I just finished half-life 1 with expansions on hard. The plot and locations are cool, but I don't know why, but Xen annoyed me, especially in the base game. All chapters of 1 are great, but after Xen in the first one I always sighed when I had to go back to it in the expansions. I really enjoyed the approach to the expansions, I love the idea of telling the story from different perspectives and the connections between them, and I can see how Gearbox introduced different ideas in both. The first half of Opposing Force was prolonged but the second half made up for it, the final boss was just as fun as the weird giant baby but more straightforward. Blue Shift was shorter but had moments where it was the most difficult in my opinion. The endings of all three games are great, different and super in their own way.Great games. Will play HL2 soon.
I tried doing my first playthrough on hard but got filtered by the first Vortigaunt encounter. Good game though.
>>11414342How did you find Surface Tension? I thought it was ridiculous on hard. Xen was tough too but much more doable. I wouldnt do it again.I didnt really like the expansions. It sucked that Opposing Force takes place after Forget About Freeman and Blue Shift was just kinda dumb.
>>11414342>from different perspectivesAlso always loved this.I wonder if they will ever do anything with Shephard again. Probably not.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iu4GXUHfU0
>>11414503There was a cancelled Half-Life: Episode Four featuring Shephard as the protagonist, although it was not developed by Valvehttps://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Half-Life_2:_Episode_Four
>>11414643>return to ravenholm>"Valve eventually decided that it didn't make sense to pursue it at the time. They felt like a lot of the staples of Ravenholm (Headcrabs and Zombies) were pretty much played out"Valve were so based.
>>11414450Surface Tension is harder than any other chapter, because fighting HECU is I think almost always harder and trickier than fighting creatures, and it's also the longest chapter. There was a lot of health and loot, and you already have Hivehand, so it's easier in that aspect. I honestly liked that you could play so much time on the surface and not just underground.>>11414503Wow, nice video, funny to see how sometimes the characters were so close to each other.
>>11414342>Xen annoyed me, especially in the base gameIt was a notoriously panned part of what was otherwise a solid 9/10 game. For me, Xen outside of the bosses just felt really jankily put together filler. It also feels like you could have very easily put those bosses into Black Mesa and it be a better game.
>>11415014Oh yeah its a great chapter but playing on hard made me hate it.
>>11415087>notoriously panned partorly? I really like Xen. Its cool that youre suddenly in a completely different zone that was only hinted at at the beginning. It delivers lore subtly and non-aggro Vortigaunts are dope. The low-g platforming is really fun too. It doesnt really go on that long either.Giant baby would be well out of place in Black Mesa.
>>11414342Blue Shift is underrated. The best of the three in some ways. Strips the gameplay down to its core, which does away with most of the dumb annoying stuff from the other games but also makes it feel a bit plain in comparison, especially with that rushed ending. Though I get that as a product it does the least to justify its asking price as far as the amount of content on offer.
How do difficulty modes in Half-Life work? Do hard and realistic mode do anything other than sponge up the enemies
>>11415685always felt blue shift was the comfiest.
>>11415615Glad you liked it Anon. For what it's worth, Black Mesa (the game) did a much better job with it, and make it work better as a concept and I will concede the final bosses (big testicle guy and flying baby guy) did work.For me, the Zero G platforming was probably some of the least well put together bits of the game. You had trampolines that didn't fire properly, and a corridor shooter suddenly pivoting to manouvering in big wide open spaces and doing pixel perfect jumps that just always felt a bit haphazard. Also the Xen levels were frustrating to navigate. It just jumped the shark a bit and was so out of place atmosphere and tone wise. In terms of the final bosses though, the mini flying babies worked in Black Mesa just fine. There could have been a whole thing about getting towards a nuclear core that he'd taken over and it would have been far more in keeping with the horror tropes they'd been using up until that point.TTXJN
>>11414342Based.
>>11415615Personally I loved the first bit of it with the gonarch. It was so alien. Beyond that, Xen stopped feeling alien (to me) and started feeling like a bunch of random crap shoved together. And maybe I did a bad job of keeping up with the story but I had no idea who the giant baby was supposed to be.
