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  • Katana314@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    The way in which Half-Life maintained a continuous viewpoint over long stretches of gameplay and landscape was always so immersive to me. Games like God of War and Dead Space did something similar, but Valve had an additional challenge.

    They almost never take player control, instead relying on mere hints of where to look; they even have the character sequences scripted for wherever the player was standing. That all usually took a lot of their effort.

    I could be biased because I even enjoyed toying with their choreography tool, which let you layer simple gestures together; so without making a new animation, you could have someone both lean forward and nod right, and point their thumb right.

  • proti@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I mean the game was given for free and just received an update. It’s also a really good game as well

    • MissGutsy@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      As a genre? I would say no. Cyberpunk is usually described as a capitalist dystopia in which a handful of companies supersede government powers and wage wars against each other beyond the concepts of national borders. In addition, cybernetic enhancements become commonplace, as a way for companies to extract more value from their workers. Cyberpunk stories usually are about groups rebelling against the system through organized crime, who ultimately fail to escape the underlying system of capitalism, doomed to repeat history time and time again.

      HL2 falls in none of the genre stereotypes. While it is dystopian, it’s not capitalist, so it’s not “punk” and it isn’t “cyber” either because of a lack of commonplace cybernetics.

  • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Half Life 2 still holds up really well, honestly better than a ton of modern first person shooters. The only places it’s lacking from a non-technical aspect is enemy variety. If valve did a remake just updating the graphics and gun play that would be my only knock on it and that says a lot for a 20 year old game.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      The physics puzzles, whole still functioning fine, feel extremely goofy today. It’s easy to forget how revolutionary they were. I’m not saying the game shouldn’t have them or anything, but some are just so silly lol.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      On enemy variety, I see the critique of games like Zelda: BOTW and even realistic games like Hitman. Something those games have in common is very well-made enemy AI that presents you many ways to defeat them.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        Ricochet hasn’t recieved the love it deserves. We’ve been waiting on Ricochet 2 for decades. The fans need closure.

        • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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          11 hours ago

          You just can’t update perfection.

          But there’s “Ricochet: Source” out there as a mod

          I worked on it with some people half a life(time) ago. It was playable but we never really finished it properly

          • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            6 hours ago

            I’ll be straight with you - I never played Ricochet. I was just doing the joke from that one guy who asked Gabe about it that one time. But the fact you ported it to the Source engine is honestly really cool.

            • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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              51 minutes ago

              If you’re ever at a lan party, I’d say: check it out. It’s quite fun and can get quite challenging on fuller levels.

              It’s how I stumbled on it decades ago

        • andxz@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          Speaking of Richochet and love reminds me of a guy I halfway knew in my youth. He had the bright idea to jerk off a quick one in the middle of a LAN party (lI know, right?). After he inevitably got caught (despite being somewhat secluded) he alt tabbed from whatever grainy porn clip he had up straight into Ricochet just as he… well ya know.

          He never came to another LAN party again, but 20+ years later he’s still known as the guy who jerked off to Richochet.

  • Unleaded8163@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    HL2 is peak first person shooter. More recent games have added a lot, but after playing through HL2 recent, it’s really nice to strip all that extra stuff away.

    • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I can see why people didn’t like some parts (boat, car) but they’re so iconic to me.

      Except episode 2 (1?) car shit with the buckeyballs. Fuck that.

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I disagree, I cannot see why people dislike those parts—the tension is fantastic in both

        • Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 day ago

          It’s only awful if you’re achievement hunting and trying to drive the god damn gnome through the level without it flinging off into space and being lost forever

  • MunkysUnkEnz0@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    There is also a VR mod on Steam that works perfectly With Half-Life 2, No need to jump through hoops, it just works. One of the best VR experiences out there.

  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    The workshop is a complete mess right now. There are multiple copies of every mod because people just rushed to get them on there.

    It’ll be funny when everyones game breaks after the dust settles.

  • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk
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    2 days ago

    FYI, that’s roughly 50x the normal average over the past 3 months. And also the highest ever concurrent users was 4 hours ago. Not bad.

    • datavoid@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Is there formatting on this post? It seems to have broken voyager slightly

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        1 day ago

        A number followed by a period is Markdown for an ordered list. To make it easier, the renderer always starts from 1 and counts properly. So on your app it is probably rendering this as an ordered list with one item instead of as two sentences.

        • datavoid@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago
          1. I’m guessing the other guy who responded was correct - must be related to markdown lists not having enough space for 4 characters before the period.
    • Baggie@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      The full list is on steam, the main thing is it’s bundled all hl2 games in one package, integrated workshop for mod installation, and added new developer commentary for hl2. Also a bunch of misc fixes etc.

    • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      If you’re into the nuts and bolts of game development at all, the commentary is fantastic.

      • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        When it first came out, for some reason, I thought all games would start following Valve’s lead and introduce commentary.

        And now two decades later, I don’t know if any other games have.

        Then again, we have other ways like game devs talking on podcasts/live stream.