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was this by any chance in responce to civvie 11's video? as much as i love that video it did annoy me that he refused to utilise some of the weapons like the hive hand and the snarks, even in "forget about freeman" the hive hand is perfect for the snark mines
That's the funny thing about it tho... ONLY dying 20 times. Shows how difficult this game really is potentially. And even if you take it the gun blazin' route, you still need to use your head to clear areas fast and efficient.
@@JustWowNick I don't think their main priority was living. It was to kill Freeman. They are determined to kill Freeman and nothing will stop in their way. It's either that or I'm just over thinking.
@@sharcc2511 What's wrong with the HD Models? They looked better than the older ones to me (NPC's and Guns), the only exception really being the crowbar.
But I LOVE that style of gameplay! The best way is to run into the room, look around and remember who is shooting at you from where, reload and outsmart them with the new knowledge :P
I always played Half-Life like this: Jump like a madman, get shot, pick up smg, alt fire, revolver, close up while tanking damage and shotgunning them in the face. And, in the case of the assasins, i just hid in a corner waiting for them to come to me. I treated it like a videogame, but now this video game me insight on how to actually play it. That's why i keep dying in hl:s
Honestly, people underestimate this game. I've seen people ignore the guard in Blast Pit under the assumption that a game this old couldn't possibly have a big enemy that tracks you based on sound.
Oh yeah, once I learned the big tentacle fuck is attracted to sound after throwing grenades at it and seeing it being attracted to the one that got across the entire chamber, it got really easy
Basically you need to leave aside the "old game old mechanics" thinking, and treat it as a modern game. You are so right about the graphics deceiving the player
Even if you were to have the mindset of a modern game, nothing in modern shooters really quite have the same strategy and built in tools for the situations you face like half life. First time playing, I found myself stuck and having to run around for 30 minutes to an hour only to find the solution is to shoot one thing or explode a wall or press e on a certain cage. I was in the mindset that "old game can't do this, no way they made it like that". Boy was I wrong.
lol modern fps is like 4-5 enemies spawn out of no where, you take cover and burst shoot them until another wave comes, then you proceed when a dramatic radio is heard. In Half Life, there are enemies there already, placed with map design as NPC entities so no spawn out of an invisible gateway; unless a teleporting Xenians or Osprey dropping soldiers.
The graphics certainly weren't deceptive when it came out. This was the first game I ever needed to buy a dedicated 3D card to play. It looked *so* different to anything that had come before. My mind boggled the first time I ever heard someone call Half Life a retro game; to me, if it *needs* a 3D card to look any good, and can't be run on DOS, it's *definitely* "modern."
my friend told me just before i started my first playthrough "You aren't Doomguy, you are Gordon Freeman. You are a theoretical physicist. Act like one."
Well I mean, in Half-Life 2, you fight the combine aswell, which are technically aliens, but their soldiers aren’t... So you’re basically fighting juiced up military.
dude man, im playing through it now, the AI is ACTUALLY SMART its insane. yeah they have pretty poor aim, compared to you, but the way the act tactically, and less as single units, and more as a group force, is leaps and bounds above most games AI
@@stapuft the AI also can smell things. and if i recognize it correctly you can distract the bullsquids in the freezer with shooting the meat down because they will go and eat it (if you don't attract their attention).
0:30 I disagree with the 'never held a gun before' assessment. In the introduction, it is stated that Gordon's Disaster Response Priority is 'Discretionary', which would mean that he is free to act as he pleases in the event of a hazardous situation. Barneys, for comparison, were supposed to put Equipment and scientists first. It is highly likely that Gordon was given special training on both weapons and survival in hazardous environments. Just look at all the dead HEV guys in Xen, they were armed to the teeth and were also teleported equipment pods filled with arms and ammo. Hell, the scientists at lambda expected Gordon to just jump into the teleporter to xen, despite the fact that he had no prior knowledge of the aliens prior to the disaster. HEV class scientists were almost certainly trained in combat.
@@kesorangutan6170 a more likelier explanation is compartmentalization. He simply was assigned to one section of blackmesa and denied access to the rest. that's why some hev guys get to explore xen while Gordon doesn't.
Well, they aren't necessarily that good an option due to their tendency to come right back towards you if there's no other target for them to attack. And if you don't have a safe vantage point to throw them from, you'll likely have to waste additional ammo on them to kill them. Grenades are honestly the easiest way due to their area of effect, usually revealing multiple mines at once. Same goes for satchel charges, which some players may not even use much otherwise.
first off you just gotta do a side-strafed back-hop over the 0.3cm height surface here looking to the west with a 34° degree to the north and land on this clip canceling the fall-damage with front-strafed semi-crouch, and you've sucefully saved 15 seconds of gameplay
Just started playing Half Life 1 recently, and on that part where you're taught to run away from the first headcrab, I got my crowbar and went back to kill it. Clearly the lesson went over my head. But still worth it.
No, the game just doesn't incentify half of the things the dude in the video is saying. If this game is meant to be tactical in some aspects then please, singal and teach the player correctly. Also Half Life is too unpredictable and has too many encounters for tactical approaches to be interesting and fun.
“This game is loaded with puzzles where the solution is to do what would be logical in that situation” This right here is why I loved this game. It felt like I truly figured out the solution. No hand-holding, no text popping up saying “That box looks like it could be broken” “That wire looks dangerous, better avoid it.” It’s something newer games do all the time that really takes away from the experience.
I wonder how much of this "hand-holding" stems from play testers getting stuck because they don't find a solution to a puzzle. Or maybe it's more because game designers want/have to make their games more accessable?
@@juanignaciojaime7563 The Black Mesa hazard course is canon to the story. Gordon wasnt the first to visit Zen, and they knew dangerous creatures were everywhere there. They put the scientists working with anomalous materials and dimensional breaches through combat training to raise their survival chances when they visit Zen. This is also why you find scientists in hazard suits in Zen sitting near ammo containers.
This style of combat is exactly why i prefer episode 2 to HL2 and ep1. The hunters and antlion workers are such well designed enemies they really bring this style of combat back to the forefront and make Hl2s combat actually challenging. Plus it does the best job of bringing back the first games’ signature “survival horror tension”.
half life 2 is timeless, it has great puzzles, it's one of the most intuitive shooters of all time, and the physics engine remains my absolute favourite today, but it's a step back from hl1. some examples of where it falls short: - the game is filled to the brim with cutscenes like a red letter day and black mesa east instead of using environmental storytelling (although i do like the second pod ride, until alyx appears) - the combine ai is a step back from hecu and feels a lot dumber and less versatile, this is partially due to over-reliance on nodes (e.g. the soldier forced to stay at the emplacement gun that you can trick with a mayonnaise jar) - there are very few weapons and they're not nearly as consistent or memorable as hl1, let alone op4 - rebel ai is unfinished as hell considering follow freeman is entirely dedicated to leading squads of them. they're annoying and immersion breaking to the point that hl1 scientists are deus ex tier in comparison. worst part? you're not allowed to shoot them. - combine combat encounters consist of just throwing as much cannon fodder at the player as possible hl1 and hl2 are both excellent games, but the difference is that hl1 is more consistent. in hl1, the bad parts (interloper, gonarch's lair, nihilanth) stand out, while in hl2, the good parts (point insertion, route kanal, ravenholm, our benefactors) stand out. hl2 shines brightest when it uses its physics for puzzles and environmental combat, but it doesn't have that much else going for it. the episodes, however, do a great job of fixing many of its flaws; the underground sections of ep1 and the antlion & hunter sections of ep2 are legendary enough to warrant their own essays of analysis lol
MoofEMP I pretty much agree with your points about HL2. And I think that Ep.2 was superior in combat, pacing etc. Compared to HL2. But was “Our Benefactors” really a good chapter? I appreciate the idea of using the Super Gravity Gun. But it gets so boring when the only enemy type you fight is the Combine Elite (with arguably bad AI) and your only weapon being a super OP weapon. The fights become too easy and too boring to me
@@doctorfaker391 the combat in our benefactors is admittedly lackluster, but its supersoldier-y nature does a good job of keeping momentum while feeling like the combine are giving everything they got, it does a good job of environmental storytelling, and it sets the player up for the citadel section in ep1, where they really go all out with the super gravity gun. the thing it has going for it most, though, is probably that it comes immediately after follow freeman, which imo is the weakest part of the game lol
"Gordon doesn't know how to held a gun" Gordon uses a prototype gun without even reading a manual, shoots with a RPG, and supports almost all knockback from the guns in his firsts shots. That degree in theoretical physics is doing wonders for him.
Gordon is an American living in most likely rural New Mexico, MIT-educated theoretical physicist who works at a secret government-funded and controlled facility or not, there ain't no way he's never used a gun even for just target shooting.
I actually did the exact opposite against the black ops assassins. I went ultra aggressive. Basically ran and jumped on them with a shotgun and the AI just got confused lmao
@@nanach6276 I dealt with them by waiting to expose themselves and shoot them with the crossbow which deals enough damage to oneshot them. Basicly the waiting game.
Jesus Christ I've been playing this game so wrong, this game is a lot more unique as I first thought. I'm very far into my first playthrough but I'm restarting.
as linear half life is, it is as dynamic in combat. there are so many ways you can enter and leave combat. although when you know pretty much exactly where every enemy is placed in every map it gives you an unfair advantage to npcs. especially when you can easily predict what will they do
So I'm not the only one who likes to roleplay as a theoretical physicist with limited combat exposure fighting for my life in a game about a theoretical physicist with limited combat exposure fighting for his life. Damn
Only Leadhead can make me look at one of my favorite games in a completely different light, I'll have to incorporate these things into my next playthrough. A big criticism I've had for Half-life is that there are too many weapons for each to actually have a clear-cut use, while it turns out I just haven't been using them to the best of their ability. Perhaps this great design going unseen by players is why Valve playtests so rigorously now. As for using real world logic in the game Half-Life supports this extremely well. On my last playthrough I did something a bit different and I think interesting, that I haven't really done with games before. I really got into the head of Gordon Freeman and did a sort of serious version of "Freeman's mind". I literally pretended that I was in that situation, and commented in my thoughts on what I would actually be thinking. I thought about what I would really think if I saw strange creatures or a dead person. I would walk places instead of run, and even intentionally screw up if I thought that's what would realistically happen. Because I've played the game a few times before, I could kind of prepare how Gordon would react, like I was writing a character but the character was also me. I would pretend to have conversations with guards and scientists, and struggle morally with defending myself against marines. It got my heart beating faster, gave me sicker feelings in my stomach, and a wider range of emotions and concern than any gaming experience I've ever had, all without any real characters and with graphics from 1998. The farthest I took this was when I found a set of cots the military was using in the chapter Surface Tension. It was pretty late and I was tired, so after clearing out the building I took a nap in real life and in the game. Keeping the headphones on and hearing the occasional gunshots in the distance, vortigaunt noises, or those flying stingray things, all while legitimately trying to fall asleep was surreal and also so real. This might be diverging a bit too much from the video's topic but I thought it was an interesting share. Half-Life is a fascinating game extremely ahead of it's time, and it's super easy to look at and treat it as just another oldschool shoot 'em up. Great video once again!
It's funny you mention Freeman's mind. Ever since I first watched the series, that's how I play almost every story driven game I play. I don't take it *quite* that far, but playing it that way is honestly awesome
@@Leadhead Freeman's mind is gold, and it made me think about how I would actually react in these situations. Ross Scott's reactions are hilarious, but probably not how an actual human would react to things in favor of being a bit more chaotic. It's interesting to think about how sick to your stomach you would actually feel in that situation, and if anything its a nice way to completely shake up a half-life playthrough.
I recently did that with Alyx as well. I tried to put myself in sync with how she's feeling and match my body language and hand gestures to what she's doing. Is she exhausted from fighting antlions? Maybe it's time to take cover and sit for a minute. The physical nature of the game really helps you do that.
Eh, I think there's a lot of cool parts but it's much too long in comparison to pretty much every chapter. Whenever I do it normally, it feels like two chapters merged into one, but I've gotten good enough at some of the skips to not have to deal with as much of it.
I think this has to be one of the best thumbnails on TH-cam. Grabs your attention, gives you an idea of what your about to watch and has a cool text font that visualizes the ideas being discussed. Also, great video.
Playing as Ross' version of Freeman is probably the most realistic and best way one would survive in this situation: Trust no one, think like a paranoid psychopath, watch out only for yourself.
