I don’t understand the hate for the combat in HL1 and 2. Their gunplay feels really solid, especially in Half-Life 2 which doesn’t have much in the way of bullet sponginess (with the exception of the pistol).
The vast majority of shooters seem to have inferior gunplay to the HL games, usually with either piss weak guns, dumb enemies, insanely low time-to-kill mechanics that ruin any sense of tactics, or all of the above.
Other than that, I agree some of the areas were probably reworked just a little too much. I kind of miss On a Rail
I don’t entirely agree with Gggmanlives’ assessment of Half-Life 1’s shooting, but I can see his points. Depending on level design, enemy placement, item placement, and amount of ammunition, a fight with a horde of human grunts would either play terribly or work well. I’ve encountered some HL1 mods which made the stakes even harder against human enemies by limiting your ammo and health pickups.
I think some of the problems some players have with Half-Life 1 may be due to them being used to the Steam version, not the original retail CD or the Game of the Year version. Some of the shooting and movement works better in those versions than the one on Steam.
As for Half-Life 2, in comparison to Half-Life 1, the shooting is hit or miss at times. By taking out the autorun, implementing a limited sprint system which shares your flashlight power, and implementing enemies that are harder to aim at and shoot accurately (depending on enemy types, the number of enemies, and enemy placements), it can feel more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that gameplay was implemented intentionally to make the stakes of survival more serious, but then again, it kind of harkens back to Gggman’s point about the level designers overthinking the level design of HL2 to make it feel like your situation is hopeless. Half-Life 2 doesn’t need to have problems with the sprint mechanic, because there are some games which utilize the sprint system and still feel satisfying, like System Shock or Outlaws.
With Black Mesa, I agree that the layout of the levels were reworked in a way that it messed with much of HL1’s gameplay. It’s also distracting to have the human enemies mess with your vision when they shoot at you. While I’m impressed with a lot of the perks and extras Black Mesa added to Half-Life, I still feel like there were plenty of missed opportunities in how to pull it off. On the plus side, the reworkings of the Hive Hand and the Gluon Gun work very well.
How would I improve Black Mesa for myself? If I ever learned how to mod the Source engine, I’d want to experiment with Black Mesa to see what can be or can’t be done.