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By the way, I was quite surprised you could actually get through that falling pipe in the end of the Blast Pit without taking a single point of damage (before this playthrough I thought that you take some amount of damage in this scene in any case). It goes something like this.
First, immediately after you activate the script, you jump back, and, while the section of a pipe falls down you end up somewhere like here:
and then you go like this:
Now, I wonder: is that something Valve consciously put into the game, or did I cheese/glitch the hell out of the game that way?
Ah, right, and they were more of a power-up, weren't they? But still, you'd have to change things quite a bit to mimic a Pathways style goggle/rat situation.
Eh? What do you mean exactly? I mean, yeah, you turn on the defense systems on the 4th level because of story, and yeah, there are two drones on that level which are strangely enough very much active even before you turn on said defense system - but what's that part about cool environmental interactions?
Ah, I must be remembering it wrong then. I thought the drones came down after you repaired the defense systems.
Nope, bullets hit with very noticeable delay as well. BTW, this particular aspect got ditched in the Unreal Tournament remake - there the weapons are true instantaneous hitscans. Also, you seem to mistake the M1 type of alien gun (which was a machinegun of sorts) for the M2/Infinity-type of alien gun (which was like this plasma rifle of sorts).
And made the level-designers the main enemies of the player - moreover, the enemies he doesn't ever get a chance to punch in the face. It's like that goddamn Perfect Hatred level from Ultimate Doom - but in more than a half of 80+ levels of all the 3 games.
That's not a bad thing though, I can enjoy when it's the level and not the enemies that are your primary adversaries. Also, you played it on full difficulty, right? I believe that doesn't just make the enemies stronger, but spawns more of them as well.
Also, there is another consideration. Both first and, especially, second Marathon storylines seem to have this thing about the player being just a minor thing of the overall situation, about the big high-level plot not revolving around the player, etc. (it's mainly derived from the second game, but the first one first the scheme as well)
Like in G4 Sunbathing, after all the effort you put into realigning that relay dish to send a distress call to Earth, you find out that they will receive it only in 90 years or so - and while that thing absolutely had to be done, it just physically can't help your current situation any way. It's just that it's absolutely not about you at this moment.
And the gamedesign with all the traps, set up specifically to fuck you, personally, up, really clashes with that high-level story attitude of the games.
Not really sure about that. You being a pawn witnessing much larger events is a big part of things, but you're also one of the main weapons for your masters. It'd make sense the the Pfhor would try to stop you (and granting that, this being a video game, you're going to end up killing an obscene number of them on your own).
So you backtrack to the recharger after the fight. Big deal. Given that many of the levels were more or less compact, that's not actually THAT big of a problem.
Except you can't count on the next chargers to be purple (I remember them being relatively rare) or even yellow. So when you step away from those, 1/3, 1/2, or 2/3 of your total health isn't able to be recharged even when you finally reach the next charging station.
It's remembered fondly because of those insane rants and all the people who tried to make a coherent narrative out of all of them, thus uncovering the tru7h.
Yes, partly. But also because the story was actually more interesting than "stop the evil bad guy", and partly because it has an interesting backstory. Well, and people like Durandal.
The plot both you and me retold in pretty much the exact same manner, was simple and straightforward.
Relatively straightforward in the end, but I wouldn't call it simple by video game plots. You think the game would be more or less the same if it was just following Leela's orders and killing off the Pfhor invaders?
- and, frankly, it doesn't even matter all that much, what was exactly in the game's script, since Pfhor were still the main arch-enemy in the first and second games (Infinity, from what I've heard, had some kind of star monster, but, as I've said, I've only played a couple of missions of it), they were the ones, dispatching whom (and whose creations) constituted 90% of both games' gameplay, and they were the major (negative) driving force, setting those ingame scripts into motion.
Well, yeah, and 98% of the enemies you fight in portal are little drone things. But I don't think saying the story of Portal is just "solving puzzles in a lab and killing some drones" would be fair.
Well, not only Durandal (although his sarcastically-bullshitting attitude didn't help). I rather disliked the sheer quantity of red herrings and absolutely unresolved threads touched upon in something like a single terminal, but in such a manner, that UUUUUUU THAT TOTALLY SIGNIFIES SOMETHING. Like that Gheritt White thing, or that terminal about CRUSTs and Martian Revolution you seem to like so much. Especially considering the simplicity of the resulting story. Too much bullshit, too little substance. Also, the Leela's part of the story is effectively System Shock, so in either case any implied "greatness of the plot" comes from either the rants or Durandal.
Note sure why you think the Martian Revolution stuff is a red herring that's supposed to signify something. It's the backstory, and a decent attempt to explain why there are weapons hidden all over the ship. Gheritt White was probably Durandal going crazy, but yeah, he's a crazy AI. I suppose he could come out and say, "I'm nuts! But I'm not going to tell you guys any of my thoughts that are too crazy, because that might piss off some people." Likewise, I enjoyed the fact that the story had to be pieced together a bit and wasn't just some big infodump. Huge infodumps and in your face narrative explanations (just in case you didn't catch the clues!) are some of the things that piss me off about modern games.
