Its so good because of 2 things... freedom and set pieces.

The game presents a problem and it presents many tools to solve the problem with. How you decide to proceed is up to the player.

Also the set pieces the game presents you with are truly superb. The final battle in episode 2 with the tripods coming from all sides is still to this day the greatest single FPS experience I've experienced.

Lets put it this way...there are FPS games that do single things better than half life. FEAR has better gunplay, Halo has greater scope in battles and coop, Killzone 2 looks much better...

But there still isn't and FPS on the market that does everything combined as good as Halflife and halflife 2.

question:

were counterstike, team forteress and day of defeat created by the developers of half life or by the community (since they are mod... were they official mods or became official only at HL2?)

I joined HL because of CS, my whole dorm was playing it and I had been out of PC gaming for 5 years (10 year old PC) and thus had not had the pleasure of playing any other FPS than doom 1&2 before ^^ So of course this game is pretty high on my list of most influential games to me.

Gordon Freeman fTW!

The question here is when you played them?

When Half Life come out there was nothing like it. Nothing!

Just compare it with the games that were out before it in 1998:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm5brBOJH5g

I was thinking that SIN is amazing and will take the crown for best FPS in 1998. Then HL1 comes out and blow it away.

Hali life 1 was REALLY a new way of doing FPS when it was released, so you have to accept it

Hali life 2 was nothing more than a very big update, that pushed the genre even more (even if I didnt even finish it when I played it in 2009)

The more funny is how these 2 games were praised for their character and story whil both are completely average ...

EDITED

The AI, the atmosphere, the guns, the enemies, Alyx, the whole damn setting was just perfect. For me it was a FPS that was closer to a rpg like no other first person shooter before. Because i actually lost myself in the world...of half-life 2.

Praised for the character because... this is going to sound odd but because Gordon lacks any character and you literally immerse yourself by believing and becomming Gordon Freeman. When the world refers to Freeman, they aren't talking about someone you're playing, but it's almost as if they're directly refering to you and an alias of yourself. Considerring the linearity it's a pretty difficult feat to acheive but is helped by other characters in HL2 such as Alyx. I can't think of another FPS where I became emotionally invested in an AI character as those in HL2.

Praised for story, not because of the story itself, but the way it was implemented and told. It didn't rely on cutscenes or hand everything to you on a plate. The main bulk is told through your interactions with the characters. The details of the story are told subtley via the environment as and when you play.

All 3 were user created mods but were bought out by Valve and had official releases and sequels.

The problem, I suspect, is you are coming to it having played games that were borne of Half Life and Half Life 2's advances.

Imaging playing Half Life 1 at the time of release - it was a revolution.

Half Life 2 meanwhile probably remains the best SP campaign yet in terms of lack of cut-scenes, immersive narrative built into the levels without needless exposition and a massive amount of different settings and gameplay mechanics - even if it wasn't quite as revolutionary as Half Life in context.

Consider the range of locations HL2 takes you through, the switching gameplay, from shooter, to vehicle to horror to shooter to puzzles, vehicle combat and so on.

Look at the SP campaigns in pretty much every recent FPS - they are short and repetitive by comparison, often with re-used set pieces (many from Half Life) vs real invention.

Without going into pages of writing the series is so huge because, even allowing for Halo, it probably remains the most influential SP FPS series ever (particularly with Halo becoming a crap SP experience to focus on MP) and probably features the most copies, imitated and reused set pieces and narrative elements.

For SP FPS it's the Citizen Kane - the one that re-wrote the rulebook.

god there are so many reasons why that is my favourite game of all time (unless i count the orange box and metroid prime trilogy). Its just the epitome of an in game emotion experience, for me anyway, I can see why it annoys so people, but it took ym breath away. The third one will be god on earth.