Re: Half-Life 2 three years on.

It boils down to taste and since you didn't care for SS2, there's nothing I
can say that will convince you that SS1 was significantly more to your
liking. It's not really relevant either, because the game is so old that it
will leave a very bad impression on a first time player, unless he's
uncommonly objective.

What I wanted to say in this thread, was that many of the things that are
generally praised about Half Life, was done years before in a much more
sophisticated manner, especially impressive considering the date of release.

However, if you indeed enjoy the scripted events more than a fleshed out
story, then Half Life will naturally suit you better. There is a big
difference in the way stories are told, and System Shock was in a way two
stories. The one before the game, which is fleshed out and done so very
well, and the one you experience during the game, which you experience and
is more commonplace. Half Life only has one during the game and it contains
very little actual dialogue or similar articulations of the story, but I
will admit that the scripted events are very exciting, and nothing in System
Shock can compare on a technical level, but then, the game was released
years before. However, if you played the game in 1994, you were being
witness to multiple gigantic steps forward in terms of both technology,
gameplay, and storytelling. I remember when I stepped onto the hangar deck
and experiencing, for the first time in a computer game, a true sense of
scale. It was also the first time I felt intimidated by an antagonist in a
game, and it is the only game in which I've ever attempted to dodge a
digital bullet by leaning to one side in real life.

One should probably also appreciate that in those days, they didn't simply
license engines and tweak them to suit their game. They wrote their own
engines, and System Shock was the last evolution of the one they did for
Ultima Underworld (which is another revolutionary game). These days, people
are so impressed by what can be done with a specific engine, but they tend
to forget that the developers can't really take credit for the technology.
It's like Bloodlines, where they licensed the Source engine and still
couldn't do anything impressive with it, but then Troika were always inept
in terms of technology (they're good at everything else though).

Half Life used the Quake engine (two generations of it, IIRC) and they still
spent several years on the game, and though they did do some impressive
tweaking, much of the experience is attributable to the engine.

Today we have Bioshock, which is using the latest Unreal engine, and they're
doing wondrous things with it, but I strongly doubt that Irrational could
handle anything remotely as sophisticated without a licensed engine as
brilliant as Unreal.

I don't mean to belittle those games, only to put things in perspective and
clarify why I feel the way I do. I have no interest in changing minds, and
people can adore Half Life all they want. I simply want to inform people
that maybe, just maybe, there are games more worthy of praise.


"Werner Spahl" <spahl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.64.0708142224430.15464@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 14 Aug 2007, Michael Albertsen wrote:

I'm talking about the atmosphere that was well done, as well as a story
which is extremely well presented and which makes a lot of sense within

Maybe I have missed something with SS1 as I only know SS2 but in the
latter case I found the atmosphere severly lacking after it repeated
itself with each new crew member that you didn't found alive. Was SS1
different there, e.g. no stupid hopes raised you might meet someone?

Half Life was a series of scripted events with hardly any story at all.

That is not exactly true. There is a story behind HL but you have to think
about it ;). It's not written down in logs but evolves with the game. Of
course it is nothing compared to Bloodlines and maybe to SS1, but again I
only know SS2 and I can't remember much of that besides everyone is dead.

Bloodlines is not at all a shooter in the traditional sense, and is
utterly bug-ridden and clumsily executed, which is why there are still
fan patches being made trying to fix it up to something half-way decent.

Yeah, I'm doing them :)!

Half Life was not unique in terms of having non-isolated levels, and
you'd only have to look at something like Unreal to watch what massive

I wasn't talking about massive levels, clearly Unreal is superior there
but I found it boring especially because the levels are large and empty.

I was talking about System Shock 1, so I don't know why you bring SS2
into this.

I bring SS2 into it because I never played SS1 and you said SS2 was the
second best. Which means that we either have a very different taste or SS1
was much much better than SS2.

I loved how it started out basically polite (but coldly distant) and
slowly descended into madness as it grew more and more furious with the

This sounds indeed promising. Was it actually talking to you or did you
need to read endless messages like in Marathon?

The logs found around the station told a story from the recent past, and
as
you explored the station and found bodies you could almost feel what had
happened, because you heard people talking about events just prior to
their
deaths etc. That was some fantastic story telling.

It's exactly the same story telling mechanism done in SS2 and Doom 3 so it
must have been better on several acounts because I can't remember people
praising Doom 3 for the logs of the dead people and found it bad in SS2.

Half Life had some cute scripted events, but they had no story to go
along with it. Basically, there was no story at all in Half Life (apart

Again you might be mistaken. I guess I could sum up the story of HL1 in a
similar way that you could sum up that of SS1 only with HL1 I liked that I
actually could experience parts of the story instead of just reading about
it like in SS2. Seeing people die makes me feel more than log reading...

--
Werner Spahl (spahl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) Freedom for
"The meaning of my life is to make me crazy" Vorlonships


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Half-Life 2 three years on.
    ... As I said, I never played SS1 only SS2 but at that time, I was amazed ... Or play SS1. ... First of all, SS2 was the worse game, compared to the storyline of SS1. ... compare. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action)
  • Re: System Shock 2 - revisited
    ... come to redo SS1 with a modern engine. ... time and a truly revolutionary game at the time. ... Whereas SS2 was ... player luck to a certain extent, whereas SS1 is down to player skill. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg)
  • Re: System Shock 2 - revisited
    ... >> come to redo SS1 with a modern engine. ... time and a truly revolutionary game at the time. ... There were lots of set pieces - something that seemed to be missing from SS2 ... SS2's version relies on player luck to a certain extent, whereas SS1 is down to player skill. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg)
  • Re: Half-Life 2 three years on.
    ... It's not written down in logs but evolves with the game. ... course it is nothing compared to Bloodlines and maybe to SS1, ... only know SS2 and I can't remember much of that besides everyone is dead. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action)
  • Re: Half-Life 2 three years on.
    ... I felt as if the levels were something out of Doom, whereas in SS2 it ... A twisty maze of passages I've seldom seen before! ... The engine section was a twisty maze, but it was really the only one ... All of SS1 was pretty much like that. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action)