I actually had no idea it was Half-Life's anniversary. That recent Half-like video was a coincidence. Damn I wish I knew now, but hey next year will be 25 years. That'll be a great excuse for every one to flood the internet with Half-Life content.
I read this comment right when i started watching it and was expecting a really emotional experience and i find 2008 camera and mic quality video explaining the weapons of half life
it's so sweet to hear that there is someone else who also noticed that warm and calm location at the end of water hazard. i also stop by there, listen to wind chimes and sit on a dirty mattress, just for a bit, to live the moment
Definitely a cool spot. I also enjoy the abandoned houses in Highway 17 and Sand Traps. The seagulls and the breeze really compliment the open lonely feel.
Ratlobber keeps calling my house trying to get me to “half my life”. Not to mention this undulating high-pitched whine in the background that makes my nose bleed. How do I stop this from happening?
I'll never forget the day my uncle bought the PS2 version of HL and showed my young sister and I the game. We cackled with the crowbar beating on things. Great memories and it started my path on the HL gaming world
Should've invited me :( I remember playing Half-Life for the first time when I was 3 (Born in 2001) because of my Dad who introduced me to Half-Life and gaming. To this day it's my favorite game, franchise and obsession. It's my "Life" literally. Happy 24th. Good video too!
My earliest memory of Half Life is the opening section of Opposing Force. The headcrab zombie in the MRI machine who gets up and smashes a window absolutely terrified me
I grew up in the 90's playing things like Doom and Quake, and when Half-Life came out, it felt like the difference between watching a silly exaggerated action movie like Total Recall or Demolition Man versus something grounded and serious like Dirty Harry or No Country For Old Men. Half-Life probably seems extremely primitive and cartoonish to younger gamers looking at it now, but back in the day, its commitment to a constant sense of realism made it shocking, unique, and gritty as fuck. It felt like you were in real danger in a real world that didn't give a fuck whether you lived or died. The little touches helped sell the illusion: the minimalistic HUD, the sound effects being programmed to have more intense echoes in larger environments, how dead-serious the game was about gravity and fall damage, the amazing blood and gore effects, and the characters actually moving their mouths when they talked instead of just bobbing their heads up and down, which until then I had assumed was just an impossible thing to do in a 3D game. There had never been _anything_ like Half-Life before.
I'm lucky enough to have played the original when it came out. My brother told me about this amazing game that looks so realistic and hyped it up a lot. I remember it being really hard at the time because I was a tiny kid but it was so much fun. The Xen levels gave me crazy vibes with the weird ambiance. I still get crazy feels hearing it now. It's crazy how well the games have held up. I still play them and Black Mesa probably 1000+ hrs a year trying to perfect runs and just having a good time.
oh boy half-life 2, second pirated game i played with my cousin, i remember being amazed as i have never seen a game like that before, i only knew cod and battlefield but in those summer moments the look of the source engine forever burned into my memories, Alyx was probably the first woman i saw in any media that wasnt just helpless (i was young ok?)
in half life 1 the black mesa facility feels like an incredibly cozy place. and half life 2 feels like an endless summer camp whcih is also cozy. and the soundtrack is amazingly alien
@@stoodle511 I don't know I wasn't even born yet. If I had to guess, maybe 12 or 13. Mainly because they had a system in place to whoever got 12 kills first they would move on to the next map. 12 maps, 12 kills. For the tournament, the person in last place would be kicked out and slowly be a 1v1. That's just my guess though I'll have to check in with my dad on that
Oh boy, time for a big bit of history on my part. I first saw the game's desktop app on the screen when one of my folks wasn't in the middle of playing Counter Strike 1.5 and I got curious, wanting to try this game. Half-Life 1 is memorable for me starting my days as a PC gamer back in 2001 when I was a little kid. Because of the theme at the time back then with a lot of games with not much in the way of stories, or were mostly just about generic, big, muscle military men just going around gunning and running non-stop, little me at the time expected it might be just one of those games, but it wasn't. I also didn't pay much attention to the text at the time when it listed things like the people involved and even Gordon Freeman's name, age, and his major. Because of this, I was always confused about why I was called "Gordon" or "Freeman", depending on the NPC. Admittedly I hated reading back then, so it's why written stuff flew over my head back then. For me, the concept of a simple, nerdy scientist that goes to work, does what needs to be done, then go home, repeat was a bit surprising for me to see Gordon adapt to survive, using what he can get his hands on to fend off against the Xen creatures. Ah, I remember getting stuck on "Blast Pit" back then, too. Couldn't figure it out until a few years later. (Lost the save file at some point, so had to start all the way back.) Eventually it clicked in my head that yes, Gordon wasn't some generic big muscle military dude with the infinite knowledge of how to use almost any weapon, but he's just simply a scientist, a civilian who's never probably handled a weapon in his entire life. I loved the free exploration, and the rewards you'd get from taking the time to explore. The storytelling by just simply progressing as you advance, surviving against both Xen creatures and later the HECU and Black Ops. (I admit, I was confused about why they wanted to kill us rather than save us, as I'd hear about the scientist say they've come to rescue everyone. 'n The Black Ops even confused me the most, too.) I've replayed it a few times, just because of how fun it was, and the memories would call me back maybe once a year, lol. Half-Life 2 I never heard about until maybe when I saw some weird flash animations. Never really clicked with me that it existed until maybe a year later after it's release...? Memory's fuzzy here. I won't lie that the concept really confused me, and then I thought back to the very end of the 1st game. I smiled when I ran into Barney, and heard him say "About that beer I owed ya." I was giddy, and then seeing Kleiner and I was just in love. Of course I was a bit older this time so I didn't skip through stuff or didn't pay attention like back with the first game. I think after beating this, I quickly picked up on Episode 1 and 2 pretty quickly than the others, and I was delighted for more. ...Of course, when there was nothing coming out, I still hoped for more until eventually years later, I just let go, believing that it was more healthy to not latch on for eternity, 'n I just moved on to other games. Half-Life did encourage me to target games with stories attached to them, I never liked storyless games that just throw you in without explanation, but that's just personally me. It did also sort of inspired me to do a bit of writing as a hobby. (I'm not very good, but it's fun.) 'n There's my childhood history with the Half-Life games. I'm also fully aware Half-Life: Alyx existed, but alas, I just resorted to watching a longplay since I don't own a VR headset. *Shrugs.*
This is a game that I have grown up with - this was the new big thing when I was at school. I remember spending many an hour at the Scientist Killing Club - I'm not sure why, but that seemed to be a constant source of entertainment to me.
