Half-Life 1 vs Halo 1

[[PROTOTYPE]]

Technician said:

Half-Life all the way. Halo is definitely the best console shooter, but there wasn't anything new and, sadly, set an obnoxious precedence for shooters today.

One thing about Halo 1, the enemies are boring as fuck. The game got good when the flood were introduced, but again, sadly, were needlessly shoehorned into the story as the squeals progressed. Also, the covenant's political story was about as engaging as the Star Wars prequels.

I gotta agree with you dude.Also...the fckng crabs really pissed me off.

[TwinBeast]

I thought HL1 had a clever intro.. and I've never wanted to skip it. Though I always did try to glitch my way out of the train. I've always done that in HL2 too.. and in the monorail section in Doom3.. and probably any game that involves such transportation devices. I always jump in elevators too, just so that I might glitch out of them.

[[PROTOTYPE]]

Jimi said:

I thought HL1 had a clever intro.. and I've never wanted to skip it. Though I always did try to glitch my way out of the train. I've always done that in HL2 too.. and in the monorail section in Doom3.. and probably any game that involves such transportation devices. I always jump in elevators too, just so that I might glitch out of them.

The outside of the base on Doom 3 was really breathtaking.I mean,there was some really complex architecture,don't u agree?

[Grain of Salt]

[kristus]

Jimi said:

I thought HL1 had a clever intro.. and I've never wanted to skip it.

Well, to each their own or whatever the saying goes. In my case, I've wanted to skip it every time I've seen it. Including the first time. Had they skipped the tram entirely, or at the very least 95% of it. Then the part after wouldn't have been such an excruciating pain to go through. You're just milling around, already annoyed by the (IMO) absurdly long tram ride, wondering when something that is even remotely interesting will happen. Even after shit hits the fan, the game doesn't actually become interesting. It's just carries on like before, only now stuff is exploding randomly and large ticks jump at you on occation.

Grain of Salt said:

Although, to be fair, I doubt StarCraft was the first to do that setup. It's just one of those ideas that everyone rips off.

Heh. Starcraft in it's turn was just a computer version of Warhammer 40k. Much like Warcraft was a computer version of Warhammer. I dunno if the story is from there as well. But the Startcraft story never impressed me either to be honest. I never got the motivations for some of the things they did. In particular Mengsk's sudden shift in character. From going from being a reasonable leader who isn't blinded by ideology to being a comicbook version of Hitler. And why the Zerg decided to make the Queen of blades. Doesn't really make sense in any other way than a vehicle for creating a hook for a dramatic shift in the story.

[DoOmEr4LiFe]

I never really got swept up in the hype of either franchise. Half-Life is pretty decent, sure it may be innovative but I didn't start truly enjoying it until you get to Xen. I didn't play Half-Life until 2002 or there abouts so the so-called revolutionary aspects that everyone talked about it when it first came out had been lost to me. I liked the game, I loved messing around with the missile launcher and the Tesla gun. It was a solid experience but didn't blow me away.

Halo, I really liked the first Halo, up until the Flood show up. They killed it for me, they were just too damn cliche and I hated having to constantly fight them. I didn't buy much into the hype of the multiplayer of Halo, but I was pretty good at it, and all my friends were into it so I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun with it.

If I had to pick one or the other, I'd go with Half-Life, it is the over all better game. Unless I can get my friends huddled over a few X-Boxes in which case I would go with Halo.

[Use]

Vordakk said:

Half-Life 1. Halo just sucks.

Gordon is far more likeable. Also Halo sucks.

[Mr. T]

kristus said:

But unlike the case of HL1's not only incredibly boring and pointless intro, they were actually skippable.

There is a console command to skip the intro. So there.

HL1 is the first FPS of the type that seems mainstream today, while Halo was the first hype$$$goldmine console FPS. Mix them together and you've got... the MW series. Gross!

[kristus]

The fact that you need to run a command line or edit the config just to get the consol in the first place makes that point even more moot than the fact that a console command isn't really enough in this case. If there's any step more than "press button <whatever> to skip this BS" it's not truly skippable. You can always skip something in some way. You can leave the room while it plays for instance. That's also skipping it.

If it's not readily available to be used by anyone playing the game, it's not skippable.

Use3D said:

Gordon is far more likeable. Also Halo sucks.

