It is, without a doubt, the best single-player first-person shooter ever. It is so good for so many reasons. But most importantly, it is fun. I mean really fun. Realistic environments, challenging AI but not overly so , stirring soundtrack, and a beautiful rendition of the Quake engine are only the frosting on the cake. In a game like Quake II , monsters behave according to their AI, and the environment behaves just as it is laid out. Monsters in Quake II do cool things like duck and run, but they never really do anything to surprise you.
But in Half-Life , you may be crawling down a pipe only to have a commando roll back a grate, pitch in a remote DET pack, and close the hatch. Not only is it time to run, but you are genuinely surprised.
There are lots of scripted events in Half-Life ; some advance the story, others are just cool. But Valve, the game developer, did an excellent job of only using each event once, thus keeping you on the edge of your seat and genuinely surprised throughout the game.
I really debated about going on and on here about what gameplay is like, but I found I was giving away too much of what makes the game fun. For one thing, it's bright and colorful; for another, the lighting is great.
The models look a little blocky, but still very professional. The skins on the models help round them out, but the low polygon count allows for lots of baddies to be on the screen at once.
The textures in the game immerse you in whatever environment you are in. Special effects like lightning and smoke trails will make you call out, "Wow!
The graphics are very intense in Half-Life. Even with a good graphics card, the game can get choppy from time to time. First of all, let me mention the outstanding music track on the Half-Life CD. The music comes on at just the right time and gets your juices flowing.
Perhaps more than anything, I appreciate the sounds in Half-Life. The monsters gurgle, bark, click and roar. Enemy commandos chatter on the radio, shout taunts and cry out in urgency when grenades are lobbed their way. Your HEV suit armor talks to you, giving you vital information about your condition. Perhaps best of all, Half-Life delivers the first truly satisfying weapon sounds since Doom. The documentation is a little sparse but adequate. Each command is documented and some background is given about your character.
The game features a training course, which I strongly recommend taking even if you are familiar with first-person-shooters.
You will not regret it. Let's face it, crappy ports of PC games are just about the last thing any console gamer wants to see. Yeah, sure, it can be nice to check out PC titles you might've missed out on before, but if the port isn't good, most of the time it's not even worth bothering. The folks at Sierra know this and are taking the necessary steps to ensure that the PS2 version of Half-Life will be every bit engrossing as the PC original. They've given the project a healthy development cycle over a year and placed it in the hands of a talented crew Gearbox Studios, made up by members who have previously worked on such titles as Duke Nukem 3D and Quake.
What's more, the company is allowing Gearbox to develop a new multiplayer game that will take place within the Half-Life universe. As for how Half-Life translates onto a console, Pitchford is very optimistic, especially in the area of control. It's a nice combination of comfort and utility. My fingers always seem to be able to find the keys I want and none of the buttons and sticks feel cramped or out of the way. Overwhelmed by the aliens, the Marines pull out of Black Mesa and begin airstrikes.
Scaling cliffs, navigating destroyed buildings, and traversing through underground water channels, Gordon finally arrives at the Lambda Complex, where scientists have developed teleportation technology that allows travel to Xen. The remaining staff tells Gordon that the satellite failed to reverse the effects of the resonance cascade as an immensely powerful being on the other side of the rift is keeping it open. The scientists activate the teleporter to send Gordon to Xen and stop the being.
In Xen, Gordon encounters the remains of researchers before him and defeats Gonarch, the huge egg-laying headcrab. At a factory creating alien soldiers, he enters a giant portal that sends him to a vast cave. There, Gordon confronts the Nihilanth, the entity maintaining the rift, and destroys it. Gordon is then awoken by the mysterious G-Man, who has been watching his progress and praises his performance.
The G-Man explains that his 'employers' wish to employ Gordon. If he accepts, the G-Man congratulates him and places him into stasis. If he refuses, he is teleported to an area full of alien soldiers and is presumably killed. According to designer Harry Teasley, id's game Doom was a major influence, and the team wanted Half-Life to 'scare you like Doom did'.