The Half-Life series (and Valve's catalogue in general) gave me some great memories and shaped my love for video game design. It also showed me how important a community is to the longevity of a game. The modding community in particular inspired thousands of people to use their imagination to craft their own visions into experiences that others could enjoy. It has left a profound impact on myself and my childhood, and the game series has aged like a fine wine.
Only one we're missing is Radiation Hazard, otherwise great video and some wonderful takes from the gang. I'm one year older than Half-life, proud to have it as part of my existence for so long.
When I first watched this, it was during the premiere, but I didn't realize it was a premiere at the moment. So, it started at around 20:19, or so. And I watched from that point until the end, and I though that that was just the joke, until I realized it was a premiere, and I was late to it...
I only recently got the half life series a couple months ago. It is now by far one of my favorite fps games ever. I was even recently playing through half life 2 again so what great timing
I only played the games for the first time as recent as mid-2021 and even for a complete zoomer like me a lot of things about HL1 in particular that really fascinated me like it’s unique gunplay that always has you thinking on the fly of the the most efficient way to dispose of enemies with an arsenal that’s completely designed around experimentation like that, a relatively small enemy lineup that doesn’t get old thanks to fun and dynamic AI, the engaging level design in the chapters that blends platforming, simpleish puzzles and combat in a varied manner and above all the engaging story told through environmental details in the levels, scripted sequences that don’t take control away from the player and NPC dialogue that is detailed enough to give you a general idea of what’s going on while also leaving enough of it ambiguous and up to interpretation HL2 and the Episodes also awesome for some of the same reasons but they’re very much a different beast then HL1 with the simpler arsenal, the physics and how the gravity gun and grenades play into it, the more involved story and more of an emphasis on combat
Glad to see I'm not the only one who got confused with the "HL2: Episode 1" thing as a kid. Thankfully in my case it was when I first played through the Orange Box, so I switched back to HL2 proper pretty fast
I was a little late to the party, but my earliest exposure to Half-Life was actually not Half-Life but rather Portal in 2008-2009 and my friend was messing with cheat codes and spawned in HL2 weapons and enemies. After that I actually had a similar sort of experience of thinking HL2:EP1 was the first part of the game and not a sequel and being very confused, but I didn't play very far before I was too lost to have fun, and after that I got it when I asked my friend what the heck was happening. From there it quickly became probably my longest running autism/ADHD hyperfixation because I stayed completely obsessed with Half-Life and all that could be associated with it for the next 4, 5, 6 years. I took a lot of roundabout ways like the aforementioned and how I didn't play the first game until after watching the first 15 or so episodes of Freeman's Mind, but I always got there in the end. The obsession has died down some, but to this day the entire series along with Portal, TF2, GMod, and more are all deeply important to me and hold so many amazing memories.
I only became a fan very recently in 2020, as for nearly a decade-and-a-half I only had Windows Vista, which no longer supports steam. I started with Portal as I saw it as the quintessential computer game, and after playing gmod, finally got around to playing Half-Life 2. After that, I played Black Mesa, then the episodes, OpFor, Blue Shift, and finally, Half-Life. One of my favorite video game series of all time.
hey hey hey time to join the old story meeting in the comments, video gamers ! already heard about hl long before playing it. a gaming show on tv explained a little on why it was so good but all i remember is that it was dark and scary compared to what games i saw before. several years later, i had still not played any of them, but i heard about the lore and the stuff i read on wikipedia was vague but interesting to imagine. i did not really wish to play the games as WWII call of duties and medal of honors were enough at the time. then a relative of mine got it through totally legal means, so i played them. they hated them because fps were not their cup of tea and only played to see what the franchise's reputation is all about. despite spoiling myself, i basically binge played them and thus spent several years of my gaming life focused on hl and other source games (i already played tf2 back then but that's different). ironically enough, i played the free version of black mesa before getting to the official games. i was real hyped by hl3's myth and all that, but eventually it wore off and i became hooked on other shooter franchises : first quake since experience with tf2 made me quite at home with the moveset, then FEAR because it was pretty dynamic despite being a glorified hitscan fest in essence. now my only relationship with half-life atm is that it has lots of mods and gameplay i am comfortable with, so i still explore those regularly in parallel to trying out other games. unlike many fans, i do not really put hl on a pedestal anymore. i like the games, they taught me some stuff, but by my most personal standards i dare say i value them as much as even some shooters people would call much inferior comparatively. the only thing i really cherish about it is that it is the franchise which taught me how nothing is really sacred as a gamer : hl or any great game is great, but stepping out of it to play the other franchises is better. valve are maybe geniuses, but they have their own interest and they only happened to be common with mine for a while. in other words, i sure recognize the benefits i had from knowing these games, but i do not feel nostalgic about it at all.
I have no personal nostalgic connection either having first played the games as recently as 2021 but I just find the series (Half-Life 1 in particular) to be really enjoyable for me personally lots of cool people making mods and youtube videos about it really feeds that interest too
This is Half Life. TeamSpeak, listening to Aphex Twin and spamming low-bitrate voice clips. This is Half Life. Never finishing a mod but discovering you love game development. 800 x 600 on your shit Windows ME. Steams dark green colorscheme and loading bars on everything. This is Half Life. Buying one game that lasts for 24 years. This is Half Life. Quake birthed Half Life so Half Life could birth Team Fortress and Counter Strike and Half Life 2; which would birth limitless potential that we are still seeing today. Half Life is what happens when someone who made a lot of money decides to create something special. It's rare, but it's beautiful when it happens. Half Life 2 is what happens when you struggle to make it through a tunnel that no one has ever ventured through. In the words of Red: Valve were a company that crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
Wolfcl0ck's story is really similar to mine and I'm sure many others can relate too. My first time playing Half-Life was about a year after it had come out and it absolutely blew my little 11-year-old mind at the time; I'd played a bit of Duke3D and Hexen prior to that, both great games in their own right, but I knew straight away that Half-Life was going to be something special. This was also my first contact with game development. I remember making (more or less awful) single player maps for it using QuArK (Quake Army Knife - anyone else here remember QuArK?), a third-party alternative to Worldcraft/Hammer, and then torturing my friends into playing them after school; mapping for Half-Life was definitely my biggest hobby growing up. Then Half-life 2 came out and it was like an industrial revolution; I was absolutely at awe with it and, of course, I did a bit of mapping for it too, because how could I not? I work in game development full time now and Half-Life will always have a special place in my heart -- I consider it THE game that made me want to become a game dev one day.