Gordon is a name and a face. What is there to like? Master Chief is a helmet and a rugged attitude and voice. Even if he's as two dimensional as an jpeg. He's at least a character.

[Jodwin]

I have to agree with pretty much anything Kristus has said, and also add something else: The combat in Halo 1 was way better than in Half-Life, despite all its flaws. At least in Halo you got multiple largeish open areas giving you options in how to approach the enemies. Sure most of the inside areas were boring copy/paste, but as a whole it's certainly better than Half-Life's hallways with melee enemies and things hanging from the ceiling. Yawn.

[Vordakk]

Lambda Lambda Lambda.

[Grain of Salt]

[Vesperas_]

Half-Life, for sure.

kristus said:

The fact that you need to run a command line or edit the config just to get the consol in the first place makes that point even more moot than the fact that a console command isn't really enough in this case. If there's any step more than "press button <whatever> to skip this BS" it's not truly skippable. You can always skip something in some way. You can leave the room while it plays for instance. That's also skipping it.

The whole point of Half-Life's method of story-telling is there are no cut-scenes and you never lose control of your character. The tram ride and intro sequence are part of the pacing of the overall game. Rather than throwing you into the action like Doom or Quake does and feeding you the story through text or cut-scenes, Half-Life raised the bar by creating tension and a more believable environment via immersion. The beginning section of it are part of that and your knowledge of the overall story comes from what you invest into it.

Had Half-Life thrown you into the action right away, the story-telling would not have had the same overall effect-- likewise, with Half-Life 2, had you just started on the boat running away from civil protection, sure... it may not seem as "boring," but it would have lost immersion. The whole G-Man manipulating your fate thing and over-arching story would not have had the same effect.

kristus said:

Gordon is a name and a face. What is there to like?

Despite being a silent protagonist, Gordon Freeman has far more characterization built up throughout the series through his actions and through the characters he interacts with, than Master Chief does through Halo. The most brilliant part of it (which several games have since ripped off) is Valve, knowing he would ultimately be a puppet of the player, specifically designed him to be just that in the game's overall story and worked in such that it actually makes sense. You have the illusion of free-choice (as in any decent, story-driven game) but due to whatever myriad of reasons, you really don't have any choice. Hence the whole "Freeman" word play thing the Vortigaunts knowingly taunt you with.

Jodwin said:

I have to agree with pretty much anything Kristus has said, and also add something else: The combat in Halo 1 was way better than in Half-Life, despite all its flaws. At least in Halo you got multiple largeish open areas giving you options in how to approach the enemies. Sure most of the inside areas were boring copy/paste, but as a whole it's certainly better than Half-Life's hallways with melee enemies and things hanging from the ceiling. Yawn.

I definitely would not say "way better," but overall, I probably would agree purely from the combat perspective. The first Half-Life definitely did not age well in many aspects. Even so, despite all of the obvious advantages Halo should have (even just from technology advancements) over Half-Life, that isn't much to write home about. You could create a pretty convincing argument about how Doom has better combat over both, despite being several years older than either game.

[DoomUK]

HL1 without a shadow of a doubt.

I struggle to think of a single thing I like/d about Halo.

[kristus]

Sig-ma said:

The whole point of Half-Life's method of story-telling is there are no cut-scenes and you never lose control of your character. The tram ride and intro sequence are part of the pacing of the overall game... ...Half-Life raised the bar by creating tension and a more believable environment via immersion. The beginning section of it are part of that and your knowledge of the overall story comes from what you invest into it.

The pacing is awful and instead of having a cutscene, they have this bullshit where they hold the player hostage in the cut scene. If all I am thinking of is "when will this shit end?" then I am not immersed. Half Life didn't raise the bar in any meaningful way. The only thing they did was fool a legion of players to think that it actually had a story other than the shallow set up of games like Doom and Quake.

Sig-ma said:

Had Half-Life thrown you into the action right away, the story-telling would not have had the same overall effect-- likewise, with Half-Life 2, had you just started on the boat running away from civil protection, sure... it may not seem as "boring," but it would have lost immersion. The whole G-Man manipulating your fate thing and over-arching story would not have had the same effect.

HL2 hardly made things better. If anything it made it worse. Instead of having three paperthin characters that had noting meaningful to say at any time in the entire game, it had a plethora of them, and everyone insisted on you to stay and listen endlessly for their yammering. When you have games like System Shock 1 and 2, Deus Ex and what have you, to compare your efforts of storytelling on. Half Life and Half Life 2 is just embarrasing.

