I found myself using the pistol quite a bit in this game. It was my go to weapon in general mid/long-range skirmishes. All you gotta do is set your sights on a guy and then HAMMER the fire button. You can bet they’ll be down before you use a full clip (as opposed to the machine gun, which costs even MORE ammo on top of it!). It’s way more accurate then you may think, I’ve even used it in long range instead of the magnum or crossbow.
Soldiers are extremely threatening, but the damage they deal drops drastically at long range. mid-close range, you can expect to lose more than half your health easily from one to two guys. But keep heading back, and they’ll just nick you now and again. It’s a fair tradeoff for a guaranteed kill with a pistol (and a cheap cost, too.)
All this said, my favorite weapon is the shotgun. We all know it’s not so hot at long range, though.
WTF? I don’t get it. I pretty much disagree with the entire OP. I won’t spend the time to nit pick each of your complaints. But over all we are having vastly different experiences. This is Half-Life God Damn it. Have you forgotten what a grind HL was, and how we didn’t care because it was a story we got to live through Gordon. Just tweak the configs to your liking or use cheats. I have not found the need to do either of these. All I did was swap the Hive hand for the machine gun. No problem moving through the levels. WTF?
Zombies. INCREDIBLY easy to kill with crowbar… Just hit, back up, hit, back up. Really an 8 year old wouldnt even have trouble with this
Bullsquids are easy. Revolver,shotgun, or crossbow to the face.
Houndeyes. Same solution… Any shot to the face that isnt a pistol will easily dispatch these. Personally im glad that one weak ass whack from a crossbar doesn’t just destroy them because that would be stupid.
As for vorts. EVER heard of taking cover?
why dont you go bitch about how in call of duty people shoot too fast and aim too good.
The pistol is weak with each individual shot but the firing speed makes up for it so there really is no problem with any of the guns or weapons except for the MP5 which takes almost an entire clip to kill anything.
Actually pretty much everything in the OP is the exact opposite of my thoughts. I loved the changed, I think it made it harder and more challenging and concidering HL1 was far too easy on Hard I like having a bit more of a challenge now.
I might agree that alines are easier than the soldiers (vortigaunts included) but that does not mean fighting aliens is no longer fun, just that soldiers are a bit more of a problem.
I’ll give you one thing, the MP5 is almost completely useless. If I’m low on revolver + crossbow ammo my go to weapon for mid-high range is the pistol simply because the MP5 is utterly useless. It uses far far too much ammo and not dealing half as much damage as it should while the pistol is dead on accurate and delivers head shots in spades causing some considerable damage.
All other weapons are fine and do their job brilliantly.
I dislike most of the combat changes, other than the bullsquid. I think most of the changes just add difficulty without really adding much interesting strategy or tactics to the game and often limit them. Here’s a copy-paste from my review:
Yep i remember in original game vortiguans didnt have any problems with killing HECU units now they dont stand a chance.
With that said its kinda wierd that HECU would fail their mission xD
But i believe its something that will be fixed soon or in Xen update.
I, however, don’t like having a bit more challenge and I appreciated the original Half-Life because it wasn’t too hard. I’ve finished it on Hard. Once. It wasn’t a lick of fun. Too much worrying about health and ammo, too much shooting to whittle down large amounts of enemy health. Black Mesa is kind of like Half-Life on Hard, only I’m playing on Nromal. It’s like that, in the sense that it’s not so much “harder” as just more irritating. It’s still as doable, but it requires me to quick-load more and use up more ammo.
I am of the view that it is unforgiving when a single encounter, badly handled, will kill you. Certainly if you continously handle encounters badly you should die - but arranging the game so a single badly handled encounter kills you means the player is required to be perfect or nearly perfect in his play.
With regard to quicksaves, saving is a mechanism outside the game narrative. It should not be used to compensate for the game being unforgiving, because it takes the user out of the game.
Perhaps games should be balanced such that saving isn’t quite necessary.