I tried playing Half Life 1 a while ago and I ragequitted because the marines suicided against me. Then I realized that there were grenades I could use against them, and I remember I thought "What? This game wants me to use grenades? I don't like using grenades, I don't wanna do that. This game can't force me to do that." And I ragequitted. Now, very recently, I gave it another try. And I realized what you say in this video: That the fights in this game are PUZZLES. Once I realized that, I absolutely LOVED the game. I learned that this game is smarter than most other shooter games, and respected it. Great game I love it 10/10 play it.
It's also fun when you focus enough to track and visualize the layout of the tunnels. I think the biggest problem with that chapter isn't the labarinthyne layout itself but the fact that it doesn't prepare the player for it. If I remember correctly from my first playthrough, by the time I thought I should be paying much more attention to the layout I was nearly done the chapter. Honeslty even just a map of the tunnels that could be found hanging on the wall in like 2 locations would've helped tremendously imo
I enjoy on a rail because of how different the fighting can be. It's always different for me. Sometimes the vorts can get the upper hand on the grunts and other times the grunts kill them first. Sometimes I can set a trap and they fall for it and other times they don't. Sometimes you can round a corner and a grunt will be there or other times there not. I mean in 98 that must of been very hard work to get the enemies AI not to respond to every situation the exact same way. I mean you know the area there going to be but not exactly what room they're going to be in when you round a corner. Sometimes they're quick and will launch a grenade the second before I launch mine and other times they don't. I also enjoyed all the different ways you could kill the two soliders you sneak up on at the end. It's probably one of my favorite levels.
Bruh, I got really frustrated playing this game for the first time a few months ago. I beat it, and loved it, but I hated the combat. It felt like resource management almost the entire time I was running around, shooting things. I didn't know the game was meant to be tactical. I feel _so dumb_ now.
Lol same. I was so pissed that there were situations where you were literally could not win because you didn’t have enough ammo. I’m glad that I played HL2 after this because it made me retroactively enjoy HL1. Now this video is gonna make me replay Half-Life.
Same here. I was wonder why this game don't have assault rifles and sniper rifles. Now I understand the assault rifles didn't exist because you need to be more tactical to choose between pistol and SMG, not both. Sniper rifle characters also seperated to revolvers and crossbow.
Go play Black Mesa. It is a massive improvement to every aspect of the game and fixes a lot of the frustrating parts (on rails is heavily re-designed for example, and surface tension is extended). Xen in particular is an absolute triumph and looks like a world that would fit perfectly into a Metroid Prime game. Now is the best time to pick it up, as the just released the final patch, the definitive edition of the game.
Carl Johan Black Mesa is honestly even more like resource management than Half-Life. It's really just the graphics, On a Rail, and Xen that were improved. The gameplay in Black Mesa overall is more tedious.
I still find Half-Life games to offer the amount of freedom and tactical options truly few shooter games yet can provide in a single package. One reason they're so infinitely replayable.
I really appreciate how well you explained what Half-Life's combat does right, and I completely agree with you on what the game is trying to do -- but I would've also liked to see you address the ways in which Half-Life seems to undermine its own design goals. I think analysis is at its best with a "they say, I say" structure, if that makes sense. Personally, I feel like Half-Life is another victim of the classic game design problem where you CAN be creative, but the game never INCENTIVIZES it. As the saying goes, "When given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of a game." Here's a few things that bugged me when I replayed the game this year: 1. The weapons all have extremely high reserve ammo pools, which discourages players from switching off their favorite guns. I never felt like I needed to use the trip mines even ONCE because I always had plenty of grenades and C4 and I thought those weapons were 10 times more fun to use while filling a nearly identical niche. Fighting HECU marines can also become stale once you find out that SMG grenades kill them instantly, you can carry 10 max, and they regularly drop more. Lowering the reserve ammo was one of my favorite combat changes in both Half-Life 2 and Black Mesa because it made my decisions in combat more frequent and meaningful. Using SMG grenades on single targets is a much more interesting choice when you can only carry 3. 2. HECU marines have too much health and accuracy, which discourages players from experimenting by simultaneously reducing the effectiveness of improvising AND planning ahead. Tabletop role-players are well aware of the phenomenon where increasing an enemy's health and/or damage makes players less likely to fight creatively due to the increased consequences for failure (this is one reason why many seasoned D&D vets don't like its 5th Edition). In Half-Life, particularly on first-time playthroughs, attempting to fight the marines with a plan can easily backfire if their high health allows them to tank the player's planned approach -- and attempting to fight the marines improvisationally can easily backfire if their high damage kills the player quicker than they can react. Therefore, why not use SMG grenades almost every time? 3. HECU marines have inconsistent AI that can often, again, discourage players from experimenting. The nice thing about the marines' high health is that it gives players more of a chance to see them act intelligently, but this game design trick only works if the enemies always tell you what they're thinking. Players have to see it and hear it to believe they're fighting realistic humans -- FEAR does this perfectly. Meanwhile, HECU marines somehow have the awareness to react to the sound of an SMG grenade instantaneously (which only affects stealth approaches, further reducing the player's combat options) without saying a word about it. And simultaneously, they're so dumb that they run right into highly visible trip mine lasers. Combined with the aforementioned "damage sponge" health and their frequently sentence mixed dialogue, the HECU marines rarely feel like human opponents. Maybe that's intentional? I'd ask Mark Laidlaw. 4. The last thing that keeps me from calling this game tactical is that weapon damage feels random, especially on the shotgun. Note that I said it FEELS random -- I'm almost certain the damage of every bullet is identical, but it doesn't feel that way in practice. My guess is that it's due to heavily randomized weapon spread. Seeing an HECU marine occasionally survive a point-blank double shotgun blast never feels warranted, and it even happens at 9:44 in this very video! I suppose the benefit here is that it makes your plans more likely to fail, sending you into an exciting scramble for your own survival, but I don't think it's worth it because of this side effect: players will learn that their plans may fail for no obvious reason, and they will stop planning ahead. Sorry to write a book (that no one will ever read), but I think there are too many videos out there that don't give Half-Life a fair shake. It has a lot of amazing elements that revolutionized the industry and have stood the test of time, but it also undermines its own potential by falling into some common trappings of '90s game design. I still love the game, but game theory has come a long way since 1998. Play conditioning -- the way a game tells you how to play it -- wasn't even a concept back then, and I think it shows.
Hey man I’m playing through for the first time and I agree. Some dudes just don’t die. And planning an encounter for it to literally never work has made me just think that people who do see the game that way have just played it so much it’s overblown in their minds. If I played Superman 64 a million times I could say the same shit just cuz I know everything about the game. And that’s what 99% of people who have talked about half life have done
@@Myrmeleos That's pretty much how I see it. Bad systems can seem tolerable or even brilliant if you spend enough time with them to avoid every flaw. It's true in life as it is in games.
@@androrobuiques9497 usually two, one to penetrate the armor plate, which most modern body armor is built to stop one than break. And the other to kill you.
Tripmines and satchels were definitely the weapons I underestimated the most early on. Soldiers can be tough to outsmart and flee quickly from grenades but *totally ignore* satchels and tripmines. Used properly, that nightmare room with the "unbeatable ninjas" will be you laughing as all the enemies try to "flank" you through a booby trap maze of pain.
Fun but dumb. Actually was how my first playthrough of Black Mesa was like until the chapter; Interloper, where I used my shotgun sparingly to pick of the contollers like duck hunting, and managed to hang on to 48 rounds until the climax. Now when I reach that chapter, about all of my weapons are deadly low, but I planned how to conserve each shot. If I'm dry and the hive hand isn't cutting it, I usually have good health and armor, so I use the crowbar on grunts and after tanking a few hits I use the long jump module to evade. Other times I will sometimes straight up use the three bursts of speed to fight enemies like I'm Sonic The Hedgehog, dodging Eggman with the occasional punt to them during a fast flyby.
@@O5MO Were there any boxes nearby? I can't remember. And I wouldn't waste a nade. I guess, Valve knew, that sooner or later people would jump into it.
I think this is why I liked Half-Life so much. I'm not really into FPS games and only played Half-Life because Valve let you play the series for free as a promotion for Half-Life Alyx. I didn't expect that I'd end up so immersed in a game from over 20 years ago. Every combat encounter had a unique setpiece which created a cool puzzle to figure out, if you ask me my favorite First Person Puzzler isn't Portal, it's Half-Life. This is also why I disliked Half-Life 2 so much since the game separated the puzzles from the combat leaving me feeling very frustrated, fortunately Half Life the Episodes once again felt like puzzle games.
@Zer0dog i get why someone would like HL2, it had a lot of really amazing setpieces and the gravity gun was awesome. I just feel like a lot of the elements of hl2 were executed better in the episodes, feeling way more refined than they originally did. But hey if hl2 is your favorite, good for you it was an awesome game, just not really for me.
Well, Doom 2016 and Eternal may not have puzzles in the traditional sense, but the combat is all about prioritizing the right enemies to stay alive, so it's also chess in its own way.
Interestingly enough, all games (except Doom) mentioned here are considered "immersive sims", not FPS games - even though half-life is indisputably an FPS game. I would add Prey (2017), Thief, System Shock and Alien Isolation to the list of recommendations.
I never played Half Life, I was born to witness it's rise to popularity & the birth of Counter Strike. I never liked shooter games at all. But based on your vid alone, I now realized I play games the way Half Life will allow me to play. Which if true, then that means if I like shooters, I'll love Half Life to death.
Yeah, for your type, half life, and maybe half life 2 would be up your alley, and if you can get your hands on VR my dude, half life Alyx is perfect for you. As it's very much like half life 1 with its philosophy, but you also have to get extremely clever with the weapons as you are always out numbered and out gunned.
Hey! That's not fair... I didn't know what barnicles do. So I decided to try myself. Despite the scientist dying the exact same way. Also, I didn't know a barney would try an waste you when you fired at the scientists. So yeah, I didn't mean to shoot him either. And I panicked and the barney killed me with low health. So that's my office complex experience.
When I looked at the video title I thought to myself: "Unforgiving? This game is not unforgiving, the difficulty is balanced and not hard at all. This guy is probably one of those youtubers who just run and schüt mindlessly and complain that they are dying". But thankfully I was very wrong lol. This is an excellent video and a must-watch for people who are just getting into the series. As a sidenote, Half-Life was the second video game I have ever played (the first being Metroid: Zero Mission). Back then I was a kid and I got lost in the Anomalous Materials lab, I was about to alt-tab and search for a map on google, like I used to do with Metroid, but then I realised I could just follow the colored lines on the walls to get where I needed to go. The game taught me to used real world logic to solve its problems. I'm really thankful this was my introduction to First Person games.
It's a bit weird to hear about the game being unforgiving and people struggling with it when I was aged on the single digits and playing this normally. Sure, I didn't breeze through it and alternated a bit with my stepfather, but it was never "so unforgiving" to me. It was a normal game with a fine difficulty.
Maxwell Lee Sterling That's how I see it too. I suck at FPS games (never could make it past level 10 on Doom II on Ultra-Violence) but I've gotten through Half-Life on the hard difficulty okay. Now Opposing Force, THAT'S unforgiving.
@@half-lifescientist1991 especially the sewer part with those giant creatures. Its like a maze and those things fit in spaces smaller than them and block paths larger than them. They are BULKY and TANKY as well as so many of them in pitch black where night vision limits your vision to like 10 meters. They are faster than you think as well as a limited amount t of medkits-no zero medkits.
This is actually why Half Life games kept getting simpler from the original to Episode 2. Playtesters would keep screwing up by doing everything poorly instead of thinking thoroughly and the developers had to make everything easier. I used to be a TA, and I'd see the same thing, people would try to brute force their way through everything, and I'd sigh while marking the Thermodynamics examinations because everybody forgot to convert to Kelvin for their calculations....
WHY DO WE CONVERT TO KELVIN THO im taking o level Cambridge physics rn and it would be extremely helpful if u explained why we convert to kelvin before doing thermal calculations
@@mostafaahmedibrahim2541 afaik is bc kelvin is part of the ISM, it's a little bit more precise with it's numbers and it's a lot easier to work with physics since 0 Kelvin is the absolute zero, there isnt negative kelvin degrees
@@mostafaahmedibrahim2541 Because 0 kelvin, or absolute zero doesn't depend on some material property such as the freezing point of water or whatever. It is a fundamental zero point, a temperature which all thermodynamics systems can reference because all of them fundamentally operate based on the difference between their temperature and this zero point. The Kelvin scale is just our own temperature scale that references absolute zero and thus allows you to make absolute references to the amount of energy / entropy a system contains
I remember back in days I tried to beat this game on hard without ever taking damage. That challenge really forced me to learn all the tricks each weapon has, there’s so much nuances and depth! The Glock became my best friend while in previous playthroughs I completely ignored it assuming it was just a useless pistol.
