Sunday Afternoon ShackReviews

Half Life was great at the time, but Monolith has done a good job of consistantly making better games than it.

No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 and Tron 2.0 all slap the unholy shit out of Half Life (when it comes to single player).

I wouldn't say Far Cry is the best FPS since Half Life, but I would say that its storytelling was superior. It didn't have any pretentions about what it was (a classic b-action movie wrapped up in a great FPS package) and it presented it in such a way that you felt like you were the b-movie hero.

Did you really feel like a stranded scientist in Half Life?

Not that it matters, Half Life was all just a simulation to test out Gordon Freeman anyway.

You know, I agree with Alec Matias. While HL was a great game and had several innovations in the technical and storytelling aspects, I find it disturbing that people still mention it as "the best game EVAR! EVEN TODAY!" and still repeat "id Software games have no story" (just to mention something that usually comes along - not comparing the two games).

Thankfully it looks like HL2 will be nothing of the d1/q1/hl1/d3 "demons/aliens invade, teleport, kill demons/aliens" concept... the story really seems 1984/braveneworldish inspired, and that's A+++ for me.

I need to rewrite this before submitting. Big thing is I haven't plaed MP enough to slag it.:

My final doom 3 wrap up.Well, maybe not but I don't know what else to call it. I just finished playing through Doom 3 a second time. Let me say that its a fun game, worth the money, and it was kind of neat to be involved in a gaming event that effects the community at large.

That said, Doom 3 wasn't that good. It relies heavily on mostly cheap tricks to provide the bulk of its game play. Its one of those things you sort of notice the first time through and are really annoying the second time around. Its really a shallow experence. If i wasn't for the excellent audio logs and pda system, Doom 3 probably wouldn't of been worth it. You walk into a room, lights go out or someone lags, and *boom* a monster or group of monsters teleport or climb out of a closet. Thats 98% of the game play for Doom 3 right there. The bizzare thing is there are incidents in the game that show that ID did in fact have other ideas. In one place there was a monster standing in the dark who wouldn't react until you shine light on them. That was actually a creepy moment. You hear them, you know they are near but they aren't attacking. I wish ID went more in that direction. Create an environment where you are in a base filled with creatures lurking in the shadows. Instead you feel that the base is infact empty and the game is waiting for you to step on invisable triggers.

Graphically, I'm not sure what to think. Yeah there are parts that are pretty, but for the most part its the quality of the textures and massive use of bumpmapping. I know I might get flamed for this but I feel Doom 3 could of been done with the Far Cry engine or the modded unreal engine that Thief 3 used and the end result would of been a better looking game and probably a fast running game to boot. Even the designs left a lot to be desired. Sure some of the characters where really good, the bosses for example, but most were rather poor. Especially the humans and lower level characters.

Sound was great. Sure some of the weapon sounds were weak but over all, they were excellent. The forementioned pda logs were, in my opinion, the best part about the game. The creature sound effects were all distictive and rich quality. Atmosphere and background sounds were also well done and effective. The intro song sucked but luckily it only shows up in game at the very end.

Over all artisticly the game is lacking. Yes they did an excellent Mars base. The problem is there is too much of it and too little of anything else. Same thing with the game play, style wise, youve seen 95% of the game in the first 10%. There were areas where its clear ID had other, interesting ideas but since they didn't fit in with the "dark room that monsters teleport into" they were under used. Id could of also went in the direction of having meaniful locations. They could of put a lot of thought into the base. Most of the base is just generic structors that don't look like they have a real purpose. Not something that was lived in and worked in. Not that having real locations would add to gameplay but its just an idea of something else that could of done.

Over all we have a remake of a loved title that barely is up to current state of the art. Its a good game, but it isn't excellent nor genre defining. I kind of rank this along with nostalgic remakes of classic games. Kind of neat to revisit, but we've moved past it.

Astro Boy: Omega Factor is pretty crazy awesome. It's also very hard. Especially if you forget about the move that lets you pass through enemies w/out taking damage.

I'll uh, *cough* have to go back and try some of those levels again -- I bet they will be easier this time. :(

Also, I made the mistake of trying to save my super moves -- not knowing they could be replenished, yeah, that might make it a bit easier as well. :(

In any case, I made it to the third level on normal before getting frustrated and starting over on easy -- and now I'm on level 6. The story kinda feels like Dragon Ball Z with lots of robots, but whatever...

