Every classic Half-Life game is now free on Steam | Hacker News Reader

Every classic Half-Life game is now free on Steam

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Do yourself a favour and check out the amazing community remake of HL1, Black Mesa! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Wow, this looks really amazing. HL1 is still one of my favorite games.

They even completely remade the Xen part and according to reviews, its better than the original, which some players did not like that much.

Xen was pretty terrible in the original. I always loved the middle act of the game, basically from We've Got Hostiles onward until going through the teleporter, but that's usually where I stopped playing. The really alien, slightly demonic aesthetic didn't really appeal to me. Or the headcrabs...

My real favorite was Opposing Force. It's unfortunate that games have become so complicated and mod-unfriendly that that font of creativity has pretty much dried up. I'm amazed at Black Mesa, but back in the early 2000s, you didn't need a large team to make decent levels, or even total conversions.

What's the equivalent of half-life mods these days?

Minecraft mods?

Minecraft modding is fairly out of hand. But that's only for Java (PC) Minecraft where they basically couldn't stop it once it had started.

In Minecraft you've got a situation where there is such a vibrant modding community that curation and configuration of mods to produce a complete working system with some particular flavour or theme is a whole separate skill. It's like the skill needed to make a decent container for a particular piece of server software. The right pieces but badly tuned may still be a miserable experience.

It's actually very strange now for me in "vanilla" Minecraft because I'm so used to certain features "everybody" mods into the sort of packs I play. Vein mining is an example: Most packs these days recognise that individually mining several adjacent blocks (or similar with other tools e.g. chopping down a tree one block at a time) is busywork, so they eliminate it. Hold down a modifier, hit one block, all identical blocks are affected at a proportionate cost to hunger and wear on the tool used.

Anything and everything made with Unity.

Arma 3 devs are very friendly to the modding community. There are some quite nice (and intrusive, in a good way) things built for it.

"games have become so complicated and mod-unfriendly that that font of creativity has pretty much dried up."

I dunno... Seems like general purpose engines are much more readily available. The best mods were similar in scout to writing a new game in a very very hacky engine... I imagine the ones who once would have been modders are now just making games.

> It's unfortunate that games have become so complicated and mod-unfriendly...

Garry’s Mod was pretty popular a few years ago (not sure about today). It’s a very mod friendly game as it itself is a mod. There’s also Minecraft.

But yes, you are correct than many big (AAA) games don’t support mods anymore. I believe there three big reasons:

* Server control / licensing: With games like Minecraft where you can run your own server, you get to choose what mods are on the server. The publisher running their own server with other people’s mods could get them into licensing trouble.

* Complexity: Mod support takes time and effort. You need to ensure a stable API (or stable enough) do mods don’t break every time you update your game. Yes, you could just break the API, but fans of your game aren’t going to like that.

And finally, the big one:

* Money: Why add support for mods if you can’t make money from that feature? Yes, you could make it a DLC, but why put in the effort if there’s no guarantee of an ROI?

Oh heavens. I played the free version in 2009. That was more than 10 years ago! Only Xen was missing back then... so I waited. And now it seems to be ready :D

I just started playing Half-Life for the first time a few days ago. Would you recommend playing Black Mesa in lieu of Half-Life, or in addition to it?

I'd probably say in lieu. If you like it and it gets you into the HL universe, then going back and playing the original HL is an interesting treat.

Keep in mind Black Mesa isn't quite finished, they are still polishing off the final levels. But there's still a good 10-20 hours or so of gameplay.

"A few days ago"? It only takes like 20 minutes to finish it.

https://youtu.be/VtI5HM7GVGY

Speedrunning is not really a viable way to judge the game's completion time. Howlongtobeat.com rates the original Half-Life at about 10-12 hours, which seems to gel more with my memory. My own Steam record says I logged about 10 hours on it.

It was most likely a joke.

I would say in addition. Black Mesa has rather uneven difficulty which detracts from the experience.

Black Mesa - definitely. Preserves everything in HL1 and adds a lot more. Xen is like 100% different though, Black Mesa's one is waaaaay better but if you want to experience HL1 version...

Play Black Mesa instead. Its the same game but better.

Play the original first. The voice acting is much better and the pacing and and combat and platforming is still tight. Without the context of the original, Black Mesa won't be as impressive. It's a great effort, but it's pretty clear it's not a professional game.

