cAPSLOCK said:
The thing that's always set Half Life apart was in how the story was told, pacing, and overall design philosophy. If you sit down and listen to developer commentary you'll see just how intricately crafted and thought out Half Life 2 was. As far as FPS go it's really hard to fault the game in any of those categories.
You have to remember that before Half Life FPS were essentially enemy conveyor belts where you just unloaded all your weapons constantly.
The answer to HL's success is much, much deeper than graphics and physics. Those 2 things are nothing more than a vehicle for a game, and Valve understands this probably more than any other developer in gaming.
The other thing besides previously mentioned (or just obvious at this point) things was the insane amount of modding done for it. The engine is a heavily modified Q1 engine, and id has always been about letting people fiddle with their stuff. Team Fortress Classic, They Hunger, Day of Defeat, Counter Strike, Riccochet, these and many many many more were mods from Half Life and contributed quite a bit to the game's success long after release.
As far as HL2's success, it came with CS:Source :P Honestly, though, generally speaking it followed Half Life's original design and pacing philosophy. It's not a beer and pizza FPS like Serious Sam or Halo or Quake 3. Like I said developer comments really open up your eyes and adds a whole new dimension to the game if you're wondering how to approach a game from a critical perspective.
Then at least love it or hate it you can appreciate and understand it a little better. Edit: If it makes you feel any better Mario Galaxy will knock one of them out of the top 10, and one of those should represent Half Life 1 in spirit, which does deserve to be in any top 10 list. |
your post seems to interchange Half-Life with Half-Life 2 at random. I LIKED the original. It is by far the best shooter made for any system ever bar none. I enjoyed TFC, CS, etc, which are all mods for the original as well. I also enjoyed some HL2 mods. But, I found the single player HL2 campaign boring. I don't think it holds a candle to the greatness of the original and I can't understand how its ranking on gamerankings can be higher than the original.
