Now that Portal 2 is out, will Valve please concentrate on Episode 3?, It's been three and half bloody years. Options

[phlapjack77]

Are Episodes 1 and 2 as awful as HL2 was?

*Cough cough*

At first your dislike of HL was galling, but now that I see you're a Marathon fan, all is forgiven (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Blade]

Because HL was one of the first FPS that had a true immersive story and much better flow on levels. Before then, you had Doom 1/2/Final, which was "kill demons, something about hell on earth", and Duke Nukem 3D which was "alienz stealin' our wimminz."

Ultima Underworld (ok, it's more of an RPG than a FPS but still)
The aforementioned Marathon
Strife
Tekwar
GoldenEye64
Star Wars: Dark Forces
System Shock
ShoGo
and I'm probably forgetting a lot.

Some of them also had 'human reactions'.

There was also SiN, released at the same time, with many similar elements but which didn't get the same attention. I remember having as much fun if not more with SiN than with Half-Life.

And playing back Half-Life 1 recently, I realised how it actually didn't really part that much from the old school FPS:
- Most of the levels inside buildings are just a succession of corridors.
- The story is really limited: an experiment gone wrong has monsters arrive. You kill monsters looking for a way out. The military arrives but they shoot on sight. You kill the military and the monsters. You're sent to the monster world. There is the mysterious G-Man and the end sequence, but apart from that it doesn't have many differences with other FPS stories.

Not to mention it also spawned Counterstrike and Team Fortress and Day of Defeat.

Actually I also don't understand how these got so popular either. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
When everyone was playing Counterstrike, I was playing Infiltration (the UT mod).
And Team Fortress was a Quake 2 mod before being a HL mod.

[Fix-it]

how many on that list are win32 platform? I don't recognize any other than Dark Forces, which didn't have multiplayer, and neither did System Shock, which while excellent, was more RPG.

the point is that HL1 came along after Quake and UT popularized FPS. right place, right time. it wasn't first, it wasn't best, but it was correctly timed. and it had some of the best modding support.

you can make the exact same argument for console FPS in bungie's Halo. it was a linear, repetitive SP campaign, with run of the mill gfx that was years behind PC platform, but it arrived just about the time that console multiplayer and the Xbox took off.

[Kagetenshi]

how many on that list are win32 platform?

Marathon 2 and Infinity, Strife, TekWar, Dark Forces, System Shock, ShoGo, and Ultima Underworld.

So all of them except Marathon 1 and GoldenEye64.

I don't recognize any other than Dark Forces, which didn't have multiplayer

Aside from the fact that that wasn't nearly as important a feature as it is today, the Marathons had multiplayer down cold.

~J

[Stahlseele]

So I finished Portal 2's campaign.

[ Spoiler ]

Does anyone else find the Enrichment Center even creepier after going through the older, abandoned chambers and seeing the history behind the place? It was bad enough to think that someone could build something so monstrous, but that it went on for so long just makes it worse. It's like a colossal tumor in the earth, a dream that somehow turned in on itself and metastasized into something corrupt and evil. Seeing the size of the place at the end was pretty horrific, as well. The end of the first game hinted at it, but when you get out into the spaces between chambers and see the cyclopean machinery stretching farther than you can see (or at least farther than the engine can render), so high you can't see the ceiling or floor that you know must be there... who builds on such an inhuman scale? Was all of that built by humans and GLaDOS just a caretaker, or did she expand it once the research staff were dead?

Either way, it's a terrifying place. I really hope we see more of Chell, though. I wonder what she and Gordon Freeman would make of each other.

[ Spoiler ]

Well, most of it IS on the Moon. Under the Surface. I still don't know why, after venting the Idiot into Space, you get to go up and walk in the sun on Earth again . . And in a completely different environment than what you could see at the end of Portal1 and where you had left GlaDos and where you woke her up again too . .

[Tanegar]

[ Spoiler ]

Well, most of it IS on the Moon. Under the Surface. I still don't know why, after venting the Idiot into Space, you get to go up and walk in the sun on Earth again . . And in a completely different environment than what you could see at the end of Portal1 and where you had left GlaDos and where you woke her up again too . .

[ Spoiler ]

Where do you get the idea that the Aperture facility is on the Moon? When you blast a hole through the ceiling of GLaDOS' chamber at the end, you can see the moon, so you're clearly not on it.