I would keep playing through HL1 and then BM personally. There's some changes like to grunt AI (BM is based on Combine AI) that make the original still worth playing.

There's also some features that are broken in the Steam release of HL1 vs the original Sierra release if I remember correctly but that's another bag of worms.

And if you don't want to play the game, you can still enjoy it. Watch Freeman's Mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SQhfkpX9bc

Basically someone used the HL universe as a roleplaying environment. He pulls it off!

EDIT: I'm not sure this is the same version of the game, but I don't think it's the original. There are some physics things in it. Still worth a watch.

Freeman's Mind uses Half-Life: Source, which is Half-Life 1 ported (no new models or textures) to the Source engine (which was the one used for Half-Life 2). Half-Life: Source was released at the same time as (or right after?) Half-Life 2 in 2004.

Black Mesa is a recreation of Half-Life 1 in the modern Source engine completely from scratch. I've followed its development for over a decade and have been consistently impressed by how good it is. They just released the last couple chapters too, so now's a great time to try it out.

Looks like Half-Life: Source to me. It's a remake of the original, they simply ported the original resources on top of the Source engine, and modified the physics engine so it would feel closer to the first one. It generally doesn't get much love in the community and I am not sure why he chose it. I am not a great fan and have only replayed it a few times.

Freeman's Mind predates Black Mesa by almost a decade.

The first episode is the most intense 5 minutes and 30 seconds of Twitch TV you’ll ever see.

Price 18€? When I played it – about five years ago? – it was gratis.

And do yourself an even bigger favor and use the original game's HE marine voices.

I can advise anyone to (re)play these games with the developer commentary on. It goes into a lot of details on technical and game design stuff and really lets you experience the game with a whole different view. Like how certain parts of the map are setup to teach certain mechanics and the huge role gametesting played in determining the final layout of the game.

I would LOVE to play with that. How do you turn developer commentary on?

https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Developer_commentary

Enjoy!

I believe it is an option in the settings or during start of the game in main menu. During the game speechbubbles will appear with which you activate the commentary.

There is also the Lost Coast 'episode' which is more of a tech demo instead of a game but really worth to play through as well.

The part in the dev commentary that during play testing they found that players tend to never look up unless prompted is ingrained in my brain forever. I always look up now :)

In games or in life? There are so many skylights and other things that I've missed for years in a real life building and then one day I look up. On multiple occasions I'll ask the person I'm with if that skylight, chandelier, etc has always been there.

For games this one surprised me given just how many times I've stood right under it... https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3g6dh9/has...

Both!

Of course I don't walk around staring at the sky or anything, I'm sure I miss stuff all the time too. Always a 'whoa' moment when you do remember though.

A friend of mine used to be a rather... prolific graffiti artist and he once explained to me how, once he's up on a scaffold somewhere, he can basically do whatever he wants because nobody bothers to look up. So I'd say it's true in real life too.

I noticed that tourists and people new to the area are the only ones looking up. I sometimes force myself to look up, which helps me appreciate the beautiful city around me.

I used to live smack-bang in the middle of the Red Light District in Amsterdam on the 3rd floor, and no one ever looked up. I guess if you put enough action street level it doesn’t cross their mind to consider looking up. Made for some great people watching.

As Half-Life 2 itself did not have a developer commentary, I personally recommend checking the book "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar," and, if you really want to do a deep and lengthy dive into the particulars of HL2's level design, check out Robert Yang's commentary-driven playthrough of HL2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VheYcG2T5qw

Half-Life came out when I was in engineering school, and I told myself I'd get around to playing it when I graduated. Somehow the demands of school, career, and family have added up to more than 20 years, it's probably time to give it a go!

You are in for a treat!

If you're lucky, you'll get to play Half Life 3 before you reach retirement age.

Life stopped after Half Life 2

Half Life: Alyx is what is finally pushing me to get on the VR train. It's not HL3 but the Half Life series was such a big part of my teenage life I can't not play it.

At least I've been wanting to try VR for a while for the other games so it's not quite $1000 to play a single video game..Thats what I tell myself at least.

The announcement of that game definitely got me to look into VR setups. But when I went and tried my buddy's Oculus, I got sick in about 5 minutes. I've never had motion sickness problems in my life, so I was sort of disappointed. Defintely try out a setup before you buy it.