@@Trooper266 Did you ever do it? I think there is only one run like that on TH-cam and the video is heavily spliced meaning it wasn't one continuous try. That would be one of the greatest half-life runs of all time.
@@gordonneverdies I was close to the end before I had to switch to other tasks. However, I wasn't attempting a continuous run; that would be extremely difficult due to all the hitscan enemies.
Or get them at a distance with the crossbow. It was an easy fight for me when I got distance between each assassin. Their AI is paused if you arent in a certain range. The rest I was able to clear out by just running up to them and double pumping the shotgun in their face.
@@nickolascrousillat4265 Putting the pressure on the assassins absolutely works, since they don't move and shoot at the same time. Get up to their face and they're likely to try to retreat and if you follow closely, you've got the upper hand.
HL Alyx Combine soldiers were specifically designed without much mobility (You know, the kind you'd need to escape a grenade) and without the ability to multitask (They need to stop firing to run at full speed) because Valve didn't think people could handle HL 1/2 soldiers in VR. That's why all of their actions and response times are so sluggish. It's not so much AI as it is power and speed that is the HL Alyx soldiers' problem.
@@testname4464 I still think there should have been optional difficulty settings. I play Skyrim where every character by default runs at usain bolt speeds, so I'm comfortable with moving fast in VR and I would have appreciated an upscaled difficulty in the game. I hardly died in my first playthrough of Alyx at the hardest difficulty.
I never even thought of this. I would just shoot everything. I am good at games so my tactic of shooting everything and lobbing grenades actually worked... I need to replay this game properly...
I wish the "run think shoot live" line was on the steam page today. I got it a few weeks ago and summed it down to older games being harder than they need to be to add to the playtime. I am going to replay it methodically now. Genuinely, thank you.
I. Fucking. Love. HECU soldiers. That little section where you and the HECU are getting hit by airstrikes lasts literally like 7 seconds but it is so fucking good. The music, everyone running around, the soldiers trying to get you, you trying to escape the air strikes and soldiers while also shooting at everything and trying to find out where to go, and how if you wait too long a whole shit ton of them rope down from the chopper, holy shit I have never seen an action game pump me so full of adrenaline in so little time. It makes you wonder just how long these short sections took the developers to make.
As one who grew up with the game, it frankly boggles my mind that we actually need a video like this. But I *did* grow up with it, so I guess I'm just old. All in all, excellent explanation and introduction into how best to play classic Half-Life!
Much of Half-Life's level design/puzzles was inspired by a game called "System Shock". "System Shock was the first to say' I don't want to make a level, I want to make a real place.'" "The first System Shock sits at a remarkable intersection between the forces that shaped coin-operated arcades, and the forces that shape games as we know them, today." Both quotes by Noah Caldwell-gervais.
It was amazing. The intro sequence on the train had some of the best graphics I had ever seen on a FPS to that point, and I think helps put you in the right frame of mind for what type of game it is. Honestly, it is a little surprising to me that people struggle so much with the game now - but I guess it makes sense that people don't expect it to have the depth of gameplay that it does because the graphics no longer seem realistic.
"If this were Doom, you'd be able to dodge this attack, but the only way to reliably avoid damage from a Vort is to get behind cover." So, like an Arch Vile then? ;)
dude i still have flashbacks to having to slide into cover behind a turret while blind firing wildly at VORG (that kept spawning seemingly infinitely but not) then charge toward a trampoline type thing while firing grenades mid air dodging lazers by sheer luck, sometimes i wonder how in the world i beat this game?!
@@distantsea There are other Enemies where seeking cover is the best option though. All the hitscanners, especially chaingunners, for example. Also I think most Hitscanners in older games are more unforgiving, than those in Half-Life, especially those damn cultists in Blood.
MarphitimusBlackimus made a really neat video detailing the assassin behavior, showing how they'll never throw grenades at you if they catch you unaware from behind and how they'll go to investigate unknown sounds while human grunts won't. It really is fascinating, all the little things going on under the hood in this game.
Fantastic analysis of this game, what makes it so good on a gameplay level, and what made it revolutionary at the time. You made great points about how this game is meant to be played, and contrasting that with how people these days tend to go into the game when coming in fresh. The thing is, back when this game was new, all of these things were at the forefront, at least for me. I remember mostly being familiar with Goldeneye as my only FPS experience, and hearing about this crazy new game that's more realistic than any game that's come before; one that's just one huge seamless level, with blood that splatters on the walls when someone gets shot, your legs break if you fall too far, where real-world physics matter, and enemies are as cunning as you are. Going into that game with all of that "realism" hype, especially being eight/nine years old and terrified, made me naturally approach things in this cautious/tactical way (though, being so young, I wasn't all that good at it). It's interesting to note how people tend to assume the opposite as the years have gone by. It's something that I've never thought about, but definitely makes loads of sense. Thanks for this deep dive into one of my favorite games ever. Definitely gonna take note to use snarks on those mine fields next time...
I would say the reason why people thought run and gunning is always the default FPS is because its a very safe and Milkable FPS style, you need to do jack shit to get the money out of it. Which is why a lot of games teach you to kinda be brain dead. Which is sad because the FPS genre has so much potential to be diverse with its styles of combat and thinking. But Alas it is not to be.
A lot of times in this game, the AI starts to act really unforgettably dumb and literally forces me to exploit its stupidity rather than come up with a clever way of outsmarting its wit. But other than that, yeah! This is actually a very true and well done video.
Thanks for making this video. I recently gave up on playing through Half-Life 1 because of how frustrated I got with it. I felt like I was constantly dying and reloading old saves to the point where it just wasn't fun anymore. But I think you're right. If there wasn't the option to save anywhere I don't think I would have tried to brute-force the game so much.
How far did you make it? I also went through that very same thing and I kept quitting because I found the combat to be difficult. However after I somehow made it through blast pit something clicked and I was able to beat the game and it's probably one of my favorites. I wish I could tell you why that was but I honestly have no idea. It could be due to finding the magnum at the end of blast pit. You also get grenades for you SMG about five minutes after the magnum and that helped me tremendously.
@@erselley9017 Funny, I was up to Ch 12, Surface Tension. I think I got those grenades and I don't recall weapons being an issue. There was something about that chopper, and then feeling stuck, and then a minefield that I kept on stumbling through and dying in. Around this time, I was having some decent fun with the game, but it wasn't anything I was blown away by. I remember thinking "This must have been really cool for its time" and being miserable when I got stuck
@@GurdevSeepersaud what's funny about that is that's the exact same place I stopped playing Black Mesa. It just wasn't enjoyable for me anymore and I felt like I wasn't making any progress. What they did was absolutely amazing but I just couldn't do it. I kept thinking we'll maybe it just takes some time to get used to like half life but surface tension is about the mid point and I still was getting brutalized at every turn. I can only Imagine the hell I would of had to endure at xen. Combat games are not easy for me anyway and I'm more a stranded on a planet alone and survive kinda girl and that's probably a big part of the problem.
@@erselley9017 Yeah I think Surface Tension is a turning point for a lot of people lol. I don't blame you for not wanting to go through it twice, but even so...do you watch the TH-camr Nerrel? I enjoy his videos and he covered Black Mesa in one of them. He said that Xen was completely reworked in BM and fixed a lot of the issues in the original game. Interesting that you dreaded Xen when playing the mod because he couldn't stop singing its praises.
@@GurdevSeepersaud oh I never even made it to xen in black mesa. I just assumed it would be difficult because the original game was. I've heard the team reworked the whole level and the videos I've seen support that. To be honest xen wasn't really difficult but more frustrating and it looks like the team really put thought into that. Maybe one day I can get there. I do know the team also made it possible to start at any level so I could easily just select xen and play it which you couldn't do in the original. However I kinda feel like I need to earn it before I visit. I'm weird like that.
I generally walk into any game with the Dark Souls mindset of "If you die, your plan was right, you just weren't skilled enough," and although I loved this game on hard, it was a big struggle. Definitely need to come back to this with strategy in mind.
I remember setting this game to hard because I thought old games are easy. It took me over 10 hours to finish playing hard on my first run through. The stress of playing on 5 health hoping to cross by a medkit has never escaped my nightmares
I bought this game like 2 weeks ago on Steam and I played it like it was like Call of Duty. Now that I've watched this video I'm gonna play it again and think about it tactically this time.
I'm honestly surprised that people have such a hard time playing this game. everything just kinda came naturally to me when playing half-life for the first time. It was almost as if this game was meant for me, and I really enjoyed it (minus the head crabs cuz I was playing it on a ps2 emulator). The biggest surprise in this video so far though is at 4:48, cuz like you, the soldiers are what made the game fun for me. It felt in a way like the perfect challenge, a challenge where you can trade-off skillful plays for witty strategies. This is why I enjoy Playing Half life so much. This game never gets old.
the game is hard if you want it to be hard too also from all the enemies that exist in the game i never really rated who is good to fight and who not but i believe we can agree that headcrabs are annoying af. even the black ops are a bit but i don't think much about them. bless gmod for allowing many ways to kill those little shiets. now i feel bad
I agree. For me it came natural too. Yes. I died just a few times because of some misshaps but. NEVER difficult. Like. How can you play a game like this wrong?
@@Mr.Tacoman999 i bought the game like maybe 2 years ago i don't even know did i even have a legitimate non steam copy of half life before i bought it XD
I remember the day before I saw this I played HL: Residual Point (a remake of the original) and got to a freight yard where a group of marines were killing me, I thought how efficient it would be if I would've thrown a grenade to distract them (as they can only shoot while standing still), wouldn't you know it I actually got through it, so I agree with what all of what you've said, good job.
@@powerofthec5908 Really late, but it's a mod of the original that changes the levels and the order of the chapters (ig surface tension comes after blast pit), it's alright as a reskin i guess, though i wasn't even intending on playing it, i downloaded a HL mod called Tyrian: Ground Assault, but for some reason i got RP, weird stuff but i'm not complaining.
I once found a review for Half-Life on steam, saying the game is too confusing and difficult, Valve has always had puzzles in their games (besides tf2 and others), and they have had that since the start and like you said Gordon isn't no Doomguy, he is a scientist, and thinking "it was released in 1998 so it will be just like doom" is pretty much like when you are about to do something you think you are familiar with, but when you start it, it is completely diffrent and you have no idea what you are gonna do, Half-Life and Portal and others require you to think, hell Half-Life even states that with it's "run, think, shoot, live" pretty much saying to your face "this isn't doom". And it shows how Valve wanted to be diffrent and not be like everyone just making games about just shooting things, Half-Life requires you to think, plan, and figure out what you are gonna do if you are pinned down.
"it was released in 1998 so it will be just like doom" - no one who remembers 1998 would think that. Its a giveaway of someone for whom 1998 is some sort of times of yore, when mammoths walked the streets and their old geezers were still young.
When I got my first computer, I remember my brother bought me this game and helped me play it as a way to learn the general controls of most games- stuff like WASD n stuff. I thought I would hate it, since im horrible at fps and a cozy gamer at heart (animal crossing, unpacking, etc), but it’s actually one of my favorite games!! I think the way half life approaches combat is super interesting, and this game design approach is probably the main reason i come back to it, despite me not usually liking the genre ^^; great video!! put a lot of my thoughts about this game into proper words :)
damn I'm one of those guys that played this game with the run and gun strategy HAHHAHA. Now I wish I played it more strategically :P P.s I enjoyed your video a lot man keep it up!!
I feel like I played the game in a really strange way, I would try and stealth my way through the whole thing because I was scared out of my mind 99% of the time, but I would never strategize because I wasn't smart enough to think more than 2 steps behind. I think I probably played the worst way possible somehow
I remember when I was stuck at a platforming section (the part after that desert tank behind that building with the guns and stuff) and I just rocket jumped. Unlike quake, the rocket launcher does tons of self damage though , and it just so happened that the area I took 80 of my health off getting to, was full to the brim with marines.
I keep being reminded just how ahead of time this games AI was. We all attribute the revolutionary way that Half Life told it's story as what it changed everything by, but it's much more than that. Love the video!
