Which Half-Life should I play first?

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Prozac23

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Hey everyone. I?m new to the forum and brand new to Half Life and Half Life 2. I?m hoping to learn a lot from all of you members who are more experienced than me. This looks like a cool forum so I thought I?d post here and see what kind of response I get.

The reason why I?m a latecomer to HL1 and HL2 is because I used to play UT2004 exclusively, was in a clan, etc, etc. UT is an extremely fast paced game and I got a bit addicted to the instant gratification and adrenalin rush of shooting and killing as soon as I spawned. I do still love that game, but recently, I decided to give a ?puzzle game? a try. (that?s my pet name for games like Half Life, where you have to actually think to get through the game, and solve various puzzles along the way to keep moving forward and leveling up).

The game I just finished is F.E.A.R., and I must admit that I LOVED IT!!! :) :cheese: :D For the first time I made it over all the obstacles, figured out all of the puzzles, and killed a butt-load of bad guys along the way. So now I?m ready to give HL1 and HL2 a try. I picked up the HL2 Game of the Year DVD which includes HL1,2 and I think Counter Strike as well. Now I come to my dilemma: I really, really want to play Half Life 2 first, but I wonder if I?ll be missing something if I don?t play HL1 first since that is where it all started. If you have any advice, I?d greatly appreciate your input. So there you have it. Sorry for the long post, but I said what I had to say.;)

I look forward to your replies and getting to know you all.

Sincerely, Prozac23 :)
 
You could start off with playing HL2, but you wouldn't get anything. Start by playing HL1, go on with it's expansions, then HL2 and HLE1.
 
Yeah if you want the story best as possible I would say this:
HL1
blue shift
op4
HL2
 
I like to leave BS out..then again thats just me. I get really bored playing it. but yeah, SELAS has the right idea.
 
"what the above two posters said"
BS bored me slightly because of less weapons and no new creatures. it was only storyline development and otis.
 
Gordon-Shepherd said:
"what the above two posters said"
BS bored me slightly because of less weapons and no new creatures. it was only storyline development and otis.
Click to expand...

The last 2 levels bored the hell out of me... It wasn't much fun, and the puzzles were WAY too hard to figure out... How the **** am I supposed to know that a barrel, probly full of fuel, will conduct the electricity through the broken (metal like) wire, leading to the dynamite, to blow up the door? Took me 4 hours to get past that (of game play, not of a day... bout 10 minutes of sitting there thinking about it every day...) Besides that, it was a very lonely game... Nobody else around untill you get to Dr.Rosenburg, then he sends you to xen, and then into the underground, that for some reason has soldiers in it, with no other way into there than through the door (Which they had to knock down) and up the elevator into the scientist filled room... Then for some odd reason you have to find a mini elevator to send up that dumbass spare battery, rather than just carrying it up the lift with you, ohh no, that'd be too simple... I could go ONNN!!!! (The only good part for me is before the shit hits the fan on that one. :/)

Anyways, didn't mean to rant on a great game's expansion, but it was word vomit, so there it be. :D

(Play blue shift once, to get the story. :P)
 
hmm... part of me thinks that actually, Half-Life 2 doesn't carry so very much of the original game over with it that you wouldn't be able to find it completely comprehensible. My only worry is that you would play it, not understand something, assume its in Half-Life 1 and then go play Half-Life 1 and get disappointed because of the vagueries of the Half-Life plot.

Both are great games, but Half-Life 1 isn't a instantly playable as it once was. If you love FPS, it's a landmark worth visiting (I consider myself this type. I've been back and played some oldies in an effort to understand the genre better). If you can't stand older, uglier games, HL2 is a good starting point, especially as the game is quite fast paced... though if you UT skills are up to clan level, you may find it a bit easy :/

Erm, so after the waffle above, I'm going to say Half-Life 1. Make sure you get the original gold-source version, not 'Half-Life: Source'. Out of place flashy water, redone but ugly 3D skyboxes and physics aren't a good enough swap for compatability with thousands upon thousands of mods or the inclusion of the two expansion packs (though Opposing Force and Blue Shift aren't essential for Half-Life 2, and they're weaker links in the saga)
edit:
Van_Halen said:
How the **** am I supposed to know that a barrel, probly full of fuel, will conduct the electricity through the broken (metal like) wire, leading to the dynamite, to blow up the door?
Click to expand...
Heh. A few years back, I think this kind of game-logic was to be expected. Puzzles make a lot more sense these days. Not that people didn't still get stuck in Half-Life 2. How they managed that i'll never know.
 
