A development group called Black Mesa is redoing the original Half-Life game with the Half-Life 2 engine...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGlhgVz5r6E[/youtube]

See it in HD at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGlhgVz5r6E

At the time of the originaI my computer could not play it. As such I have never played any Half-Life; perhaps this will get me to.

Half Life is on my must play list.

Though I'll probably play the original over this.

That said, that looks very good, especially for a fan project.

It ought to, it's been in development for a lot of years, about as long as the original game was.

If you wanted to check out the original, Christmas week was a good time. It was on sale via Steam for something like $3.

Even now it's still only $10, or even better, $15 for the version that includes the two (excellent) expansion packs.

Seriously, the Steam client is free. Go here and download it. They have great sales all the time. You can snag amazing games for five bucks. Download them right to your PC, no muss, no fuss.

I know.

I don't have a PC.

I'd buy the whole damn Valve Complete if I had a PC, it's like $75 this week.

Half-Life was my favorite PC game of all time.

My favorite FPS of all time.

My favorite online multiplayer of all time.

I was in law school from 1997 to 2000. I had Half Life on my computer at some point.

My wife worked as a school teacher in the public schools, teaching the wild kids. She came home exhausted. She would collapse and be asleep by 9:00.

I didn't work during the school semester. I would yawn and say "time to go study."

You know what time it is.

That last statement is apparently not true.

The sale ended yesterday.

The second statement isn't entirely true, both by the literal definition of "PC" and that I do have a Pentium 3, with no operating system.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z88W0oY_msI[/youtube]

That really does look terrific. I love HALF-LIFE. I think part of the reason I love BIOSHOCK so much is that it reminds me, atmospherically, of HALF-LIFE. You never know what's around the next corner, and the sound effects alone are creepy as hell.

Must resist urge to criticize Half-Life 1.... must resist... must resist...

It was pretty good. I never really understood the massive props heaped upon it. The big problem with it is that it just sort of went on and on without varying the surroundings too much (I attempted to replay it and completely lost interest about half way through... at the time, I regularly played games through two or three times). And the alien levels were bloody awful, as the game turns into Mario jump puzzles.

And telling the story completely in game... cue me hopping around the room while people babble back and forth about stuff that isn't terribly interesting. Okay, I need to go find the power station and turn the power back on... let me go do it now... can you stop chatting with Barney and open the frakkin' door. Weird how it annoys me more than a cut scene. The cut scene at least shows me what I should be looking at, while I'm never 100% sure I'm looking at the right place in HL. "The bridge is collapsing"... where's the frakkin' bridge? Shit, I just missed something cool. Yes, I was just playing Episode Two last night.

Anyway, HL2 (and its episodes) are much more to my liking. It varies the locations and action a lot more than the original.

Half-Life was incredible. Immersive, fascinating, pick your adjective. Then came the alien levels. A big WTF moment for me. HL2 doesn't stumble like that and keeps the atmosphere earthly.

I think one of the big problems I have with the original Half-Life is that the level design rarely diverted from one of the biggest FPS cliches of level design: the futuristic military base and lab.

That and the opening bored me silly. Taking the tram into the facility was a neat idea... for the first minute or two. After that, it's just an exercise in hopping around an enclosed space.

Otherwise, a good game, but I prefer a bit of ambition in the level design of shooters. And I like lots of secret areas with funny easter eggs. Who can forget the Imperial bathroom from the original Dark Forces?

Love Half-Life 2 and its episodes.

Man, do I miss playing DARK FORCES. That was my first real FPS (f**k DOOM), and it was glorious.

Boba Fett was a pain the ass.

Dark Forces has not aged well . . .

Never played Dark Forces in the day.

Played it awhile back.

Sucked, hard.

Sorry, needs to be said.

Awful.

Marathon, now there's an old skool FPS.

Even at the time, Dark Forces was a bit awkward. The lack of saving was a problem that wasn't completely off-set by having extra lives. And being able to look up and down, but with no mouse look made it a hard game to go back to (sort of like how I flat-out couldn't play Wolfensten 3D because it wouldn't allow you to set the strafe keys to the left and right arrow, forcing you to use old style movement). A shame LucasArts never released the source to the fans, so they could update it as fans have done to Doom with modern control schemes and higher resolution textures.

And last night, I played through most of Half-Life 2 Episode 2... man, that so fucking rocked.

Isn't Dark Forces Doom based?

Why can't you just run the wads on a modern Doom source port?

Nope different engine. Jedi Knight 2 was the first in series that used a licensed engine.

Hmm, I thought it was Doom based.

Worth noting that I've only played the Playstation version and apparently that's the inferior of the versions, I really thought it sucked.

ALL console versions of First Person Shooters are inferior to their PC/Mac counterparts.

The FPS just works better under the mouse/keyboard control scheme.