Holy shit, I've been playing this game so wrong, I always thought that it was a generic run and gun game and I would always die trying to beat it. I never thought that this would be so strategic and I'm glad that it is, I love strategy games. But honestly, this helped me on my game so much, thanks.
it actually took me until after my second playthrough in questionable ethics in black mesa to realize that i should play more safe and tactical than i did with most shooters. i learned that i need to use almost all of my arsenal to make it out with good hp for the next section( i personally like to use trip mines for the reason of traps ).
One of my childhood friends (the first of us who got a PC and played ego shooters) told me that the zombies were so 'lame' cuz you could simply use the crowbar, bait them and then knock them down without losing health. Me, being a child, thought this was frightening. But he showed it to us and I think that this really broke how we all perceived AI in video games. We jumped on tables in Dark Project, rocket jumping in Quake and played Blood, Duke and Doom always looking for these little things to "learn" a game and the more or less intentional counter.
This is a hidden, undersubbed, gem of a video. I never knew it was possible to analyze video games that much, or even that Half-Life had so much depth to it!
Just wanna let you know, I recently started college and am taking a class for video game design. One of my first assignments was to play a video game and write down the rules of the game, its mechanics, and the ways in which the developers want you to play it. I recalled this video and decided to play Half-Life. With all the points you made in mind, it helped me properly analyze the subtleties of Half-Life and let me put into words how it differs from its predecessors like Doom and Quake. Thanks for being awesome.
I Have a terrible habit in half life where i Get extremely triggered if i lose a bit of HP or waste ammo. I Can't imagine half life without Save states other then that i enjoyed it the hivemind Weapon is one of my least used weapons in half life i only used it as a last ditch effort. I Think i was using them the wrong way I'll might replay this game on hard And Try to use it to its full potential
@@apugalypse_now Plus it has two different fire modes, which it makes me love that weapon more, unfortunately you could only obtain it in later stages though
I am like this too. Half-Life in a nutshell: *F6* *F5* I always retry until I kill everyone with least health and ammo loss... I also always quickload if I miss a revolver headshot
Great video! Played the first Half Life in hard five months ago, and I noticed that my play style usually be played it safe. It’s a slow progression, but it really does show the senses of the game. I died about nearly fifty times due to being low HP or human error. Though I didn’t complete Xen because I read some players stated that it’s not worth it. Also any other games that Valve made has involve literally thinking things through. Portal 1 & 2 - defining physics. L4D1 & L4D2 - know when to make a move. TF2 - the roles could make a difference in the match. Dota 2 - a simple game of chess could be easily defined as. Counter-Strike - coordination is number one priority.
Hello Leadhead! I liked your argument about roleplaying the game as a theoretical physicist. I run a youtube, twitter, and subreddit (/r/letsroleplaygames) focused on highlighting similar thinking as in your video. I'm trying to build a community of like-minded people who approach games from the perspective of highlighting choice in games. Still getting off the ground so not much to look at other than my own work, but I've shared your video on twitter and reddit.
I'm gonna check out your stuff later, but do you have any tips for roleplaying in games in general? I always just play like I would. Sure, my attitude is different (such as being much more aggressive in combat situations), but any other time, I play as me.
@@wlll1235 Absolutely nothing wrong with that. A lot of the roleplaying I do is just "what would I do if this was in real life". It doesn't have to be some radical or grandiose thing. So if I'm playing as a good person, things like randomly killing people, taking everything out of a house (even if it's not marked as stealing), etc in a game like Fallout New Vegas are out of the picture. Just because the game can't stop you doing something doesn't mean you should do it. Or via your actions. For example in Prey (2017), you can either choose mods that allow you to lift heavy items. I usually use explosive barrels or recycling charges instead of getting those abilities. Same with hacking, there's a toy cross-bow you can use to get doors open so I tend to prefer that. What Leadhead was doing in this video was roleplaying via his actions. He chose to combine weapons as a physicist would. I chose to use the environment to do something similar in Prey.
@@SequentialGamer_KCD sorry I didn't see your reply earlier! I honestly forgot that I wrote something here, anyways, onto my point: thanks for the advice! I always try to do what is possible in a game, and not limiting what I do. It almost seems like it's less fun (limiting what you do), but from what I've heard, it's even more fun than otherwise.
This really makes me want to try replaying half life. I tried for the first time a few months back and save scummed like crazy while dying constantly. I gave up during “on a rail”. I’m excited to try again With a new strategy
An example of me using things tactically was when i got to the canal area of unforseen consequences. Instead of waiting to deal with the bullsquid, i simply pulled the pin on a grenade, let it cook, then throw it.
Great video! I wish I could’ve heard all this before playing Half Life. I had no one to introduce me to the game and went in blind, I spent so much of my first play through saving and reloading, doing a million things over and over again to memorise what to do. Might have to replay it and implement significantly more strategy
First time I dealt with the minefield I tried shooting at it and didn't set any of the mines off. From that I concluded that wasn't how the mines worked. Black Mesa did it far better with the mines actually being visible.
It was blown away when you mentioned you've seen players not know how to manage the minefield. The game does such a good job of helping players get into right the mindset with constant environmental interaction, by the time I got to the mines during my first playthrough back in 1999, the grenades were the first thing I reached for. Something like blast pit should have tipped them off. The tentacles will kill you if you make noise, but even if you creep up to the door, it's boarded up! So, maybe if you use a grenade to blow the planks off first, you can sneak past... but wait, they're attacking the door now... where the grenade went off... It SHOULD get the gears turning, right?
Now I realized why I love the Half-Life and Portal series so much: these games take brains to play,. And I never thought people tried to just brute force them.
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Hey guys! If you wanna join in on some games, and get involved with this cool community, you can join my discord at discord.gg/PVvXESU7WU
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@@sorenmathias3978 tf?
3:30 , ask that to the shambler in quake
was this by any chance in responce to civvie 11's video? as much as i love that video it did annoy me that he refused to utilise some of the weapons like the hive hand and the snarks, even in "forget about freeman" the hive hand is perfect for the snark mines
I've always called snarks as pokemon.
I always kill houndeyes, headcrabs zombies, vortigaunts and bullsquids with crowbar and dont take any damage. I have a problem about spending ammo.
"You should only die about twenty times in your playthrough."
Me falling off the same ladder and dying 30 times: Got it boss.
why nobody commented here.
That's the funny thing about it tho... ONLY dying 20 times. Shows how difficult this game really is potentially. And even if you take it the gun blazin' route, you still need to use your head to clear areas fast and efficient.
@@royliber3824 especially in the tank parts in surface tension
Me in Blast Pit
Damn, this massive fan is going to be cool
*Gets sliced up into pieces*
I die 30 times in a minute let alone the whole playthrough
“They’re cunning as hell and want to live as badly as you do”
Grunts nading themselves tells me otherwise
Being cunning and being able to aim are two incredibly different things.
I am me The actual intent and the actual execution of the AI are two incredibly different things
The grunts stand on their grenades only when they are low on health. They stand still baiting you to get closer. I speak from experience.
@@rishavganguly92 Even so, that's still not something someone who wants to live would do.
@@JustWowNick I don't think their main priority was living. It was to kill Freeman. They are determined to kill Freeman and nothing will stop in their way. It's either that or I'm just over thinking.
So I'm correct in playing like a terrified chipmunk on amphetamines with an M16 and a Tau cannon?
Exactly
*MP5. Unless you're playing Gearbox's rather ugly-looking "HD" pack.
when i first played half life i didn't know that i was playing with the hd models :(
Imagine using hd models 😒
@@sharcc2511 What's wrong with the HD Models? They looked better than the older ones to me (NPC's and Guns), the only exception really being the crowbar.
"If you only use the SMG and shotgun, you'll probably have 16 health or above and constantly loading saves."
Wow, that's accurate
But I LOVE that style of gameplay! The best way is to run into the room, look around and remember who is shooting at you from where, reload and outsmart them with the new knowledge :P
@@jarlfenrir I mean hey whatever works best for you is a valid way to play!
I always played Half-Life like this: Jump like a madman, get shot, pick up smg, alt fire, revolver, close up while tanking damage and shotgunning them in the face. And, in the case of the assasins, i just hid in a corner waiting for them to come to me. I treated it like a videogame, but now this video game me insight on how to actually play it.
That's why i keep dying in hl:s
I definitely save a lot because I feel like a bunch of marines would show up in the next loading scene and that I would die.
Unless you reload a quicksave everytime you take damage.
Honestly, people underestimate this game. I've seen people ignore the guard in Blast Pit under the assumption that a game this old couldn't possibly have a big enemy that tracks you based on sound.
Oh yeah, once I learned the big tentacle fuck is attracted to sound after throwing grenades at it and seeing it being attracted to the one that got across the entire chamber, it got really easy
yeah I figured nades would distract it and I felt so smart lol
@@focalpoint._ 'big tentacle fuck' is the best thing i've seen it being called
Who is underestimating the game? It's deemed one of the best shooters ever, even by people who play it wrongly!
Blast Pit is very easy if you crouch when throwing grenades around the place, I like that it can't hear you if you crouch.
Basically you need to leave aside the "old game old mechanics" thinking, and treat it as a modern game. You are so right about the graphics deceiving the player
Even if you were to have the mindset of a modern game, nothing in modern shooters really quite have the same strategy and built in tools for the situations you face like half life. First time playing, I found myself stuck and having to run around for 30 minutes to an hour only to find the solution is to shoot one thing or explode a wall or press e on a certain cage. I was in the mindset that "old game can't do this, no way they made it like that". Boy was I wrong.
lol modern fps is like 4-5 enemies spawn out of no where, you take cover and burst shoot them until another wave comes, then you proceed when a dramatic radio is heard.
In Half Life, there are enemies there already, placed with map design as NPC entities so no spawn out of an invisible gateway; unless a teleporting Xenians or Osprey dropping soldiers.
The graphics certainly weren't deceptive when it came out. This was the first game I ever needed to buy a dedicated 3D card to play. It looked *so* different to anything that had come before. My mind boggled the first time I ever heard someone call Half Life a retro game; to me, if it *needs* a 3D card to look any good, and can't be run on DOS, it's *definitely* "modern."
If Half Life was a modern FPS, it would have a bunch of superpower gimmicks and flashy ultimate attacks.
its true but the year that it came out also doesnt help xD
my friend told me just before i started my first playthrough "You aren't Doomguy, you are Gordon Freeman. You are a theoretical physicist. Act like one."
Based friend clearly cared for your playthrough's quality.
meanwhile black mesa:
@@jockeyfield1954 i mean true but black mesa is, in my opinion, made to be more fast paced
no he didn't say this
@@eLaine33 yes he did
"Half-life is a slow methodical set-up to a tactical fight"
Speedrunners: NO.
@@snarkylive 2:17
@@LilChid every enemy possible*
@@sidekic1109 I don't understand, you are correcting a time code.
@@LilChid correcting snarky's sentence
what about the multiplayer?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
!
I finished the game today and I didn't expect it to be so damn hard, I wanted to fight aliens not the entire us military
lmaoo
Well I mean, in Half-Life 2, you fight the combine aswell, which are technically aliens, but their soldiers aren’t... So you’re basically fighting juiced up military.
dude man, im playing through it now, the AI is ACTUALLY SMART its insane. yeah they have pretty poor aim, compared to you, but the way the act tactically, and less as single units, and more as a group force, is leaps and bounds above most games AI
@@stapuft the AI also can smell things.
and if i recognize it correctly you can distract the bullsquids in the freezer with shooting the meat down because they will go and eat it (if you don't attract their attention).
@@stapuft well there is a reason why VALVE is seem as the milestone of npc AI... they are gods at it
"I admit I have a fascination for those who adapt and survive against all odds. They rather remind me of myself." - The G-Man
Adrian Shephard :D
G, man...
@@mtflieutenant7693 GORDON FREEMAN!!!?!!?
@@plorabare gman is gordon freeman father
What did he mean by that?
0:30 I disagree with the 'never held a gun before' assessment. In the introduction, it is stated that Gordon's Disaster Response Priority is 'Discretionary', which would mean that he is free to act as he pleases in the event of a hazardous situation. Barneys, for comparison, were supposed to put Equipment and scientists first. It is highly likely that Gordon was given special training on both weapons and survival in hazardous environments. Just look at all the dead HEV guys in Xen, they were armed to the teeth and were also teleported equipment pods filled with arms and ammo. Hell, the scientists at lambda expected Gordon to just jump into the teleporter to xen, despite the fact that he had no prior knowledge of the aliens prior to the disaster. HEV class scientists were almost certainly trained in combat.
Gordon went through the Hazard Course, which taught him to shoot at least an MP5 with a grenade underbarrel attachment.
