HL: overrated or not, aka. HL3 the savior or a failure?

Half-Life Series
#201

I would like portable medkits, hell maybe even as a toggleable option you could have it so if you have stored medkits and your health drops below 10 it would automatically use one (kinda like Duke3D), though that would probably be forced off on harder difficulties.

Also, why do people assume because I want mantling in HL that means I want full on parkour? There are plenty of FPS games with mantling, and they don’t even have visible animations for it and it works fine, it’s just something to make platforming more fun.

#202

And some assurance that your invisible legs won’t get caught on an important jump.

#203

Mantling? As in ‘press A to vault over wall’ ? No way in hell. How could that ever improve a game like Half-Life? An arcade shooter?

As for portable medkits, they’d have to really change the challenge, pacing and ability of enemies if you’ve got health on you at practically all times.
Where would be the tension in a Half-Life game if you had instant health at the push of a button? I just can’t see how they could do it well.

Anyway. No Half-Life is not overrated. It practically redefined what shooters were supposed to be about and has consistently set the bar for practically everything incorporated into shooters since. Both it and its sequels are in the top games of all time, and it as a series, with what it did for the time and still does today is overall unsurpassed by any other to date.

#204

I am legitimately baffled as to why you wouldn’t want a feature that makes first-person platforming - that half-life has - more fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=idLklBc0Tyo#t=713s

Press ‘A’ to vault over a wall =/= mantling. Just because certain games have pre-defined climbing spots with slow animations doesn’t mean Half-Life has to do it that way.

Thief, Dark Messiah, Unreal 2, Duke3D (with the DukePlus mod), and System Shock 2 all have mantling without even having animations for it, and it literally less then a second to complete the action in Unreal 2, SS2, the Duke3d mod, and Thief. If it can work in Duke3D, which is infinitely more arcadey then HL, it can work in HL.

#205

Mantling does sound nice, but isn’t that pretty much what crouch-jumping is already?

#206

Mantling is climbing, crouch-jumping is tucking your legs in so you can make a higher jump.

They aren’t quite the same, while they do help in similar situations, mantling allows you to reach anything that would realistically be in grabbing reach of your character, so if you were to miss a jump and hit a wall, you’d be able to grab the ledge and pull yourself up.

It prevents issues like a player barely misjudging a jump, where without it his bounding box would prevent him from making the jump even if he was literally a single unit too low for something like a crouch jump to work.

#207

NO ONE FUCKING SAID THAT.
STOP THINKING THAT’S WHAT MANTLING IS.
THAT’S NOT WHAT FUCKING MANTLING IS.

MANTLING IS NOT PARKOUR.
IT’S NOT A CONTEXT SENSITIVE ALTERNATIVE TO JUMPING.

IT’S FUCKING MANTLING.

#208

Apparently, Gabe says this in: “…It does create sort of a peculiar pathway to some of are things so…
We go do Richochet and everybody’s like Where’s the sequel? And we’re like We can’t figure out how to make it better its kinda perfect the way it is so how could we possibly ever do Richochet 2?”
https://ec.libsyn.com/p/0/b/4/0b4b1d9440ed5292/Nerdist_307_-Gabe_Newell__Valve-_The_Company.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01cd8f37d6c155fd2e&c_id=5303248
Dunno if true, someone check it please. If so, then I don’t know if I should start laughing now or what.
EDIT: either Gabe has spelling problems, or there are some typos, just quoting a post from steamforums.

#209

Tl;dr but just this: you’re looking at HL1 from the 2013, back in 1999 it had a very deep plot for an fps. Mind that 1999 was the era where the game’s plot where written on the manual, or told through 0:30/2:00 minutes of low resolution movie, and most of times they didn’t even make any sense if not “we’ve this and that.”.

Valve changed this with half life. And their ultimate conquest is portal, which opens a new genre in the fps, where the characters are described and detailed in every smallest fraction of their personalities.
Not that I liked Portal much.
Just my $0.02.

#210

Did you see the QUESTION MARK after my sentence? Does that imply I’m QUESTIONING WHAT YOU MEAN? Do you want to get the FUCK OVER YOURSELF and stop getting riled up about SOMETHING THAT ISN’T IMPORTANT BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION? Good LORD.

Sorry I must have left my ‘gaming definitions’ thesaurus back in… OH WAIT NO THERE ISN’T SUCH A THING BECAUSE MANTLING IS USED TO DESCRIBE PLENTY OF SIMILAR SHIT.