Thanks for the heads up, definitely a concern for people before committing a whole bunch of money on something. I've been flying FPV racing drones for a few years so I'm pretty confident my brain had adapted to that type of thing pretty well by now. Guess I'll find out for sure in March!

Did you give it a few tries to see if you could adapt? When I started FPV it could be pretty disorienting even while sitting down, after a little bit I had no problem at all standing while flipping all over the place with the drone.

Definitely play the original Half-Life first.

I'd also try the new Black Mesa remake, it's really well done.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

HL2 is probably my favorite game of all time. Also worth noting that HL1 looks dated as hell now and Its probably worth paying for and playing Black-Mesa instead. Only thing you'll miss is Xen which is a just a tiny fraction of the original campaign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_(video_game)

They actually recently finished Xen! It's different from the original, but I think the overall consensus is that it's better than the original. (No more awkward fps platforming)

Xen is already out for Black Mesa

Xen is out and it is fantastic. I was 13 when it was announced and it was worth the wait. Enjoy :)

I loved HL2 as well, though I found the start of the game a bit linear, almost rail-shooter-ish (in fact even with actual narrow enclosed train rails, and vehicles that moved linearly). But that improved drastically mid game and beyond and in the next episodes :)

Just such a shame episode 2 ended with a cliffhanger that never got fulfilled, as almost everyone knows

At this point Half Life 3 became a running joke :)

Second

Black Mesa is beautifully done but combat is not as well balanced as the original game; there are odd spikes in difficulty at certain points that will have you cursing.

Players new to the series would be better served by playing the original Half-Life than Black Mesa.

I play through HL2 and the episodes every couple of years or so. It never gets old. It truly is one of the greatest games ever made.

My handle is a reference to the HL universe :)

IMO vanilla Half-Life 1 is still amazing. Every gun, every enemy has a unique idea to them and requires you playing differently. HL2 kinda streamlined that aspect in favor of “cinematic” presentation which was built around a graphical wow-factor that’s hard to replicate today. HL1’s gameplay is still fresh. In fact, because it was in development for (over?!) 10 years, Black Mesa suffers from a similar “1,5-generations behind” vibe, visually.

I remember playing it for the first time when I was in early high school. It was one of the first games I played on the PC and I loved it. Seems like it's time for a replay.

HL was a delicious escape from studying for me whilst at uni, which consumed pretty much all my other waking hours.

It's not free forever, only until march when Alyx launch's.

If it's anything like episode 3, I guess it's defacto free forever.

I think you're probably joking but it's not the same thing at all. Episode 3 was never given a launch date, was it?

Kind of. They said a new episode would be released each year, but Episode 3 never came out.

Ignoring the "every three months" thing... In May 2006, as they were launching episode 1, they promised episode 2 later in the year and episode 3 by "Christmas 2007".

Looks that they got caught in Valve Time for good: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

I imagine they will make it free forever. We're nearly approaching two decades of the game being sold and it was one of the first digitally distributed games as well. Can't imagine there are many Steam accounts without HL2 and I don't imagine there are many PC gamers without a Steam account.

It would great incentive offered by Valve to simply have a Steam account.

Relevant XKCD? https://www.xkcd.com/1053/

Before I clicked, I expected it to be this one https://www.xkcd.com/606/

I agree, there already were countless opportunities to buy the series for next to nothing during sales.

I actually created my Steam account after receiving a coupon for a "free game" from a Steam representative at the 2008 Leipzig Games Convention. When redeeming the coupon, the "free game" turned out to be the Orange Box.

That coupon was certainly a good business decision for Valve. My library now contains 100+ games.

IIRC, my Steam account dates back to a bundle code in a CD for what I believe was an HL: Blue Shift bundle and an encouragement to use Steam for multiplayer because of better anti-cheat protection, around when that was new enough (it came out in 2001 and Steam officially launched in 2003, so it was maybe two or three years after the original launch as a bundle?), that code included all of HL1 up to that point. It's weird to recall there was a period where I had the entire Steam catalog unlocked, but it's also been a long time since the entire Steam catalog was just HL1 and its expansions and mods.

This was back in an ancient dial up age when downloading a CD's worth of game seemed crazy, but I liked the idea of having a "backup" of the CD accessible just in case.