There's a Ninja 5-0 F.S.U.™ vibe here though so I'm happy.

The thing you have to understand about the original Half-Life was that it was released back in November of 1998.

For it's time the single player experince was revolutionary. No game could touch it. Those of us who got their copy when it was release knows what I am talking about.

I think if you want to make a fair comparison between Doom3 and Half-Life you need someone who played both games at release, and they will tell you that Half-Life provided a huge breath of fresh air into a pretty stale aspect of most other games released during it's time.

Doom3 did do the same thing for gamers today, but not on the scale that Half-Life did for us back in 1998.

I would say the surprise this update would be Astro Boy: Omega Factor as it has been garnering some impressive reviews,

Why would this be a surprise? It's long been known that Treasure developed it and most reviewer have a hard on for anything with Treasure's name associated with it.

Also, it's long been known that the game kicks all sorts of ass.

Half-Life was, and remains one of the best first person shooters ever made. Heck, it remains one of the very best games I've ever played. Hands down.

I loved HL from nearly start to finish. I say "nearly" because that last boss fight was lame in the extreme...I even enjoyed Xen, but oy did that boss battle suck big time.

What's amazing about Half-Life is how well it's held up. If you play it now, in high-res (1280x1024 or higher) on a nice video card with AA and filtering cranked up and the HD pack, it looks *great*. Really, really great. And there aren't too many games you can say that about. Heck, most games from '98 can't even be cranked up that high. Credit Valve with continually keeping the game up to date...can you imagine if everyone did that?

Half Life's presentation of story was impressive...its story; not so much. I mean for an FPS game (especially in 98) it was a step above everything else (in 98).

That said HL's story was a collection of action movie cliches and XFiles reruns.

The presentation; however, was amazing and head and shoulders above anything before and most games that came after. The use of NPCs and a constant narrative that never took you out of the game for a cut-scene was brilliant (I actually have nothing against cut-scenes...its more a design decision).

HL was like the 24 of gaming. You were in this constant real time experience fighting for your life. They worked hard to make Black Mesa feel like a real living breathing place and to make you feel like you were part of a real organic populated world. It was a so-so story presented in a superb way (so much so that it made the story seem better than it was...it was like if you got Peter Jackson and Stanley Kubrick and Orson Wells (doing Citizen Kane caliber work) to co-direct a movie based on a story that wasn't all that great...you'd still get a movie worth watching over and over.

LOL, I clicked on the comments link and got exactly what I expected to see...A bunch of halflife zealots defending their precious game.

anybody own an Alienware computer?
please tell all.thanks inadvance

He is of course, entitled to his opinion though.

I on the other hand, had more fun playing Doom 3 than any other game in recent memory, period.

It seems those of us who weren't expecting another Doom game are the ones that come out of the experience feeling let down. I know what id do best, I know what sort of game a Doom title should be, and another Doom titled is exactly what we got.

For me this could never have been a dissapointment - the graphics are unsurpassed (sorry, neither Far Cry or Riddick look as good as Doom), the sound is simply top-notch (there are NO weak/bass lacking sounds using the 5.1 engine, at least not on my setup - Doom 3 sounds better than any game I've played yet on PC) and the game is tense, atmospheric, and above all, damn good fun to play.

...And another reason Half-Life was a great SP game: it spawned a bajillion really good SP mods and add-ons like the 'They Hunger' series, Dark Star, Xeno's two missionpacks, azure sheep, I could go on and on... there are literally dozens of great SP maps and mods/TC's for this game.

I never finished the original Half-Life either. had a crappy system when it was released and it gave me a headache.

I'm waiting for Half-Life: Source to play it.

When playing through HL1, don't forget the High-Definition pack! The HD pack adds better models/textures to the game.

For original HL installed from CD, you'll need the Blue Shift CD, and run the upgradekit.exe from the CD.

For HL installed with Steam: http://www.fileplanet.com/files/130000/135089.shtml (gfly_uhds.exe if you want to d/l it elsewhere.)

i think it's because the contraction of 'could have' sounds a lot like 'could of.'