Sig-ma said:

Despite being a silent protagonist, Gordon Freeman has far more characterization built up throughout the series through his actions and through the characters he interacts with, than Master Chief does through Halo. The most brilliant part of it (which several games have since ripped off) is Valve, knowing he would ultimately be a puppet of the player, specifically designed him to be just that in the game's overall story and worked in such that it actually makes sense. You have the illusion of free-choice (as in any decent, story-driven game) but due to whatever myriad of reasons, you really don't have any choice. Hence the whole "Freeman" word play thing the Vortigaunts knowingly taunt you with.

You seem to fail to realize that Gordon doesn't interact with anyone. Other than the enemies he kill. The characters around him reacts to him being there. But that's not interaction. The closest thing is when you in HL2 can tell the stupid puppet men that keep hollering "your name" to go stand someplace else. You seem rather delusional on the case of Gordon though. that he would be somehow different from the Silent protagonist of Doom, Wolfenstein 3d or Quake and in turn, Master Chief. He isn't. There's no brilliance here.

Sig-ma said:

I definitely would not say "way better," but overall, I probably would agree purely from the combat perspective. The first Half-Life definitely did not age well in many aspects. Even so, despite all of the obvious advantages Halo should have (even just from technology advancements) over Half-Life, that isn't much to write home about. You could create a pretty convincing argument about how Doom has better combat over both, despite being several years older than either game.

So why do you even make that argument? Quake and Quake 2, which the game Half Life is taking it's technology from is far superior in it's spatial game play over HL. It's obviously not a matter of technology, it's a matter of having shit/mediocre design. System shock 1, (again) a game that I would argue is where HL1 should have taken it's inspiration. Is far superior despite having far inferior technology. The controls is a mess and the engine, while impressive for it's time, is very limited in it's abilities. Yet, they created a game that is makes those issues something many people are willing to put up with, just to experience it.

Look, it's not like these things are objectively quantifiable. But you go about it like what HL and HL2 did was something even remotely original or groundbreaking. Ad far as I am concerned. The only thing that HL delivered was a reality check on how easily impressed people are.
EDIT: It was seminal though. In a bad way. since HL we've seen other games forcefeeding the player their trivial paperthin stories just like HL forcefed you their trivial paperthin story.

[Archy]

I've never played the first Half-Life so this isn't very fair but I'll go for Halo for the awesome pistol and shotgun, Halo 1 had the best pistol. Halo 2 and 3 mest up the weapon damage balance big time, things take forever to die.

[MRB_Doom]

Speaking of HL1, my favorite mod was Edge of Darkness and my fav HL1 Opposing Force mod was without a doubt Nuclear Winter.

I just DLed both of them to keep as treasures (IMHO).

Finally, when the fuck is Black Mesa going to be released? It says the developers will make it available as a free download, which makes me happy of course, but this remake, at least from what I've seen so far, looks pretty bad ass.

[Jodwin]

Sig-ma said:

I definitely would not say "way better," but overall, I probably would agree purely from the combat perspective. The first Half-Life definitely did not age well in many aspects. Even so, despite all of the obvious advantages Halo should have (even just from technology advancements) over Half-Life, that isn't much to write home about. You could create a pretty convincing argument about how Doom has better combat over both, despite being several years older than either game.

Yes, Doom does have much better combat over both, or should I say, over any other FPS game. But that's irrelevant to a discussion that's about Half-Life and Halo alone. Bottom line is that Halo has better combat than Half-Life and that story doesn't matter jack shit in an action game (especially when it isn't even a good story), so Halo is the better game out of the two.

As to why Half-Life has worse gameplay than Halo does...it's got nothing to do with technology. It's something that the guys at id knew back when they were working on Doom: Half-Life's gameplay is as bad as it is because it tries to have realistic environments, just like the original plans for Doom did. Thankfully those plans for Doom were scrapped in exchange for level design that doesn't, you know, suck. There are other reasons too, but in the comparison between Half-Life and Halo the level design is by far the biggest issue.

[Mr. T]

I think you guys are being a bit hard on the original HL.

Sure, the best part of the game (from after you lose your weapons until you get to Xen) was, judging from Valve's original output before and after then, a huge fluke. But damn it was fun!