Don't play FPS much any more but HL1 (and Deathmatch) had a big impact on me as a child in terms of what video games could do for story telling and immersion. I hope younger people give it a shot.

Same. Many fond memories of HL1 and playing Counterstrike over dial up. HL1 drew me in in a way that Unreal never did... it was hyped beyond belief and was technically incredible, but the game itself felt flat. Half-Life on the other hand... incredible.

Even by the time HL2 rolled around I wasn't playing FPSes so much. I played and enjoyed it, but the experience doesn't compare to HL1.

Not exactly. You can play the game for free until March but you cannot download it for free.

OSX Catalina not supported for those that have upgraded.

Luckily Steam tells us which games will be incompatible with Catalina. For me it's a big part of my library and some are even recent (-5 years). I doubt these game will ever get updates or Apple will provide a compatiblity layer ala rosetta stone like they did for the PPC to X86 switch. A lot of old games are already lost to me because of this.

Some of the games that Steam says aren't compatible are still compatible.

Absolutely incredibly how much of my Steam library disappeared overnight. I realize dual-booting Windows or an old OSX release is an option; but not so easy with the minuscule MacBook flash storage.

If you want to go the dual boot way, target mode or an external disk to boot off might be viable.

I dual-boot my Mac mini (different Mojave and Catalina setups) off of a USB-C external enclosure with a 1tb m2 SSD. Boot time is a bit slower off the external drive, but it's workable.

But it's up to the games developers to set up the compatibility flag, and many are wrong. See https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17DkOsI9AwAT4dzPkLmun...

I have not looked into this, but if it's a flag you might be able to change it yourself in the info.plist file. Unless code signing get in the way.

It's an issue in Steam database, not in the games. It shows the "this game is not compatible" message, but the games can still run.

Another reason for me to not upgrade, despite the notification nags me every day

It's quite easy to get System Preferences to ignore the update [0]. Ignoring Catalina isn't a long-term solution, but is pretty much a necessity for many right now.

[0] https://www.macworld.com/article/3447396/how-to-stop-getting...

Slightly annoyed as I bought Half Life a couple of weeks ago. Even more annoyed, as it turned out that it doesn't run on Windows 10 - it installs and launches, but isn't capable of any sort of useful FPS. I ended up installing Windows XP in a virtual machine and then installing HL on that - I get native resolution and fps that matches my monitor.

Steam does have history selling games that can't be played. I bought Max Payne a few years ago at only to find that doesn't run on Windows 10 either (iirc I used WINE that time).

I've played HL and HL2 on Windows 10 and not had any of the issues you describe -- what hardware are you using?

Same. The issue probably isn’t Windows 10.

HL2 is absolutely fine. HL1 is not. It's a 6-core 4ghz processor with a gtx-970 graphics. No problems with other titles. See link below or just google for "half life 1 fps windows 10"

https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/257985440075...

this sounds wrong.

This absolutely a problem with your computer. All valve games run at literally hundreds of FPS on my Win10.

I don't seem to be the only other person with problems - and considering I can get useful FPS out of HL2 and other modern titles (or decent fps when it's virtualised) I really don't think it's a hardware problem.

See https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/257985440075... or search for "half life windows 10 fps"

There are fixes listed for problems with the game here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Half-Life

The Steam support rollercoaster I went through recently to unlock these games was kind of insane but also wonderful at the same time. I went back and forth for an eternity with support trying to get access to an account that I no longer had email access for.

When the support person finally handed over the keys to the kingdom after like 15 years of not being able to login I was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe that they basically helped me out on what really came down to the honor system.

Now all these games are free. Go figure =)

I’ve been reviving an old 3770k as of late, getting back into overclocking and desktop PCs in general. My goal is to build a decent little desktop side rig for compiling nerves/rpi kernels. The integrated graphics can’t do 4K, so I knew I needed an actual GPU. Getting back into this scene has been really nostalgic from the high school years. I started with a cheap RX570 that whines and cried under load like a thousand dying rats (coil whine?). So I returned that and took big green for a spin w/ a GTX 1650 from EVGA which is by no means a top dog card but it has worked really well to drive my 4K display.

I fired up HL2 this weekend on Linux and played it for a few minutes. So nostalgic! The weird noises and radio crackles really hammer home the dystopian future. I can’t get the game to run full screen though (Linux problems) but it works okay in windowed mode. I don’t know how people game on Linux because despite the progress it’s still so far from being sane.

