/v/ - Video Games

i played the demo before they added xen and it was good, but then they took fucking ages to finish it and now xen is something like half the game now? i know that nobody really liked the original one and it was sort of tacked on towards the end but if they're going to remake it why don't they remake it 1:1? they even shortened the rail section because they thought it was too long and tedious.

stop remaking games and then changing them by cutting out large parts of the game

>>16866740

>Is it shit?

They haven't even tried to fix most of the problems from the freeware release, so yes.

it's still half life, so yeah it's a shit game

It's okay. Just okay. Thinking about how it took a billion years to make is hilarious. Amateur modders getting arrogant and pretending to be professionals and pricing their games the same as those made by professionals is hilarious. But even retards such as they are capable of making a game eventually, it seems, given infinite time.

>>16866747

>they even shortened the rail section because they thought it was too long and tedious.

The fuckers.

>spend $18 for an inherently inferior version of a game you can get for free

Imagine being this retarded.

>>16867539

At first they also had Surface Tension cut down a lot but integrated someones mod, author of said mod has made an uncut version of On a Rail too.

>>16867476

They literally spent most of that time doing fuck all that was actually visible.

And most of the changes from the free mod aren't even all upgrades.

>>16866747

I liked Xen, but then again I don't mind first person platforming (especially in a Quake engine game). I did enjoy playing the demo so I might check this out. Paying for that shit leaves a bad taste in my mouth though, knowing it isn't even their IP or concept at all. Maybe I'll hoist the sails

Honestly autistic tweaking is pretty par for the course with this game. I think it's nice for what it is. I do wish they would just have a campaign mode where it was just vanilla half-life 1 without level changes. That way less knowledgable people dont need to go outside of the game to fix it.

>>16867745

>Call a 22 year old meme game shit means you're from Cuckchan

Half-Life only ever gained it's acclaim because it was one of the first "expansive full 3D" games that was actually decent. However, when you actually go back and play it, it's perhaps one of the most cliche products ever made. Outside of the platforming segments (Which were followed-up on with games like Metroid Prime and Mirror's Edge), the rest of the game is the origin of EVERYTHING that people hate about modern games.

Anyone find a free full length trial yet?

You know what I mean :^)

The game looks really pretty I'll give it that, but I already beat HL1 and I don't feel like playing it ever again.

>>16867798

Nah, you just sound like a faggot contrarian hating on half life because it recently received a popularity surge thanks to the VR rubbish. You dont give any actual reasons why Half Life is bad. You say that all the problems with modern games stem from HL but I dont see any with the exception of forced cutscenes - which honestly isnt that much of a drawback in HL since the cutscenes are so brief and they are all in-game, so theyre about as immersive as a cutscene can get

>>16867806

>you just sound like a faggot contrarian hating on half life because it recently received a popularity surge thanks to the VR rubbish

I started playing through the game last year, several months before Alyx was even announced, because I wanted a shooter to play through and I figured that I might as well play through it just to see what everyone has been jizzing their pants over for the past couple decades. Long story short, to find the story being standard "Secret government organization was doing something they shouldn't and are trying to cover it up", the gameplay not being fun outside of the platforming and when you're on Xen, incredibly dumb AI on the hardest difficulty, levels that blur together and are far too long, and a conclusion that doesn't actually give the game any ending (Other than Freeman becoming either Doomguy or a tool for the Illuminati) left me wondering why people still give this game the time of day when much better titles are left forgotten.

>>16867836

>when much better titles are left forgotten

Like what?

>>16867868

XIII and Kiss: Psycho Circus are the first two to come to mind.

>>16867884

>Kiss: Psycho Circus

I have not heard that name in ages.