Half-Life introduced me to PC shooters. My first ever FPS was Red Faction on PS2, but Half-Life will always be the first old-school FPS I played on PC and first FPS on PC for that matter. I'll never forget how great, not hand-holdy the game was. The combat was great, and I really never understood it back then, but the level design was so great. Not only that, but modding it was always a blast. The newer Brutal Half-Life, HL Rally and playing games like CS 1.6 brought me some good memories. Half-Life is one of my favourite games ever.
I am so happy to have played Half-Life 1 at the ripe age of 14 so that I can say that I have actual nostalgia for it. It was 2014, I was in a sort of... homeschool... school? It's called a co-op so like homeschool parents bring there kinds to a place where ex teachers teach shit and so on. Anyway, all the kids (who were all nerds like me suprise suprise) where gushing over FNAF and I really did like that game. BUT... at that time I was investing my time in Half-Life. I had always been vaguely aware of Half-Life but it wasn't quite on my radar. But man 14 y/o was utterly blown away by the game. I find it interesting that despite the first game's age, even the young 14 y/o me was able to appreciate it.
My brother and I would play Half-Life on the PS2, just taking turns trying to finish Unforeseen Consequences. When we got to Office Complex, we thought it was "level 2", as we were used to games being level based, due to us playing games like Quake 2 on the N64.
Whoaa, great stories here. The community creating factor of (gold)source games is beatyfull, by HL i got to know sven coop, andhad memorable experiences there. Considering the single player hl, I remember getting my copy when I was bored with games I already had. I knew it's made on an old buggy engine, but actually, I was really suprised how wise it was made and how smooth the experience was. Used walktrough on Xen though, because younger me didn't paid enough attention to cutscenes, and so forgot about the longjump module. Figured something with lanuching myself by satchel charges or rpg, and than, after some 10 tries, i somehow made it to lower level with 10 health. "This shouldn't work like that tho...". I was kinda late for modding, speedruning and game breaking subculture, but eventually found some little funny tricks in hl2, a natural (no noclip) out-of-bounds (on highway 17, where i also learned to bhop for the first time, since i forgot the goddamned car on one playthrough), I made Dog lanuch me instead of a crate in BM East, many methods to acces roofs or skip sections and such. Nothing particularly good for "speedrun meta", but it was great to trigger them by myself.
My oldest friend played the orange box with me at their house and I got it for myself and loved it, sadly I didn't have a computer when I was a kid so I couldn't play half life one till I was a teenager
Funnily enough, my adventure with Source started with the Portal series. I learned to make a source map and learned about cheats all in Portal and Portal 2. And then my dad was like "I'm going to let you play this game, it has great storytelling" and then i booted up the game and I immediately knew about the dev console in that game and I enjoyed that game! It was Half Life 2.
I played Half Life on 98. I was like 11 years old and My brother came home one night with The Game, and installed it, we stayed up all night in awe, from The way The Game started, and told the story. At The time games like quake and Doom where The standar of what a FPS was. The ambience and The story, hooked me. I wanted to be a physicist just like Gordon and worked in something like Black Mesa. Truly Half Life 1 change not only my gaming life, but also my life as a whole.
Play CS 1.5 on my cousin pc, loved it so much that i bought the game for myself, got confused why it is called Half Life, but i'm thankful for that moment.
My experience with Half-life is similar to Colonel's, my dad introduced me to PC gaming with games like Half-life, Diablo 2 and Quake 2, which I think formed my personal taste in gaming. I watched my dad play HL countless times and when he wasn't playing, I imagined different scenarios that would happen in the game with my toys, parents clothes etc. And after my dad and mom got divorced, HL helped me cope with it because every time me and dad met after the divorce, we would discuss Half-life games and mods. And a very weird thing: because of Half-life I really started liking gloves for some reason. Probably because how good Gordon's hands look in the HEV suit. My introduction to Half-life 2 was very weird, because i didn't remember the game's title back then and the only thing that I remembered was the lambda symbol, so when I saw the "game" at my Mom's friend's house I asked if I could play it, it was the og Xbox version and I didn't realize that it wasn't Half-life 2, the realization came in only when I played the orange box on ps3.
I'm actually late to the party, i started playing half-life in 2021 when my dad bought me a half-life collection as a birthday present and i finished the first game in about 19 hours , and after i played half-life 2 i discovered what those npc and ragdolls where in Gmod, it's almost every day, i hop into any half-life game and play a random map, highlights include we've got hostiles, surface tension, route canal, anticitizen 1, and for the rest like opposing force or episode 1, i just play the game from start to finish, i just love half-life and i can't wait to get a VR Headset to play alyx and hl2 vr, and i watched your half-life videos before even playing half life.
I remember when i was younger playing half life 2 the first time. me and my dad were playing synergy and we were on the coast bridge map. It was a terrifying experience and one of my favorite memories from when i first played the game. when the train went over the bridge and it was shaking, god.
I believe my first contact with HL was either gmod back in 2013, some video on youtube that I may have discarded since I was never really big into FPS games, or a friend, recommending the game to me in 2019, where I tried it and like always, had difficulties remembering to keep playing it. Unlike with portal (started with P2) I actually decided to try HL1 first and then its expansions (haven't played OPForce to date lmao) and had an honest blast with the game, skip to now and I *think* I'm the only one among my friends that took that darn gnome to the great cosmos, though I've been putting off getting all base HL2 achievements for a good while now. Needless to say, I am quite fond of the HL universe overall, it may have not changed my life or anything, but it is still the FPS I cherish the most, and managed to get me hooked in ways I don't think any other FPS game has managed to date.
