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Comment by gxd | Hacker News Reader

One of the saddest things in my gamer resume is that I was never able to get into Half-Life. I can absolutely see what everybody likes in the game - both technically and in terms of gameplay. But I was never into its uneven pace when compared to Doom, not even back in the day. I always felt that the game couldn't decide whether it was a shooter or a puzzle-adventure, what the article refers to as "friction".

The Orange Box console versions also suffered from a non-adjustable field of view that made me feel sick after a few minutes of playing.

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> I always felt that the game couldn't decide whether it was a shooter or a puzzle-adventure

I think I remember reading an interview with the dev team where they explained that playing action for too long was boring, as well as solving puzzles, so they consciously designed the game with interleaved phases of action/puzzle. Your recompense for solving a puzzle is action, and your recompense for killing all the bad guys is a relaxing puzzle.

It's funny you didn't liked that, because for me it was the complete opposite. I like pure action shooters, and I like pure puzzle adventure games, but I really loved Half-Life and I didn't know why until I read that explanation.

It’s a long time ago now so my recollection is likely very flawed, but with HL I didn’t like the feeling of a created path that must be followed, irrespective how of the interleaving of different aspects. There are lots of modern games like this too - which on the face of it are relatively open-world, but underneath the apparent freedom there’s a strict path to find and follow for success. (I’d definitely include one of the modern Doom games —I forget which it was I tried— in this category, - it was so linear that it felt but one step removed from the old-fashioned shooters where you’re literally on a conveyor belt and shoot whatever appears.)

In the original Doom, in contrast, the only requirement was to make it to the end of the level, figuring out the map and puzzles along the way. Anything else (did you chase 100% kill and 100% secrets?) was optional. I guess it just felt more… honest?

I did not mind this linearity in Half-Life, because the story was engaging. You wanted to know what happened next. And I found the enemies did had some advanced "AI" for that time; like the first time the commandos came was a big moment. They were nothing like the enemies you had seen in other games.

Well in HL2 there were a lot of puzzles to show off their new Havok physics engine

I played through the single player, but like you I think I preferred doom.

That said, half-life mods were imo the golden age of gaming. Vampire slayer let you scare the shit out of your friends at 3am in a LAN. Day of defeat and firearms were the cod and mw of the day. Natural Selection crushed it in terms of fps/RTS hybrid, teamplay and overall quality and polish. Science & industry? Pirates Vikings & knights? Tfc? Several attempts at matrix mods & the opera. So much amazing diversity - it's such a shame that CS (the most banal, vanilla, milquetoast game ever) got all the mindshare. Even when CS ventured into making things more interesting/diverse (hostage rescue, shield, etc.) those things seem to have died off back to the 'standard' game mode (80% of players dead and spectating while "the bomb has been planted" sound effect plays).

I deeply miss Science and Industry. Half life is still being modded these days just isn't as popular. Jollywangcore features some of the single player mods

Jolly's Hardcore Mod is still one of my favourite youtube videos -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL8rxqodeRI

Let's not forget Action Half Life.

The variety sometimes meant you only played your favorite mod a few times at the LAN parties. Because people had so many other things to play as the 90s and early aughts progressed.

AHL was great, but The Specialists was GOAT. Never felt more like a badass after disarming an opponent, hitting slow motion, and chucking a katana at their head while diving.

I disagree, the CS betas were great. I miss the as_ maps the most — sneaking away to victory as the VIP with all my teammates dead and seconds left on the clock.

At that time in 1998 I mostly played Q1/Q2 online and contemporaries wise I preferred Unreal and SiN over HL's single player experience. Also Unreal's graphics were just truly next level on the Voodoo2 vs anything else. HL DM at LAN parties was surprisingly good and a bit overlooked though; the beginning of the game until the dimensional rift was definitely fun. What stood out the most to me was the soldier AI actually. I always felt the series was a bit hyped but I've come around as I returned to the games on my Steam Deck OLED last fall. In retrospect; clearly classics and the high praises were well earned after all. SDOLED apart from actual CRT setup is maybe the perfect way to experience it today IMO.

Of course DOOM is its own thing completely; a timeless distillation of the 80s - the arcade, Super Mario and D&D all astonishingly abstracted into an unreasonably blissful bleeding-edge hellscape; 93 till infinity.

SiN did have more character and tried some innovations of its own, but the gameplay needed a bit more polish. Bullets felt so slow you could run past them. JK/DF2 had this problem too.

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