The original Half-Life is for lack of a better term, a classic. A staple in the genre that has pretty much stood the test of time as well as some of the games around this decade introducing the full, free and swift player control seen in games like 1996's Quake applied to a much more methodical and linear campaign with a much more refined weapon arsenal that you can take advantage of, new movement options, and much more tactical options (such as sneaking to your opponent or peeking past a wall), while also showing the first hints at how Valve started developing their storytelling in the Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead games from here on now.
Being set in a 2000's facility in New Mexico as you're tasked with doing a very questionable experiment with a sample from another world, then it all going south at the end of it makes for a really cool setting. Most of the time you're going in the ins and outs of the facility doing all sorts of platforming, going through literal openings in cogs underwater as you try to get to the surface, only to be faced with the government sending in military forces to kill off everyone so there's no witnesses, and then sending in black ops agents to kill off those military forces. As you scavenge your way through the facility you get to notice more and more how otherworldly beings take over and in the surface levels is pretty much a turf war between Xenians and humans practically setting in how much of a necessity it is for Gordon Freeman to reach Lambda Complex to seal off the world beyond to stop the invasion. Pretty simple plot but it's something a lot of people take for granted from this game, because not a lot of it really makes you think of it besides "oh damn, that is a giant ass alien that I haven't seen before". This would result in the Valve way of telling stories in their video games as mentioned.
Half-Life is pretty good, practically revolutionary in the FPS world and a technological marvel that superseded its predecessor by a far mile, and as far as giving birth to a whole community of modders, artists, composers, offering the by then flexible GoldSrc engine able to be modded by anyone to make their own creations. And is personally a game that I enjoy a lot myself having been accompanied by it for a long time.
Only real complaint I would have this time around is that I played on Hard difficulty and damn those enemies just take bullets like crazy and never go down, and then being sub-50 health at all times making you not be able to tank or sustain any damage at all is hell too. Also, Xen wasn't all that bad, everyone's exaggerating.
Being set in a 2000's facility in New Mexico as you're tasked with doing a very questionable experiment with a sample from another world, then it all going south at the end of it makes for a really cool setting. Most of the time you're going in the ins and outs of the facility doing all sorts of platforming, going through literal openings in cogs underwater as you try to get to the surface, only to be faced with the government sending in military forces to kill off everyone so there's no witnesses, and then sending in black ops agents to kill off those military forces. As you scavenge your way through the facility you get to notice more and more how otherworldly beings take over and in the surface levels is pretty much a turf war between Xenians and humans practically setting in how much of a necessity it is for Gordon Freeman to reach Lambda Complex to seal off the world beyond to stop the invasion. Pretty simple plot but it's something a lot of people take for granted from this game, because not a lot of it really makes you think of it besides "oh damn, that is a giant ass alien that I haven't seen before". This would result in the Valve way of telling stories in their video games as mentioned.
Half-Life is pretty good, practically revolutionary in the FPS world and a technological marvel that superseded its predecessor by a far mile, and as far as giving birth to a whole community of modders, artists, composers, offering the by then flexible GoldSrc engine able to be modded by anyone to make their own creations. And is personally a game that I enjoy a lot myself having been accompanied by it for a long time.
Only real complaint I would have this time around is that I played on Hard difficulty and damn those enemies just take bullets like crazy and never go down, and then being sub-50 health at all times making you not be able to tank or sustain any damage at all is hell too. Also, Xen wasn't all that bad, everyone's exaggerating.