LOL... I guess I'm just not too smart then ;)

(Then again, I was about 11 years old when I first played it.)

I like my little rant though. :smoking:
 
Van_Halen said:
LOL... I guess I'm just not too smart then ;)
Click to expand...
Getting stuck on Blue Shift puzzles: fair enough, games back then obeyed their own mysterious laws and conventions that you could only 100% pin down through experience

Getting stuck on Half-Life 2 puzzles: Forgiveable only if you've played so many old-style game puzzles that you've completely forgotten how objects and machines operate in the real world.
 
Hmmm. Never liked HL1. Just played it enough to find out about the *SPOILER* resonance cascade, then watched a friend beat the Nihilanth. *END SPOILER* I recommend finding spoilers on the net for HL1, play HL2, then, if you're interested, play HL1.
 
I certainly enjoyed playing Half - Life and I also liked Blue Shift... but opposing force was rather lame and very unrealistic. There were some interesting new weapons and enemies... parts of gameplay I liked, but the whole script was as interesting as in "Doom" or "Quake"...No story...:(
Play HL1 first, becouse you won't understand all of it's beauty after playing HL2...
 
I started playing HL1 after finishing HL2. I don't know how you could even contemplate playing the first game first. It would be like flying a Sopwith Camel as a warm-up for flying an F-22. Don't get me wrong--I like Half-Life for it's sharp level design and superior stroytelling. But it's over a generation out of date and it shows. Moreover, and this may be a more telling argument, the story in HL isn't that complicated; (SPOILERS!) a mishap at a secret research facility causes deadly aliens to start teleporting to eath and killing everything in sight; the protagonist battles through many murky areas en route to the epic showdown with...well, I've said too much. Anyway, my point is that the story doesn't start to get complicated until the sequel and knowing the events of the first game won't help all that much with unravelling it. You have to pay attention to what's around you in HL2's rich and scrupulously realised gameworld.

If, on the other hand, you're a caffeine-fueled gaming fiend who can blast through Half_LIfe in a day or two, go to it. Just don't let it hold you back from tucking in to an epochal moment in contemporary gaming.

Just my two cents...
 
you wouldnt understand about xen, vorts, and the soon-to-be-featured (I hope) xen plant/animal life. apart from that, the combine (who are more important) will be understandable (unless you dont have eli explain stuff to you by looking at the newspaper)
 
Van_Halen said:
The last 2 levels bored the hell out of me... It wasn't much fun, and the puzzles were WAY too hard to figure out... How the **** am I supposed to know that a barrel, probly full of fuel, will conduct the electricity through the broken (metal like) wire, leading to the dynamite, to blow up the door?
Click to expand...

agreed. if it was a different looking barrel and not the kind you see littered all over the place during the game, maybe it would help.
 
Half-Life 2's story was designed so that people who never played the first game wouldn't be lost as to what's going on, but it certainly is good to know the previous events.

And besides, once you hit the end of half-life 2, it feels kinda cool when thinking back to the ending of half-life 1

(though when i first played half-life 1, i noclipped through zen and cheated to kill the nihilanth........way to boring for me)
 
Thanks a bunch!

Thanks everyone for your generous replies, advice, and tips. After contemplating all of your input, I decided to go ahead and play HL2 first. I don't know if I could go back that long ago and play HL1, but I prolly will give it a try when I complete HL2.....We'll see.;)

I love relatively fast paced games and I love new generation graphics so that is why I leaned toward going ahead and playing HL2 first. :sniper:

Now I just need to learn how to get the best control setup/(keyboard and mouse) so I'm going to make a post in the HL2 forum about that. If you guys want to offer advice on game setup, that'd be great. :P

Once again thanks for your help, Prozac23 :cheers:
 
Should of played hl1 first, you wont appreciate its glory now that you've played hl2 first, just like everyone else who has played hl2 first...
 