I learned about Half Life around 2009 when I got my own PC for my 14th Birthday. Being just a kid with barely any money I got to download a package with HL, Opposing Force and Blue Shift and I remember how alien was for me to use the keyboard keys to move around, specially jump and crounch at the same time 😅. To be honest I started gaming on PC when I was around 3 or 4 years old but never have I played any kind of FPS on it, mostly platformers where you used the arrow keys to move around. I believe that my current love for PC gaming and assembling my own rigs has to do in great majority with Half-Life and the rest of games from the franchise. Now days I work making handcrafted action figures, toys and replicas and I'm currently working on a Gordon action figure with the original Mark IV HEV suit. I will try to upload some pictures of it whe I get it done so the community can see it 👍
I remember playing this shit while my dad brutally beat my dog to death for shitting on the floor, it was immersive as fuck dawg... RIP Puppers though :(
I got this game on Christmas in 2004 from my parents. I hardly even knew of the series at that time. The PC I had was *_AWFUL!_* And I mean awwwwwful, it was one of those weak Dell computers. It was an anti-gaming PC. The freezing and lagging was unreal, but the game was so good that I pushed past that. I even crashed once because "my system was out of virtual memory". Still didn't stop me.
I first started half Life in 2018 when 8 now in 2021 i Finnished everything from hl1 to ep2 my favourite game with one of the best protagonist in the hev suit he us the freeman the man that will save all of us
Holy fuck this video made me feel old 😂. I was 4 when half life dropped and I think I was about 6 or 7 when I got my hands on it, my grandfather had it on the ye old compaq pc he had, he had blueshift and opposing force and I’d go spend weekends there and my cousin and I would take turns at ever loading section. That game was the real intro to pc games for me. Later on I’d give credit to gmod for being the soul purpose for me getting my own pc years later, after buying my grandpa HL2 for his birthday only to find out his compaq khaki tan colored pc wouldn’t run it years back I finally got to play it years later. The impact this series has had on my life is priceless, I don’t think people really understand the Influence. Long love half-life. Also hl3 plz
I first played half life on the ps2 port, I thought it was really fun, and I spent probably way too much time killing scientists then reloading the save to kill them again. I would play the deathmatch with my brother and we have a fun time. Also played decay by myself that was interesting. I think its kinda funny that I'm so used to the hd models on the ps2 that now on pc I genuinely prefer the hd models and I think the old ones look out of place
Half-life 1, I played it when I was 8 but most of the time I watch my two older brothers play it especially on Sundays. It really hadan impact on me on how video games can be when the games I only play before were Caesar 2, BattleBeast and the dos game called Scorch and some Maui Mallard Cold Shadow. Then 2 years after that we bought a pirated compendium of Half-life (yea because we can't really afford original games back then ahaha) and it's the first time I played other gldsrc mod games such as Gangsta Wars, Wanted!, Action Half-Life and of course counter-strike beta 7.1 with the lowest resolution AHAHAHAHA we don't have access to the internet at that time so we played with bots while winamp is playing on the background. Playing those games really made me happy then tried Quake , Team Fortress Classic with LAN with my friends at that time or play diablo 2 and grabbing my save files with a floppy disk so I can play it at home. And after a few year Half-life 2 came out and I was amazed by it but at this time just a few of my friends and classmates appreciate HL2 since they still like cs1.6 and ps2 games so my brothers were the only ones who I can chat about hl2. And now still can't believe that half-life community is still alive and still talked about. As soon my kid grows up a little I'll let her play this franchise and make nostalgic memories with it just like you and your dad. :D
i can write my own section right here: so i started playing valve games with portal 1 on the xbox 360 minecraft bundle pack, ofcourse portal 1 demo to chamber 11 but i was HOOKED, i played through these 11 testchambers to the death of the controller, then came portal 2, full version of portal 1 and then i pirated hl2, i thought it was good but not for me and after like a month i redownloaded it and played it in god mode and it was a blast, then after that hl1 cd version that i cracked, opposing force (after blue shift) and the episodes and then i basically became a fan of the series
Ayyy, I love the half life series. I remember when I was 12, back in 2013 I think it was, I got my first 360 that Christmas, and had gotten the orange box sometime after, and well to me, their was nothing like half life 2, I had never played a game like it. At the time, I never had a computer, only the shit family computer. And I remember pirating half life 1 and the expansions, I didn't know what steam was back then. But yeah, there you have it, I've long since became a huge fan of half life. In my opinion, half life 2 will always be my favourite, the music, the scale was something I never experienced at the time that I played it.
>playing blue shift in low graphics for the nostalgia factor >plays in opengl render mfw no software rendering inside of a virtual machine so it can run properly
@@PurpleColonel oh god, well now i gave you a new video idea in a way, cuz software rendering have some neat quirks that got lost in to the transition to OpenGL, like how some textures are like randomized like some walls have like different layouts in the software rendering instead of just repeating like in the OpenGL rendering
I actually had no idea it was Half-Life's anniversary. That recent Half-like video was a coincidence. Damn I wish I knew now, but hey next year will be 25 years. That'll be a great excuse for every one to flood the internet with Half-Life content.
Ratlobber sounds like he is stuck in the scooping room of FNAF Sister Location
Ratlobber’s section really left me crying, I never knew a game could have such a profound impact on someone’s life. Absolutely incredible.
I read this comment right when i started watching it and was expecting a really emotional experience and i find 2008 camera and mic quality video explaining the weapons of half life
@@gragerus same. the second he started talking i thought to myself: "why did i expect something serious, it's fuckin ratlobber"
he’s a bit goofy but he a real one
it's so sweet to hear that there is someone else who also noticed that warm and calm location at the end of water hazard. i also stop by there, listen to wind chimes and sit on a dirty mattress, just for a bit, to live the moment
Definitely a cool spot. I also enjoy the abandoned houses in Highway 17 and Sand Traps. The seagulls and the breeze really compliment the open lonely feel.
Same, man. I love that place so much.
Ratlobber keeps calling my house trying to get me to “half my life”. Not to mention this undulating high-pitched whine in the background that makes my nose bleed. How do I stop this from happening?
You cant, Ratlobber will attempt to Half The Life of everyone-
gotta play roblox
Far knight is better! 1!1!111😡😡😡😡
block land better
You are no correc
cookie clickre !!!111;!!!