Anyway, are you planning on playing any of the Marathon engine games? I only played the demos, but they were kind of interesting. Prime Target was a DC murder mystery/FPS (don't think they matched those well), Damage Inc. let you have an army squad you could give rudimentary orders to while you took out shotgun-wielding KKK members, and ZPC is notable for it's Soviet propaganda-style graphics.
Well, let's see, how it is in AlephOne's version of Marathon Infinity (and yes, it's an old save).
Here is the near shot:
It's actually the very FIRST frame of weapon_flash/gun_firing_animation/flying_casing exactly coinciding with the very FIRST frame of the spark produced by the bullet hitting the wall.
Here is the ranged shot:
Oh, OK. So, the exact same flash, the exact same spark and the exact same casing position (although with a different orientation). Hell, you might be right after all!
Well, you would be, if not for one teeny tiny detail. The spark and the flash on the second screenshot correspond to the different bullets.
So, let's review the near shot in detail.
The bullet hits the wall and produces the spark at the exact same frame the weapon flash occurs. The weapon goes up and the empty casing flies away while the smoke dissipates.
Now, a single far shot:
BAM!:
The gun reaches its highest point, the casing has already flown off the screen:
then it starts to go down, it returns to its neutral position...
And THEN
the bullet finally hits the wall.
Again, we are talking about ~1sec delay here. I don't know how this could go unnoticed (even on distances thrice smaller than the one from my example) by any person who played the game.
So, yeah, the bullets have a VERY much finite speed in either of Marathons. And yes, I could record the exact same thing for the vanilla M1. And yes, the actual shots fired in all these images are different - but I do still believe that they make a good job of representing the phases of both types of shots.
That's not a bad thing though, I can enjoy when it's the level and not the enemies that are your primary adversaries.
Not with this combat mechanics and not with level-designers actively using the lack of save-terminals/rechargers in some parts of the levels as a tool of actively trolling the player.
Also, you played it on full difficulty, right? I believe that doesn't just make the enemies stronger, but spawns more of them as well.
I dunno. I never actually compared enemy placements on the easiest and the hardest levels. I played the AlephOne version of M1A1 on Major Damage till the "Smells like Napalm", then I restarted and completed the original M1 on Total Carnage - and that's it. The placements actually WERE somewhat different, but I attributed that to the differences between M1 and M1A1 themselves (or maybe M1 failing to spawn all enemies correctly), while assuming that the ingame difficulty changes only the ranks of the enemies (like, on TC, on the enemies are high-ranking, and on the easiest, all the enemies are low-ranking). I wonder if that's actually correct, or whether I'm mistaken.
Not really sure about that. You being a pawn witnessing much larger events is a big part of things, but you're also one of the main weapons for your masters. It'd make sense the the Pfhor would try to stop you (and granting that, this being a video game, you're going to end up killing an obscene number of them on your own).
Well, first, that line of thought didn't originate with me. I actually lifted it from here (although the article is primarily about the second Marathon). And while I actually think, that, yes, you kinda could discern such a theme in Marathon games, I also think that its implementation is half-baked at best. Second, while, yes, you are one of the main weapons for your masters, you also don't have any illusion of control over what happens next (with all the hectic teleporting, and your next missions frequently being completely unrelated to what you personally tried to achieve in previous ones, etc.). And, yes, you are a crucial figure without which the crucial portions of the plot wouldn't play out the way they did (and there is an ingame explanation for that) - but at the same time the game makes it extra clear that you don't influence anything at all - and you're just a puppet of your current puppet-master. You just jump here and there, see some snippets of such and such event, influence them the only way the game lets you - and that's it.
Except you can't count on the next chargers to be purple (I remember them being relatively rare) or even yellow. So when you step away from those, 1/3, 1/2, or 2/3 of your total health isn't able to be recharged even when you finally reach the next charging station.
If I don't have an access to my purple recharger anymore, I'll be happy to make it to ANY other health recharger in one piece, period. And if I do have an access to any kind of recharger, it doesn't really matter to which one: if it's 1x, I'll just backtrack to it a bit more frequently.
Seeing that the Durandal's part is literally 1/3 of the game and boils down basically to expeditions to youknowhere and killing the youknowwhat - well, that definitely influences the overall storyline, but the excess of that influence is debatable.
Well, yeah, and 98% of the enemies you fight in portal are little drone things. But I don't think saying the story of Portal is just "solving puzzles in a lab and killing some drones" would be fair.
