is way, way, way below average for the shooters of its day. Especially if you also consider other first person games like Thief (not a shooter but close enough) and System Shock 2 (FPS-RPG hybrid) which have absolutely excellent open level design.
Half Life is actually very close in intent and scope to Lagoon. Both are interactive stories or movies where the player acts as the protagonist, enacting a single plot. Freeman literally doesn’t talk, which conceals the simplicity of the path he takes through the game. No chance to refuse, crack a grim joke, or ask for more money, because the entire point of any interaction is to be an exposition point as inexorable and unchanging as watching a movie or reading a book.
Unlike most things classified as RPG’s, the emphasis is on the plot rather than the mechanics, thus no need to explore side tracks or alternate career paths.
I mean... if all you want to do is tell a linear story with barely any interactivity, why not just film a movie or write a book instead? Those are much more suited for linear storytelling. Games, on the other hand, are about YOU, the player, doing his thing and occasionally going against the script or taking a detour. It shouldn't be up to the designer to tell me exactly which path to take. It should be up to me whether I check out the left or the right corridor, and the designer's job is to place risks and rewards in various places to make exploration worthwhile
That's actually a pretty bad misrepresentation. Story and immershun had nothing to do with it. The main complaint is the way the story is told and how this came at the expense of the level design. Doom/Quake have elaborate, labyrinthian level design, Half-Life discards that to a large degree so it can play off its scripted setpieces as you progress through the considerably more linear levels.
This "cinematic" school of level design grew more and more pervasive over the years, eventually resulting in stuff like Cowadoody where you run down a linear corridor while scripted events go off left and right
Not a huge fan of either, but I don't actually hate Quake. But I really did not like Half Life. I did not like the scripted sequences, how when I cross this line on the ground I get ambushed no matter how well I play, no matter how careful I am I'm getting ambushed because the developer said I'm getting ambushed. The huge problem I have with this is that scripting only works the first time you encounter it...then you reload and try again with foreknowledge. No matter how many times you replay that scene you are getting ambushed exactly the same every time. I MUCH prefer games where the story and gameplay are "emergent" and depend upon player action and superior AI. Not from crossing a line on the ground.
So Quake by default for me. At least it just gives you a level, with enemies and says- go at it however you like. If you play careful and play well, you will find it easier and be rewarded.
There's been complaints of both over the years. Some people who play only one specific sub-genre are angry that other sub-genres exist end up ranting about that and a lot of such people end up getting "burned out" without some variety. At the same time, what fronzelneekburm is referring to is the widespread meme's of "12ft wide levels + story is 'better' than more open-levels + no story" for which Half Life / Call of Duty level design was often the butt of memes / jokes for years even into the early 2010's.
I thought both Half Life's were great games, but System Shock, Thief & Deus Ex definitely had way more of a personal impact on showing me the future of what FPS's would develop into with engaging stories or RPG elements, etc, beyond the early 90's Doom / Quake "arena shooters", but also did so without having 12ft wide overly-scripted levels. I don't mean open-world games like Morrowind, but rather 'that thing' in between where the levels are still mostly linear but designed in a way that circular routes / multiples paths, ability to backtrack (vs "checkpoints of no return"), etc, made them feel more open enough to kill off the feeling of the level being 12ft wide. Games like Deus Ex (2000) and NOLF2 (2002) nailed circular design in many levels whilst even Half Life 2 (2004) continued with very "railroady" straight-line levels (canals and Highway 17 levels spring to mind).
For me, the key thing is that HL started the influx of extremely linear shooters (where both level design and scripting leave little room for sandbox gameplay) where you pretty much proceed form checkpoint to checkpoint, while Doom & Quake would drop you into a level with varying degrees of openness and you'd choose how to tackle it and reach the exit (often via multiple possible routes and optional areas). Being story driven wasn't ever such a distinguishing quality to me, only HL managed to implement the story in a way that contributes to linearity. Having npcs is certainly a distinguishing quality for HL, but again Unreal has NPCs too.. and so does Quake 2 (well ok, a handful of prisoners). From a gameplay perspective, NPCs can have very little or very much impact. For example, I don't think doom would be a very different game if a few of the dead humans you see lying around were actually live allies with chaingunner AI.
If we go by that criteria, then Metro 2033 being extremely linear makes it HL-like. Far Cry is rather open ended, so I find it to be more Quake-like.
Half-life is a middle ground between modern cover centric stop and pop shooters and earlier dodge and shoot shooters. Half-Life has you ducking and weaving between cover taking a few sparse shots every now and then in every fight, however in games like DOOM and Quake you rely on your agility and awareness of enemy projectiles to win fights. Combat is more like a dance as opposed to looking at the ugly 32x32 grey concrete texture every few seconds because the hitscan enemies started shooting at you.
Quake is more level design centric than DOOM, more about understanding 3d spaces and working within them to progress, as opposed to just moving forward through linear corridors, levels are complex and maze like, open and often with diverging paths. It also features one of the best levels of all time, Ziggurat Vertigo.
Half-Life stole a lot of Unreal's thunder for its cinematic-like style. Unreal was rather derivative of Quake, it relied a lot on understanding 3D spaces and projectile weapons as opposed to hitscan. The levels were complex, diverging and the AI easily leagues beyond Half-Life's.
https://desuarchive.org/vr/thread/652152/#652830
Based Ganker
Take your meds, Alf
As you can see hardcore gamers hate what this game did to fps.
Care to explain why you like it so much hl gays?