>>16867836

>Blow 4 enemies to chunks using a grenade launcher while running at Sanic speed

>Not fun

>He'll never play Opposing Force whichis even better

Back to cuckchan

>>16867884

retarded games that are forgotten and buried for a reason. xiii gets a new texture pack though, or so i have herd. it's the rage to release shit these days and call it a day, just look at age of empires.

black mesa only looks good, the gameplay is shit though. nothing beats hl1 (original), heck even the voicework alone sells it.

it's a decent fanmod, but charging 20 bucks for it is ridiculous.

just get the codex rls and call it a day, it's nothing special (apart from muh grafix update which is really not that important for hl.)

give me a new blue shift, gordon is a fag :)

>>16867959

i can tell the following from the back of my head while playing up to surface tension…

headcrabs die 90% with their hosts when shot (unlike hl1), smashing crates leaves some weird big pieces standing around (no smashing boxes or other shit anymore, fuck details), merc ai is dumb as a rock, not enough energy stations (?) around, changed dialogue ("what in the blazes is wrong with our equipment" as opposed to "what in hell is wrong with.." in original), shitty music or no music at all (hello?? hl1 music was iconic, they changed the whole feel of the game) in remake, audio in general is subpar, game becomes a call of duty when reaching zen (have not confirmed have to get there first, never liked zen anyway), can't rebind all keys with new ui (only in the cfg file itself), feels strangely barren at times, hl1 was all around perfect this is just a poor imitation with "the looks" improved but the gamepay is gone, lots more which i can't really tell right now have to make a list of all the crap first

>>16867798

It is one of the greatest games of all time because of modding. Other opinions are dumb.

>>16867976

You do realize that comparison is shit because of how Pong manages to be fun right out of the box, meanwhile Half-Life takes almost an hour before things get going.

>>16867965

>It is one of the greatest games of all time because of modding

Doesn't that line of thinking lead to the reason why Skyrim is considered one of the "best" games of all time?

>>16868006

>fun

fuck off reddit

>>16867800

Hey nigger you're not reddit anymore, you can talk about piracy

>>16868028

who are you talking to?

>>16866747

Fuck's sake, the rail sections weren't that bad. The bits in Xen were probably worse, especially with there being more of those floating motherfuckers that shoot energy balls at you.

>>16868206

>>16868221

>>16868222

>>16868227

>>16868231

>>16868232

Wow, this looks like a game from 2005.

It look them 16 years to make this.

>>16868218

>especially with there being more of those floating motherfuckers that shoot energy balls at you.

Use the grunt gun.

>>16868239

16 years

To "remake" a game. A game released back in 1998. That also already received graphical updates a couple years later.

>>16868261

Well, it started as a free fan project from a number of volunteers but then Valve was impressed with the work and liscenced it to them so they could make money off it and then it kinda became a shitshow from there until it finally hit 1.0 and released with two levels cut. >>16867632

>>16868261

seething

>>16868261

You have no idea how game development works and even less of an idea how remakes work

>>16868309

Okay, let's boil this down. Looking at the screenshots provided by the other Anon, the first thing that I thought of when I saw them was "Hey, why does this look like F.E.A.R.?" Now, when Monolith was producing F.E.A.R. (Which was made in a couple years), the company had a staff of about about 100 employees: http://archive.vn/gxSfw

12 more than was last counted working on Black Mesa back in 2015: http://archive.vn/tmxsc

Given the fact that Black Mesa was originally "passion project", so the mod devs probably spent a quarter of the time developing it than a regular developer would, that means it would probably take them about 5-6 years to make it since all they're really doing is just overhauling an already made game, and they already have most of the ground work laid out for them by Valve already. And, looking at the original free release of Black Mesa, that came out back in 2012 (8 years after starting), it appears that they already had nearly everything put together with the exception of Xen: http://archive.vn/CrLt5

However, in 2013, then they went commercial.

That means that this was no longer a passion project and was a matter making money. Which means they are now employees. And, by 2015 (Three years later), then you have the "complete" edition of Black Mesa released but full of bugs.

So, that brings into question about what the fuck the devs have spent the last five years dicking around and doing?