I played HL1 first. Didn't like it. HL2 was much better.
 
All you've proved is that you are unable to appreciate its glory.

Its almost 10 years old and id play it over many recently released games!
 
I prefer HL1 over HL2 - mainly because I've spent so much time on it and it never grow old.
 
Loke said:
I prefer HL1 over HL2 - mainly because I've spent so much time on it and it never grow old.
Click to expand...
On a Rail? Residue Processing? Xen? Gonarch's Lair? Interloper? Alien Grunts that take 50,000 bullets before dying? Standing in a corner clearing out rooms with the Hornet Gun for 5 minutes and repeating ad nauseaum? Constant vent crawling? The complete lack of sustained interest in the early levels once you go back and play the game, and the whole wow factor of what it is trying to do has long since collapsed and died?
 
kupoartist said:
On a Rail? Residue Processing? Xen? Gonarch's Lair? Interloper? Alien Grunts that take 50,000 bullets before dying? Standing in a corner clearing out rooms with the Hornet Gun for 5 minutes and repeating ad nauseaum? Constant vent crawling? The complete lack of sustained interest in the early levels once you go back and play the game, and the whole wow factor of what it is trying to do has long since collapsed and died?
Click to expand...

If i sucked a lime while playing HL2 i could repost something pretty similar you know.
 
Well i didnt enjoy sandtraps, or dont go to ravenholm, or entanglement or water hazard etc etc, all very pretty, but pretty repetitive, aka, boring.
 
Piers89 said:
Well i didnt enjoy sandtraps, or dont go to ravenholm, or entanglement or water hazard etc etc, all very pretty, but pretty repetitive, aka, boring.
Click to expand...

I didn't like ravenholm on my first time through because of the lack of ammo, I rarely used the gravity gun (stupid thing to do in ravenholm, well but it was just my first time). But on the second time through, when I knew exactly where to go and what to do it was so fun.
 
Piers89 said:
Well i didnt enjoy sandtraps, or dont go to ravenholm, or entanglement or water hazard etc etc, all very pretty, but pretty repetitive, aka, boring.
Click to expand...

So let me make sure I'm clear on this. You DIDN'T enjoy cutting zombies in half with saws, burning them to bits, or crushing them with cars? Or is "don't go to Ravenholm" not the level I'm thinking of?
 
57210788 said:
So let me make sure I'm clear on this. You DIDN'T enjoy cutting zombies in half with saws, burning them to bits, or crushing them with cars? Or is "don't go to Ravenholm" not the level I'm thinking of?
Click to expand...

He never said he didn't like "We don't go to Ravenholm", he just said that we shouldn't go there outselves. Which is a great tip.
 
Rabarber said:
He never said he didn't like "We don't go to Ravenholm", he just said that we shouldn't go there outselves. Which is a great tip.
Click to expand...

WOW, how long did it take you think that one up?! Medal for you lad.

And, no i didnt particularly enjoy the level, i found it slow and tedious, and before you all rage your defence of the level, i was merely trying to get across that all games have their 'shoddy' levels, and that its not fair to flame hl1 as it was a revolutionary game, and we would not have hl2 would it not be for hl1.
 
Piers89 said:
WOW, how long did it take you think that one up?! Medal for you lad.

And, no i didnt particularly enjoy the level, i found it slow and tedious, and before you all rage your defence of the level, i was merely trying to get across that all games have their 'shoddy' levels, and that its not fair to flame hl1 as it was a revolutionary game, and we would not have hl2 would it not be for hl1.
Click to expand...

Hmm? I didn't like HL1 when I first played it (this would be around 1999(?)). I think I quit slightly after the resonance cascade... Anyway. It's hardly unfair to point out that HL2 has much more consistent quality in its levels than HL1.
 
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