And Kristus, O M G. I have never seen someone whine so much about anything in my life ever before. I'm sure that anyone who enjoyed the game enough to play through the whole thing again would be smart enough to figure out how to use the console.

Most of the boring non-cutscenes in HL could be skipped anyway by way of murdering the person talking. HL2 OTOH forces you to sit through them, and they are dull as shit.

[MRB_Doom]

Mr. T said:

Most of the boring non-cutscenes in HL could be skipped anyway by way of murdering the person talking. HL2 OTOH forces you to sit through them, and they are dull as shit.

I agree. This whole "you can't kill characters that will survive / you need their help / your allies is appalling.

If it is supposed to be realistic, please let us gamers execute these so called "allies" in the forehead and maybe create features like "the story changes if you kill an ally" at that particular moment" and so forth.

[kristus]

Mr. T said:

And Kristus, O M G. I have never seen someone whine so much about anything in my life ever before. I'm sure that anyone who enjoyed the game enough to play through the whole thing again would be smart enough to figure out how to use the console.

So it took you one post before you just resort to calling me a whiner and jump to irrational conclusions about what other people would know of and figure out about a game that they apparently thught was good enough to warrant a second play through?

It appears that it hasn't come across that I am not a person who give up easily. But considering how people keep going on about HL, I've really really tried to enjoy it. I've tried on at least 4 separate occations to just play through the game so I could see what all the fuss was about. But every time, I've come to a point in the game where I just can't take anymore of the bullshit that game is all about. I can't think of a single moment in the game's single player where I was enjoying myself. When I played my brother and his friend in DM, we had fun. But it had not so much to do with the game, as it was that we were doing it together and played it on lap tops with the touch pad. (we didn't have enough mice to go around) I remembered that session later when I with friends played at a LAN together. And we picked up HL for some DM fun. But it wasn't. Becayse even when I enjoyed playing the game, it wasn't because of the game. It was because of the situation.

HL2 and Halo, I have played through. Halo was without a doubt the game that had the most interesting and versatile game play of the two (though that's not really saying a lot). HL2 was mostly a mundane task of going from A to B while people talked about stuff I didn't manage to care about around me.

It did have a nice atmosphere though. Which is what kept me playing it. I enjoyed the War of the worlds vibe it was giving off.

[Aliotroph?]

It's a bit weird to compare HL to Halo. HL is an older game designed for a different platform.

I thought the design of Halo was lazy (looks like Starship Troopers with bad lighting in the maps), but the outdoor parts played well and made for some nice DM. Halo also has some really annoying enemies.

HL was one of my favourite games for a long time, but that was more than ten years ago when it seemed like a huge technical leap from the things I was used to playing, like DOOM. It was easy to build nice-looking environments.

I don't know why people always talk about its story. The story was you're a guy who escapes from some crazy shit and kills lots of things along the way. What it did well for its time was present everything happening more seamlessly than other games. The cutscene-like moments get annoying after you've played for a couple times, but they're far less annoying than what most RPG players seem to like.

Yes, the maps are too linear. That always saddened me.

[bcwood16]

Half Life 1 - It was ground breaking and very story driven, everything about it was polished and graphics were top notch.

Halo - when I first saw a friend playing this I thought he was playing a silly MOD for some home made 3D engine. The enemies were laughable and sounds were even worse lol!

When I was told it was Halo I did not believe him, I was proven wrong and so I never actually played the game my self....first impressions were not good!!

[lazygecko]

I found Half-Life's graphics pretty underwhelming having played Unreal earlier the same year.

[Belial]

Unreal wiped the floor with Q2 and HL1 in every aspect.

Only thing that could compete was Q2's soundtrack.

[Vordakk]

Belial said:

Unreal wiped the floor with HL1 in every aspect.

Except plotline, ingenuity of gameplay...and a number of other things as well.

[Phobus]

Belial said:

Only thing that could compete was Q2's soundtrack.

It is a great soundtrack, but I never managed to get into any Quake game before Quake 4 (presumably some sort of blasphemy round here). Unreal I did love and would also compare favourably to Half-Life.

[Avoozl]

I didn't really like any of the two games to be honest, I missed out on them as my first system to play games on was my gamecube, I was more into the 007 games and I guess I could say Everything or Nothing was my favorite 007 game.

