the further i get in HL1 the more i actually sort of hate this. There have been multiple times in Surface Tension where i just burst into a shower of drumsticks and livers and had no clue why
Hoo boy, people shit on xen but i totally forgot how much the game wears out its welcome by the time you even get there. Surface Tension was half as long in my mind and everything between it and Xen was collapsed into a shorter sequence of events, but you actually do a bunch of backtracking and looping around destroyed buildings and water pumps and stuff while fighting too many aliens that take too many hits to kill. Itâs not really very fun! Xen is at least cool looking enough that i can enjoy noclipping through it
noclip and godmode are the only way i ever kill the last boss too. fuck that guy
Xen is way too long but I love that thereâs a weird alien meat-packing facility in it
The sharp damage falloff with distance on explosions just ends up making them feel random and capricious - itâs hard for a player to understand where they were in space next to an explosive, so itâs hard to put together the consequences, especially when they can be as obnoxious as âreload your saveâ. Better to make the noise volume and flash intensity falloff realistic, but even then, I usually prefer longer (non-exponential) volume falloffs for things like explosions, because they have gameplay consequences.
My final thought on HL1 going into 2 is that the tram ride at the beginning of 1 is a perfect metaphor for the rest of the game: about 25% too long! Wah-wahhh
meanwhile, âPoint Insertionâ is about as long as the ride and Gordonâs trip to the tesst chamberrr put together, and i know everyone and their mother has blabbed about how itâs a masterclass in video game scene-setting and world building, but, uhhhh⌠it is that! When i replay HL1 i think âwow Black Mesa sure is deep down there. Like, really really deep. Reeeeaaally deeeeep ok iâm gonna go take a pissâ whereas for basically the whole first 20 minutes of HL2 iâm like aww shit, here we go again. i love this game, i always forget how much until iâm up in it
Somehow this is the first time i realized that the cops are flipping out and busting down doors right when you get there not because FREEMANâS HERE â thatâs not until the teleporter accident â but simply because your presence meant there was a miscount.
And itâs amazing how much i hated the vehicle levels my first time vs how much ass i think they kick now. Like âHighway 17â might be flat out my favorite level?
Broco mentioned this upthread but yeah the quiet, forlorn coast stuff is probably the strongest in the game
Iâd be really really happy if Valve ported Half-Life 2 to an engine that could load one zone in advance and ditch the room-by-room nature of the coast and underpromise of the car.
When I first played it through it just repeated the last half-second of the audio buffer for the entire minute-plus of every load screen ever few minutes, which may have made me more anxious about their load structure than others.
Oh yeah I made this:
I love the tram ride in HL1 for the same reason I loved picking up garbage in No More Heroes. Games should strive for boring the player more often? I dunno.
ehhh. If youâre going to purposefully induce boredom in me with your video game you had better do it extremely tactically
i thought the tram ride was cool exactly once. and even then, at about the 2nd load screen i was like âOK, i get it alreadyâ
I donât think the tram ride is boring at all. it establishes atmosphere, thereâs some neat foreshadowing about the kinds of environments and hazards youâre going to be facing, and there are plenty of entertaining things to see on the way. :marge simpson voice: I just think itâs neat
The tram ride was also a major graphics showcase.
Sure i agree with all that, i just think it goes on too long.
thereâs some cool shit but thereâs also like 2 separate parts where the tram stops to let some shipping crates pass lol
Also a scripting showcase.
âWhoaaah look at this we have NPCs walking around and talking. Itâs like an animotronics show in your FPS!â
yeah itâs like uhhhhh immersive
(youâre definitely right, like by todayâs standards itâs bloated and self-indulgent but I still love it because itâs still 1998 in a cold dark corner of my heart)
iâll drag HL2 for a lot of stuff but the sound design is A+++
The pickup sounds for health and battery packs are way up there for video game sounds that could induce a Pavlovian reaction in me
VastleCania how do you feel about Viceral Cleanup games? I went âthis is neatâ to very very bored in about 5 minutes as it was a literal lawnmower simulator.
viscera cleanup is great with a group. Iâd go as far as to say thatâs the only time itâs actually a game
Itâs kinda like Twister