It's definitely up there for me. This and that are the top two levels imo.
This reminds me of that unconfirmed (?) rumor where a VA working at Valve said one thing Valve are having problems with is to make animations/characters more dynamic during scripted scenes?
Really? *goes to check out*
Honestly, it was a coin toss between Surface Tension and Blast Pit. Surface Tension has the most variety by far, but Blast Pit, ultimately, manages to be way more unified as a level. The focus on the Tentacle and dealing with it made it attractive to me to write about. If I'd written about Surface Tension, the article would look more like my Halo piece.
That would certainly explain a lot. Still, I feel like Valve have encountered some problems with really EASY solutions before...
I love
Bioshock, man. I also don't.
HL2 was definitely still a lot worse in that regard though because of the heavier focus on characters. Could have benefited from a Pause -> Skip Conversation option. You always have to listen to the conversation in Red Letter Day. You always have to listen to the Vortigaunt in Route Canal. You always have to listen to the rebels put the gun on the boat in Water Hazard. You always have to listen to the conversation in Black Mesa East. Ravenholm was awesome because most of the talking was done during tense gameplay or far off in the background. But then you always have to talk to the rebels at the beginning of Highway 17. Sand traps or Nova Prospekt are fine, but Entanglement is no better than your average Call of Duty level. Not fun to replay. And so on and so forth....
In HL1 there is the intro and that's about it until you reach the Lambda Core.
Red Letter Day (and the moments leading up to it) is a cutscene that's about 10 minutes long. It's a bunch of useless exposition that really doesn't do much other than showcase some of the game's tech. By any metric other than technology... it's not very good. Most games would have cut that down to a thirty second cutscene, and I think it would have made for a better game.
Someone took the words right out of my mouth (although Blast Pit is probably still top three for me).
Great article though.
Like I said in this post, I ALMOST went for Surface Tension. It's a lot like System Shock 2 or STALKER for me. I think they're both the best game of all time, but it's sort of a schrodinger's thing. One's the best depending on how I'm feeling at any given moment.
I would say that almost all modern games could learn a lot from
entire Half-Life.
At least Wolfenstein:TNO did a good job in that regard.
Playing this so shortly after WolfTNO kinda makes me wish they'd changed some things about it.
I liked how immediately after the "boss level with puzzles" the following level is another "boss level though this time with more action". Felt like a great way to defy expectations. "Whew! This fucking tentacle, it won't get worse than this...this freaking beast is tearing the marines apart!".
Yeah, it's really good. Blast Pit's ending is kinda weird given how slow it is. There's this bit after you kill the tentacle and before you get to Power Up that just feels out of place, yet VITAL to the pacing (you need SOME downtime to meditate on your victory and get that sweet, sweet revolver).
¡HarlequinPanic!;141510964 said:
reading this the other day got me to try and play through half-life for the first time, but I really didn't get very far before losing interest. not entirely the game's fault as there's some weird ass sound bug going on that makes it sound like I'm always in a corridor that is echoing louder and louder with each motion I make.
If I can fix that I'd like to soldier on.
That's... a weird bug.
This reminds me of how much fun and incredibly new and exciting half life was to me when I played it in 98. So much of it was just new rather than a trope I had seen countless times before. It made the game unpredictable in a way, but also much more alive. I couldn't predict things at all. I'd love to play it through as it was at the time and with no memory of everything since. I spent more time exploring and taking my time, than just running between encounters, because the world was interesting and actually providing some narrative and useful info
A great example was crawling through some vents in surface tension, and eaves dropping to get some info - something I did in other levels - but this time they shoot up the vent leaving that light trail that missed me, and then I relax only for the damn thing to fall anyway. Stuff like that was just great
I played through it for the first time in 2007. It's partly why Half-Life 2, which I played for the first time immediately after (also did BS and OP4) felt like such a letdown to me.
The "seemingly unstoppable set piece monster that follows you throughout the level" is one of my favorite ideas. I suppose the first time I encountered this was with Super Mario Bros 3, where the angry sun will swoop down from time to time and you just gotta be on the ball as you maneuver through the level. Its a good alternative for a game that don't have traditional boss fights with health bars and all that. I think a very similar idea springs up in Half-Life 2 with the helicopter from the beginning. It swoops into view, lays waste to some civilians, and you know it means business. And from there until near the end of Water Harzard you're up against this thing. You dodge in-between junk and boxes, fighting off Combine as you sprint between shots. you dodge bombs on the boat and hit ramps to fly over explosions, you finally get up that tower and shoot with the stationary turret like "Yeaaah fuck you you like that huh? get out of here" only for him to show right back up five minutes later like "oh, c'mon!". Then you get a little gun mounted on your boat and you shoot 'em in the face and you feel like you can finally fight back. When you finally take him down out in that open area, it feels good. You accomplished something, you took down this seemingly indestructible fucker that's been hounding you for hours.
As much as I like things like that, it really frustrated me in Dead Space 2 (which is otherwise one of my favorite games) with the regenerator. Dead Space 3 made it even worse. I like 'dueling' it out with a boss before getting to the 'real' fight, but few games seem to do it well. I did kinda like TEW's approach with the weird bloodcorpsegirl, though the last fight itself wasn't particularly fun 'cause of the game's stupid hitbox implementations.
I like the helicopter in Half-Life 2 aside from A) Route Kanal and Water Hazard being way too long, and B) the part where it just craps out mines. It was a bug and I wish they'd quashed it, and given you another way to fight, because it looks SILLY imo. I like the idea more than the execution, in other words. I do like how the helicopter sort of develops a character as the game goes on, and more importantly, I like that it's a boss you can kill with other means than the stupid rocket (which is actually a GOOD rocket, but using it so often to kill bosses gets a bit dull).
There are other examples, but thats the one that jumps out to me. The Tank chapter from Uncharted 2 where its blowing up walls, you're dodging in-between the streets, you're sneaking past it as it rolls by, you're jumping across rooftops and ledges, it'll blow up a building you're in and you got to get the fuck out of there, etc until at the end you finally get some serious firepower in RPGs to take it out and save the village. It takes about as long as fighting one of those Destiny bosses, but it certainly a lot more interesting than just shooting at this one target with one attack pattern for ten minutes in-between enemy waves.
I may dislike Uncharted 2, but I did like this part.
Destiny's in a rough spot, because it has to build bosses around all these different stats and modifiers and classes and variables and gear and levels players could potentially come to battle with, so a lot of the time in in these kind of MMO/Diablo games it comes down to a gear check/level check/health sponge. In more heavily scripted games like Half-Life or Uncharted with less potentially variable skill systems to build challenges around, you can do this kind of thing.
At the very least, a Raid could work this way. Heck, even a Strike could--you could have a boss that flees after it takes X or Y amounts of damage. Say some giant Fallen that summons four or five archons, then leaps off a cliff and runs away or something. Maybe you eventually killing it with an echo of Half-Life--firing a colony ship's engines at it and frying it. Make the fight a bit more interesting by splitting up the raid team near the end of the mission. One group down below has to get his attention and hook up fuel lines. The other group has to fight their way to the engine controls. At some point, he picks up a vex-type overshield so he doesn't take damage any more and the only way to kill him is with, yeah, the colony ship.
Maybe there's a big Cabal dude, and to kill him, you have to free /other Cabal/ who've been imprisoned by him. They fight their jailor for you, and your job is actually to hold off the Cabal who might come to his aid.
Also, Hitman avatar?