I dislike the saving excuse as well. I’ve found that with each death and quick load, while I’m more likely to improve my tactics based on the meta-gamed knowledge gained (which is itself a problem - Gordon wouldn’t get any do-overs), I’m less likely to execute them well because I’m irritated, and I feel dramatically less like Gordon Freeman in Black Mesa than than a guy hammering on a keyboard and angrily staring at a computer screen. Buzz-kill. When it goes on too long, it inevitably ends with rage-quitting.
So yeah, it’s not like your game’s over when you die, thanks to saves, but your immersion level goes down the toilet by about the tenth time in a row. Hate that.
Perfection is only required of the player if they want to beat the game without dying, which seems fitting to me.
I don’t see what narrative has to do with anything. I see saving as a gameplay mechanic, personally. I don’t see how it takes one out of the game, considering it’s part of the game, but if you’re really worried about death breaking narrative immersion, you can always play on easy, and if that fails, there’s god mode.
I’d consider dying part of the game and therefore saving a necessity.
I’m not trying to be mean, but that’s what easy is for. Hell, look at a game like Deus Ex - Human revolution - they TELL you the easy difficulty is for people who want to experience the narrative. Some enemies on normal could be tweaked a little though.
I really have no Earthly clue how you’ve come to some of the thoughts you have, so I’ll just go through them one by one.
The crowbar is exactly how it’s always been. It’s great for headcrabs, zombies and barnacles - if you’re getting hit, that’s your fault. It’s fairly easy to kill dozens of these without taking a single hit. Houndeyes most certainly can be fought with it, even Vortigaunts, even on Hard - you’ll probably take a hit or two, but it kills them pretty fast. The Houndeye is fantastic now - it’s actually a threat. In the original it was little more than a nuisance; I love the change there.
I much prefer the glock, myself. It hasn’t been nerfed at all. It’s still has absolutely dead-on accuracy and downs most things with but a few headshots.
I can see your point here but I prefer the change, personally. I only tend to use it for long-range engagements, so the smaller clip size isn’t really a problem for me. I’m not a gun nut, but I don’t believe a 50-round magazine for an MP5 is standard. Regardless, if you’re charging into rooms unloading clips into HECU legs/chests, that there is your problem. It’s still more than capable of popping heads.
Simply not true. If you’re getting hit whilst meleeing them, you’re getting greedy with your swings.
Like I said, I think the Houndeye buff actually benefits the experience - especially the fact that they now attack in packs. It’s turned a fairly meek, pointless enemy into a real threat and I love that. I don’t want any hostile alien creature to feel like it’s merely there for show during the early levels.
Pistol, I actually agree. They are a bit too much of a bullet sponge for my liking. But they’re still easy to crowbar.
I hope you’re joking. These guys have been nerfed into oblivion. They do something pitiful like 10 damage per hit, even on Hard. Only their first shot is somewhat of a challenge to dodge (and even then, it’s quite easy if you’re right next to cover,) and then you can pop them before they get another chance because they die so fast. And the crotch piece is a part of their slave chains get up, just so you know.
Again, I hope you’re joking. These things only spit now, the acid barely does any damage unless you somehow manage to let yourself get hit by every globule of it, and on top of that, it’s incredibly easy to dodge and down. I think the only time one of these hit me on my last playthrough was the one that’s directly behind you when you pop out of the pipe in Blast Pit, because I forgot he was there.
Ah see, I never even got close enough to know that they still do that. The only way they can effectively tail whip you is by charging you to get close enough in the first place, so I’d definitely like to see that added at some point.
I miss charging bullsquid. I mean that was the whole purpose of the “bull” part, to charge at you like one.
Now they won’t melee unless you put yourself in that range. It’s quite sad.
I played Black Mesa the first time on easy. I even think easy is the default difficulty unless you pick something else. I had a blast. I did die on easy too but it never got frustrating. And I died just because I kept rushing some encounters. As soon as I stepped back and took an overview of the situation it never was a problem.
Play it on easy and stop complaining. That is what easy is for. I always play single player games on easy the first time around. I did play Medal of Honor Warfighter on Normal just because someone had said it was easy and I got about half through the campaign before I switched to easy.
Black Mesa is obviously a lot more difficult on Normal, so Hard is for those who really want to test their skills.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