Especially since you have other companies like Bluepoint who consist of "just over" 90 people working there, and they can produce a full remake of a PS2 game in a few years time: http://archive.vn/jlmJ9

The Klonoa remake took less than a year to develop: http://archive.vn/rO8Dk

Granted, however, the company had 120 employees (Less than 40 more than Black Mesa): http://archive.vn/nlLwc

Then, you have the "bigger" companies (A few hundred) who have made remakes/visual-overhauls of Halo, Goldeneye, a few of the KH games, the REmakes, etc. all being developed in a year or two. In fact, the only couple of remakes/visual-overhauls that I can find that took longer than a couple years was Shadow of the Beast (About four years), and the Abe's Odyssey remake (Which was five years, with a studio of about 25 people).

<And, then you have the one autist in the room who's spent the last couple years porting Sonic '06 to Unity and actually has it in a very playable state.

So, long story short, this shit should not have taken 16 years to develop. And, going "You can't understand the process this took" seems pretty weak since you DO have other resources to pull from when getting an idea of how long this type of stuff should take.

>>16867476

>It's okay. Just okay. Thinking about how it took a billion years to make is hilarious.

It's like Half Life 2 all over again.

>>16868343

You also forget that source is a painful engine to make a game with. If the devs ditched source for unreal, i'm sure the dev time would have been cut.

>>16868343

Ask any developer and they will tell you that the source engine is one of the worst engines for game design. It is outdated, slow, hard to use, and terrible.

>>16869037

>>16869042

We have IDs, faggot.

Do they still overly rely on crouch jumps for platforming?

I remenber that from the first game and it was one my gripes with it. It's not really a negative, but the original game didn't really use it that much where as Black Mesa requires it pretty much all the fucking time.

I'm certain there were many sections where the height of things was changed specifically to demand you did a crouch jump.

Beyond the DSP compilations, flailing with the physics engine because he didn't understood the controls, it wasn't even that hard to pull off, so it got old really fast anyway.

>16 years

The first thing they should have done is to start working on Xen before anything else as soon as the mod went commercial. But no, instead they worked on stupid shit such as G_drays and cascading shadows or whatever.

anyone else disappointed with Xen? just looks like some gay shit, nothing really seems "alien" about it, in the original game it at least captures the alien feeling but maybe im biased?

>>16874295

Nah, I feel the same way. Way too many tropical biomes added. Feels like an extension of Earth instead of an alien border world.

>>16874295

>>16878424

HL's xen looks cooler, but BM's xen isn't a pile of dog shit to actually play.

>>16867634

>I liked Xen, but then again I don't mind first person platforming

Is that why people didn't like it? Honestly, it's not even that bad.

>>16878816

it's a shame because I think the boss fight itself is an improvement; apart from the whole "break shield on phase 1" cliche.

>>16867798

>rest of the game is the origin of EVERYTHING that people hate about modern games.

That's Half Life 2, not 1.

>>16878932

>Is that why people didn't like it?

Basically. You have idiots that scream about "I lack depth perception" bitching about how they cannot figure out a way to judge distance and height from a first-person perspective. Pretty much the same reason why Mirror's Edge fell into obscurity.

>>16878422

>>16878816

Hold the fuck up! It's just me or the 90's version is more detailed than the new one? WTF?

>>16878977

I disagree, by removing the teleport attack, they took away a much needed breather from the conflict that the original Nihilanth boss fight had. Granted, the original boss fight was also relatively easy and didn't require as much hopping around like a coked-up rabbit as BM does but that's just all the more reason why BM needed to keep that. And goddamn, did they remove all the atmosphere from it - the soundtrack sucks shit, the Nihilanth looks generic as fuck, the freak-out opening where you teleport right in front of the guy has been changed for unceremoniously dumping you on the ground 30 feet away, they gave him a bunch of colorful "pew, pew, laser, flash, bang" attacks that are all the fucking same, etc, etc.