[Vesperas_]

kristus said:

The pacing is awful and instead of having a cutscene, they have this bullshit where they hold the player hostage in the cut scene. If all I am thinking of is "when will this shit end?" then I am not immersed.

You're entitled to your opinion of course, but there is a reason most recent memorable first-person games (F.E.A.R., Doom 3, Skyrim, Bioshock, etc.) lifted their intro sequences from Half-Life's framework.

kristus said:

HL2 hardly made things better. If anything it made it worse. Instead of having three paperthin characters that had noting meaningful to say at any time in the entire game, it had a plethora of them, and everyone insisted on you to stay and listen endlessly for their yammering. When you have games like System Shock 1 and 2, Deus Ex and what have you, to compare your efforts of storytelling on. Half Life and Half Life 2 is just embarrasing.

HL2 has some of the most memorable characters I've ever seen in a game. I'm not really sure what you mean. Even Dog had more personality than the Doom or Quake marines. :-P

kristus said:

You seem to fail to realize that Gordon doesn't interact with anyone. Other than the enemies he kill. The characters around him reacts to him being there. But that's not interaction. The closest thing is when you in HL2 can tell the stupid puppet men that keep hollering "your name" to go stand someplace else. You seem rather delusional on the case of Gordon though. that he would be somehow different from the Silent protagonist of Doom, Wolfenstein 3d or Quake and in turn, Master Chief. He isn't. There's no brilliance here.

The brilliance comes from Freeman's role in the story-line. I'm also not sure what you mean with him not interacting with anyone. Just because HL doesn't ask you to press the use key to access some bullshit contrived responses that make no difference in the overall scheme of the story-line doesn't mean he doesn't interact with anyone. Good story-telling weaves exposition and characterization through the length of the experience and HL does just that. As a silent protagonist, his responses would be whatever you choose but seeing as you're a puppet, you have no choice anyway.

kristus said:

So why do you even make that argument? Quake and Quake 2, which the game Half Life is taking it's technology from is far superior in it's spatial game play over HL. It's obviously not a matter of technology, it's a matter of having shit/mediocre design. System shock 1, (again) a game that I would argue is where HL1 should have taken it's inspiration. Is far superior despite having far inferior technology. The controls is a mess and the engine, while impressive for it's time, is very limited in it's abilities. Yet, they created a game that is makes those issues something many people are willing to put up with, just to experience it.

Jodwin said:

As to why Half-Life has worse gameplay than Halo does...it's got nothing to do with technology. It's something that the guys at id knew back when they were working on Doom: Half-Life's gameplay is as bad as it is because it tries to have realistic environments, just like the original plans for Doom did. Thankfully those plans for Doom were scrapped in exchange for level design that doesn't, you know, suck. There are other reasons too, but in the comparison between Half-Life and Halo the level design is by far the biggest issue.

I'd have to disagree with both of you. The problem is, a strict comparison between the two games isn't really viable beyond a subjective (but ultimately, intimate) opinion. Technology has a lot to do with it. Doom never had the same chance of telling a story like Half-Life (or even Doom 3) did. In Doom, you can't look up or down, crouch, jump, the enemies are ridiculously stupid and most of the weapons are interchangeable. You could fire up DoomBuilder and make a big square room and with half-decent monster placement, it would still be fairly enjoyable for awhile.

Again, you could make the argument Doom has better combat but that is all it really has over Half-Life. Doom has no story. As far as level-design, I am inclined to think you're not looking at it objectively at all because Doom had a lot of ridiculously shit level design. Slough of Despair? Dis? Fortress of Mystery? I understand that id Software had initially intended to make Doom "more realistic," but it simply would not have worked because of how limited the engine was. Even with the advanced source-ports available today, bots and NPC's don't really work that well (at least I haven't seen any that were as convincing as those in the original Half-Life, even). Considering it would have implied text-driven dialog and everything else, it really would have been to the detriment to the game. Half-Life does not have that problem. You can't really claim one game is strictly better than another based on only one aspect of both games.

As far as Halo is concerned, yeah... it probably does have more enjoyable combat than the original Half-Life but again, it should considering how old and largely experimental Half-Life was. Even when Halo was released many considered it to be a bland FPS and since it did nothing all that special beyond that (being a good console FPS, which owes it continued success largely to Xbox Live), it isn't all that surprising how most people here voted.

[Kirby]

Vordakk said:

Lambda Lambda Lambda.