half-life 1 vs. half-life 2

[jonc2006]

had the urge to play through both again this week and im curious as to what you fools think is the better of the two games. you dont have to but if you want you can factor in each game's expansions as well. personally i think HL2 takes the cake here, the atmosphere is simply incredible and even though the source engine and the game itself have been out for some time now, graphic-wise i feel it can stand up pretty well with the more recent games out there. the only gripe i have with both games is that they are way too linear.

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[emwearz]

Half Life 2 brings you into the game much more then Half Life 1, while at the time Half Life was a amazing game it really shows it age in terms of gameplay, theirs also simply too much of a 'repetitive' atmosphere, and its story is not as engaging as HL2, however for its time it was amazing story wise.

I played Half Life Source, and it utterly sucked, I wish they put more effort into it.

I wont even mention graphics as that's just a stupid thing to comment on. Its kind of like comparing System Shock to System Shock 2, utterly useless commenting on there graphics, the second build on what the first had and made an utterly mind blowing game.

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[snickothemule]

Half life 2 for sure, I smacked my gob when I first played the game. Just absolutely exquisite to see, hear and do.

Interestingly though I found that the Half Life demo was more interesting that the retail version.

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[TheCloudOfSmoke]

Half-Life 2 all the way!

I remember that I bought Half-Life 1 several years ago after I heard all of the hype over HL2. I got through about a 1/4 of the game and I was extremely bored with it and put the game down for a long time. Then I got a better laptop that allowed me to play HL2 decently (this was around last summer) and I was blown away. Ever since then, I have been hooked on HL2 and it's following episodes. After I beat HL2, I decided to play HL1 for ****s and giggles and so that I could better understand the overall story and the references made in HL2 about certain events in HL1. HL1 still wasn't that impressive the second time around (probably because it was a 1998 game that I was playing in 2007), but the expansions weren't bad and I was glad that I played through them all so I could understand the whole story.

So my point is that you should kick back, grab the gravity, rape some Combine soldiers, and have a good time. As a matter of fact, I think I might replay HL2 again. I have been wanting to replay HL2 for some time now.

On a side note: HL2 for the Wii would be awesome.

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Originally Posted by BigIg

If I support the game company, then I won't won't be supporting the blank DVD business.

Decisions, decisions.

[PCXL-Fan]

I'll go the other way. Half-life 2 was definietly a better game, but relative to the times when they came out Half-life was better.

When disregarding time they came out sequels are almost always superior. Sequels are usually anyways. The true test is where it can be as good and as ground breaking as the original was relative to the time it came out of course.

I think that the original half-life was way more revolutionary for its time than Half-life 2. Half life 2 was enhanced by happenstance. If it wasn't for that tech demo creation of the gravity gun, the discovery of how awesome it was and its inclusion in the game, Halflife 2 would not be as good as it became.

Even with the gravity gun it wasn't as revolutionary as the first was to the gaming industry. I guess it's kinda unfair to compare sequels to originals relavite to the time they came out though as you can't reinvent the wheel twice and it can be hard to try and come up with new innovations when you tried to bring all the stops on your original title.

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Last edited by PCXL-Fan; June 7th, 2008 at 22:52..

[Mr. Killjoy]

I can't really tell which I prefer, both have their good and bad parts.

HL1 pros:
-Believable AI (although sometimes a bit buggy)
-The feel of the weapons. You see when you hit, you know when you miss, you know when they lose HP or not
-Storytelling different to other games thanks to its scripted-but-not-action-stopping sequences (who doesn't remember the scientist being grabbed by the tentacles in the reactor?)
-Killable friendly NPCs
-Already had lipsynching, it was simple bone-based animation (as opposite to vertex morphs in todays games), but it was there.
-Had some cult stuff
-Hard mode was quite hard (or maybe I was a total noob and playing it on a P2 350 in software mode didn't help)
-Sadistic scripted NPC deaths

HL1 cons:
-Ugly for todays standards, but that doesn't really count.
-Some very boring parts, esp. a couple of Xen maps.
-No chicks. 10 years ago you could still sell games without boobies, now it's hard to think of taking this risk ^^' (STALKER sold without that though)

HL2 pros:
-Gravity gun served the gameplay and even enemies could use physic props (dunno if it was scripted the few times I saw that though)
-Ambience nicely done. Quite epic at times.
-Ravenholm. Traps + zombies + survival horror style.
-Graphics. Character models look life-like and don't have that plastic-ish aspect added by unnecessary shaders on their textures (if you played FEAR or Far Cry you know what I mean). Their facial animation system does wonders (too bad it's time consuming to add it to your own models)
-Storytelling is still good...

