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From: Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Half-Life 3 Confirmed! For real!
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2024 10:46:01 -0600
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On Thu, 7 Nov 2024 11:07:40 +0000, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB
wrote: 

>On 07/11/2024 00:42, Zaghadka wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:18:17 +0000, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 05/11/2024 16:00, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>>> Oh, don't mistake me. I generally enjoyed the games overall. But some
>>>> are definitely better than others. The original "Half Life" stands
>>>> tall amongst its peers; "Half Life 2", not so much. "Black Mesa" and
>>>> the various expansions are somewhere in between.
>>>>
>>>> But if you're new to the franchise and therefore have no nostalgia or
>>>> connection to the series? It'd be hard for me to recommend HL2, for
>>>> instance. Compared to modern titles (and even some of its
>>>> contemporaries) it doesn't really stand out. The original "Half Life"
>>>> was revolutionary and deserves a play-through. The latter games rely
>>>> heavily on that influence to make them worth playing.
>>>>
>>>> TL;DR: we all should go replay the original "Half Life" now. ?
>>>
>>> I think they did a good job with Black Mesa as instead of trying to just
>>> replicate HL:1 in the source engine they instead went for keep the
>>> essence of it but tighten up some of the levels and also remove some of
>>> the more frustrating aspects (jumping anyone?). On a Rail no longer
>>> drags and the finale of Blast Pit isn't an exercise in quick save/reload
>>> until you finish it.
>>>
>>> HL:2 obviously didn't standout as much as HL:1 but I still think it's a
>>> good example of how giving levels a different feel keeps the interest
>>> going. Another more minor aspect I like about it is how it's a tutorial
>>> through play instead of press this key messages. Who didn't like getting
>>> used to the gravity gun by playing fetch with dog?
>> 
>> IMO, HL2 put its graphics so far ahead of level design that levels were
>> extremely limited and it became essentially a corridor shooter, with a
>> few open levels that didn't go anywhere except to another corridor.
>> 
>> It was very impressive to look at, at the time, but the gameplay was wash
>> rinse repeat. So it aged very poorly.
>> 
>
>I still enjoy it even though yes, like HL:1 it is essential a corridor 
>shooter. It's not that I dislike more open world games but to me that 
>often feels that they aren't that much different from a corridor shooter 
>expect that it takes five mins to get from the one you've just finished 
>to the next one and you have a mini-map to tell you where it is.

It is a symptom of the times. KoTOR, a contemporary, had similar
limitations, because it had to cater to console resources. It's a series
of very small levels. So small there's no room for map complexity. They
blew all their best map design on the first planet. Otherwise, almost
every map in that game is a corridor, or a few connected corridors, or an
open map leading to yet another set of corridors, with spacious
backgrounds representing areas you can't access due to invisible walls.
It's positively claustrophobic.

Today, you have memory and advanced graphics enough to do almost anything
you want. The limitation is now human resources. We have to remember that
back in early 2k, dev teams were a) smaller, and b) had to choose the
priorities for limited machine power and make trade-offs for fewer
resources elsewhere. They also had even more limited human resources. In
HL2, it all went to textures and fire effects, plus a brief stab at
limited physics. It didn't age well, like all bells and whistles.

The closest cognate I can think of in modern gaming is Cyberpunk 2077.
They had to dumb down the object richness and polygon complexity of
levels to make RTX work at tolerable frames on 2xxx series cards. The
result was that if you *didn't* have RTX, you got a game that looked 5-10
years old out the gate. I thought it looked slightly better than Deus Ex:
Human Revolution (2011, 9 years ago) without RTX. I got an RTX card, and
I can now see why the choice was made. It's more forgivable with the
touches of RTX effects.

So CDPR had to dumb down mature and established core graphics to throw in
the nascent RTX and while there's the gee-whiz factor of this new effect
for some people, it quickly becomes background meh. Then the gameplay
limitations become apparent. This happens quickly in this case because
limited ray-tracing effects are, imo, the very definition of "meh."*

CDPR spent all their energy on that brief moment of "cool." Result:
everything else was crapola. They fixed the crapola after the fact with
DLC manpower as a remediation force for the DLC Phantom Liberty. Then
they backported PL to the main game. It's now a very good game with
graphics gimmicks that wore off quickly and are largely irrelevant.**

HL2 is basically the same story a little over 15 years prior.

-- 
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten
_____________________________

* Totally ray-traced environments, otoh, would be something to crow
about.

** I hope Nvidia cut CDPR a big, fat check to drive those 3xxx series
card upgrades. It was an outsourced tech demo. Hopefully, CDPR got paid.