@@randompersonontheinterwebs agre! Cock clicke best game🎉🎉🎉🎉
Thanks for inviting me to do a voice on this video thing. Should do more vocals sometime!
Thank you for giving me the excuse to go on this little tip down memory lane!
I'll never forget the day my uncle bought the PS2 version of HL and showed my young sister and I the game. We cackled with the crowbar beating on things. Great memories and it started my path on the HL gaming world
Thanks so much for having me on, great video by the way. My favourite part was your n00bzor brother getting pwnd in deathmatch
Should've invited me :(
I remember playing Half-Life for the first time when I was 3 (Born in 2001) because of my Dad who introduced me to Half-Life and gaming. To this day it's my favorite game, franchise and obsession. It's my "Life" literally.
Happy 24th. Good video too!
Next year :)
@@PurpleColonel 25 years of Crowbar bonks
My earliest memory of Half Life is the opening section of Opposing Force. The headcrab zombie in the MRI machine who gets up and smashes a window absolutely terrified me
Who's that stinker at 10:10? Who's that gremlin goblin man?
I grew up in the 90's playing things like Doom and Quake, and when Half-Life came out, it felt like the difference between watching a silly exaggerated action movie like Total Recall or Demolition Man versus something grounded and serious like Dirty Harry or No Country For Old Men. Half-Life probably seems extremely primitive and cartoonish to younger gamers looking at it now, but back in the day, its commitment to a constant sense of realism made it shocking, unique, and gritty as fuck. It felt like you were in real danger in a real world that didn't give a fuck whether you lived or died. The little touches helped sell the illusion: the minimalistic HUD, the sound effects being programmed to have more intense echoes in larger environments, how dead-serious the game was about gravity and fall damage, the amazing blood and gore effects, and the characters actually moving their mouths when they talked instead of just bobbing their heads up and down, which until then I had assumed was just an impossible thing to do in a 3D game. There had never been _anything_ like Half-Life before.
I'm lucky enough to have played the original when it came out. My brother told me about this amazing game that looks so realistic and hyped it up a lot. I remember it being really hard at the time because I was a tiny kid but it was so much fun. The Xen levels gave me crazy vibes with the weird ambiance. I still get crazy feels hearing it now. It's crazy how well the games have held up. I still play them and Black Mesa probably 1000+ hrs a year trying to perfect runs and just having a good time.
oh boy half-life 2, second pirated game i played with my cousin, i remember being amazed as i have never seen a game like that before, i only knew cod and battlefield but in those summer moments the look of the source engine forever burned into my memories, Alyx was probably the first woman i saw in any media that wasnt just helpless (i was young ok?)
in half life 1 the black mesa facility feels like an incredibly cozy place. and half life 2 feels like an endless summer camp whcih is also cozy. and the soundtrack is amazingly alien
Proud to be in this video!
How many played in the deathmatch tournament?
@@stoodle511 I don't know I wasn't even born yet. If I had to guess, maybe 12 or 13. Mainly because they had a system in place to whoever got 12 kills first they would move on to the next map. 12 maps, 12 kills. For the tournament, the person in last place would be kicked out and slowly be a 1v1. That's just my guess though I'll have to check in with my dad on that
Oh boy, time for a big bit of history on my part.
I first saw the game's desktop app on the screen when one of my folks wasn't in the middle of playing Counter Strike 1.5 and I got curious, wanting to try this game. Half-Life 1 is memorable for me starting my days as a PC gamer back in 2001 when I was a little kid. Because of the theme at the time back then with a lot of games with not much in the way of stories, or were mostly just about generic, big, muscle military men just going around gunning and running non-stop, little me at the time expected it might be just one of those games, but it wasn't. I also didn't pay much attention to the text at the time when it listed things like the people involved and even Gordon Freeman's name, age, and his major. Because of this, I was always confused about why I was called "Gordon" or "Freeman", depending on the NPC. Admittedly I hated reading back then, so it's why written stuff flew over my head back then. For me, the concept of a simple, nerdy scientist that goes to work, does what needs to be done, then go home, repeat was a bit surprising for me to see Gordon adapt to survive, using what he can get his hands on to fend off against the Xen creatures.
Ah, I remember getting stuck on "Blast Pit" back then, too. Couldn't figure it out until a few years later. (Lost the save file at some point, so had to start all the way back.)
Eventually it clicked in my head that yes, Gordon wasn't some generic big muscle military dude with the infinite knowledge of how to use almost any weapon, but he's just simply a scientist, a civilian who's never probably handled a weapon in his entire life. I loved the free exploration, and the rewards you'd get from taking the time to explore. The storytelling by just simply progressing as you advance, surviving against both Xen creatures and later the HECU and Black Ops. (I admit, I was confused about why they wanted to kill us rather than save us, as I'd hear about the scientist say they've come to rescue everyone. 'n The Black Ops even confused me the most, too.) I've replayed it a few times, just because of how fun it was, and the memories would call me back maybe once a year, lol.
Half-Life 2 I never heard about until maybe when I saw some weird flash animations. Never really clicked with me that it existed until maybe a year later after it's release...? Memory's fuzzy here. I won't lie that the concept really confused me, and then I thought back to the very end of the 1st game. I smiled when I ran into Barney, and heard him say "About that beer I owed ya." I was giddy, and then seeing Kleiner and I was just in love. Of course I was a bit older this time so I didn't skip through stuff or didn't pay attention like back with the first game. I think after beating this, I quickly picked up on Episode 1 and 2 pretty quickly than the others, and I was delighted for more. ...Of course, when there was nothing coming out, I still hoped for more until eventually years later, I just let go, believing that it was more healthy to not latch on for eternity, 'n I just moved on to other games.
Half-Life did encourage me to target games with stories attached to them, I never liked storyless games that just throw you in without explanation, but that's just personally me. It did also sort of inspired me to do a bit of writing as a hobby. (I'm not very good, but it's fun.) 'n There's my childhood history with the Half-Life games. I'm also fully aware Half-Life: Alyx existed, but alas, I just resorted to watching a longplay since I don't own a VR headset. *Shrugs.*
This is a game that I have grown up with - this was the new big thing when I was at school.