HL2 cons:
-...but I miss scary/painful NPC deaths (IIRC, only Striders do things like impaling rebels)
-Weapons sucked. They have ugly models and textures, their look doesn't fit with the overall quality of other models/textures used in the game. Except maybe for the Python, which looks decent, there are many 3rd party models for CSS that look much better.
-Weapons sucked (bis). Feels like shooting with airsoft guns, all bullets go around the target and even when you hit, you think you hardly did any damage.
-Somehow, AI sucked too. Impossible stealthy approachs at times, stupidly reacting enemies at others. How did they manage to kill one of the strong points of the 1st game? I wonder.
-Cliffhanger ending to make you buy episodes... didn't see that one coming when I bought it. Or at least, I expected the sequel to be HL3.
-Unkillable friendly NPC, WTF? I wanted to make good use of Alyx's dead body...
In HL1 killing important NPCs reloaded the latest save, but you still kill them.
It also added to the gameplay at moments you had to cover an NPC during attacks with shooting him accidentally.
-Made too casual/noob friendly. To the point they coded an (enabled by default) auto-reload feature for guns you're not currently using.
-Gordon can still climb a ladder with both hands on his gun. He should be renamed Goro.

Pros on both:
-Very modder-friendly. That's important to me. Both because I like to customize and because mods/TC people develop make your game last much longer, so money isn't lost after you finish them


Cons on both:
-Linear. HL2 even more than HL1, the latter gave you some choices in the order you did some tasks in few parts of the game (like activating stuff before switching the reactor on), but HL2 is far too straightforward.
-Maps are too square-ish. It was normal back in the HL1 days because of technical limitations, but nowadays it breaks immersion a little. Agreed, HL2 mostly takes place is in urban envs, but still... it feels like playing in maps build with textured Legos (well, technically that's it, since the engine is basically the same system just with huges improvments)
-Static lighting. Was common before 2000, so I forgive HL1 for that, but in HL2, it sucks.
It's hard to make a decent use of light effects because of crappy dynamic lights and shadows. (Try to create a mod that relies on shadows like a Silent Hill game and you'll see)

Well, I prolly missed some stuff, but I don't think my opinion matters so much...

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Last edited by Mr. Killjoy; June 7th, 2008 at 11:15..

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

Originally Posted by Mr. Killjoy

-Unkillable friendly NPC, WTF? I wanted to make good use of Alyx's dead body...

I can think of a few things. XD

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Originally Posted by BigIg

If I support the game company, then I won't won't be supporting the blank DVD business.

Decisions, decisions.

[Hard core Rikki]

HL1: sucked big time. Really. Multiplayer-based mods weren't any better either.

Source > GoldSource

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[Mr. Killjoy]

"I can think of a few things. XD "
Yeah, I wasn't talking about physics hehe

"HL1: sucked big time. Really. Multiplayer-based mods weren't any better either."
Natural Selection was awesome, too bad it kinda died when HL2 was released

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[Titus03]

Half-Life 2 and I can say the same than emwearz, that it really brings player really in the game. Ot took me two years to beat Half-Life 1, but Half-Life 2 was played in a couple of weeks.

Mr. Killjoy made a good list of pros and cons for both games. Here is my own point of view, not as much detailed.

HL1

Pros:
-The feeling that the whole game has only one map makes the player to feel the game more like real.
-Helping friends.
-New kind of storyline.

HL1 cons:
-The storytelling was not very deep. Sometimes the game felt very boring.
(I believe that re-making HL1 with full usage of Source engine won't make the game much better.)
-Commandos were inhuman strong. The had to take tons of bullets to get killed.

HL2

HL2 pros:

-Storyline is presented better than in HL1 and everything is done much deeper.
-Gravity gun was a good add-on.
-World is realistic.

HL2 cons:

-There was still some dull parts in the game.
-Gravity gun can't raise dead bodies (human/zombie).
-Ending was too easy (before EP1).
-Player's choices didn't affect nearly as much in the game as it was beforehand told to do.