@@roadent217 Completely forgot about that. that's true.
Didn't Gordon also win a shooting tournament in his past?
Yep, Gordon had training
@@kesorangutan6170 a more likelier explanation is compartmentalization. He simply was assigned to one section of blackmesa and denied access to the rest. that's why some hev guys get to explore xen while Gordon doesn't.
in all the years Ive been playing hl1 I never thought to use snarks for mine fields omg
Yes, do it, abuse the helpless alien bug-thing.
I always used grenades and saved snarks to catch soldiers off guard
same
I just used the pistol to see where to walk
Well, they aren't necessarily that good an option due to their tendency to come right back towards you if there's no other target for them to attack. And if you don't have a safe vantage point to throw them from, you'll likely have to waste additional ammo on them to kill them. Grenades are honestly the easiest way due to their area of effect, usually revealing multiple mines at once.
Same goes for satchel charges, which some players may not even use much otherwise.
The rule of Half-Life: don't Quake it or you're Doomed
lmfao
Don't Quake it make it
That's unreal
Quake it til you make it
Then you'll be wearing a halo
Normal People: Run, Think, Shoot, Live
Speedrunners: Run.
run,shoot
Runrunrunrun think shoot runrunrun
Hop, Noclip, Glitch the game, Live, kinda
first off you just gotta do a side-strafed back-hop over the 0.3cm height surface here looking to the west with a 34° degree to the north and land on this clip canceling the fall-damage with front-strafed semi-crouch, and you've sucefully saved 15 seconds of gameplay
Half Life Speedrunners: Hop.
Just started playing Half Life 1 recently, and on that part where you're taught to run away from the first headcrab, I got my crowbar and went back to kill it. Clearly the lesson went over my head. But still worth it.
No, the game just doesn't incentify half of the things the dude in the video is saying. If this game is meant to be tactical in some aspects then please, singal and teach the player correctly.
Also Half Life is too unpredictable and has too many encounters for tactical approaches to be interesting and fun.
@@ra.n9482 Skill issue
@@ra.n9482
There's literally a training mode for the player.
@@ra.n9482 youre really saying that a game not being monotonous and empty is bad?
Im on the boss fight on normal mode, I basically killed everyone and everything that moved except scientists and cops
“This game is loaded with puzzles where the solution is to do what would be logical in that situation” This right here is why I loved this game. It felt like I truly figured out the solution. No hand-holding, no text popping up saying “That box looks like it could be broken” “That wire looks dangerous, better avoid it.” It’s something newer games do all the time that really takes away from the experience.
Great point. It always pisses me off in half life 2 where Alyx is like "Hey I think there's a vent behind those shelves."
@@gordonneverdies to be fair, she doesnt say that right away but still
The hand holding in modern titles is annoying af
for someone who just played the mainline fps' it was a great challenge because there wasn't an example on the screen to help me figure it out
I wonder how much of this "hand-holding" stems from play testers getting stuck because they don't find a solution to a puzzle. Or maybe it's more because game designers want/have to make their games more accessable?
"Play as a scientist whos probably never held a gun" Someone skipped the tutorial where Freeman is put through advanced survival and combat training.
its for the player
@@okacha_0632 Yes, the game is for the player. Not sure what youre getting at.
@@Corgblam I think he says that the tutorial is for the player, not for Gordon
@@juanignaciojaime7563 The Black Mesa hazard course is canon to the story. Gordon wasnt the first to visit Zen, and they knew dangerous creatures were everywhere there. They put the scientists working with anomalous materials and dimensional breaches through combat training to raise their survival chances when they visit Zen. This is also why you find scientists in hazard suits in Zen sitting near ammo containers.
@@Corgblam I don't think the tutorial is cannon but that would be a good way to make it cannon
This style of combat is exactly why i prefer episode 2 to HL2 and ep1. The hunters and antlion workers are such well designed enemies they really bring this style of combat back to the forefront and make Hl2s combat actually challenging. Plus it does the best job of bringing back the first games’ signature “survival horror tension”.
For real, I think overall, Half Life 2 is the best game in the series, but as far as game *mechanics* go, you can't beat hl1 and ep2 for me
Episode 2's Hunters are fun, but I really wish they were slightly more deadly.
half life 2 is timeless, it has great puzzles, it's one of the most intuitive shooters of all time, and the physics engine remains my absolute favourite today, but it's a step back from hl1. some examples of where it falls short:
- the game is filled to the brim with cutscenes like a red letter day and black mesa east instead of using environmental storytelling (although i do like the second pod ride, until alyx appears)
- the combine ai is a step back from hecu and feels a lot dumber and less versatile, this is partially due to over-reliance on nodes (e.g. the soldier forced to stay at the emplacement gun that you can trick with a mayonnaise jar)
- there are very few weapons and they're not nearly as consistent or memorable as hl1, let alone op4
- rebel ai is unfinished as hell considering follow freeman is entirely dedicated to leading squads of them. they're annoying and immersion breaking to the point that hl1 scientists are deus ex tier in comparison. worst part? you're not allowed to shoot them.
- combine combat encounters consist of just throwing as much cannon fodder at the player as possible
hl1 and hl2 are both excellent games, but the difference is that hl1 is more consistent. in hl1, the bad parts (interloper, gonarch's lair, nihilanth) stand out, while in hl2, the good parts (point insertion, route kanal, ravenholm, our benefactors) stand out. hl2 shines brightest when it uses its physics for puzzles and environmental combat, but it doesn't have that much else going for it. the episodes, however, do a great job of fixing many of its flaws; the underground sections of ep1 and the antlion & hunter sections of ep2 are legendary enough to warrant their own essays of analysis lol
MoofEMP
I pretty much agree with your points about HL2. And I think that Ep.2 was superior in combat, pacing etc. Compared to HL2. But was “Our Benefactors” really a good chapter? I appreciate the idea of using the Super Gravity Gun. But it gets so boring when the only enemy type you fight is the Combine Elite (with arguably bad AI) and your only weapon being a super OP weapon. The fights become too easy and too boring to me
@@doctorfaker391 the combat in our benefactors is admittedly lackluster, but its supersoldier-y nature does a good job of keeping momentum while feeling like the combine are giving everything they got, it does a good job of environmental storytelling, and it sets the player up for the citadel section in ep1, where they really go all out with the super gravity gun. the thing it has going for it most, though, is probably that it comes immediately after follow freeman, which imo is the weakest part of the game lol
"Gordon doesn't know how to held a gun"
Gordon uses a prototype gun without even reading a manual, shoots with a RPG, and supports almost all knockback from the guns in his firsts shots. That degree in theoretical physics is doing wonders for him.
MIT education practically paying for itself
Hev suit = no knockback
in the intro they say gordon has trained for this kind of scenerios
Gordon is an American living in most likely rural New Mexico, MIT-educated theoretical physicist who works at a secret government-funded and controlled facility or not, there ain't no way he's never used a gun even for just target shooting.
@@lsswappedcessna I think in the training level Gordon is trained with a couple of guns
I actually did the exact opposite against the black ops assassins. I went ultra aggressive. Basically ran and jumped on them with a shotgun and the AI just got confused lmao
Me2 actually, I threw grenades and used the revolver and changed directions all the time while jumping and running like a mad man
@@nanach6276 I dealt with them by waiting to expose themselves and shoot them with the crossbow which deals enough damage to oneshot them.
Basicly the waiting game.
Jump around, place some mines here and there, go crazy with the shotgun. Doing wonders.
I just blasted em with underslung grenades when they stopped 10 feet away to shoot
@@ARStudios2000same
Jesus Christ I've been playing this game so wrong, this game is a lot more unique as I first thought. I'm very far into my first playthrough but I'm restarting.
as linear half life is, it is as dynamic in combat. there are so many ways you can enter and leave combat. although when you know pretty much exactly where every enemy is placed in every map it gives you an unfair advantage to npcs. especially when you can easily predict what will they do
Try Black Mesa aswell
The two arent the same, but compliment each other well
No dude just keep playing
Xen is complete bullshit though. No health or ammo when getting to the final boss.
@@doriantermini yeah I heard a lot of shit about that part.
So I'm not the only one who likes to roleplay as a theoretical physicist with limited combat exposure fighting for my life in a game about a theoretical physicist with limited combat exposure fighting for his life. Damn
*damn*
damn
*damn*
thats how i played the game
Damn.
Only Leadhead can make me look at one of my favorite games in a completely different light, I'll have to incorporate these things into my next playthrough. A big criticism I've had for Half-life is that there are too many weapons for each to actually have a clear-cut use, while it turns out I just haven't been using them to the best of their ability. Perhaps this great design going unseen by players is why Valve playtests so rigorously now.
As for using real world logic in the game Half-Life supports this extremely well. On my last playthrough I did something a bit different and I think interesting, that I haven't really done with games before. I really got into the head of Gordon Freeman and did a sort of serious version of "Freeman's mind". I literally pretended that I was in that situation, and commented in my thoughts on what I would actually be thinking. I thought about what I would really think if I saw strange creatures or a dead person. I would walk places instead of run, and even intentionally screw up if I thought that's what would realistically happen. Because I've played the game a few times before, I could kind of prepare how Gordon would react, like I was writing a character but the character was also me. I would pretend to have conversations with guards and scientists, and struggle morally with defending myself against marines. It got my heart beating faster, gave me sicker feelings in my stomach, and a wider range of emotions and concern than any gaming experience I've ever had, all without any real characters and with graphics from 1998.
The farthest I took this was when I found a set of cots the military was using in the chapter Surface Tension. It was pretty late and I was tired, so after clearing out the building I took a nap in real life and in the game. Keeping the headphones on and hearing the occasional gunshots in the distance, vortigaunt noises, or those flying stingray things, all while legitimately trying to fall asleep was surreal and also so real. This might be diverging a bit too much from the video's topic but I thought it was an interesting share.
Half-Life is a fascinating game extremely ahead of it's time, and it's super easy to look at and treat it as just another oldschool shoot 'em up. Great video once again!
It's funny you mention Freeman's mind. Ever since I first watched the series, that's how I play almost every story driven game I play. I don't take it *quite* that far, but playing it that way is honestly awesome
@@Leadhead Freeman's mind is gold, and it made me think about how I would actually react in these situations. Ross Scott's reactions are hilarious, but probably not how an actual human would react to things in favor of being a bit more chaotic. It's interesting to think about how sick to your stomach you would actually feel in that situation, and if anything its a nice way to completely shake up a half-life playthrough.
That's a super interesting mental experiment! A lot of mental effort perhaps but fasinating as an experience. :D
I recently did that with Alyx as well. I tried to put myself in sync with how she's feeling and match my body language and hand gestures to what she's doing. Is she exhausted from fighting antlions? Maybe it's time to take cover and sit for a minute. The physical nature of the game really helps you do that.
I always play like this but only in Half-Life games. Don't know why but I just can't take some other games seriously
As stressful as the chapter “Surface Tension” was due to extreme combat difficulty, for me it was honestly one of the most fun parts of the game.
Eh, I think there's a lot of cool parts but it's much too long in comparison to pretty much every chapter. Whenever I do it normally, it feels like two chapters merged into one, but I've gotten good enough at some of the skips to not have to deal with as much of it.
It is the best part of the game
The coolest chapter, maybe behind lambda core but still, cooler
Agree with the fact it’s very combat heavy
Doomguy: Where do you work out?
Gordon Freeman: At the library.
Brains is The biggest Muscle
I think this has to be one of the best thumbnails on TH-cam. Grabs your attention, gives you an idea of what your about to watch and has a cool text font that visualizes the ideas being discussed. Also, great video.
"Thank God I watched Diehard like 50 times, otherwise I wouldn't know anything about guns."
- Gordon Freeman
Playing as Ross' version of Freeman is probably the most realistic and best way one would survive in this situation: Trust no one, think like a paranoid psychopath, watch out only for yourself.
my favorite quote from Gordon is: " "
- Gordon Freeman
I tried playing Half Life 1 a while ago and I ragequitted because the marines suicided against me. Then I realized that there were grenades I could use against them, and I remember I thought "What? This game wants me to use grenades? I don't like using grenades, I don't wanna do that. This game can't force me to do that." And I ragequitted.
Now, very recently, I gave it another try. And I realized what you say in this video: That the fights in this game are PUZZLES. Once I realized that, I absolutely LOVED the game. I learned that this game is smarter than most other shooter games, and respected it. Great game I love it 10/10 play it.