I remember spending many an hour at the Scientist Killing Club - I'm not sure why, but that seemed to be a constant source of entertainment to me.
half-life rehab support circle
The Half-Life series (and Valve's catalogue in general) gave me some great memories and shaped my love for video game design. It also showed me how important a community is to the longevity of a game. The modding community in particular inspired thousands of people to use their imagination to craft their own visions into experiences that others could enjoy. It has left a profound impact on myself and my childhood, and the game series has aged like a fine wine.
this may or may not have inspired me to record a half-life video
i played up to the end of Power Up
it stopped recording after the hazard course
;-;
I weep for your loss.
if i sound like i was locked up in a basement, it's because Purple locked me in his basement
Only one we're missing is Radiation Hazard, otherwise great video and some wonderful takes from the gang. I'm one year older than Half-life, proud to have it as part of my existence for so long.
When I first watched this, it was during the premiere, but I didn't realize it was a premiere at the moment. So, it started at around 20:19, or so. And I watched from that point until the end, and I though that that was just the joke, until I realized it was a premiere, and I was late to it...
I only recently got the half life series a couple months ago. It is now by far one of my favorite fps games ever. I was even recently playing through half life 2 again so what great timing
I only played the games for the first time as recent as mid-2021 and even for a complete zoomer like me a lot of things about HL1 in particular that really fascinated me like it’s unique gunplay that always has you thinking on the fly of the the most efficient way to dispose of enemies with an arsenal that’s completely designed around experimentation like that, a relatively small enemy lineup that doesn’t get old thanks to fun and dynamic AI, the engaging level design in the chapters that blends platforming, simpleish puzzles and combat in a varied manner and above all the engaging story told through environmental details in the levels, scripted sequences that don’t take control away from the player and NPC dialogue that is detailed enough to give you a general idea of what’s going on while also leaving enough of it ambiguous and up to interpretation
HL2 and the Episodes also awesome for some of the same reasons but they’re very much a different beast then HL1 with the simpler arsenal, the physics and how the gravity gun and grenades play into it, the more involved story and more of an emphasis on combat
the ratlober bit was the best, he's shit a livestreamer but he is funny
Glad to see I'm not the only one who got confused with the "HL2: Episode 1" thing as a kid. Thankfully in my case it was when I first played through the Orange Box, so I switched back to HL2 proper pretty fast
Fantastic work, Izzy.
I was a little late to the party, but my earliest exposure to Half-Life was actually not Half-Life but rather Portal in 2008-2009 and my friend was messing with cheat codes and spawned in HL2 weapons and enemies. After that I actually had a similar sort of experience of thinking HL2:EP1 was the first part of the game and not a sequel and being very confused, but I didn't play very far before I was too lost to have fun, and after that I got it when I asked my friend what the heck was happening. From there it quickly became probably my longest running autism/ADHD hyperfixation because I stayed completely obsessed with Half-Life and all that could be associated with it for the next 4, 5, 6 years. I took a lot of roundabout ways like the aforementioned and how I didn't play the first game until after watching the first 15 or so episodes of Freeman's Mind, but I always got there in the end. The obsession has died down some, but to this day the entire series along with Portal, TF2, GMod, and more are all deeply important to me and hold so many amazing memories.
I only became a fan very recently in 2020, as for nearly a decade-and-a-half I only had Windows Vista, which no longer supports steam. I started with Portal as I saw it as the quintessential computer game, and after playing gmod, finally got around to playing Half-Life 2. After that, I played Black Mesa, then the episodes, OpFor, Blue Shift, and finally, Half-Life. One of my favorite video game series of all time.
man i love this series and i would replay the whole thing again
hey hey hey time to join the old story meeting in the comments, video gamers !
already heard about hl long before playing it. a gaming show on tv explained a little on why it was so good but all i remember is that it was dark and scary compared to what games i saw before.
several years later, i had still not played any of them, but i heard about the lore and the stuff i read on wikipedia was vague but interesting to imagine. i did not really wish to play the games as WWII call of duties and medal of honors were enough at the time.
then a relative of mine got it through totally legal means, so i played them. they hated them because fps were not their cup of tea and only played to see what the franchise's reputation is all about. despite spoiling myself, i basically binge played them and thus spent several years of my gaming life focused on hl and other source games (i already played tf2 back then but that's different). ironically enough, i played the free version of black mesa before getting to the official games.
i was real hyped by hl3's myth and all that, but eventually it wore off and i became hooked on other shooter franchises : first quake since experience with tf2 made me quite at home with the moveset, then FEAR because it was pretty dynamic despite being a glorified hitscan fest in essence. now my only relationship with half-life atm is that it has lots of mods and gameplay i am comfortable with, so i still explore those regularly in parallel to trying out other games.
unlike many fans, i do not really put hl on a pedestal anymore. i like the games, they taught me some stuff, but by my most personal standards i dare say i value them as much as even some shooters people would call much inferior comparatively. the only thing i really cherish about it is that it is the franchise which taught me how nothing is really sacred as a gamer : hl or any great game is great, but stepping out of it to play the other franchises is better. valve are maybe geniuses, but they have their own interest and they only happened to be common with mine for a while. in other words, i sure recognize the benefits i had from knowing these games, but i do not feel nostalgic about it at all.
I have no personal nostalgic connection either having first played the games as recently as 2021 but I just find the series (Half-Life 1 in particular) to be really enjoyable for me personally
lots of cool people making mods and youtube videos about it really feeds that interest too
This is Half Life.
TeamSpeak, listening to Aphex Twin and spamming low-bitrate voice clips.
This is Half Life.
Never finishing a mod but discovering you love game development. 800 x 600 on your shit Windows ME. Steams dark green colorscheme and loading bars on everything.
This is Half Life.
Buying one game that lasts for 24 years.
This is Half Life.
Quake birthed Half Life so Half Life could birth Team Fortress and Counter Strike and Half Life 2; which would birth limitless potential that we are still seeing today.
Half Life is what happens when someone who made a lot of money decides to create something special. It's rare, but it's beautiful when it happens.
Half Life 2 is what happens when you struggle to make it through a tunnel that no one has ever ventured through.
In the words of Red:
Valve were a company that crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
Wolfcl0ck's story is really similar to mine and I'm sure many others can relate too.
