Game of the Month #107 (December 2023) - Half-Life

"The game follows the adventures of Gordon Freeman, a young research associate at the Black Mesa Federal Research Facility. A typical day at the office goes completely awry as numerous alien life forms invade the facility. The fate of the facility, and quite possibly the world, is in the hands of an unlikely hero.
How long is Half-Life?
When focusing on the main objectives, Half-Life is about 12 Hours in length. If you're a gamer that strives to see all aspects of the game, you are likely to spend around 15½ Hours to obtain 100% completion.
Platforms:
Dreamcast, Linux, Mac, PC, PlayStation 2
Genres:
First-Person, Shooter
Developer:
Valve Corporation
Publisher:
Sierra Entertainment
NA:
November 19, 1998
EU:
November 19, 1998

Still an excellent game which Def built some great levels (I remember the helicopter fight on the dam as being a big stand out for me). I might have a review I'll check

great excuse to play through this again - it's been a while since I played and I'm keen to see how different it is with the anniversary updates!

Picked it up when it was free about two weeks ago. I also just got a Steam Deck last week, so I imagine this is a good way to play it for the first time.

Really surprised this didn't get picked as GOTM earlier..

I would highly recommend the Black Mesa version. In my opinion it's the definitive way to play this classic.

Just finished a few days ago black mesa, i guess i'll pass :(

Great game and leagues above the sequel, that is until you get to the final set of levels in Xen, which are a major turnoff on every replay. But since it's been verified on Steam Deck, I just might push myself through it once more. Black Mesa is ultimately the superior experience though, with the Xen levels being done so well they're easily among my favorite locations in the game, but you must have played the original beforehand to get the most out of it.

Really surprised this didn't get picked as GOTM earlier..

I would highly recommend the Black Mesa version. In my opinion it's the definitive way to play this classic.

I prefer the original over Black Mesa. Played Black Mesa earlier this year and it's been buggy. Performance dipped hard for no reason on a powerful PC in one of the sections of the game the one outdoor, with the rocket, and I had a gamebreaking bug in Xen that required me to restart a stage with a console command, which made me lose all my weapons. Which I then had to cheat back sigh. The expanded Xen version that wasn't in the original also feels worse than the rest of the game.

That aside, Half-Life is a fantastic game, I've played it many times over the years since I was young. I'm excited for more people to get into it and play it for the first time. Considering the anniversary update came out recently, I'll give it another play as well sometimes this month. Maybe over Christmas!

I like Half Life and by extension Black Mesa but what prevents me from ever going back to the original and Black Mesa again is Xen. I don't know why they just didn't have Gordon teleport to the final boss and get into an epic fight and just kill him instead of a super padded set of levels. It's like if the first Mortal Kombat movie had Liu Kang fight Shang Tsung and before the final fight can commence, the latter sends him to the neather realm, the former gets out AND THEN the final fight happens. Its the definition of padding.

Black Mesa makes this even worse by making Xen even longer. Interloper went on FOREVER. The level just refused to end and it got so bad that I level skipped to the final boss, and I rarely if ever do that. In fact, I only ever do it if say if a game keeps crashing on a certain part or level or if a level is straight up unplayable and its a game I like the game and Black Mesa's Interloper was the latter.

I am probably going to get lambasted all the way to hell for this, I prefer Half Life 2 for this reason. HL2 knew when to wrap up, HL1 just dragged on with Xen.

I know I am complaining about Xen a lot but it derails the game so hard for me.

Nothing beats the original. But still love number 2!

I forgot to talk about it since I beat it a few days ago.

I think the game is a solid shooter, but for me personally it doesn't wow me. I'm sure if I had played it years ago my tune would be different since it's so influential for shooters today.

Also that final boss is easily one of the worst bosses I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

I prefer the original over Black Mesa. Played Black Mesa earlier this year and it's been buggy. Performance dipped hard for no reason on a powerful PC in one of the sections of the game the one outdoor, with the rocket, and I had a gamebreaking bug in Xen that required me to restart a stage with a console command, which made me lose all my weapons. Which I then had to cheat back sigh. The expanded Xen version that wasn't in the original also feels worse than the rest of the game.

That aside, Half-Life is a fantastic game, I've played it many times over the years since I was young. I'm excited for more people to get into it and play it for the first time. Considering the anniversary update came out recently, I'll give it another play as well sometimes this month. Maybe over Christmas!

proby cause old dx9 too many drawcalls and stuff. its pushing too much. dxvk maybe could help to improve cpu usage and api bottlenecks... idk havent tried. i know disabling real time reflections alleviated some of this.

xen is one of my favorite parts compared to practically everyone here. i always loved getting to it and its atmosphere was top notch. in Black Mesa remake it was even better and so extended... was in constant awe all time. Especially loved Interloper chapter.

Recently discovered this site after deciding I want to go back and playthrough some solid single player games. I love the idea of this book club type group for games.

This game is actually a month older than I am, and I've never touched it till now. It's fun so far, and actually quite a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. I will post a full review once I complete it!

Review: This was not my cup of tea. Gave it 55% out of 100. I think there is too much jank for me to truly enjoy it.

I forgot to talk about it since I beat it a few days ago.

I think the game is a solid shooter, but for me personally it doesn't wow me. I'm sure if I had played it years ago my tune would be different since it's so influential for shooters today.

Also that final boss is easily one of the worst bosses I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

Preach. That final boss sucks so hard.

I played Half-Life like half a decade ago for the first time and thought it was fine for the most part. I respect it for its significance in terms of videogame innovation and it has a certain charm, but I never fell in love with it. Especially the later levels in the alien environments - which are generally considered the weakest parts anyway, from what I gathered - had me annoyed a lot back then. And then the final boss fight just put a big poopy cherry on top, in my opinion. lol

- Matt

Now imagine if half life 3 came out. Also which version of half do you guys think is the best to play?

Now imagine if half life 3 came out. Also which version of half do you guys think is the best to play?

current steam version of original is all good. never touch half-life source.