[Stahlseele]

[ Spoiler ]

Where do you get the idea that the Aperture facility is on the Moon? When you blast a hole through the ceiling of GLaDOS' chamber at the end, you can see the moon, so you're clearly not on it.

[ Spoiler ]

simple, really. there is simply nothing anywhere else even remotely close enough otherwise where it could be, if you get sucked out into the cold hard vacuum of the night and can see the moon that up close and personal. And you said it yourself, i think. The size of the installation is ginormous, so it can't be an artificial structure free floating in space . .

[Tanegar]

[ Spoiler ]

simple, really. there is simply nothing anywhere else even remotely close enough otherwise where it could be, if you get sucked out into the cold hard vacuum of the night and can see the moon that up close and personal. And you said it yourself, i think. The size of the installation is ginormous, so it can't be an artificial structure free floating in space . .

[ Spoiler ]

I'm sorry, I still don't follow you. When you look up at the moon from GLaDOS' chamber, it looks the same size as it does IRL (more or less, allowing for the fact that you're viewing it on a monitor); that puts the Aperture facility on Earth. There's one portal on the floor of the room, and you shoot the other onto the face of the Moon; that's how you get out into space. There's just nothing that suggests the facility itself is anywhere other than Earth. Based on what you see when leaving, I'd guess at least part of it is under the American Midwest.

[Adarael]

how many on that list are win32 platform? I don't recognize any other than Dark Forces, which didn't have multiplayer, and neither did System Shock, which while excellent, was more RPG.

Most of them, actually.

the point is that HL1 came along after Quake and UT popularized FPS. right place, right time. it wasn't first, it wasn't best, but it was correctly timed. and it had some of the best modding support.

Per Quake, yes. Correct there, but as to UT? No, Half-Life predates Unreal Tournament. In fact, it only came out several months after the original Unreal - Unreal was released on May 22, and Half-Life came out November 18th. I recall this because everybody talked about how Half Life was the first FPS with a story, and I was all annoyed, because Unreal had one as well. Not disagreeing with you, fundamentally - just pointing out timelines.

Come to think of it, 98 was a great year for breaking the FPS mold. Not only Half Life and Unreal, but also Rainbow Six, Shogo Mobile Armor Division (which they need to revisit) and nominally Quake II (technically 97, but December of 97).

[KarmaInferno]

[ Spoiler ]

They actually specifically added in the bullet-time slowdown so you can tell you just shot a portal onto the moon, plus an exaggerated flash and "plink" noise, because in early testing people would shoot the portal gun and not realize anything had happened, and then they got confused when they suddenly were on the moon. It's in the Developer Commentary in the game.

Remember that they never establish the maximum range of the Portal Gun in either game. Yes, you just shot a Portal through a hole in the roof of an underground bunker on Earth, onto the surface of the damn moon!

In fact, here's the ending if you want to watch it again.

Additionally, they make a reference earlier in the game, when the audio of Cave Johnson talks about buying 60 million dollars worth of moon rocks, grinding them up, and discovering that the result is highly toxic. He then goes on to say that they did discover that the powdered moonstuff made a great conduit surface for the Portal Gun. The off-white Conversion Gel that lets you shoot portals onto any surface is made from moon-rock powder.

Also, later you take an elevator up to the surface, which is clearly on Earth. Blue skies, golden wheat fields, etc.

-k

[Stahlseele]

[ Spoiler ]

They actually specifically added in the bullet-time slowdown so you can tell you just shot a portal onto the moon, plus an exaggerated flash and "plink" noise, because in early testing people would shoot the portal gun and not realize anything had happened, and then they got confused when they suddenly were on the moon. It's in the Developer Commentary in the game.

Remember that they never establish the maximum range of the Portal Gun in either game.

In fact, here's the ending if you want to watch it again.

Additionally, they make a reference earlier in the game, when the audio of Cave Johnson talks about buying 60 million dollars worth of moon rocks, grinding them up, and discovering that the result is highly toxic. He then goes on to say that they did discover that the powdered moonstuff made a great conduit surface for the Portal Gun. The off-white Conversion Gel that lets you shoot portals onto any surface is made from moon-rock powder.

Also, later you take an elevator up to the surface, which is clearly on Earth. Blue skies, golden wheat fields, etc.

-k

[ Spoiler ]

OK, now that i have watched the movie, i see what you're getting at.
Did not notice while playing, due to OMGWTFBBQIAMDEAD!

[Tanegar]

Saw the co-op finale. I think we can guess what the major challenge in Portal 3 will be: herding cats gamers.