January 2018 – General Chat

1st January 2018

Good Morning and welcome to 2018.

You have chosen or been chosen to start this year with a love of Half-Life.

No game has ever affected you in such a way.

Other games have pleased and excited you, but not in the same way Half-Life.

Half-Life can’t be replaced by shiny graphics or VR.

Half-Life is and will always be your favourite.

34 Comments

  1. Bolloxed

    I apologise in advance for what I’m about to do in 2018.

    1. That’s a first, you apologising for anything. Is it a New Year’s Resolution?

      1. Bolloxed

        Once I make that statement at the beginning of the year it covers me for anything and everything. Efficient and provides a clear conscience. Should try it.

  2. First Metal Gear Solid 3 dethroned Half-Life for me, then Doom 2016 dethroned both.
    (related to the post description)

    1. GET OUT! You are no longer welcome here. Just joking (or am I?).

    2. Our lord and saviour Gabe Newell gave us this gift and you dare to neglect it? There will be consequences…

      1. Our lord and savior Gabe Newell abandoned us

  3. In relation to the post, very few games come close to beating Half Life for me. The two that spring to mind as being my favorites aside from HL are Mirrors Edge mainly because I am into the art style and the environmental theme and the other is Bioshock (The first Bioshock, I cant stand Infinite at all!).

    The reason I am still here on a Half Life related website and not many other games is that they either have bad level creation tools or no level creation tools. Even though Goldsource and Source are “outdated”, there are still fun levels/maps being made to this day.

    One day I will try Doom 2016 and like Crowbar above, no doubt i will fall in love with it and play the heck out of it.

    1. Dude I wish I was in your position and could play Doom 2016 for the first time!

      1. Dude. I have just bought it. I will probably start playing it this week! Your advertising techniques are too good Crowbar.

    2. I would say that on a sheer “fun” level, Doom ruined Half-Life for me. Not just Doom 2016, but going back to appreciate the originals too. The simplicity of it, the thrill of having to weave around projectiles rather than stand behind cover, or kill four guys at once with a single shotgun blast. It left me wondering how we allowed ourselves to get away from such entertaining tenets of game design by succumbing to realism.

      And then you realize that, while it probably wasn’t their intention, Half-Life was a big reason why that momentum shifted like it did.

      1. Wesp5

        I had a lot of fun blowing stuff away in HL as well as in Doom, but I agree that I recently replayed some of the original Doom maps and they still work even with the blocky sprite graphics! But then I was rather disappointed with Doom 2016. Granted, the graphics are phantastic, but I miss a good story behind it which I nowadays expect due to HL. Also it annoys me to no end that they couldn’t decide which direction to go, photorealistic environments and monsters but then colorful icons pop out after every kill, killing the immersion and always reminding me that it’s just a game? Stupid!

        1. Doom isn’t photorealistic at all. It is very stylised.

  4. Half-Life doesn’t gets topped or replaced. It just doesn’t.

    Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR TO Y’ALL!

    We’re in for a treat with the Lambda Cup challenge

  5. got about 4 hours of HL death match in today, now on to catch up on some hl2 maps. cheers happy 2018s

  6. Happy new year, I guess. Another year, another Hamm- I mean Lambda Cup. Speaking of which, will the overviews ever be done for them?

  7. shark

    Happy 2018 citizens. Been looking for a worthy replacement of HL but no luck so far. New games usually feature great graphics but very little game play, cut scenes abound and the story often demotes the player to a mere watcher of events. On the opposite side the shoot’em ups are too fast and furious so you don’t have time to explore and enjoy the surroundings. Have tried METRO, Bioshock, Tomb Raider,…all have failed.

  8. Senator33

    Although I loved Doom, Unreal, etc.; none – past or present – have surpassed the Half-Life genre.

    Much credit is due to Valve and the original developers, but more importantly the mappers and modders worldwide have made a priceless contribution to keeping the game fresh and alive.

    We must thank Phillip and others for hosting and promoting – while asking little of the thousands of die-hard users, like myself, other than to play and comment on their works.

  9. opike

    I think if there is an area which hl unquenched its the artistic design like you get in bioshock for example which draws you in its more abstract therefore somehow more valid as it has more sublety in what it conveys vs realism or naturlistic approach feels ironically unreal and niave they dont unerstand the metaphore , for me thats where its at best game ever = exile bbc micro/hl2 ep2

  10. I need some really big help! It would be appreciated if anyone could… anyways!

    Whenever I try downloading a mod for Half-Life 2, it doesn’t work?

    For example, I download it, when it’s done, it has some type of folder that says “open” or “save”, then, I click open, thinking that it would just open up the mod I downloaded, but it doesn’t go to the mod when I press OPEN?

    Is there any way where I could play these mods? If anyone could help, it would be super appreciated! 🙂

    1. Unq

      Usually you have to copy the mod’s folder (after unzipping) to your sourcemods folder, which is in the Steam\steamapps directory. Then, start or restart Steam and the mod will show up in your Library.

      There are some exceptions to this (like just maps, which go in the maps folder for example). Most mod pages on this site have installation instructions, especially for non-standard installs. You can always refer to https://www.runthinkshootlive.com/th/ for technical help as well.

  11. Brand new to RTS and am excited to get started leanring more about mapping and game development. I’m a devoted fan of all the Half Life games and have enjoyed everyone to date.

  12. Funny, starting this year with a craving for Half-Life too.

  13. Well, Half life series, especially 2nd one, will always stay at top of my lists.. but few games came that are on equal ground now. None of them has such a dedicated community or sadly tools to make our own adventures.

  14. It’ll be 20 years of Half Life soon.

  15. After getting somewhat bored due to the lack of new things to play in the HL universe, I decided to pay for and download Kingpin on Steam, I played the demo years ago but that was as far as I got..but what a disappointment, I can’t get it to run with windows 10, tried the fixes and all, but nada. Had to get a refund…damn.

    1. What a pity. Check you email, there might be a little surprise.

      1. Cheers Phil, unexpected but greatfully recieved, wonder what it’s about…I’ll have a look..

  16. Recently started playing Half-Life for the first time after only having played Black Mesa before and wow, i never realised just how big the difference was. I had trouble recognising entire sections and I’m pretty sure some gameplay was vastly different – for instance, BMS gives you the .357 instead of the shotgun in Office Complex.

    Feels like an entirely new game, and I’m starting to understand why some people dislike the drastic changes BMS made.

    1. Yeah. Parts that are great in Half Life can become a slog in Black Mesa due to different balance. I still like the game though, but somewhere along the line it stopped being a remaking and started being a new game.

      I am going to enter the Mesa Cup, though, and I still have fun in BM, especially on custom maps.

    2. the reason I dislike the changes is because some are so pointless and feel like they changed it just for the sake of it. But other than that (and a few nitpicks) I LOVE Black Mesa.

  17. in 2018 i will, like always be playing my fps of choice HL2’s myriad range of mods old and hopefully many new for this ancient game franchise. i guess i’m stuck in the mud and up to my armpits in, crackle, crackle goo!

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