>>16879016

The thing is, pretty much everyone on the forums and elsewhere was begging them to fix On A Rail (especially OAR Uncut is already basically just sitting there for them to implement) but the stubborn fucks won't because…reasons. This despite keeping Residue Processing as is, despite it being even more of a chore that On A Rail and making Xen eight times longer, despite adding absolutely fuck all of interest except a bunch of stupid puzzles that most people rush through because they are so fucking boring. It's fucking hilarious how they spent 16 years on this and crapped out something even worse that the original Half-Life. Even the graphics look super-fucking-dated and this despite them spending half the development time on pointless shit like lens flares to make it appear "nicer".

And did anyone notice that they severely nerfed the gravity on Xen? It's way stronger than in the original. I have no idea why they keep on making stupid changes like that, just copy-paste the original game you fuckwits.

>>16879486

Pretty huge side effect of jumps in technology, proper texture on your texture is attempted to be done by shaders these days.

He does lack a lot of small details for some reason as well, like his forehead holes and center arm stitches. Like i can understand trying the former but what the shit are these design changes.

>>16879750

Yeah i can't really understand any of the crap choices going on with this.

Xen was mostly nice as a exploration and light puzzler area, the combat arenas were very rare, although when you got to shooting things it was very fun seemed like at point Black Mesa turned into a tech flex game, there to impress you with all the things they do you didn't think possible with Source 1.

>>16878422

My only gripe with him is that they removed his teleport attack, otherwise the boss fight is a general improvement.

>>16879750

>the soundtrack sucks shit

yeah I'm not a fan of the blockbuster movie type soundtrack. Doesn't feel like a Half Life soundtrack.

>>16866740

>Anyone played it yet? Is it shit?

I've started replaying it, currently around surface tension.

I actually thought they couldn't fuck it up further from the surface tension update but it seems they managed to make the game run like complete shit (as in worse than the free mod which ran like complete shit in a few places) while also adding disgusting eyecancer bloom everywhere, there's no fucking excuse for settings independent sub 60 dips on a fucking PC exclusive game.

They also made some weird decisions from the free mod

>nerf grunts into the fround but also give them omniscience

>vortigaunt can now shit all over any other enemy because large AoE melee and sniper accuracy

>alien grunts became complete pushover

>can't stealth the assasssin sections

>helicopter will still rape you in a coupe seconds from full heatlh and armor semi randomly which is the is fucking thing that should have been addressed balance wise

>most weapon models take more screen space for no good reason

>removed the way the crossbow scope worked granted with how shit performance already is maybe it's better that way

>you never actually need the train in OAR, in fact it's a good way to get yourself killed

>cut OAR because it's too long and boring

>but make interloper longer despite it already longer and more boring even before that

>made health / power station give you insane amount of either resources which means you can sleepwalk through hard now

>whatever the fuck is up with the ammo related decisions they've made overall

>making the alien arm weapon thing even more fucking useless

>the music although because reasons I just had it muted even before realizing it was shit

>still fucking using the MP5, even after making the mag size 30 and deprecating the handgun which made separate ammo pools for "muh realism" perfectly fine gameplay wise

>>16866747

remake =/= remaster

>>16880336

the teleport attack was boring as fuck, my only problem was they removed all vertical jumps forcing you to move horizontally on the map.

You can no longer use the crowbar to make the finishing blow.

>>16868343

they spent 5 years redoing the game to justify it being a paid product. Changing things haphazardly and such

>>16884626

They made the combat a lot more like half life 2, which is bad because Half Life 2 sucks, and it doesn't fit with Half Life 1 environments. Dumber and more aggressive enemy AI. Incredibly limited ammo for high-damage weapons. Flinch and generally higher inaccuracy. It means you're guaranteed to take a lot more hits and encourages just plinking at enemies with the SMG from long range. Iron Sights that are annoying and useless.

>>16884811

I mean you technically never could haha, you literally cannot kill him with the crowbar.

His last sliver of health refuses to go for some fucking reason.

>>16884869

Half Life 2's AI is a funny thing, i wouldn't exactly call it bad; it makes sense with the way HL2s enemies are placed.