"run -> shoot -> die -> reload -> run -> shoot -> live"
that seems like my first time playing half life
Basically every game ever
"On a rail" is honestly one of my favorite chapters in the game. all of the combat encounters are incredibly fun if you play cautiously
Finally! Someone likes on a rail like me
On a Rail can be incredibly frustrating the first time, but when you play it again you realise how fun it is
It's also fun when you focus enough to track and visualize the layout of the tunnels. I think the biggest problem with that chapter isn't the labarinthyne layout itself but the fact that it doesn't prepare the player for it. If I remember correctly from my first playthrough, by the time I thought I should be paying much more attention to the layout I was nearly done the chapter. Honeslty even just a map of the tunnels that could be found hanging on the wall in like 2 locations would've helped tremendously imo
HOLY SHIT YES. Fellow On a Rail enjoyer.
I enjoy on a rail because of how different the fighting can be. It's always different for me. Sometimes the vorts can get the upper hand on the grunts and other times the grunts kill them first. Sometimes I can set a trap and they fall for it and other times they don't. Sometimes you can round a corner and a grunt will be there or other times there not. I mean in 98 that must of been very hard work to get the enemies AI not to respond to every situation the exact same way. I mean you know the area there going to be but not exactly what room they're going to be in when you round a corner. Sometimes they're quick and will launch a grenade the second before I launch mine and other times they don't. I also enjoyed all the different ways you could kill the two soliders you sneak up on at the end. It's probably one of my favorite levels.
I totally agree with you, everyone calls half life 1 an arena shooter, but in reality, it's one of the earlier tactical shooters.
@@MaryKartografr true, but that's a seperate client, so it doesn't count
@@GavinPetty wdym seperate client?
@@shurbrrt Separate exe, can be downloaded and run without ever touching the base game.
Quake was like this too.
@@Cri_Jackal no its not, HL2DM is a seperate client but HL1 DM was always the same client as the campaign
I loved it all. The story campaign, deathmatch, TFC CS 1.6 it was great. I remember making dinky little maps in the worldcraft editor.
Bruh, I got really frustrated playing this game for the first time a few months ago. I beat it, and loved it, but I hated the combat. It felt like resource management almost the entire time I was running around, shooting things.
I didn't know the game was meant to be tactical. I feel _so dumb_ now.
Lol same. I was so pissed that there were situations where you were literally could not win because you didn’t have enough ammo. I’m glad that I played HL2 after this because it made me retroactively enjoy HL1. Now this video is gonna make me replay Half-Life.
Same here. I was wonder why this game don't have assault rifles and sniper rifles. Now I understand the assault rifles didn't exist because you need to be more tactical to choose between pistol and SMG, not both. Sniper rifle characters also seperated to revolvers and crossbow.
Evan Kauffman If Half-Life felt like resource management, try playing Opposing Force.
Go play Black Mesa. It is a massive improvement to every aspect of the game and fixes a lot of the frustrating parts (on rails is heavily re-designed for example, and surface tension is extended).
Xen in particular is an absolute triumph and looks like a world that would fit perfectly into a Metroid Prime game.
Now is the best time to pick it up, as the just released the final patch, the definitive edition of the game.
Carl Johan Black Mesa is honestly even more like resource management than Half-Life. It's really just the graphics, On a Rail, and Xen that were improved. The gameplay in Black Mesa overall is more tedious.
basically, playing half-life
is like playing first person shooter chess.
so thats why im so bad at it!
i like how this also describes doom eternal, looks like the legacy carries on
Chess but you can just Turn All your Pawns into Queens By typing a code
Or Knock the board over
what are you talking about? have you played half life?
to clarify
I have played every half-life game
and multiple mods
and I have played chess
I still find Half-Life games to offer the amount of freedom and tactical options truly few shooter games yet can provide in a single package.
One reason they're so infinitely replayable.
I really appreciate how well you explained what Half-Life's combat does right, and I completely agree with you on what the game is trying to do -- but I would've also liked to see you address the ways in which Half-Life seems to undermine its own design goals. I think analysis is at its best with a "they say, I say" structure, if that makes sense.
Personally, I feel like Half-Life is another victim of the classic game design problem where you CAN be creative, but the game never INCENTIVIZES it. As the saying goes, "When given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of a game." Here's a few things that bugged me when I replayed the game this year:
1. The weapons all have extremely high reserve ammo pools, which discourages players from switching off their favorite guns. I never felt like I needed to use the trip mines even ONCE because I always had plenty of grenades and C4 and I thought those weapons were 10 times more fun to use while filling a nearly identical niche. Fighting HECU marines can also become stale once you find out that SMG grenades kill them instantly, you can carry 10 max, and they regularly drop more. Lowering the reserve ammo was one of my favorite combat changes in both Half-Life 2 and Black Mesa because it made my decisions in combat more frequent and meaningful. Using SMG grenades on single targets is a much more interesting choice when you can only carry 3.
2. HECU marines have too much health and accuracy, which discourages players from experimenting by simultaneously reducing the effectiveness of improvising AND planning ahead. Tabletop role-players are well aware of the phenomenon where increasing an enemy's health and/or damage makes players less likely to fight creatively due to the increased consequences for failure (this is one reason why many seasoned D&D vets don't like its 5th Edition). In Half-Life, particularly on first-time playthroughs, attempting to fight the marines with a plan can easily backfire if their high health allows them to tank the player's planned approach -- and attempting to fight the marines improvisationally can easily backfire if their high damage kills the player quicker than they can react. Therefore, why not use SMG grenades almost every time?
3. HECU marines have inconsistent AI that can often, again, discourage players from experimenting. The nice thing about the marines' high health is that it gives players more of a chance to see them act intelligently, but this game design trick only works if the enemies always tell you what they're thinking. Players have to see it and hear it to believe they're fighting realistic humans -- FEAR does this perfectly. Meanwhile, HECU marines somehow have the awareness to react to the sound of an SMG grenade instantaneously (which only affects stealth approaches, further reducing the player's combat options) without saying a word about it. And simultaneously, they're so dumb that they run right into highly visible trip mine lasers. Combined with the aforementioned "damage sponge" health and their frequently sentence mixed dialogue, the HECU marines rarely feel like human opponents. Maybe that's intentional? I'd ask Mark Laidlaw.
4. The last thing that keeps me from calling this game tactical is that weapon damage feels random, especially on the shotgun. Note that I said it FEELS random -- I'm almost certain the damage of every bullet is identical, but it doesn't feel that way in practice. My guess is that it's due to heavily randomized weapon spread. Seeing an HECU marine occasionally survive a point-blank double shotgun blast never feels warranted, and it even happens at 9:44 in this very video! I suppose the benefit here is that it makes your plans more likely to fail, sending you into an exciting scramble for your own survival, but I don't think it's worth it because of this side effect: players will learn that their plans may fail for no obvious reason, and they will stop planning ahead.
Sorry to write a book (that no one will ever read), but I think there are too many videos out there that don't give Half-Life a fair shake. It has a lot of amazing elements that revolutionized the industry and have stood the test of time, but it also undermines its own potential by falling into some common trappings of '90s game design. I still love the game, but game theory has come a long way since 1998. Play conditioning -- the way a game tells you how to play it -- wasn't even a concept back then, and I think it shows.
I bet you’re the kind of guy that has a multi page resume and wonders why he gets no interviews.
@@arrux4822 Honestly, I respect a good roast. I actually do get interviews, but that's usually as far as I go. Job markets, man :(
Hey man I’m playing through for the first time and I agree. Some dudes just don’t die. And planning an encounter for it to literally never work has made me just think that people who do see the game that way have just played it so much it’s overblown in their minds. If I played Superman 64 a million times I could say the same shit just cuz I know everything about the game. And that’s what 99% of people who have talked about half life have done
@@Myrmeleos That's pretty much how I see it. Bad systems can seem tolerable or even brilliant if you spend enough time with them to avoid every flaw. It's true in life as it is in games.
I read the book and agree 100%
I grew up playing HL1 so for me its style of cautious/judicious combat is the more natural approach when I play singleplayer FPS.
Have you ever tried rainbow six siege? Heard that's got that type of tactical combat
@@dontkickmychick6076 it's supposed too, but yeah rainbow has that, however your always made of glass in that came so caution I'd always needed
*same*
@@Uniformtree000 lol yea ur made of glass cuz a bullet or 2 would usually put u out of a real fight
@@androrobuiques9497 usually two, one to penetrate the armor plate, which most modern body armor is built to stop one than break. And the other to kill you.
Everytime I fought the silent assassins I remind myself that "I AM THE DEMOMAN"
what makes you a good demoman?
@@cheatsykoopa98 if he was a bad demoman, he wouldn't be discussin it with ya, now would he?
@@gavindillon1486 LETS DO IIIIIIT
@Matarael, Angel of Rain *grabs scrumpy*
@@FranTusajigwe big sip
Tripmines and satchels were definitely the weapons I underestimated the most early on. Soldiers can be tough to outsmart and flee quickly from grenades but *totally ignore* satchels and tripmines. Used properly, that nightmare room with the "unbeatable ninjas" will be you laughing as all the enemies try to "flank" you through a booby trap maze of pain.
In my first playthrough, I basically just rushed at everything with a shotgun.
*scout tf2 intensifies*
Yeah, pretty much. I use the same strategy for DOOM Eternal, with only a few exceptions.
Fun but dumb. Actually was how my first playthrough of Black Mesa was like until the chapter; Interloper, where I used my shotgun sparingly to pick of the contollers like duck hunting, and managed to hang on to 48 rounds until the climax.
Now when I reach that chapter, about all of my weapons are deadly low, but I planned how to conserve each shot. If I'm dry and the hive hand isn't cutting it, I usually have good health and armor, so I use the crowbar on grunts and after tanking a few hits I use the long jump module to evade. Other times I will sometimes straight up use the three bursts of speed to fight enemies like I'm Sonic The Hedgehog, dodging Eggman with the occasional punt to them during a fast flyby.
I use pistol.
Same
There is a big ass rotating propellor beneath me: The logical thing would be to jump into it.
No, the logical thing is to throw a granade, or push a box. And then jump.
@@O5MO Were there any boxes nearby? I can't remember. And I wouldn't waste a nade. I guess, Valve knew, that sooner or later people would jump into it.
@@NikolajKalashnikov47 You get 5 grenade for each pickup, surely you can waste a grenade or two to blow open the wooden hatch on the ceiling?
@@focalpoint._ Yes, but that's not the problem. Who would even think about throwing a grenade down there?
HR in BlackMesa: why would you jump into rotating thing?
Me: FOR THE SECRETS OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS OF COURSE!
I think this is why I liked Half-Life so much. I'm not really into FPS games and only played Half-Life because Valve let you play the series for free as a promotion for Half-Life Alyx. I didn't expect that I'd end up so immersed in a game from over 20 years ago. Every combat encounter had a unique setpiece which created a cool puzzle to figure out, if you ask me my favorite First Person Puzzler isn't Portal, it's Half-Life. This is also why I disliked Half-Life 2 so much since the game separated the puzzles from the combat leaving me feeling very frustrated, fortunately Half Life the Episodes once again felt like puzzle games.
@Zer0dog i get why someone would like HL2, it had a lot of really amazing setpieces and the gravity gun was awesome. I just feel like a lot of the elements of hl2 were executed better in the episodes, feeling way more refined than they originally did. But hey if hl2 is your favorite, good for you it was an awesome game, just not really for me.
@@yehuda8589 I like the episodes better too!
this kind of sandbox puzzle solving is exactly why i love games like half-life and halo. its a shame there arent more FPS franchises like them
Well, Doom 2016 and Eternal may not have puzzles in the traditional sense, but the combat is all about prioritizing the right enemies to stay alive, so it's also chess in its own way.
honorable mention to Deus Ex: Invisible War
@@ThiefOfBaghdad original deus ex is also very good :D
Bioshock 1+2 are similar, although it's usually you ambushing the enemies.
Interestingly enough, all games (except Doom) mentioned here are considered "immersive sims", not FPS games - even though half-life is indisputably an FPS game. I would add Prey (2017), Thief, System Shock and Alien Isolation to the list of recommendations.
I never played Half Life, I was born to witness it's rise to popularity & the birth of Counter Strike. I never liked shooter games at all. But based on your vid alone, I now realized I play games the way Half Life will allow me to play. Which if true, then that means if I like shooters, I'll love Half Life to death.