1. Install Linux Mint

2. Install Steam and enable compatibility mode in settings

(And Gog Galaxy and special shout out to Lutris which should be installed as well)

3. Profit

Thanks. Your username is very fitting.

Penguins also like to have fun :).

I need to give Mint a try. I recently built a Ryzen box specifically for gaming (my first gaming-centric build ever, and my first PC build in a decade, talk about future shock!), and installed Ubuntu on it. Steam works well enough but Cities:Skylines crashes when I fullscreen it, and there are cryptic error messages about video memory allocation failures.

I got bogged down trying to install new Mesa libraries and just resigned myself to playing windowed, until such time as folks with more skills fix the mainline and I can just upgrade to it.

For some reason it never occurred to me to try a different distro. Mint might be in my future!

Maybe also consider Manjaro. The hardware detector works extremely well.

Small note: free to play till launch. I don't think you get them forever. That said, they're great games and playing them only makes me sad they never made a true HL3.

Anyone that is considering replaying HL2, should give SMOD [1] a look. It works on top of the original campaign, but it is highly customizable and makes for some interesting gameplay, e.g. Duke Nukem kick melee attack without changing weapons, completely customizable bullet-time (own speed, own projectiles speed, enemy speed, etc.), etc.

1: https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod

I'd love to, but how? I don't see installation instructions or even a download link there. The site is so full of link bars, toolbars and sidebars that I might easily be missing the link, though.

click on files right below "released 2004" and scroll down to the files. might want to get one of the popular ones (right sidebar)

but you are right, the UI is quite horrible

When the Orange Box came out, it broke many mods, SMOD being one of them. I believe this version should work with the current HL2 version distributed by Steam:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod/downloads/smod-40a-piped

Seconded, SMOD is a blast if you're looking for an arcade-y experience.

Not including Opposing Force and Blue Shift. I guess we can't get our hopes up about Adrian Shephard being awoken to be Alyx's first sidekick, or anything like that.

Does Valve actually own them? AFAIK at least one of them was developed by a different company.

Both were by Gearbox, IIRC, probably best known recently for the Borderlands series.

Not mentioned in the announcement, but in fact both are also included in the "FREE to play" promo.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/50/HalfLife_Opposing_Forc...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/130/HalfLife_Blue_Shift/

Half Life 1 & 2 are still flagged as not compatible with Catalina, though I think there are a few games flagged as such which actually run

Ugh. This is why I won't be moving past Mojave.

Doesn't Proton ("Steam Play") work on Mac OS?

Keyword "Catalina". It works just fine on non-Catalina MacOS.

Cities Skylines for example. Funny enough it's available only as 64 bit, but Steam says won't work on Catalina.

Oh boy, I'm excited that the chain of events around this might also move CSGO closer to finally being ported to the Source 2 engine... :D

I run a yearly Halfvember (Novembda?) playthrough event of these games with friends/co-workers because they're such great games. Highly recommend playing through, if you've not yet done so.

And if you have, I recommend the aforementioned Black Mesa edition of Half-Life, as well as the Community Edition of Half-Life 2.

I play HL1/HL2 every 4 years or so since they came out. I still haven't finished HL2 Episode 2 though :(

I can't find anything about "Community Edition of Half-Life 2", what is that?

EDIT: Maybe you mean "HL2 Update"? ... https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/27/8302337/half-life-2-update...

There is also the "HL2 Cinematic Mod" but that looks ridiculous (pretty much a scantily dressed Alyx) ... https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/FakeFactory%27s_Cinema...

Yeah, the HL2 Update was what I meant. I think I've heard it referenced as 'Community Edition' due to it's inclusion of the community commentary.

now free -> free for now

Does anyone know what is the difference between "Half-Life 2" and "Half-Life 2: Episode One"?

Did they start counting from zero or is the latter a subset of the former?

If they use a zero-index numeral system, then Valve does count to 3...?

Episode 1 is continuation of the story started in Half Life 2. There's a follow up, Episode 2 as well.

Play them in order: HL2, HL2 EP1, HL2 EP2.

Valve experimented with episodic games with half life. The idea was to release small, couple hour episodes as a continuation of the story frequently, instead of waiting a long time to make a half life 3.