My first time playing Half-Life was about a year after it had come out and it absolutely blew my little 11-year-old mind at the time; I'd played a bit of Duke3D and Hexen prior to that, both great games in their own right, but I knew straight away that Half-Life was going to be something special.
This was also my first contact with game development.
I remember making (more or less awful) single player maps for it using QuArK (Quake Army Knife - anyone else here remember QuArK?), a third-party alternative to Worldcraft/Hammer, and then torturing my friends into playing them after school; mapping for Half-Life was definitely my biggest hobby growing up.
Then Half-life 2 came out and it was like an industrial revolution; I was absolutely at awe with it and, of course, I did a bit of mapping for it too, because how could I not?
I work in game development full time now and Half-Life will always have a special place in my heart -- I consider it THE game that made me want to become a game dev one day.
Half-Life introduced me to PC shooters. My first ever FPS was Red Faction on PS2, but Half-Life will always be the first old-school FPS I played on PC and first FPS on PC for that matter. I'll never forget how great, not hand-holdy the game was. The combat was great, and I really never understood it back then, but the level design was so great. Not only that, but modding it was always a blast. The newer Brutal Half-Life, HL Rally and playing games like CS 1.6 brought me some good memories. Half-Life is one of my favourite games ever.
I am so happy to have played Half-Life 1 at the ripe age of 14 so that I can say that I have actual nostalgia for it. It was 2014, I was in a sort of... homeschool... school? It's called a co-op so like homeschool parents bring there kinds to a place where ex teachers teach shit and so on. Anyway, all the kids (who were all nerds like me suprise suprise) where gushing over FNAF and I really did like that game. BUT... at that time I was investing my time in Half-Life. I had always been vaguely aware of Half-Life but it wasn't quite on my radar. But man 14 y/o was utterly blown away by the game. I find it interesting that despite the first game's age, even the young 14 y/o me was able to appreciate it.
My brother and I would play Half-Life on the PS2, just taking turns trying to finish Unforeseen Consequences. When we got to Office Complex, we thought it was "level 2", as we were used to games being level based, due to us playing games like Quake 2 on the N64.
Whoaa, great stories here. The community creating factor of (gold)source games is beatyfull, by HL i got to know sven coop, andhad memorable experiences there.
Considering the single player hl, I remember getting my copy when I was bored with games I already had. I knew it's made on an old buggy engine, but actually, I was really suprised how wise it was made and how smooth the experience was. Used walktrough on Xen though, because younger me didn't paid enough attention to cutscenes, and so forgot about the longjump module. Figured something with lanuching myself by satchel charges or rpg, and than, after some 10 tries, i somehow made it to lower level with 10 health. "This shouldn't work like that tho...".
I was kinda late for modding, speedruning and game breaking subculture, but eventually found some little funny tricks in hl2, a natural (no noclip) out-of-bounds (on highway 17, where i also learned to bhop for the first time, since i forgot the goddamned car on one playthrough), I made Dog lanuch me instead of a crate in BM East, many methods to acces roofs or skip sections and such. Nothing particularly good for "speedrun meta", but it was great to trigger them by myself.
My oldest friend played the orange box with me at their house and I got it for myself and loved it, sadly I didn't have a computer when I was a kid so I couldn't play half life one till I was a teenager
Funnily enough, my adventure with Source started with the Portal series. I learned to make a source map and learned about cheats all in Portal and Portal 2. And then my dad was like "I'm going to let you play this game, it has great storytelling" and then i booted up the game and I immediately knew about the dev console in that game and I enjoyed that game! It was Half Life 2.
I played Half Life on 98. I was like 11 years old and My brother came home one night with The Game, and installed it, we stayed up all night in awe, from The way The Game started, and told the story. At The time games like quake and Doom where The standar of what a FPS was. The ambience and The story, hooked me. I wanted to be a physicist just like Gordon and worked in something like Black Mesa. Truly Half Life 1 change not only my gaming life, but also my life as a whole.
Play CS 1.5 on my cousin pc, loved it so much that i bought the game for myself, got confused why it is called Half Life, but i'm thankful for that moment.
My experience with Half-life is similar to Colonel's, my dad introduced me to PC gaming with games like Half-life, Diablo 2 and Quake 2, which I think formed my personal taste in gaming. I watched my dad play HL countless times and when he wasn't playing, I imagined different scenarios that would happen in the game with my toys, parents clothes etc. And after my dad and mom got divorced, HL helped me cope with it because every time me and dad met after the divorce, we would discuss Half-life games and mods. And a very weird thing: because of Half-life I really started liking gloves for some reason. Probably because how good Gordon's hands look in the HEV suit.
My introduction to Half-life 2 was very weird, because i didn't remember the game's title back then and the only thing that I remembered was the lambda symbol, so when I saw the "game" at my Mom's friend's house I asked if I could play it, it was the og Xbox version and I didn't realize that it wasn't Half-life 2, the realization came in only when I played the orange box on ps3.
That is a great story man!
@@ElephantsDoingCrack Thanks, glad you liked it!
I'm actually late to the party, i started playing half-life in 2021 when my dad bought me a half-life collection as a birthday present and i finished the first game in about 19 hours , and after i played half-life 2 i discovered what those npc and ragdolls where in Gmod, it's almost every day, i hop into any half-life game and play a random map, highlights include we've got hostiles, surface tension, route canal, anticitizen 1, and for the rest like opposing force or episode 1, i just play the game from start to finish, i just love half-life and i can't wait to get a VR Headset to play alyx and hl2 vr, and i watched your half-life videos before even playing half life.
I remember when i was younger playing half life 2 the first time. me and my dad were playing synergy and we were on the coast bridge map. It was a terrifying experience and one of my favorite memories from when i first played the game. when the train went over the bridge and it was shaking, god.
I have to much too say, but at least I have all the way until next anniversary to think about what I have to say.
holy shit this is fire 🔥
I believe my first contact with HL was either gmod back in 2013, some video on youtube that I may have discarded since I was never really big into FPS games, or a friend, recommending the game to me in 2019, where I tried it and like always, had difficulties remembering to keep playing it.
Unlike with portal (started with P2) I actually decided to try HL1 first and then its expansions (haven't played OPForce to date lmao) and had an honest blast with the game, skip to now and I *think* I'm the only one among my friends that took that darn gnome to the great cosmos, though I've been putting off getting all base HL2 achievements for a good while now.