The project had the working title Quiver , after the Arrowhead military base from The Mist , an early inspiration for the game. Valve struggled to find a publisher, as many believed the game was too ambitious for a first-time developer. Sierra On-Line signed Valve for a one-game deal as it was interested in making a 3D action game, especially one based on the Quake engine. Valve aimed for a November release to compete with Quake II.
They took a novel approach of assigning a small team to build a prototype level containing every element in the game, and then spent a month iterating on the level. First, the level had a number of interesting things happen in it and all when the player came into near proximity of the event, rather than based on time elements, so that the player would set the pace of the level. Second, the level had means to respond to any player action, even for something as simple as adding graphic decals to wall textures to show a bullet impact.
Finally, the level warned the player of imminent danger to allow them to avoid it, rather than killing the player with no warning. To move forward with this unified design, Valve sought a game designer, but found no one suitable for the job.
Instead, Valve created the 'cabal', initially a group of six individuals from across all departments that worked primarily for six months straight in six-hour meetings four days a week. The cabal was responsible for all elements of design, including level layouts, key events, enemy designs, narrative, and the introduction of gameplay elements relative to the story.
Membership in the main cabal rotated, since commitment required created burnout. They also produced a page document for the game's narrative, and hired Laidlaw, to help manage that script. Within a month of the cabal's formation, the other team members started detailed game development, and within another month, began playtesting through Sierra.
The cabal was intimately involved with playtesting, monitoring the player but otherwise not interacting. They noted any confusion or inability to solve a game's puzzles and made them into action items to be fixed on the next iteration. Later, with most of the main adjustments made, the team included means to benchmark players' actions which they then collected and interpreted statistically to further fine-tune levels.
Birdwell said that while there were struggles at first, the cabal approach was critical for Half-Life ' s success, and was reused for Team Fortress 2 from the start. Much of the detail of Half-Life ' s development has been lost; according to employee Erik Johnson, two or three months before release, their volume shadow service 'exploded'; they had to compile what they could from was otherwise stored on individual computers at that time, meaning that only the last month of technical changes were preserved.
This included saving the source to GoldSrc. Half-Life was released in November The first, Half-Life: Day One , contained the first fifth of the game and was distributed with certain graphic cards. The second demo, Half-Life: Uplink , was released on February 12, and featured original content.
Newell had stated at the time of Half-Life 's release that to comply with the BPmJ's regulations on violence against humans, they had to replace all the humans in the game with robots, replacing any blood with oil and body parts with gears, among other changes. This allowed for the game to be released but was placed on a list maintained by BPmJ that prevent sales of the game to anyone under 18 years old. This version of the game had a significant overhaul in terms of both character models, weapons, and more advanced and extended levels and general map geometry, incorporated from work on a planned Dreamcast version.
Also added in is a head-to-head play and a co-op expansion Half-Life: Decay that allowed players to play as the two female scientists Dr. Cross and Dr. Green at Black Mesa. Those weren't the only special things to happen that year. It was also the year in which Half-Life was published. This first-person shooter took the helm from the previous generation of 3D shooters led by titles of the likes of Quake, Heretic, Hexen or Duke Nukem 3D. Valve Corporation surprised us with their first title, introducing us to an action-packed video game with extremely realistic graphics and frenetic action.
We were immersed in a story featuring Gordon Freeman, a scientist with a certain resemblance to Breaking Bad's Walter White, who is surprised by a flaw that opens up an interdimensional portal during an experiment. This leads to alien creatures invading the laboratory where he works, which means that he's going to have to deal with the problem. In other words, he'll have to beat the hell out of them.
In the second case, each player acts for himself. Whoever collects the most phrases wins. Mod and maps are made on Source engine. Added new weapons, locations, skins, etc. Download torrent.
0コメント