FPS game for a casual

[schru]

The levels in Half-Life do change theme quite a bit, there are only two laboratory areas after you find the Magnum, though also a rather protracted railway tunnels right after. Later on there are very nice surface levels. The current Steam version renders some textures at lower resolution because it was stripped of the Direct3D renderer, EAX sound was also removed, so it's better to find a torrent with an older version.

On this note, you could also give Half-Life: Uplink a try. It can be downloaded from various sites, it was an additional chapter which Valve released separately as a demo and it's pretty good. It might be difficult to get the menu to work right on current systems.

 

[Dramart]

If you finished Return to the Castle Wolfenstein you're not as bad as you think. I see you had the intention to play Clive Barker's Undying, it's really good, I was going to recommend to you that game. The first Call of Duty is really fun. FEAR 2, it has good gameplay, I found it more enjoyable than the first one. FThere is a game called Jericho, is not as good as a shooter in my opinion but you can use different characters each one with different weapons and skills, and it's gore, maybe you should give it a chance.

 

[DalekFlay]

The levels in Half-Life do change theme quite a bit, there are only two laboratory areas after you find the Magnum, though also a rather protracted railway tunnels right after. Later on there are very nice surface levels. The current Steam version renders some textures at lower resolution because it was stripped of the Direct3D renderer, EAX sound was also removed, so it's better to find a torrent with an older version.

Is there really any reason not to play Half-Life: Source? I'm sure if you have nostalgia for the original version that might overtake you, but he obviously does not. I do agree Half-Life is a good choice, it blew me away at the time and changed what I wanted from a shooter. I still love Doom and Quake, but having that extra narrative and variety element really added something to the genre.

 

[schru]

About the Steam version of Half-Life (GoldSrc), it no longer has that problem I mentioned, so it only lacks EAX.

Is there really any reason not to play Half-Life: Source? I'm sure if you have nostalgia for the original version that might overtake you, but he obviously does not. I do agree Half-Life is a good choice, it blew me away at the time and changed what I wanted from a shooter. I still love Doom and Quake, but having that extra narrative and variety element really added something to the genre.

Half-Life: Source differs from the original version in quite a few ways, importantly in terms of movement. It's been a longer while since I compared the two versions, so I don't remember the details, but I think a few scripts might not work right, the lightmaps in some areas are bland, some textures lacked additional variations or something like that, and after the 2013 engine update the chrome shader, which was something of a special feature of that version, looks quite wrong (at least as far as I know, I haven't checked if there were more recent updates). At the time, during a public beta, Valve employees said that they didn't see a point in spending too much time fixing that version.

 

[DalekFlay]

Half-Life: Source differs from the original version in quite a few ways, importantly in terms of movement. It's been a longer while since I compared the two versions, so I don't remember the details, but I think a few scripts might not work right, the lightmaps in some areas are bland, some textures lacked additional variations or something like that, and after the 2013 engine update the chrome shader, which was something of a special feature of that version, looks quite wrong (at least as far as I know, I haven't checked if there were more recent updates). At the time, during a public beta, Valve employees said that they didn't see a point in spending too much time fixing that version.

Hmm, I remember comparing them many years ago and thinking Source looked fucktons better, but it's been a while I guess.

 

[schru]

Hmm, I remember comparing them many years ago and thinking Source looked fucktons better, but it's been a while I guess.

It does look better in terms of all the new things it adds like lighting effects, new water, somewhat different texture filtering (seemingly, at least), and generally it does have a pleasant clean look to it. The vista in the cliff level, while looking interesting in its own right, pales in comparison to the original skybox:

I just think such remakes or remasters are a bit pointless if all the original features and detail aren't carefully carried over.

 

[DraQ]

Is there really any reason not to play Half-Life: Source? I'm sure if you have nostalgia for the original version that might overtake you, but he obviously does not. I do agree Half-Life is a good choice, it blew me away at the time and changed what I wanted from a shooter. I still love Doom and Quake, but having that extra narrative and variety element really added something to the genre.

Half-Life: Source is completely broken. More so since they lazily ported it to the newer version of the Source engine in 2013, but it was always like this to some extent. It may look a bit shinier on the surface, but pretty much every script is broken in some way, and most of the differences are just from their not caring enough to correct things instead of any intentional change. From what I remember:

• DXT compressed textures (everything looks blockier than it used to)
  
• Inaccurate chrome effects, which were then broken in the update (schru seems to be confusing this with the added specular effects on textures, which were also actually kind of lazily done as they just used the same generic environment map for everything)
  
• Decals are black, rather than using their original colours
• The original lighting colours needed to be gamma corrected in order to appear correctly in the Source engine, but instead they just modified the uncorrected values slightly or not at all. Brightness and fall-off is handled differently, too, which results in similar errors
• No randomly tiled textures
• The MP5 does the same amount of damage as the pistol, and has exaggerated recoil
• Broken armour on enemies, and now even broken hitboxes (the helicopter's hitbox is a lot smaller than it appears, and tentacles are completely non-solid and harmless)
• Random assets from HL2 occassionally thrown in, which just look out-of-place and stupid

And so on. NPC behaviours and scripting and whatever is also all broken in various ways, but it's so ubiquitous that it's hard to point out anything in particular. The whole thing is entirely on accident. Also, no mods.


The thing about the lower resolution textures in the original also affected OpenGL, not just Direct3D. It can be disabled with a command, though (gl_round_down 0).

This. Either play original or fucking Black Mesa.

 

[DraQ]

I also remember an obscure Russian shooter called Chasm. It was like a mix of Quake and Daikatana (actually more fun than Daikatana).

Chasm was p. good, although short and very, very flat (much less z-axis than even Doom engine games).