Not Playing Half Life Considered Harmful

My Personal Insanity

Not Playing Half Life Considered Harmful

[Author's note: I have modeled this post on the venerable Usenet posting
"C Shell Programming Considered Harmful." If you find yourself growing
angry at the tone of the post, remember that it is, like most things I do,
at least half a joke (also known as a joak or HHOS for Ha Ha Only
Serious). It stems from learning that many of my co-workers play PC
games, both single and multiplayer, and that there's even a few die-hard
EverQuest fans, but not a one has ever even HEARD of Half Life. Also, I've
produced this entirely during boredom intervals at work, so no, I did not
use any of my own time on it

]

Resolved: Any PC gamer who has not played Half-Life single player should
be locked in a room with a computer but without network connections, and
not allowed out until they have kicked Nilianth's ass.

I am continually shocked and dismayed to find avid players of PC games
that have not played or even heard of Half Life. You would expect at least
a few such individuals, those who have no interest in first person shooters
at all, for example. But sadly the ranks of the HL deprived are larger than
this, and include many people that regularly play Half Life mods (*cough*
CounterStrike players *cough*). Indeed, even many people that have
knowingly installed Half Life couldn't tell a headcrab from alien grunt if
both were dropped on them at once.

This can lead to a serious lack of knowledge of the base of the games one
is playing, or even outright embarassment, when you marvel at the alien
in genome, who is in fact just a re-use of a headcrabbed zombie from HL,
or when, at the end of an NS match, when the only remaining marine,
named "Gordon Freeman", is hiding, and the whole alien team walks
blithely past him for the twentieth time, all players suddenly hear a voice
say "Gordon Freeman, I can't believe you're still alive!", you don't know
what the voice is or why it's funny.

Why is the default decal a lambda symbol in a circle? Don't know? Here's
a hint: It's not a secret mark of a conclave of greek sourcerers. And
PLEASE, people, it'd be nice if I didn't have to constantly explain what a
houndeye is!

To people who have not at least played the original HL single player
episode, I say: You don't understand what you've missed. If playing TFC
NS, or DoD gives you quick reactions, team co-ordination, and high
degrees of skill in translating your desired movements into keyboard and
mouse commands, and I admit that they can, single player Half-Life
teaches other skills entirely:

How often in a multiplayer game have you been tempted to simply
rush at the enemy lines, guns ablazing, and hope you take out enough
foes to leave a path to the objective for your teammates? Now, how often
have you seen someone do this repeatedly, to no effect? (*cough* 2fort
with lots of snipers *cough*).

Would it not be better to sneak around the enemy, saving your health
and ammo for better uses? Or to feint forward then step back to strength,
giving the enemy enough rope to hang himself with? Or even simple
decoy tactics; any skulk who has ever sat in a vent or under a floor
giggling, while the marines waste ammo and fail to notice the other three
skulks about to bite them in half knows what I mean.

Sometimes it is best to simply to stop a moment and rest from the urge
to rush created in multiplayer games and take some time to think about
how the enemy is laid out and how best to disorganize them.

Playing through Half-Life can give you many chances to practice such
skills, in an enviroment with a nice convient save and restore feature, to
recover from mistakes. But more importantly than ANY of that: It's a great
game! Gaming publications often slap accolades with names like
'Game of the year' on random titles that really aren't that great, but
when they ALL slapped them on Half Life, it was actually TRUE.

So, what excuses do people have for not playing HL?

"But Half Life is so OLD."

So what? Lately I've been playing through Hexen, (jHexen), and it is even
older still, Doom-based, and I still find it enjoyable. It doesn't have to be
stamped and shipped an hour ago to be GOOD.

"Half Life is too hard" or "It has puzzles and jumping, ewwwwwww"

First off, no puzzle or jump in Half Life is harder than a concussion jump,
bunnyhopping or a jetpack rush on a hive. Besides, often times it's better
to slow down, explore the maps, and think a bit; rather than running
around at full speed with eyes straight ahead only. Some maps require
precision co-ordination, but you already have that, right?

"I don't like single player enemies, they are stupid."

Kind of funny, since Half Life was touted so much for it's new enemy AI
when it was introduced. NPCs can be dumb, (though usually that just
means you need to stop playing in 'easy' mode!), yet so can human
Players (and NSPlayers and Privates and even players with real
names

), so I declare this excuse invalid. Anyone who wants to argue
the invalidity of this excuse must first spend a week playing TFC on
'all-2fort' public servers.

"But MPI, I bought CS Retail"

Alas, I'm sorry, but you were had. You've been sold a bottle of club
soda with a Jolt(tm) label on it. Head for your nearest software store or
mass merchandiser and get the real thing.

"I only have a Mac!"

This excuse is at least partly acceptable, as to my knowledge, Valve
has not ported Half Life to any Mac platform, and has no plans to do
ever do so. So go ahead and go back to Neverwinter Nights;
but when you get a PC, you better be blasting headcrabs and hgrunts!

"I never play single player games and never will!" or "I never play
shooters and never will!"

There is no hope for you.

Half Life has very much become an 'operating-system' for FPS
games (and more!), and this is a good thing. It has brought to us
many good mods that otherwise the world would be worse without.
(It also brought us CounterStrike, but that can be forgiven). Sadly,
this has begun to make the "original mod", the one sitting there
lonely in the "valve" directory, nearly invisible, all it's myriad
resources unknown and unexplored.

Do yourself a favor, and if you haven't played the Half Life single
player episodes all the way through, set aside some time and do so.
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[/url]
aaa, oshiete sensei-san...

[njk]Nopeace4u-DBD · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:56 pm Post subject:

Nice read, I make it a point to beat the single player game before going on and playing multiplayer, it gives a better understanding of what is ahead.
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JtH · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:58 pm Post subject:

hey i beat halflife single player a long time ago.its very good and i recommend anyone who hasnt to do so.

jack

and even though i played through it i still dont know what a houndeye is.
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cobra · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 5:03 pm Post subject:

went to the single player mode myself before playing online. not hard asw i didnt have an internetconnection back then.

for those who haven't played the single player yet i really rocommend doing so.
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GellyRoll · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 5:13 pm Post subject:

sgt stutter · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 5:21 pm Post subject:

Stevo · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 6:56 pm Post subject:

Good posts here. Half-Life seems to get no credit, either, and CS gets all of it. If you look at DoD or other games, they usually say "From the makers of Counter-Strike."
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My Personal Insanity · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 9:12 pm Post subject:

Paddyjack

[quote="My Personal Insanity"]
"I only have a Mac!"

This excuse is at least partly acceptable, as to my knowledge, Valve
has not ported Half Life to any Mac platform, and has no plans to do
ever do so. So go ahead and go back to Neverwinter Nights;
but when you get a PC, you better be blasting headcrabs and hgrunts!

[quote]

Since you know I like to enlight you bunch of ignorant louts

, I will do a quick note saying Valve DID attempt to port HL on the mac, was almost done, but finally decided they had not enough ressources to support this version with patchs after its release.
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but still SWINGING!

Rock2..... JUST SAY NO!!!!!

My Personal Insanity

sharkbyte · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 11:27 am Post subject:

Comput3r · Registered User Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 17

<-- Has still never played the single player version
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