Regardless, I’d still disagree. What possible point could it serve? Oh we can put these jumps you need to get to SLIGHTLY HIGHER. We can slow down the platforming elements of the game and potentially have times where you can’t shoot whilst getting shot at. Fuck yes!

#211

Actually I’d take Portal 2 quality narrative in HL3 with all ten, hopefully they won’t disappoint me.

#212

while surffing the web HL3 related

575×642 190 KB

900×746 1.22 MB

i found this in a recent steam forums thread, one of the mods stated this…

“Source 2 will have a new SDK and every tool will interface with the Workshop, so we can find maps, mods, models, presets, frameworks, scripts, etc. We’ll start seeing more, larger, and higher quality Source 2 mods on Steam.
The map editor will be as friendly as the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker, but will have features found in your more robust editors (like Hammer).
Inspired by Skyrim’s 11 month reveal-to-release strategy, Half-Life 3 will be officially announced in an ARG and released later in the year.
OpenGL is faster than DirectX, according to Valve, so Source 2 will be OpenGL first, DX second. They will throw out the BSP format and the engine will use the sparse voxel octree data structure.”

#213

I don’t need to know Russian to understand, that explains the delay lol.

#214

Portable medkits. Even if it’s just one or two. Gordon has more than enough space for all those guns and ammo, he should have room for at least one medkit.

Being able to use meds on allies might be nice.

On the note of meds you shoud be able to hold onto at least one or two extra batteries.

You should be able to turn the suit shielding on and off at whim, so you could save it for when it’s more necessary. Taking a couple of bullets here and there full force isn’t too bad if you’re saving shielding for something explosive up ahead.

More types of weapons, more ‘SCIENCE!’ (read: experimental hi-tech) weapons, and a return of the organic ones-and introduction of some new ones.

Many Combine stuffs seems to be cyborg/biomechanical so this wouldn’t be hard to do, and would be so cool. I loved the snarks and hivehand, and would love to see some more things in that vein.

Holding things in one hand and shooting with the other is a cool idea.
So is grabbing ledges-if it’s done right. Though not first person view Megman Legends has ledge grabbing (and a rather fast ‘pull-up’ animation) and it’s damn useful.

Some type of ‘wait’ and ‘out of my way’ commands when leading squads so they aren’t in your way as much, and you can prevent them from killing themselves to an extent.

Better aiming system for grenades.
I think the way grenades are dealt with in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker would work very well for half-life. It shows the trajectory of the grenade before you throw it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=tPV3pwTrPv8#t=111s

RE: warpedfreeman
Indiana Jones!! :smiley: LOL

#215

On the whole portable medkit thing, I think there should be a whole inventory screen in general, like here for example.
I’d like for there to be a limit as to what Gordan can carry, carrying 10+ weapons of varying sizes is a bit too old school which, while that isn’t a bad thing, I think that limited inventory can increase the challenge of the game. I’d also like heavy weapons to put a strain on the player, so say Gordon has an RPG, he should move rather slow, and maybe a holster/un-holster button as well. I’ll want to have the option to have allies follow me, rather than them just tagging along when I really don’t want them to.

As for the game’s atmosphere, I’d like for it to be really dark, scary, and depressing. More violence, more darkness, more negativity…and more bad words :smiley:
Also, I’d like for it if they did a small redesign on the Combine soldiers, make them look more soldier-like, with ammo-bags, realistic armor, etc, and maybe give their voices a bit more life. Oh, and have the G-man fuck around with Gordon’s head a bit from time to time, like how Alma does to the Point-Man in FEAR.

#216

Fuck no

#217

Yes, because more darker and edgier is exactly what the world needs.

#218

Christ, all I’m saying is that I think the series could be darker than it already is, which it’s pretty dark already, but still. I’m not saying that somehow that’ll make the game better all by itself, because theirs obviously more to it than that, but I think that giving the game more darker tones will make a much more profound effect on the player and make them feel alone, with no real hope, which will suit the game nicely, as that’s already a big theme in Half-Life.

#219

Original HL2 was dark… sure HL2 has “dark” atmosphere, but combine that with the “funny” dialogue and it loses consistency.

#220

It doesn’t lose consistency :expressionless: It’s called variation. An entire 10+ hour game that is nothing but dark, gritty and depressing wouldn’t be very fun to play.

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