(-EP1 and EP2 forced some users to update their systems.)

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[Mad]

I just loved HL1 and HL2.
Played lots of singleplayer mods on both games. Those were 2 games that really made up for the money ive paid. Ive bought hl1 in 1998, and only stopped in 2003, when i bought hl2, and still playing some stuff on in.

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[refraction]

HL2 definately draws you in a lot more than HL1, not to mention 2 episodes that follow to continue the same story.

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[capo_2k]

There's a mod being made for Half-Life 2 which is a remake of Half-Life. It's called Black Mesa.

Check it out: Black Mesa: A Half-Life 2 modification

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Last edited by capo_2k; June 8th, 2008 at 12:22..

[PCXL-Fan]

Okay there is no question Hlaflife 2 is better than No.1.

But how about relative to the time they came out?

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Originally Posted by Exodus

Yes, I like anime, Street Fighter, Japanese music and download video game music. Yes, I know... I've changed.

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[galson]

Originally Posted by Mr. Killjoy

-Unkillable friendly NPC, WTF? I wanted to make good use of Alyx's dead body...

Giggity giggity giggity, all right!


I reckon HL2 is a bit better, still the first HL has a great sentimental value for me. Hmm, dunno myself so I say they're equal for me.

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[Mr. Killjoy]

HL1 was my 1st PC FPS, before that I only played Goldeneye, Duke Nukem and Doom on consoles (Jurassic Park SNES was FPS inside building too, if that counts). To me it was something new and awesome (esp when I saw I could make my own maps and all), it became a reference quickly heh...
HL2 had some innovations, but for some reason, it failed where HL1 was a big hit for me. HL1, at its time, had more realistic gameplay and environments most other games of its genre... now HL2 improved the realistic look, ok, but I was less impressed. Gameplay, aside from Gravity gun, was below what games like Far Cry offered before that, so that was a bit like a step backward in this domain (see above for feel of the weapons, the ladder climbing weirdness, etc).
Don't misunderstand, I'm not a grphics/realism whore, but come from a sequel, I expected things to get better in all areas, not to stay behind in a few of them that made the identity of the 1st opus

Update:
"Giggity giggity giggity, all right! "
Necrophilia powaaa

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[Cobalt]

If you are older player, and like playing old titles (like PSX, and that stuff) I recommend you Half Life 1. Sure, Half Life 2 has better graphics, and draws you more. Refraction said same thing for HF2. XD

BTW, try to get Portal, it rocks.

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[refraction]

Originally Posted by Cobalt

If you are older player, and like playing old titles (like PSX, and that stuff) I recommend you Half Life 1. Sure, Half Life 2 has better graphics, and draws you more. Refraction said same thing for HF2. XD

BTW, try to get Portal, it rocks.

if you wanna go old, everybody should have a go at wolfenstein 3d (not return to castle wolfenstein) bit of history there, where it all began, plus it was a pretty class game xD

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[TheCloudOfSmoke]

Johnshizzle, screw HL1, play Half-Life 2. And do it with the nude Alyx mod. If you want it, let me know. It'll make the game so much more interesting to play. That in itself is enough motivation for me to play the whole game through again.

If nude Alyx doesn't interest you and if nude Barney or nude Dr. Kleiner is what floats your boat instead, I'm sure that they have a mod for that too.

Originally Posted by capo_2k

There's a mod being made for Half-Life 2 which is a remake of Half-Life. It's called Black Mesa.

Check it out: Black Mesa: A Half-Life 2 modification

That looks awesome! I was actually thinking that a HL1 remake using the HL2 engine would be cool not too long ago. I bookmarked that page and I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks.

Jon, if you have an urge to play HL1, wait for that mod to be finished. It looks like it's worth the wait.

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Originally Posted by BigIg

If I support the game company, then I won't won't be supporting the blank DVD business.

Decisions, decisions.

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Last edited by TheCloudOfSmoke; June 8th, 2008 at 22:03..

[Mr. Killjoy]

"And do it with the nude Alyx mod. If you want it, let me know. It'll make the game so much more interesting to play."
Dunno for many other ppl, but I'd rather use a model with alternate sexy clothing than a fully nude one. Sometimes, hiding is showing

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