Needless to say, I am quite fond of the HL universe overall, it may have not changed my life or anything, but it is still the FPS I cherish the most, and managed to get me hooked in ways I don't think any other FPS game has managed to date.
I learned about Half Life around 2009 when I got my own PC for my 14th Birthday. Being just a kid with barely any money I got to download a package with HL, Opposing Force and Blue Shift and I remember how alien was for me to use the keyboard keys to move around, specially jump and crounch at the same time 😅. To be honest I started gaming on PC when I was around 3 or 4 years old but never have I played any kind of FPS on it, mostly platformers where you used the arrow keys to move around. I believe that my current love for PC gaming and assembling my own rigs has to do in great majority with Half-Life and the rest of games from the franchise. Now days I work making handcrafted action figures, toys and replicas and I'm currently working on a Gordon action figure with the original Mark IV HEV suit. I will try to upload some pictures of it whe I get it done so the community can see it 👍
Ratlobber's part was mad funny
Extremely funny
Bro's mic was in 72p lmfao
@@planetearth2249 it probably costed 72p
I remember playing this shit while my dad brutally beat my dog to death for shitting on the floor, it was immersive as fuck dawg... RIP Puppers though :(
I replayed the game on it's anniversary without even knowing lol
I got this game on Christmas in 2004 from my parents. I hardly even knew of the series at that time. The PC I had was *_AWFUL!_* And I mean awwwwwful, it was one of those weak Dell computers. It was an anti-gaming PC. The freezing and lagging was unreal, but the game was so good that I pushed past that. I even crashed once because "my system was out of virtual memory". Still didn't stop me.
I first started half Life in 2018 when 8 now in 2021 i Finnished everything from hl1 to ep2 my favourite game with one of the best protagonist in the hev suit he us the freeman the man that will save all of us
Sadness, you are 1 day late.
Holy fuck this video made me feel old 😂. I was 4 when half life dropped and I think I was about 6 or 7 when I got my hands on it, my grandfather had it on the ye old compaq pc he had, he had blueshift and opposing force and I’d go spend weekends there and my cousin and I would take turns at ever loading section. That game was the real intro to pc games for me. Later on I’d give credit to gmod for being the soul purpose for me getting my own pc years later, after buying my grandpa HL2 for his birthday only to find out his compaq khaki tan colored pc wouldn’t run it years back I finally got to play it years later. The impact this series has had on my life is priceless, I don’t think people really understand the Influence. Long love half-life. Also hl3 plz
Half-life is a pretty cool game, you should try it.
thanks ill give it a shot some time
I think you are going to really like it.
Happy birthday
i first played half life opposing force instead of half life because i liked adrian shephard on the cover
I first played half life on the ps2 port, I thought it was really fun, and I spent probably way too much time killing scientists then reloading the save to kill them again. I would play the deathmatch with my brother and we have a fun time. Also played decay by myself that was interesting. I think its kinda funny that I'm so used to the hd models on the ps2 that now on pc I genuinely prefer the hd models and I think the old ones look out of place
Anything on sweet half life, colonel?
Has it really been 24 years....
As a guy who owns half life
I agree
Nice vid
My first valve game was portal 2 for the Xbox 360 I never beat it until a few weeks ago when I beat it on my laptop
Do you force overbright lighting? It breaks detail textures but those look like shit in GoldSrc anyway so
Man Skyrionn is missing here ...
Half-life 1, I played it when I was 8 but most of the time I watch my two older brothers play it especially on Sundays. It really hadan impact on me on how video games can be when the games I only play before were Caesar 2, BattleBeast and the dos game called Scorch and some Maui Mallard Cold Shadow. Then 2 years after that we bought a pirated compendium of Half-life (yea because we can't really afford original games back then ahaha) and it's the first time I played other gldsrc mod games such as Gangsta Wars, Wanted!, Action Half-Life and of course counter-strike beta 7.1 with the lowest resolution AHAHAHAHA we don't have access to the internet at that time so we played with bots while winamp is playing on the background. Playing those games really made me happy then tried Quake , Team Fortress Classic with LAN with my friends at that time or play diablo 2 and grabbing my save files with a floppy disk so I can play it at home. And after a few year Half-life 2 came out and I was amazed by it but at this time just a few of my friends and classmates appreciate HL2 since they still like cs1.6 and ps2 games so my brothers were the only ones who I can chat about hl2. And now still can't believe that half-life community is still alive and still talked about. As soon my kid grows up a little I'll let her play this franchise and make nostalgic memories with it just like you and your dad. :D
Very epic.
i can write my own section right here:
so i started playing valve games with portal 1 on the xbox 360 minecraft bundle pack, ofcourse portal 1 demo to chamber 11 but i was HOOKED, i played through these 11 testchambers to the death of the controller, then came portal 2, full version of portal 1 and then i pirated hl2, i thought it was good but not for me and after like a month i redownloaded it and played it in god mode and it was a blast, then after that hl1 cd version that i cracked, opposing force (after blue shift) and the episodes and then i basically became a fan of the series
epic
beware of dave he's a dangerous and mischievous individual
Gotta play roblox and stuff
Ayyy, I love the half life series. I remember when I was 12, back in 2013 I think it was, I got my first 360 that Christmas, and had gotten the orange box sometime after, and well to me, their was nothing like half life 2, I had never played a game like it. At the time, I never had a computer, only the shit family computer. And I remember pirating half life 1 and the expansions, I didn't know what steam was back then. But yeah, there you have it, I've long since became a huge fan of half life. In my opinion, half life 2 will always be my favourite, the music, the scale was something I never experienced at the time that I played it.
only one year to 25
half
and life
I would be very thankful if you would invite me next year :)
Where Lamwarp ? :(
🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱
>playing blue shift in low graphics for the nostalgia factor
>plays in opengl render
mfw no software rendering inside of a virtual machine so it can run properly
I edited all of the visuals for this video in like 3 hours lol
@@PurpleColonel oh god, well now i gave you a new video idea in a way, cuz software rendering have some neat quirks that got lost in to the transition to OpenGL, like how some textures are like randomized like some walls have like different layouts in the software rendering instead of just repeating like in the OpenGL rendering
Do Epic
EPICLY EPIC