You can not like shooters but have few exceptions so just try half life
Yeah, for your type, half life, and maybe half life 2 would be up your alley, and if you can get your hands on VR my dude, half life Alyx is perfect for you. As it's very much like half life 1 with its philosophy, but you also have to get extremely clever with the weapons as you are always out numbered and out gunned.
@my man No.
@my man honestly just no. who would pirate this amazing game??
Why I keep dying in Half-Life 1:
I played Half-Life: Source
What's the difference
@@deadelaus2611 Half Life source is just a port of the OG HL to source engine.
@@n646n Haha yes, no gameplay difference. As if the fucking bugs aren’t a gameplay difference.
oh god
@@n646n I felt like the grunts are way harder to kill in source.
Imagine dying in Office Complex.
Hey! That's not fair... I didn't know what barnicles do. So I decided to try myself. Despite the scientist dying the exact same way. Also, I didn't know a barney would try an waste you when you fired at the scientists. So yeah, I didn't mean to shoot him either. And I panicked and the barney killed me with low health. So that's my office complex experience.
Backrooms
I died crushed on the vent
Do I get excused if I’m playing in VR
"lol i know ri-
Barnacle: *I F E E L S O M E T H I N G, I M U S T E A T I T *
When I looked at the video title I thought to myself: "Unforgiving? This game is not unforgiving, the difficulty is balanced and not hard at all. This guy is probably one of those youtubers who just run and schüt mindlessly and complain that they are dying". But thankfully I was very wrong lol. This is an excellent video and a must-watch for people who are just getting into the series.
As a sidenote, Half-Life was the second video game I have ever played (the first being Metroid: Zero Mission). Back then I was a kid and I got lost in the Anomalous Materials lab, I was about to alt-tab and search for a map on google, like I used to do with Metroid, but then I realised I could just follow the colored lines on the walls to get where I needed to go. The game taught me to used real world logic to solve its problems. I'm really thankful this was my introduction to First Person games.
@Josiah Sepulveda I already played all of these! Thief is one of my favorite games of all time, along with Half-Life
It's a bit weird to hear about the game being unforgiving and people struggling with it when I was aged on the single digits and playing this normally. Sure, I didn't breeze through it and alternated a bit with my stepfather, but it was never "so unforgiving" to me. It was a normal game with a fine difficulty.
Maxwell Lee Sterling That's how I see it too. I suck at FPS games (never could make it past level 10 on Doom II on Ultra-Violence) but I've gotten through Half-Life on the hard difficulty okay. Now Opposing Force, THAT'S unforgiving.
@@half-lifescientist1991 especially the sewer part with those giant creatures. Its like a maze and those things fit in spaces smaller than them and block paths larger than them. They are BULKY and TANKY as well as so many of them in pitch black where night vision limits your vision to like 10 meters. They are faster than you think as well as a limited amount t of medkits-no zero medkits.
@@ahmadasfour6715 nah you can just get them stuck on corners and its an absolute pisstake
This is actually why Half Life games kept getting simpler from the original to Episode 2. Playtesters would keep screwing up by doing everything poorly instead of thinking thoroughly and the developers had to make everything easier. I used to be a TA, and I'd see the same thing, people would try to brute force their way through everything, and I'd sigh while marking the Thermodynamics examinations because everybody forgot to convert to Kelvin for their calculations....
WHY DO WE CONVERT TO KELVIN THO im taking o level Cambridge physics rn and it would be extremely helpful if u explained why we convert to kelvin before doing thermal calculations
@@mostafaahmedibrahim2541 afaik is bc kelvin is part of the ISM, it's a little bit more precise with it's numbers and it's a lot easier to work with physics since 0 Kelvin is the absolute zero, there isnt negative kelvin degrees
@@leonardo9259 thanks
r/iamverysmart
@@mostafaahmedibrahim2541 Because 0 kelvin, or absolute zero doesn't depend on some material property such as the freezing point of water or whatever. It is a fundamental zero point, a temperature which all thermodynamics systems can reference because all of them fundamentally operate based on the difference between their temperature and this zero point.
The Kelvin scale is just our own temperature scale that references absolute zero and thus allows you to make absolute references to the amount of energy / entropy a system contains
I like running around in deathmatch mode while spamming snarks and proclaiming “I am the snark man!”
ALL HAIL THE SNARK MAN!
I remember back in days I tried to beat this game on hard without ever taking damage. That challenge really forced me to learn all the tricks each weapon has, there’s so much nuances and depth! The Glock became my best friend while in previous playthroughs I completely ignored it assuming it was just a useless pistol.
Did you make an exception for the damage rule for the freezer where you take 1 damage per second
@@plumjet09 I don't remember, that was a long time ago. But I think so.
Oh that’s pretty fun sounding! Were there any specific restrictions, weapon bans or strats u used? I’d love to see it!
@@Trooper266 Did you ever do it? I think there is only one run like that on TH-cam and the video is heavily spliced meaning it wasn't one continuous try. That would be one of the greatest half-life runs of all time.
@@gordonneverdies I was close to the end before I had to switch to other tasks. However, I wasn't attempting a continuous run; that would be extremely difficult due to all the hitscan enemies.
Lasertrip mines are perfect counter against black ops assasins. Just plant them and hide.
Or get them at a distance with the crossbow. It was an easy fight for me when I got distance between each assassin. Their AI is paused if you arent in a certain range. The rest I was able to clear out by just running up to them and double pumping the shotgun in their face.
@@nickolascrousillat4265 Putting the pressure on the assassins absolutely works, since they don't move and shoot at the same time. Get up to their face and they're likely to try to retreat and if you follow closely, you've got the upper hand.
It's hilarious watching an assassin backflip straight into a tripmine
Half life: Marines runs away when they see a grenade
Half life alyx: Combines looks at a grenade as they die.
@nigge r Yeah, but half life came out in 1998. So the bad AI is excusable. Alyx came out in 2020 however................
HL Alyx Combine soldiers were specifically designed without much mobility (You know, the kind you'd need to escape a grenade) and without the ability to multitask (They need to stop firing to run at full speed) because Valve didn't think people could handle HL 1/2 soldiers in VR. That's why all of their actions and response times are so sluggish. It's not so much AI as it is power and speed that is the HL Alyx soldiers' problem.
Old good. New bad.
@@saisameer8771 Imagine having to run at 30mph while in VR, you'd be violently vomiting in minutes.
@@testname4464 I still think there should have been optional difficulty settings. I play Skyrim where every character by default runs at usain bolt speeds, so I'm comfortable with moving fast in VR and I would have appreciated an upscaled difficulty in the game. I hardly died in my first playthrough of Alyx at the hardest difficulty.
I never even thought of this. I would just shoot everything. I am good at games so my tactic of shooting everything and lobbing grenades actually worked... I need to replay this game properly...
I wish the "run think shoot live" line was on the steam page today. I got it a few weeks ago and summed it down to older games being harder than they need to be to add to the playtime. I am going to replay it methodically now. Genuinely, thank you.
Bless you
I. Fucking. Love. HECU soldiers. That little section where you and the HECU are getting hit by airstrikes lasts literally like 7 seconds but it is so fucking good. The music, everyone running around, the soldiers trying to get you, you trying to escape the air strikes and soldiers while also shooting at everything and trying to find out where to go, and how if you wait too long a whole shit ton of them rope down from the chopper, holy shit I have never seen an action game pump me so full of adrenaline in so little time. It makes you wonder just how long these short sections took the developers to make.
this is a pretty rad vid, never really put this much thought into half-life's combat before
As one who grew up with the game, it frankly boggles my mind that we actually need a video like this. But I *did* grow up with it, so I guess I'm just old. All in all, excellent explanation and introduction into how best to play classic Half-Life!
"Approach this game as a theoretical physicist would"
Me bhopping and skipping sections: "Uhhhh oops"
Thats why its theoretical
well youre exploiting the physiscs of reality to be faster than everyone and skip combats, that kinda intelligent no?
Ok tryhard
Zombies watching u bhop: mom come Pick me up im scared :(
@@tuomasgaming4210 🤓
Much of Half-Life's level design/puzzles was inspired by a game called "System Shock". "System Shock was the first to say' I don't want to make a level, I want to make a real place.'" "The first System Shock sits at a remarkable intersection between the forces that shaped coin-operated arcades, and the forces that shape games as we know them, today." Both quotes by Noah Caldwell-gervais.
For 1998 this was amazingly ahead of it's time. I would of loved to be around when this was released it would of mindblown me.
It was amazing. The intro sequence on the train had some of the best graphics I had ever seen on a FPS to that point, and I think helps put you in the right frame of mind for what type of game it is.
Honestly, it is a little surprising to me that people struggle so much with the game now - but I guess it makes sense that people don't expect it to have the depth of gameplay that it does because the graphics no longer seem realistic.
"If this were Doom, you'd be able to dodge this attack, but the only way to reliably avoid damage from a Vort is to get behind cover."
So, like an Arch Vile then? ;)
Yes, but if you think about it, doom would be a different game if Archviles were as common as pinkies
@@distantsea Plutonia Experiment flash backs
dude i still have flashbacks to having to slide into cover behind a turret while blind firing wildly at VORG (that kept spawning seemingly infinitely but not) then charge toward a trampoline type thing while firing grenades mid air dodging lazers by sheer luck, sometimes i wonder how in the world i beat this game?!
@@distantsea There are other Enemies where seeking cover is the best option though. All the hitscanners, especially chaingunners, for example. Also I think most Hitscanners in older games are more unforgiving, than those in Half-Life, especially those damn cultists in Blood.
**angry swedish noises**
MarphitimusBlackimus made a really neat video detailing the assassin behavior, showing how they'll never throw grenades at you if they catch you unaware from behind and how they'll go to investigate unknown sounds while human grunts won't. It really is fascinating, all the little things going on under the hood in this game.
Fantastic analysis of this game, what makes it so good on a gameplay level, and what made it revolutionary at the time.
You made great points about how this game is meant to be played, and contrasting that with how people these days tend to go into the game when coming in fresh. The thing is, back when this game was new, all of these things were at the forefront, at least for me. I remember mostly being familiar with Goldeneye as my only FPS experience, and hearing about this crazy new game that's more realistic than any game that's come before; one that's just one huge seamless level, with blood that splatters on the walls when someone gets shot, your legs break if you fall too far, where real-world physics matter, and enemies are as cunning as you are.
Going into that game with all of that "realism" hype, especially being eight/nine years old and terrified, made me naturally approach things in this cautious/tactical way (though, being so young, I wasn't all that good at it).
It's interesting to note how people tend to assume the opposite as the years have gone by. It's something that I've never thought about, but definitely makes loads of sense. Thanks for this deep dive into one of my favorite games ever. Definitely gonna take note to use snarks on those mine fields next time...
I would say the reason why people thought run and gunning is always the default FPS is because its a very safe and Milkable FPS style, you need to do jack shit to get the money out of it. Which is why a lot of games teach you to kinda be brain dead. Which is sad because the FPS genre has so much potential to be diverse with its styles of combat and thinking. But Alas it is not to be.
A lot of times in this game, the AI starts to act really unforgettably dumb and literally forces me to exploit its stupidity rather than come up with a clever way of outsmarting its wit.
But other than that, yeah! This is actually a very true and well done video.
Thanks for making this video. I recently gave up on playing through Half-Life 1 because of how frustrated I got with it. I felt like I was constantly dying and reloading old saves to the point where it just wasn't fun anymore. But I think you're right. If there wasn't the option to save anywhere I don't think I would have tried to brute-force the game so much.
How far did you make it? I also went through that very same thing and I kept quitting because I found the combat to be difficult. However after I somehow made it through blast pit something clicked and I was able to beat the game and it's probably one of my favorites. I wish I could tell you why that was but I honestly have no idea. It could be due to finding the magnum at the end of blast pit. You also get grenades for you SMG about five minutes after the magnum and that helped me tremendously.
@@erselley9017 Funny, I was up to Ch 12, Surface Tension. I think I got those grenades and I don't recall weapons being an issue. There was something about that chopper, and then feeling stuck, and then a minefield that I kept on stumbling through and dying in. Around this time, I was having some decent fun with the game, but it wasn't anything I was blown away by. I remember thinking "This must have been really cool for its time" and being miserable when I got stuck
@@GurdevSeepersaud what's funny about that is that's the exact same place I stopped playing Black Mesa. It just wasn't enjoyable for me anymore and I felt like I wasn't making any progress. What they did was absolutely amazing but I just couldn't do it. I kept thinking we'll maybe it just takes some time to get used to like half life but surface tension is about the mid point and I still was getting brutalized at every turn. I can only Imagine the hell I would of had to endure at xen. Combat games are not easy for me anyway and I'm more a stranded on a planet alone and survive kinda girl and that's probably a big part of the problem.
