Gloop898
3 reviews liked by Gloop898
Chibi-Robo!
2005
would you make your chibi-robo serve divorce papers to your dumbass husband?
MultiVersus
2022
my original review was just a beta, so i've decided to take it down
Half-Life
1998
A trailblazer in the cinematic, story-driven style of FPS, Half-Life accomplished a lot of new things in a compelling wrapper, but perhaps at the cost of having just-barely-serviceable gameplay.
Half-Life is maybe a sort of platformer, but without the physics and controls in place to make half of the precision jumping reasonable.
Half-Life is maybe of tactical shooter, but with an array of tools that can feel useless against highly bullet-spongey enemies.
Half-Life is maybe a focused and linear cinematic rollercoaster, but with endless trial-and-error encounters and cheap shots.
Practically birthing a new trend of how FPS games were made, Half-Life occupies a strange space of being distinctly different from the likes of Quake and certainly the Doom era of games, but hasn't quite locked down the best practices for the subgenre of games it would kickstart. This is hard to fault Half-Life for, but I can't help but feel many of its shortcomings could have been avoided by trimming much of the fat.
The best of Half-Life's offerings all come with an asterisk. Enemy AI is certainly smart, but it's not very much fun to fight against. The FPS formula is mixed up to provide some variety, but many of its puzzles outstay their welcome. The game's scripted moments and queues are all fairly memorable, but often hampered by a slew of technical glitches and goofs - Worse, the effects of these moments are diminished by the need to constantly save and load when the game is eventually unfair or just breaks beyond repair.
The reputation of Xen precedes itself, and it is in fact the lowest point of Half-life - A shame for the climax of any game - But I feel all of Half-Life's worst habits and bad practices really start to manifest in irritating fashion by the second half of the Surface Tension chapter.
At it's core, Half-Life was probably the first FPS game to feel like a playable pulp action hero movie - Maybe less Total Recall power fantasy and more Die Hard vulnerable tension - And it does so with a great sense of style and atmosphere. But to say it's rough around the edges and slightly overlong is an understatement.
Half-Life is maybe a sort of platformer, but without the physics and controls in place to make half of the precision jumping reasonable.
Half-Life is maybe of tactical shooter, but with an array of tools that can feel useless against highly bullet-spongey enemies.
Half-Life is maybe a focused and linear cinematic rollercoaster, but with endless trial-and-error encounters and cheap shots.
Practically birthing a new trend of how FPS games were made, Half-Life occupies a strange space of being distinctly different from the likes of Quake and certainly the Doom era of games, but hasn't quite locked down the best practices for the subgenre of games it would kickstart. This is hard to fault Half-Life for, but I can't help but feel many of its shortcomings could have been avoided by trimming much of the fat.
The best of Half-Life's offerings all come with an asterisk. Enemy AI is certainly smart, but it's not very much fun to fight against. The FPS formula is mixed up to provide some variety, but many of its puzzles outstay their welcome. The game's scripted moments and queues are all fairly memorable, but often hampered by a slew of technical glitches and goofs - Worse, the effects of these moments are diminished by the need to constantly save and load when the game is eventually unfair or just breaks beyond repair.
The reputation of Xen precedes itself, and it is in fact the lowest point of Half-life - A shame for the climax of any game - But I feel all of Half-Life's worst habits and bad practices really start to manifest in irritating fashion by the second half of the Surface Tension chapter.
At it's core, Half-Life was probably the first FPS game to feel like a playable pulp action hero movie - Maybe less Total Recall power fantasy and more Die Hard vulnerable tension - And it does so with a great sense of style and atmosphere. But to say it's rough around the edges and slightly overlong is an understatement.