Exactly. Portal is a game about solving puzzles using portals (and overcoming a couple of drones using portals). Which (both puzzles AND drones, actually) represent the only character in the game you can interact with - or rather the only character in the game and your ultimate antagonist - GlaDOS (and also Wheatley in the second game). Marathon, by comparison, is a game about blasting dudes in the face. One, of course, could argue that Marathon is a game primarily about reading terminals rather that blasting things in the face - and as such, could be stated to be about Durandal, but, again:
1) the extent to which Marathon is a game about reading terminals, rather than shooting dudes in the face, is debatable;
2) I'd argue about Durandal being the central character of the first game at all even on terminal space (and notifications about Pfhor occupy AT LEAST a much of the terminal space as the notifications about or rants by Durandal - in addition to their overwhelming prevalence on, you know, the FPS part of the game).
Note sure why you think the Martian Revolution stuff is a red herring that's supposed to signify something.
Because it infodumped you with this stuff about the CRUSTs, the bloody something massacre or whatever in literally one terminal - and it didn't mention it in ANY way till the very end of the game. Oh, yes, there is that "martian insurgents" bit dropped by Durandal in one of the levels - it actually concerns One Single Secret, situated literally a dozen of steps from the terminal it's mentioned on - and NO, it doesn't explain the ammo being stashed on the other parts of the damn ship in any way.
"I'm nuts! But I'm not going to tell you guys any of my thoughts that are too crazy, because that might piss off some people." Likewise, I enjoyed the fact that the story had to be pieced together a bit and wasn't just some big infodump.
Riiiight, because having a fair number of absolute pointless bullshit levels (instead of trying to tie together at least SOME of the "backstories" they've already thrown in the general direction of the player), specifically for the fucker to toy with us. is totally better. I mean, the whole "bullshit level" aspect of M1-2 is so bad, that when the game (the second Marathon specifically) makes a twist about a seemingly bullshit level being not so bullshit after all, it's seriously the most surprising and memorable twist in the entirety of both games.
Huge infodumps and in your face narrative explanations (just in case you didn't catch the clues!) are some of the things that piss me off about modern games.
Just finished Half Life: Blue Shift.
Nice short game presenting a alternative prospective on Resonance Cascade aftermath.
On return HL1 gunplay still feels right and satisfying, proving that HL2 deserves the bashing it gets.
One thing I found irritating is that the "combat music" stops if you reloaded the game mid-fight.
Can't remember this was the same in the base game, but it's rather annoying.
(Also the revolver has no reload sound for some reason.)
Overall its a decent level pack with a neat story thrown in.
Don't know why people say to avoid it, if you like HL1 its worth playing...
Just finished Half Life: Blue Shift.
Nice short game presenting a alternative prospective on Resonance Cascade aftermath.
On return HL1 gunplay still feels right and satisfying, proving that HL2 deserves the bashing it gets.
One thing I found irritating is that the "combat music" stops if you reloaded the game mid-fight.
Can't remember this was the same in the base game, but it's rather annoying.
(Also the revolver has no reload sound for some reason.)
Overall its a decent level pack with a neat story thrown in.
Don't know why people say to avoid it, if you like HL1 its worth playing...
Just finished Half Life: Blue Shift.
Nice short game presenting a alternative prospective on Resonance Cascade aftermath.
On return HL1 gunplay still feels right and satisfying, proving that HL2 deserves the bashing it gets.
One thing I found irritating is that the "combat music" stops if you reloaded the game mid-fight.
Can't remember this was the same in the base game, but it's rather annoying.
(Also the revolver has no reload sound for some reason.)
Overall its a decent level pack with a neat story thrown in.
Don't know why people say to avoid it, if you like HL1 its worth playing...
Blue Shift was more of a "final bone before 7 year draught" for HL2 I believe. I like to believe it's a slightly more professional, slightly more canon mod map pack.
To give people an idea of how good (and valuable) Half-Life 1 is today, I give you this real-life, present-day example.
For many years I owned a compilation of HL1 plus its expansions, along with Counter-Strike (even though I never played it). While clearing house earlier this year, I sold this compilation for various reasons, but among them was the fact that the codes had already been redeemed on Steam (by "some guy" working at the store it was sold at) and that the box was literally broken - a large chunk of it was missing.
Today, I received a package bought via eBay: A SEALED copy of that same compilation, meaning that all the codes and whatnot were unused, and the box was intact. With all customs charges and extra costs calculated, I had to pay DOUBLE the asking price it went for on eBay. I still bought it, because I wanted a non-Steam version of HL1 that I could play in the future - not to mention any HL1 mods that are about.
The fact that it was voted as the 8th best non rpg pc game here shows the decline of the codex.
Doom, Quake, Duke, Blood, Unreal, Shadow Warrior, Tribes, Marathon, Outlaws, Dark Forces, Strife, Cybermage, Sin, Redneck Rampage, Powerslave, Turok, Thief, Deus Ex, System Shock, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, Ultima Underworld
Now those are timeless classics.