@@erselley9017 Yeah I think Surface Tension is a turning point for a lot of people lol. I don't blame you for not wanting to go through it twice, but even so...do you watch the TH-camr Nerrel? I enjoy his videos and he covered Black Mesa in one of them. He said that Xen was completely reworked in BM and fixed a lot of the issues in the original game. Interesting that you dreaded Xen when playing the mod because he couldn't stop singing its praises.
@@GurdevSeepersaud oh I never even made it to xen in black mesa. I just assumed it would be difficult because the original game was. I've heard the team reworked the whole level and the videos I've seen support that. To be honest xen wasn't really difficult but more frustrating and it looks like the team really put thought into that. Maybe one day I can get there. I do know the team also made it possible to start at any level so I could easily just select xen and play it which you couldn't do in the original. However I kinda feel like I need to earn it before I visit. I'm weird like that.
Snarks will forever be one of my favorite weapons to use in any game
Snarky . Live NICE
My ones were penguins in opfor
Half Life 1 in vr with the oculus quest (yes, it's been ported) it's the most amazing thing ever
I generally walk into any game with the Dark Souls mindset of "If you die, your plan was right, you just weren't skilled enough," and although I loved this game on hard, it was a big struggle. Definitely need to come back to this with strategy in mind.
I remember setting this game to hard because I thought old games are easy. It took me over 10 hours to finish playing hard on my first run through. The stress of playing on 5 health hoping to cross by a medkit has never escaped my nightmares
I bought this game like 2 weeks ago on Steam and I played it like it was like Call of Duty. Now that I've watched this video I'm gonna play it again and think about it tactically this time.
I'm honestly surprised that people have such a hard time playing this game. everything just kinda came naturally to me when playing half-life for the first time. It was almost as if this game was meant for me, and I really enjoyed it (minus the head crabs cuz I was playing it on a ps2 emulator). The biggest surprise in this video so far though is at 4:48, cuz like you, the soldiers are what made the game fun for me. It felt in a way like the perfect challenge, a challenge where you can trade-off skillful plays for witty strategies. This is why I enjoy Playing Half life so much. This game never gets old.
the game is hard if you want it to be hard too
also from all the enemies that exist in the game i never really rated who is good to fight and who not but i believe we can agree that headcrabs are annoying af. even the black ops are a bit but i don't think much about them. bless gmod for allowing many ways to kill those little shiets.
now i feel bad
I agree. For me it came natural too. Yes. I died just a few times because of some misshaps but. NEVER difficult. Like. How can you play a game like this wrong?
why would you play the ps2 version on a pc when the pc version is way better
@@Fogolol I actually bought it the other day, I was just broke for a while. : /
@@Mr.Tacoman999 i bought the game like maybe 2 years ago
i don't even know did i even have a legitimate non steam copy of half life before i bought it XD
I remember the day before I saw this I played HL: Residual Point (a remake of the original) and got to a freight yard where a group of marines were killing me, I thought how efficient it would be if I would've thrown a grenade to distract them (as they can only shoot while standing still), wouldn't you know it I actually got through it, so I agree with what all of what you've said, good job.
I never heard of residual point.
@@powerofthec5908 Really late, but it's a mod of the original that changes the levels and the order of the chapters (ig surface tension comes after blast pit), it's alright as a reskin i guess, though i wasn't even intending on playing it, i downloaded a HL mod called Tyrian: Ground Assault, but for some reason i got RP, weird stuff but i'm not complaining.
I once found a review for Half-Life on steam, saying the game is too confusing and difficult, Valve has always had puzzles in their games (besides tf2 and others), and they have had that since the start and like you said Gordon isn't no Doomguy, he is a scientist, and thinking "it was released in 1998 so it will be just like doom" is pretty much like when you are about to do something you think you are familiar with, but when you start it, it is completely diffrent and you have no idea what you are gonna do, Half-Life and Portal and others require you to think, hell Half-Life even states that with it's "run, think, shoot, live" pretty much saying to your face "this isn't doom". And it shows how Valve wanted to be diffrent and not be like everyone just making games about just shooting things, Half-Life requires you to think, plan, and figure out what you are gonna do if you are pinned down.
"it was released in 1998 so it will be just like doom" - no one who remembers 1998 would think that. Its a giveaway of someone for whom 1998 is some sort of times of yore, when mammoths walked the streets and their old geezers were still young.
if he got it from steam
does it mean he didn't get to see the box?
played this when i was 9 the game felt like a horror fps puzzle game and opposing is most memorable feel so helpless and isolated.
When I got my first computer, I remember my brother bought me this game and helped me play it as a way to learn the general controls of most games- stuff like WASD n stuff. I thought I would hate it, since im horrible at fps and a cozy gamer at heart (animal crossing, unpacking, etc), but it’s actually one of my favorite games!! I think the way half life approaches combat is super interesting, and this game design approach is probably the main reason i come back to it, despite me not usually liking the genre ^^; great video!! put a lot of my thoughts about this game into proper words :)
damn I'm one of those guys that played this game with the run and gun strategy HAHHAHA. Now I wish I played it more strategically :P
P.s I enjoyed your video a lot man keep it up!!
same. but i would use explosives instead of the guns
I feel like I played the game in a really strange way, I would try and stealth my way through the whole thing because I was scared out of my mind 99% of the time, but I would never strategize because I wasn't smart enough to think more than 2 steps behind. I think I probably played the worst way possible somehow
I remember when I was stuck at a platforming section (the part after that desert tank behind that building with the guns and stuff) and I just rocket jumped. Unlike quake, the rocket launcher does tons of self damage though , and it just so happened that the area I took 80 of my health off getting to, was full to the brim with marines.
I keep being reminded just how ahead of time this games AI was. We all attribute the revolutionary way that Half Life told it's story as what it changed everything by, but it's much more than that. Love the video!
Holy shit, I've been playing this game so wrong, I always thought that it was a generic run and gun game and I would always die trying to beat it. I never thought that this would be so strategic and I'm glad that it is, I love strategy games. But honestly, this helped me on my game so much, thanks.
Speedrunner: Run, Think, Noclip through the sky box, Live
it actually took me until after my second playthrough in questionable ethics in black mesa to realize that i should play more safe and tactical than i did with most shooters. i learned that i need to use almost all of my arsenal to make it out with good hp for the next section( i personally like to use trip mines for the reason of traps ).
One of my childhood friends (the first of us who got a PC and played ego shooters) told me that the zombies were so 'lame' cuz you could simply use the crowbar, bait them and then knock them down without losing health. Me, being a child, thought this was frightening. But he showed it to us and I think that this really broke how we all perceived AI in video games. We jumped on tables in Dark Project, rocket jumping in Quake and played Blood, Duke and Doom always looking for these little things to "learn" a game and the more or less intentional counter.
I never thought about half life combat this way. I think I want to play half life again now.
This is a hidden, undersubbed, gem of a video. I never knew it was possible to analyze video games that much, or even that Half-Life had so much depth to it!
Me running through every room while bunnyhopping in circles around enemies trying to crossbow + revolver them:
Just wanna let you know, I recently started college and am taking a class for video game design. One of my first assignments was to play a video game and write down the rules of the game, its mechanics, and the ways in which the developers want you to play it. I recalled this video and decided to play Half-Life. With all the points you made in mind, it helped me properly analyze the subtleties of Half-Life and let me put into words how it differs from its predecessors like Doom and Quake. Thanks for being awesome.
So Half-Life should be played like the boxing scene in Sherlock Holmes
And the snarks are D I S C O M B O M B U L A T E
Summary: Discombobulate
This guy just made me think about FPS like never before.
I Have a terrible habit in half life where i Get extremely triggered if i lose a bit of HP or waste ammo.
I Can't imagine half life without Save states other then that i enjoyed it
the hivemind Weapon is one of my least used weapons in half life i only used it as a last ditch effort.
I Think i was using them the wrong way I'll might replay this game on hard And Try to use it to its full potential
The hivehand is great for conserving ammo though. You can also shoot it around corners (the bees home in).
Why are you putting random capital letters everywhere? You look ridiculous.
@@apugalypse_now Plus it has two different fire modes, which it makes me love that weapon more, unfortunately you could only obtain it in later stages though
same and i'm worse than an unborn child at FPS games
I am like this too. Half-Life in a nutshell: *F6* *F5*
I always retry until I kill everyone with least health and ammo loss...
I also always quickload if I miss a revolver headshot
i had a solid giggle when you took cover from the bullsquid at 2:55
"If this were Doom, you'd be able to dodge this attack."
Ever heard of Archviles, son?
Great video!
Played the first Half Life in hard five months ago, and I noticed that my play style usually be played it safe. It’s a slow progression, but it really does show the senses of the game.
I died about nearly fifty times due to being low HP or human error.
Though I didn’t complete Xen because I read some players stated that it’s not worth it.
Also any other games that Valve made has involve literally thinking things through.
Portal 1 & 2 - defining physics.
L4D1 & L4D2 - know when to make a move.
TF2 - the roles could make a difference in the match.
Dota 2 - a simple game of chess could be easily defined as.
Counter-Strike - coordination is number one priority.
interloper is actually one of my favourite chapters, xen and nihilanth are both complete shit
Hello Leadhead! I liked your argument about roleplaying the game as a theoretical physicist.
I run a youtube, twitter, and subreddit (/r/letsroleplaygames) focused on highlighting similar thinking as in your video. I'm trying to build a community of like-minded people who approach games from the perspective of highlighting choice in games.
Still getting off the ground so not much to look at other than my own work, but I've shared your video on twitter and reddit.
I'm gonna check out your stuff later, but do you have any tips for roleplaying in games in general? I always just play like I would. Sure, my attitude is different (such as being much more aggressive in combat situations), but any other time, I play as me.
@@wlll1235 Absolutely nothing wrong with that. A lot of the roleplaying I do is just "what would I do if this was in real life". It doesn't have to be some radical or grandiose thing.
So if I'm playing as a good person, things like randomly killing people, taking everything out of a house (even if it's not marked as stealing), etc in a game like Fallout New Vegas are out of the picture. Just because the game can't stop you doing something doesn't mean you should do it.
Or via your actions. For example in Prey (2017), you can either choose mods that allow you to lift heavy items. I usually use explosive barrels or recycling charges instead of getting those abilities. Same with hacking, there's a toy cross-bow you can use to get doors open so I tend to prefer that.
What Leadhead was doing in this video was roleplaying via his actions. He chose to combine weapons as a physicist would. I chose to use the environment to do something similar in Prey.
You should do a roleplay video on postal as an april fools video.
@@SequentialGamer_KCD sorry I didn't see your reply earlier! I honestly forgot that I wrote something here, anyways, onto my point: thanks for the advice! I always try to do what is possible in a game, and not limiting what I do. It almost seems like it's less fun (limiting what you do), but from what I've heard, it's even more fun than otherwise.
This really makes me want to try replaying half life. I tried for the first time a few months back and save scummed like crazy while dying constantly. I gave up during “on a rail”. I’m excited to try again With a new strategy
An example of me using things tactically was when i got to the canal area of unforseen consequences. Instead of waiting to deal with the bullsquid, i simply pulled the pin on a grenade, let it cook, then throw it.
Great video! I wish I could’ve heard all this before playing Half Life. I had no one to introduce me to the game and went in blind, I spent so much of my first play through saving and reloading, doing a million things over and over again to memorise what to do. Might have to replay it and implement significantly more strategy
First time I dealt with the minefield I tried shooting at it and didn't set any of the mines off. From that I concluded that wasn't how the mines worked.
Black Mesa did it far better with the mines actually being visible.
It was blown away when you mentioned you've seen players not know how to manage the minefield. The game does such a good job of helping players get into right the mindset with constant environmental interaction, by the time I got to the mines during my first playthrough back in 1999, the grenades were the first thing I reached for.
Something like blast pit should have tipped them off. The tentacles will kill you if you make noise, but even if you creep up to the door, it's boarded up! So, maybe if you use a grenade to blow the planks off first, you can sneak past... but wait, they're attacking the door now... where the grenade went off...
It SHOULD get the gears turning, right?
If you've played deathmatch with me you know I never neglect my tripmines.
Every stair, every corner, every door.
*TRIPMINES WHERE EVER YOU ARE.*
Now I realized why I love the Half-Life and Portal series so much: these games take brains to play,. And I never thought people tried to just brute force them.