Half-Life is 10 Years old!

[Morgoth]

You should watch the new Black Mesa trailer! Click

HL1 completely redone in the Source Engine!

 

Looks friggin great if you ask me!

[Bokishi]

Yea I saw the trailer yesterday it's awesome

[Humodour]

Valve just released Half-Life 1 sales figures.

 

Excluding Steam sales, Valve has sold an average of 1 million copies per year for the past 10 years.

 

Holy ****.

 

Numbers for HL2, L4D and such are similarly astonishing.

 

Edit: Also, as many already know, Valve as a company, and specifically Valve's boss, Gabe Newell, hates most DRM (especially things like SecuROM), and actively discourages devs and publishers from using it with Steam.

 

Score one for the good guys.

Edited December 9, 2008 by Krezack

[karka]

Yet, Steam is just another form of DRM.

[alanschu]

Well, Steam itself is a type of DRM too, so it's not that surprising.

[karka]

And those sales figures only show how an overrated company Valve is.

[alanschu]

How would that make them overrated?

[Calax]

The thing about Steam being DRM is that it's not designed to find problems. It also makes it easier to keep track of your games and pick which ones you have on your system at any one time.

[Humodour]

How would that make them overrated?

 

I think it makes them overrated if you're a tripper like karka who hates Half-Life.

[karka]

No, I don't hate Half-Life. Why would I? It's just a game. I think, they don't deserve the praise they get. That's all.

[Humodour]

Well you're free to dislike the game, but you need to remember that doesn't mean the game is bad. I don't like GTA but I can tell the difference between a crap game and a game that doesn't appeal to me.

 

I mean fair enough you found the game boring, but claiming that selling 10 million copies over 10 years is somehow evidence that the game is overrated is a bit bitter (and if anything I should think it means the opposite).

[Morgoth]

Half Life 1 is still my personal favorite from Valve. And I'm so looking forward to the Black Mesa Mod.

[Pidesco]

Well you're free to dislike the game, but you need to remember that doesn't mean the game is bad. I don't like GTA but I can tell the difference between a crap game and a game that doesn't appeal to me.

 

I mean fair enough you found the game boring, but claiming that selling 10 million copies over 10 years is somehow evidence that the game is overrated is a bit bitter (and if anything I should think it means the opposite).

 

Karka thinks Half Life is more successful (i.e. sells more) than it deserves, therefore he thinks Half Life is overrated. I don't see how that means he is bitter.

[Humodour]

As I said, I respect that he found it boring - wasn't his cup of tea, but trying to justify that as the game being 'overrated' is like saying "I know better than the other 10 million people who consistently bought the game each year." Doesn't hold water, I'm afraid.

[Pidesco]

McDonald's must have the best hamburgers ever, then.

 

Also, Half Life is Doom with better AI, and the (same)story told within the game instead of through the readme. It is a good game, albeit one with serious faults, but not the bestest game ever that would account for selling 10 million units a year.

[Morgoth]

McDonald's must have the best hamburgers ever, then.

 

Also, Half Life is Doom with better AI, and the (same)story told within the game instead of through the readme. It is a good game, albeit one with serious faults, but not the bestest game ever that would account for selling 10 million units a year.

I don't know about you, but back then in 1998, there was no better FPS out there than Half-Life. It was the revolution, as BG was the revolution to the old forgotten RPG genre. Sounds dramatic, but nobody can deny it's success. Not to mention the excellent and vibrant mod community that was born thanks to Valve's commitment to support it's products. I also think that HL2 was back then in 2004 the second coming. But maybe I'm just a Valve fanboy, and other's aren't. And whether they "deserve" this success is irrelevant - they are, because people love them and their games. Valve simply rocks!

Edited December 11, 2008 by Morgoth

[karka]

In 1998

 

Quake was better than HL

Quake 2 was better than HL

Unreal was better than HL

 

even

 

Blood was better than HL2

 

At least they were fun to play. But I never had any fun playing HL. Of course it's just me and it's obvious that lots of people don't share the same experience.

[Morgoth]

In 1998

 

Quake was better than HL

Quake 2 was better than HL

Unreal was better than HL

 

even

 

Blood was better than HL2

 

At least they were fun to play. But I never had any fun playing HL. Of course it's just me and it's obvious that lots of people don't share the same experience.

Well, personal taste aside, I disagree. Quake was a mindless shooter (and so much brown), with no versatility, no scripted events, only silly "search the key card", get to elevator gameplay. Same for Blood, which was just meaningless in every way.

 

Half Life finally featured a cool story (albeit not told through cutscenes) with varied gameplay, cool level design, cool weapons and generally more intelligent gameplay. Overall, HL did design wise everything better.

Edited December 11, 2008 by Morgoth

[karka]

It's all about preferences.

 

I prefer fun gameplay over anything. If they are boring, scripted events mean nothing to me.