Mind you they're gimped in hundred other ways and combine this a fuckload of health and such and you have an AI that will never show much.

Like the combine are programed to use strategy, just not as aggressively as the HECU did because you'd be dealing with hoards of combine compared to the pretty sparse HECU.

Its a terrible match for both games ironically, the HL2 AI only made sense when HL2 didn't shower you in free resources.

>>16868256

black mesa source's xen took inspiration from both blue shift's xen and the mod of half life called point of view.

>>16884869

>They made the combat a lot more like half life 2

>encourages just plinking at enemies with the SMG from long range

Opposite actually, you can rush like a complete dumbass eat tons of damage but since they give you plenty of resources everywhere and the AI isn't too bright

>>16884942

>>16884965

This is Half Life 2 and only using the SMG but it pretty well covers the AI issues. Enemies can shoot accurately while moving and rush you with no self-preservation. You're given an abundance of health and armor. Combined with limited ammo for weapons like the grenade launcher, rocket launcher or revolver you're encouraged to just slog your way through with the SMG or shotgun, taking tons of damage.

Marines in Half Life 1 have to choose between either moving OR shooting. This makes them a lot less likely to rush right at you and more likely to scatter, pick at you from a distance or flush you out with grenades. Health is less frequent and you have more ammo for high damage weapons. Combined with the fact that enemies stop to shoot it encourages taking them out quickly with a well placed shot, and using explosives.

The end result is that Half Life 2 and Black Mesa have AI that feels worse than Half Life 1, encounters that are less interesting than Half Life 1, and a general sense of being an invincible shithead fighting retards instead of soldiers.

>>16885255

Yeah but its not shooting and moving that really kills the combine.

The combine don't exactly rush, the player just has the resources that allow them to do so instead. No ai would seem correct this way, guns are meant to force people to either run for cover or die.

But maps and damage/accuracy leave them a non-threat that you'll never see any tricks or "smart" moves.

Also the combines lack of running really fucks up their ability to go to cover, but they do pretty much act the same otherwise.grenades aside

I find it pretty funny how many people i've seen actively praise the new AI that came about recently, when it really doesn't work for the game either.

They seem even less synergistic somehow and they still have crap for accuracy, good thing they're bullet sponges still despite the lack of powerful weapons or ammo for said weapons the game gives you.

Even if they have more gimmicks, that just means its another combine with more useless bells and whistles.

I always found it kinda funny that he didn't really show good FEAR footage to showcase AI in that. Honestly i never really cared for the insight, sure dialog is cool but i've found the insight to be a much in FEAR.

>>16879750

>>16884536

https://youtu.be/MRfBk8fmNl0

https://youtu.be/096CqF3kbvI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8fW_SeNm_8

https://youtu.be/opbm25RIfPA

why is BM trying so hard to be "emotional"?

Final finished this fuckery

Xen actually isn't too bad especially the large combat section where you have infinite Tau + Gluon gun figthing enemies that are actually somewhat of a threat, but there's still shit that never should have been there (the houndeye section on the branches just looks 100% retarded when the fucker float midair because collision doesn't match the models) and it's hard to enjoy it when the framerate goes from 300 to 30 back to 300 all the fucking time, it shouldn't even go down that fucking much to begin with (on a 3800X + 1080ti) no to mention it's not even affected by settings much or at all (meaning potato runs as bad as ultra preset)

So how's Alyx

>>16887264

Alyx is voiced by a literal sheboon nigger ape that doesn't sound remotely close to the original alyx.

>>16886139

>Blast Pit 1 and 2

Ah man, I liked that stuff. Blast Pit was probably my favorite chapter in BMS ambiance-wise. Nielsen is obviously not Bailey, and the soundtrack is now epic, grandiose, emotional rather than this oppressive threatening droning befitting a survival horror. Sure, it's not Half-Life anymore, because the mood is completely different, but a love letter to the original game. That's the vibe I'm getting from BMS's soundtrack.