Oh sweet, I haven't been keeping up with any of the mods released since...hell, Half Life 2 and Half Life Source came out, so this is the perfect excuse to play through it all over again. My singular complaint with HL:Source was that the bodies no longer gibbed, though. Other than that, I really liked how they oh-so-gently migrated HL into the new engine (especially with the addition of the new physics model).
Half Life is a damn classic and while the Source version is hotness, you can't go wrong with the original PC version (fully patched!). I know I'm in the minority, but I really dig the look of it when you run it in high res software mode, too. The DC version is pretty bleh and I haven't really spent much time with the PS2 version (going to fix that soon enough), but good lord is the PC version a classic.
Once you finish Half Life, you should look into a couple of choice single player mods.
Uplink is the demo for the game that's since been turned into a modification for it. It's a set of unique levels and situtations that didn't exist in the retail version and is well worth playing through.
Poke646 is an insanely high quality experience as well and probably my favorite single player mod for the game. I know I'm a bad person for it, but I've yet to play the sequel. No idea how it stacks up
Top notch level design, high quality textures and models, and just an all-round pimptight package of awesomeness. Come on, you get a nail gun. Like a real nail gun, not a Quake one. You know it's good.
They Hunger is a unique 3-part horror series that was included on PC Gamer cover discs. The final part kinda lacks the same punch as the first and the second is in-between, but they're still hella fun. Ravenholm from Half Life 2 bears a pretty strong resemblence to the hell from They Hunger.
USS Darkstar was a PC Gamer coverdisc release before They Hunger and was developed by the same talanted team. It sucks you in from the opening cutscene and keeps you playing until you beat the damn thing. I preferred They Hunger more for its unique setting, but Darkstar is still hellaciously badass.
Redemption is a bit like Half Life mixed with a bit of Tomb Raider. Difficulty level is fairly high, but it overall pretty well done. G-Man speaks and there's a bit of a fuck up in your first teleportation, sending you to ...well, I don't want to spoil anything.
Without fagging up the thread with too much rambling, I also recommend Heart of Evil, Todesangst 1 and 2, Azure Sheep, and The Long Night. Chronicles might also be worth looking into once you finish the game, though you'll just feel depressed that more episodes weren't done (they were intended to show what would have happened if certian situations in Half Life had gone just slightly differently)
If any of those links shit out on you or you need a hand, I can bundle up the Steam-friendly installs from my computer for you.
I love me some Half Life.
Intangir wrote:
Anywho, enjoy HL1. If you're going to stick it out with the original, I'd make sure to install the expansions--namely Blue Shift. If I remember correctly, Blue Shift updated a lot of the character models so they don't look so amazingly low-poly.
My only beef with the high poly models was that they swapped the MP5N with the M4A1, and it just never felt right since then.
Then again, I'd take Looking Glass over Valve any day of the week.
Looking Glass was hella good, but none of their stuff is really comparable to Half Life. Everything they did was so unique and original that there was really nothing else out there that compared to it. System Shock 2 was pretty awesome, but the weapon decay really pissed me off initially. Co Op is totally the way to play that game anyway though. Haven't played it in like 5 years....I should look at installing it again sometime. The high res character models looked neat, but I've always been hoping someone would update the level geometry as well to complement them. As it is, they just look too out of place
Also, you'd think that Terra Nova would command a higher value considering how awesome it is and how much of a titanic bomb it was. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled on 5 boxed copies for $2 a piece (which ended up costing me nothing because the store owner just wanted to get rid of them) and then recently seeing copies move for under $10 a pop. There's no excuse why anyone should put up with the silly rip on The Underdogs when it's so inexpensive to get those gloriously awful cutscenes. Shit, they're a major reason why Looking Glass went under... may as well watch 'em
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