[Morgoth]

Luckily enough, HL offered fun gameplay everywhere, even outside sciripted events. What exactly did Quake or Blood offer that made them better than HL? Nostalgia?

[Humodour]

McDonald's must have the best hamburgers ever, then.

 

Also, Half Life is Doom with better AI, and the (same)story told within the game instead of through the readme. It is a good game, albeit one with serious faults, but not the bestest game ever that would account for selling 10 million units a year.

 

Eh, you're not making your case terribly well. An overrated game is something like Oblivion or NWN1. It sells a few million copies in the first 2 or 3 years then you never hear from it again.

 

This, on the other hand, is a couple of people who found the game boring and assuming that because it didn't meat their tastes that means it's overrated (read: think they're a better judge of a game than most everybody else who played it).

 

Half-Life 1 wasn't even hyped up. It had to contend with a bunch of far more well-known FPS's at release, and it didn't start out with a bang. The years preceding its release sold far more copies than its initial pitch. That doesn't happen with an over-hyped piece of mediocrity.

 

So I know this is really a trivial non-issue, but it's rather bemusing to see somebody try and retroactively reclassify HL1 as 'overrated' (or more hilarious still, equate it with Doom - you might manage that with Quake 2, though).

Edited December 11, 2008 by Krezack

[karka]

Luckily enough, HL offered fun gameplay everywhere, even outside sciripted events. What exactly did Quake or Blood offer that made them better than HL? Nostalgia?

 

I can't exactly pinpoint the reason why I found HL boring and found the others fun. May be being an alien slayer MIT professor is not my cup of tea and I like macho characters. Or it's just the HL sucks and others don't. I don't know, really. But it's definitely not nostalgia. If it was nostalgia, HL would be on that list too.

 

I can see why people love the other games I don't like like Diablo games, WoW, GTA games, and such. But honestly, I can't see how anyone can get fun from HL games.

[Pidesco]

Are you kidding? Half Life was seriously hyped up and every reviewer who played the game hailed it as the second coming of Christ, and everyone back in 1998 was playing Half Life. Also my misgivings towards the game are not retroactive, even back in 1998 a few people were already complaining about the awfulness that was Xen and the idiotic platforming bits.

 

And by the way, I wasn't comparing it to Doom, a game five years older than Half Life, by accident. Half Life offers the same product as Doom with two meaningful and important improvements. This makes Half Life a good game not a revolutionary one. System Shock, or Thief, or Ultima VII were revolutionary games, for example, regardless of how well they sold or for how long they sold.

 

Half Life's qualities aren't just dependent on individual, subjective tastes. You can look at the game and easily discern what it is that Half Life did do, that was improved or new when compared to other FPSs.

[alanschu]

McDonald's must have the best hamburgers ever, then.

 

Also, Half Life is Doom with better AI, and the (same)story told within the game instead of through the readme. It is a good game, albeit one with serious faults, but not the bestest game ever that would account for selling 10 million units a year.

 

 

I think that that is different, because McDonald's has CHEAP hamburgers. Sell Striploin steaks for the same price as McDonald's hamburgers, and we'll see how well the McDonald's hamburger does.

[alanschu]

Are you kidding? Half Life was seriously hyped up and every reviewer who played the game hailed it as the second coming of Christ, and everyone back in 1998 was playing Half Life. Also my misgivings towards the game are not retroactive, even back in 1998 a few people were already complaining about the awfulness that was Xen and the idiotic platforming bits.

 

And by the way, I wasn't comparing it to Doom, a game five years older than Half Life, by accident. Half Life offers the same product as Doom with two meaningful and important improvements. This makes Half Life a good game not a revolutionary one. System Shock, or Thief, or Ultima VII were revolutionary games, for example, regardless of how well they sold or for how long they sold.

 

Half Life's qualities aren't just dependent on individual, subjective tastes. You can look at the game and easily discern what it is that Half Life did do, that was improved or new when compared to other FPSs.

 

 

As probably the biggest Ultima VII fanboi out there, how was it revolutionary whereas a game like Half-Life wasn't?

 

The thing that impresses me the most about Half-Life, is that I still consider it one of the best games I have ever played, in spite of Xen (which did suck).

 

 

Furthermore, what does a game being "evolutionary" vs "revolutionary" have to do with whether or not a game is overrated? System Shock 2 was evolutionary, but kicked the tar out of System Shock 2. Dues Ex followed along the same lines, and was significantly better than either System Shock game.

 

Often times "revolutionary" games suck serious ass. Look at Codename Eagle. That game was bloody awful. But it set the stage for the Battlefield games, as well as game modes in other games like UT2k4 and so forth. All of the evolutions of the revolution that was Codename Eagle are significantly better than Codename Eagle.

Edited December 11, 2008 by alanschu