Half-Life² Questions

well... about doom, with all this recent talk about advanced AI in games, specially in FPS, the only AI that really impressed me was from the original doom.

I mean, all the AI from this new games, like fear, crysis, HL 1, consist in duck, flank, cover and some variations, but it only take a few minutes for any average player to figure out its patterns. I'd rather call them "artificial behavior".

In doom, since it was a straight shooter, the enemies would fight against each other if you provoke that situation.

And to tell you the truth, I've almost never seen this in any game again. In fact there are some games that enemies fight each other, but normally, it's some scripted event, or probably it's already estabilish diferent sides, like in half life we had marines vs Xen slaves.

but hordes of hell that sudenly changes sides? Only in doom. The difficulty of these games was in the numbers. a swarm of enemies, not one enemy tha ducks, retreat, etc.

Other "AB" I like are those from the thief series, which had diferent alert states, and could change between them acconding to your playing style. And if they found you, they would be unforgivable.

 

In Qake Ii you could also get enemies to fight each other. Loads of fun.

 

Hmmm, it's from ID software also, but I never really played quake 2 that much, so I couldn't remember.

The thing is that you could have a room filled with 20 enemies in doom 1, and they all would fight each other. you could leave the room, and get back there after sometime and have only one baddie remaining.

 

HL2 was crap. It was pretty much HL with ten times as shitty setting, story, characters(even though HL didn't really have characters), all wrapped up in retarded "episodic" system, i.e. now play vehicle section, now horror section, now team section, and so on. Fuck you.

 

Fuck YOU. What are you, the new Volourn? GTFO.

 

the setting in hl2 is quite good, what are you talking about? It's cool and varied, the artistic direction is very nice.

 

It's cool bro, I'm sure when [color] box will be released with Episode 3 you will be able to buy HL2 for the fourth time so chill

 

Nobody makes you play it if you don't want it, shithead
the fact remains - half life 2 and episodes are as good as they make them these days

 

Yeah, as good as it gets, if you want campy Star Trek like drama and gameplay older than most of RPG-Codex.

 

Armed Ass.... Errr... Well uh. Yeah we are fucked FPS-wise.

 

I can't really understand all this anger against Alyx , I found her to be a well made character and has saved your ass more that you have saved her in the game. As for the presentation she has the best facial expressions in dialog I've seen since Bloodlines.The only important flaw of HL2 is that it's very crowded and linear with too many scripted events. It should provide you with bigger areas, more freedom , more atmosphere. HL1 was much better in that aspect.

 

Agreed. The writers and animators did a fine job with Alyx, as did her voice actress.

 

HL1 had bigger areas and more freedom? We must've played different games then. It took awhile to run across the dam, and then there was that other shitty part with the minefields. That was about as open as it got. Unless you consider Xen to be a superior setting to that of HL2. Too bad Xen was a turd.

And sure, you could say that shooters don't age well because of the graphics. What else do a lot of shooters have going for them, really? I mean what does HL1 do so much better than HL2? The story is almost nonexistent, the gameplay is just as linear as in the sequel if not more so, there's no AI to speak of (especially for the companion scientists jesus christ), all the baddies except the ninjas consequently manage to be a complete joke even compared to those found in HL2, and, again, Xen is a turd. HL1 was just a never-ending switch hunt (except for the turd that is Xen). HL2 still has switch hunt portions, but at least it added some damn variety to the mix too.

If variety is a bad thing to you and if you wanted nothing more than an HL1 with new levels for a sequel, well then I guess I can understand.

All well, I'm done ranting.

 

You're criticizing AI of HL? Hooo boy!

 

This explains everything about him.

 

portal, prey, quake 4 and dark messiah.

 

I guess this means your "opinions"..or statements, are now officially worthless? Justify your choices.

 

Justify why his choices aren't worthy.

 

Portal is not a shooter.
Prey and Quake are on the same level of Doom3 mediocrity (the same dark corridors with monsters in wardrobes - and then this Prey where you even can't die which eliminates every sense of challenge) and Dark Messiah isn't anything special - monotonous fantasy first person fighting with magic. I find HL2 to be better.

Alyx acts like a naive 16 years old girl that never shut ups and adds so much ghey to the game because of that.

 

Playing Quake IV after that horrible boring Doom3 was like coming out of a buried toilet.

I guess you conveniently forgot running around small asteroids in Prey?
Also that its Science fiction instead of badly done horror? The portals, playing with gravity, walking upside down on those walkways and fighting while on them, flying around inside that mothership? Spirit form to go through walls and transport your body around?
And no monsters jumping from the walls at all.
Though not being able to die was kinda stupid.

Quake IV - a military science fiction. Bigger and very different are design of the levels, often playing with very well designed squad mates and no horror moments at all? With one of the best pacing ever made in FPS.

Appart from being FPS and using the same engine (in much, much better ways) they dont have anything in common with Doom 3.

 

They're my opinions only, but i had fun with them.

well, portal is not a shooter, but its FP. And you shoot "portals", hehe. And it appeals for FPS players.

Quake 4, well, i liked it. Find it very fast paced, and had some cool moments. Better than doom, there had more outdoors enviroments, there was an "war" feeling, a kind of call of duty in space. And I liked stroggification, the squadmates, which were more "human" like.

Prey had the problem of not dieing, but for me it's almost the same effect as dieing and have quick save/load. I liked it for the same reson of quake: Fast paced, cool enemies, and i liked the new aproach of walking in ceilings. the portal's system is cool, with you entering into a shrunk asteroid or something.

Dark Messiah, well, I liked the kicking, the meleé combat, some magics, the monsters... it's fantasy, a common setting in an RPG, but very unusual for FPS. and it was very much like half life, and had some elements from the thief games, like the stealth, rope arrows, but you'd have to spend your points in thieving skills.

But anyway, they were fun. That's what i normally expect from an FPS.

One of these that was kind of boring is F.E.A.R., because every place looked the same.

And about the problem of be impossible to die, this remind me of Bioshock. In this case, I play with the vita chambers deactivated.

 

Come on, you've seen worse, haven't you. I won't claim that HL2 has the deepest characters ever, but they are pretty well done, especially for an FPS.

Cool ideas, but in the end the gameplay was nothing special, characters and story were uninteresting and the novelty wore off quickly.

 

true, maybe, but it was very far from Doom 3 in all elements.

 

Biocock, Crysis, Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, Call of Duty 4... that roughly covers last two years I guess, therefore there'd be more if my memory wasn't a taiwanese whore.

 

I haven't played it, so I can't say.

edit: I mean that I haven't played Doom 3.