Quake 2 Or Half-Life 1?

I dunno, on the other hand, I doubt that if Half-Life had better sounds, we'd all be sitting here going "man, wouldn't half-life have more personality if the sounds were shittier?", though we could possibly lose the "xxx but with half life sounds" since some of them are distinct for their uh, quality.

I really get the feeling sometimes valve wasn't that good at sound mixing and editing, given that there are some strange choices, especially with Half-Life 2 where we have those famous zombie sounds at 11025hz for.. some reason?

17 minutes ago, SaladBadger said:

I dunno, on the other hand, I doubt that if Half-Life had better sounds, we'd all be sitting here going "man, wouldn't half-life have more personality if the sounds were shittier?", though we could possibly lose the "xxx but with half life sounds" since some of them are distinct for their uh, quality.

 

I really get the feeling sometimes valve wasn't that good at sound mixing and editing, given that there are some strange choices, especially with Half-Life 2 where we have those famous zombie sounds at 11025hz for.. some reason?

See?

There would be no more fun to them if they were cleaner and higher quality, and higher quality doesn't help if the source sounds themselves weren't great to begin with - try out Duke in Raze with the default sound settings and see what you get with vastly superior sound processing for example - it actually sounds worse and kinda muffled.

But what's wrong with the zombie sounds in HL2? They never sounded strange to me, so is this just from a technical standpoint?

59 minutes ago, SaladBadger said:

I really get the feeling sometimes valve wasn't that good at sound mixing and editing, given that there are some strange choices, especially with Half-Life 2 where we have those famous zombie sounds at 11025hz for.. some reason?

The zombie's scream is muffled cos there's a headcrab covering his entire head, dude. :^P

7 hours ago, cambreaKer said:

HL1 has around 2000 sound files (58 MB), how else were they supposed to fit them all into 1 cd?

Yet you can add a ton of multiplayer maps to the game, and have skins that are more advanced than HL's in it (stuff from Black Mesa or Call of Duty for example).

HL1's sound quality is way better than DN3D's and no one can change my mind.

Also, if bad sound design is a deal breaker for you, I recommend staying away from Hexen 2. It's a good game, but the sound design is atrocious. Everything is loud as all fuck, I had to turn the volume wayyy down just for it to be tolerable.

11 hours ago, Maggle said:

HL1's sound quality is way better than DN3D's and no one can change my mind.

I don't think anyone is seriously trying to do that :p .

Like I said above, if you want to hear for yourself just how pathetically low quality are Duke's sounds just download Raze and use the default sound configuration. With vastly superior sound processing, it actually sounds worse and kinda muffled than the game does with a lo-fi setup. I'm really glad SW was a step up in this department, and also had better sprites, even though it still had issues - see the Ripper pain sounds, god damn it...

Now that we are talking about sound desing. GoldScr engine for sounds with their fake 3D Sounds was a technical standpoint for the time.

Here it's a example, it's apply also to Half Life as it's the same engine.

https://youtu.be/yEwH-XMZ5KE

Quake II
Because I used to play it as a little kid, not sure if it was before Doom but I remember playing it back then (Way before Half Life 1).
And I really like the game, the weapons, monsters, levels, everything is just great.
There are some meh parts in the game too, but for me, by my opinion, better then Half Life 1.
I mean, I don't hate Half Life 1, I love it, but Quake 2 is, as I said, by my opinion, better then Half Life 1.

On 7/13/2020 at 7:36 PM, The Strife Commando said:

Yet you can add a ton of multiplayer maps to the game, and have skins that are more advanced than HL's in it (stuff from Black Mesa or Call of Duty for example).

i'm saying that valve had to fit the 2000 sounds into the game's CD, along with the maps, textures, models, CD audio (music), etc. and a CD could get up to 600 or 700 MB of data. HL itself weighs around 400 MB, and the rest of the disc space was filled by the game's CD audio.

Quake II by a longshot.

The weird alien industrial body horror of the Strogg is way more interesting than whatever the hell is going on with Half Life.

Also dat sonic Mayhem OST *chefs kiss*

Half Life by a long shot for me. Quake 2 is a solid and very fun game but in some ways to me it feels like it lacks a bit of soul compared to Q1 and is kinda going through the motions just to show off some (then) groundbreaking tech. Half Life on the other hand feels like a very well thought out and atmospheric experience and was genuinely quite exhilarating to play at the time due to all of the exciting design advances it brought to the table. Those tense cat and mouse battles with the military in HL1 for example make most encounters in Q2 feel rather dull in comparison.

Quake 2 is my favourite game.

But Half Life isn't bad.

Quake 2 because of best multiplayer!

Touch call, both games have excellent soundtracks, and both are fun to play. HL1 just about edges out Q2 for me though.