Clearly that didn't happen.

What you need to know is that it's more campaign for half life 2. If HL2 is a movie, episode one is the first episode of the TV show. Smaller, but still good.

Half-Life 2: Episode One is a direct continuation of the story of Half-Life 2. Similarly, HL2: Episode Two continues where Episode One leaves off.

Valve originally planned on releasing a series of episodic entries in the HL series, two per year if I remember correctly. However they were never able to meet this schedule.

They missed having an actual half-life release schedule by 4 years :-/

1998 HL -> 2004 HL2 (6 years) -> 2020 HL3 (16 years)

At least improvements in VR tech might make overlook that...

HL Alyx is not a HL3 though, it is a prequel.

True, but regardless it's too late. I'd just accepted Alyx as the third major installment of Half-Life, that's really what I meant.

Technically there were the episode releases too, and so it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. I just liked the idea that they released one full game on schedule befitting the name.

I'm not a huge gamer but, for some reason, I have purchased the HL2 series like 5 times in the past 15+ years.

Do they work under Linux?

HL1 has a native Linux version, HL2 works with Proton.

Edit: As cosarara correctly points out, HL2 also runs natively.

HL2 works natively too.

For some reason only Windows and OS X are listed on the HL2 Steam store page. But you're right of course, HL2 runs natively too.

Some games seem to use Steamplay automatically. For example, I was able to install and run the old Star Wars Battelfront 2 on Linux without doing anything while I had to grab Proton to run other games

What do you mean with "grab Proton"? By default Steam only uses Proton for games where it was tested to work but there's a setting to enable it for all that aren't available natively.

You can also force it to use Proton when a native version does exist which is useful for bad ports.

I think I had to grab a specific version for a game

I haven't tried, but they almost certainly do. CSGO works under Linux, and HL2 uses the same engine.

Generally yes, I only wish the VR mods¹ worked on Linux.

1: https://old.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/egccp8/valv...

All valve games (except maybe ricochet) have native linux support.

Yes, I played all Portal and HL+HL2 episodes natively from Steam in ArchLinux

I can't find it in Steam for free -does anyone have a specific link to the Steam store somehow? There are a lot of fan-made versions which are Free, but that's not what this is about is it?

There are links to each game in the post.

As some of the other comments have noted, this is like a free-to-play weekend, but longer. It does not appear that you can associate it with your account for free.

I was surprised that I don't already own Half-Life on Steam. I have the Orange Box, but I guess I only have boxed copies of the older games and expansions.

Just wanted to remind folks here that Half-Life is the game that single handedly popularized the entire genre of First Person Shooter (FPS). That in itself is a big achievement but the game is much more than that with its intricate puzzle style with giving minimum instructions to the player and let the player figure out things.

Edit: OK...I see folks reminding me about other classic FPS games that came before HL but I was too young when those games came out so my first FPS experience was with HL. Also by the time I started playing video games those games were too old graphics-wise to entice me to play. But fair point!

Quake? Doom? Wolfenstein 3D?

....how f'ing old am I? Do people seriously not remember Doom!? And that FPS's used to be called Doom Clones!? GET OFF MY LAWN!

Hey, at least he didn't say Halo. (rimshot)

My video game history isn't all that great, but... what? Wolfenstein 3D (1992)? Doom (1993)? Quake (1996)?

Bungie's Marathon series arguably had a story line.

Unreal also came out before HL in 1998. And I think it looks, plays, and sounds better. The only things HL does better is scripted storytelling and realism.

Unreal is a game I enjoy today and will probably play again sometime this year; HL's linear scripting is something I only need to see once, and its realism hasn't aged so well.

> Just wanted to remind folks here that Half-Life is the game that single handedly popularized the entire genre of First Person Shooter (FPS)

I think you're forgetting a few titles...

It's more accurate to say that HL popularised story driven FPS games, before that we had plenty of FP arena shooters with no real storytelling.

GoldenEye 007 for N64 came out the year before HL and was pretty popular and had a good campaign mode.

"Firsts" are often a bit fuzzy.

There was also Unreal, but its story delivery was almost entirely through datapads you would pick up and read.

Seriously? Kids these days... :) All hail to the #1 FPS development powerhouse of the 90s: id Software/John Carmack. Hail!

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