if; <necrobump> = 1 then;
<entity_person> = "mad"
Just a made up script.
I haven't really gotten very far on my review, considering what's left, but by starting a few days ago I've written a lot.
- Shrunk down version of my writing (just an overall view)
- sgewge.png (30.81 KiB) Viewed 2756 times
And here's the whole thing in text with formatting, but not everything is done such as colors and adjustments. Remember, I am far from done, and feedback would be appreciated. If you really want to read through all this
Half-Life. You may have heard the term before, "Biological half-life; the time it takes for a substance to lose half of its pharmacologic, physiologic, or radiologic activity", but there is an exceptionally good game called Half-Life. The original, winning over 53 Game of The Year awards, and the sequel with its episodes, it has to be one of the best (if not the best) game of all times. Whole series contains Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and a "deleted scene" tech demo called Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, multiplayer games such as Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source, Deathmatch classic and Half-Life: Decay MP, story POVs like Half-Life: Blue Shift, Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Decay Co-Op, it's a huge library all by itself. This review will contain info on everything in the series, and also mods/other games by VALVE.
So let's start somewhere in this vast universe of Half-Life, and "
somewhere" is the first Half-Life game.
Half-Life
Facts:
Sci-fi first-person shooter genre.
Released in November 19, 1998, developed by VALVE and published by Sierra Entertainment.
Distributed by Sierra Entertainment at first, then later on Steam in 2004.
Using the GoldSrc engine, heavily modified from the original Quake engine.
Available on Windows, PS2, Linux and OSX as of today with both singleplayer and multiplayer modes.
Written by Marc Laidlaw and composed by Kelly Bailey.
Gameplay/info:
Half-Life is a science-fiction game featuring a location called "Black Mesa Research Facility" in New Mexico. The main character is a man called Gordon Freeman which is 27 years old and has a MIT graduate. You see everything from only Gordon's eyes, and that is something which is special about the game. It makes it a lot better to keep it this way, with no cut-scenes or jumps in the plot timeline. There are tasks and puzzles encountered to advance the plot, and they vary from easy to very hard to perform.
As Gordon progresses trough the plot, he achieves different types of weapons by picking them up from dead scientists/security guard or weapon rooms. Some of the weapons are the infamous crowbar, the MP5, a Glock, Gauss Gun, .44 Revolver, and even alien-weapons.
Plot:
It all starts on a tram-system, and you're Gordon Freeman. You have no idea of what's going to happen, but as you're going trough the facility, you'll already see signs of unstabillity. Radioactive waste is flowing out from a tank as you pass by, security guards are locked out and later on you'll hear dialogue pointing towards malfunction. This build up the tension towards a catastrophic failure in the test chamber, where a portal to the Xen universe was created. Unknown aliens teleported to the facility, thus making it a dangerous area where few survived. One of the survivors was you, Gordon Freeman. "Thank God for that Hazard Suit!" says it all, without your suit you would've been dead.
Graphics:
Well, since this is a 1998 game, the graphics aren't that pretty, but it's fair enough if you think about it. The environment is very contrasted between underground facility and outside freedom, which gives you a great visual perspective and it fits right into the plot. Characters lack facial expressions, but that's not important in this game, the dialogue is. Even though it isn't as detailed as newer games, obviously, it actually creates a great environment and ambience. You really feel like you're there, in an underground facility fighting aliens. Outside areas utilizes a so-called "skybox" which is an image placed around the map to give a more 'realistic' and larger outdoor area (or atleast it looks like it). Now, you can clearly see that in example desert mountains in the background aren't real 3D, but it's a nice way to fill up that out-of-map space.
<<<PICTURE OF SKYBOX/ENVIRONMENT HERE>>>
Half-Life uses a heavily modified Quake engine (called GoldSrc) and drawbacks of this is the map size limit, which means lots of loadings. Fortunately, these are quick loadings on todays PC's. Performance-wise the game will run on any PC you can buy today, also at a decent framerate.
There are no settings for low, medium or high, but hardware settings like D3D (removed in the newest Steam version), OpenGL (default) and software rendering. OpenGL is the recommended setting, but D3D or software might work better for your PC. It depends on your hardware, but if OpenGL is very playable (60+FPS) without any errors or artifacts, I would recommend to not switch over. Choosing the wrong render setting (and resolution) can make your game black out on startup, and you would have to fix them by either using parameters in the shortcut, or change the settings file.
Audio:
As I mentioned, the dialogue is important, and VALVE did a great job. Not only are the voice acting great, but the contents are well chosen and can be analyzed to get a better view of the whole plot in general. Sometimes they're humoristic to cheer you up a little, and also dramatic when hell breaks loose at the facility.
Sound effects are well-recorded and most of the time sounds like it's supposed to sound like, but the quality isn't top-notch. By quality I mean the bitrate of the recordings, which is believed to be about 80Kbs and can sound grainy, especially on voices. Remember, this was back in '98, and they because of the huge amounts of recordings, they probably had to lower the bitrate to save space. After all, the game was intended to fit on a single 700MB CD.
There are ambient sounds such as wind, steam, sparks and metal howling in the background, they're cooperating with the graphical environment to create a full experience.
Summary:
This is a great game with hours of pure gaming enjoyment, it's linear, builds up tension greatly, has lots of puzzles and is one of the best games ever made. Receiving 53 Game of The Year awards, it has truly earned it. After you've played it you just want to do it all over again.
Score:
9.5/10
Counter-Strike
Facts:
Gameplay/info:
This is the game that stormed the gaming-world, and is responsible for thousands of competitions, gatherings, LAN parties, skin/modding communities etc.
It is truly one of the biggest competitive online game in the gaming history. Today, there are still hundreds of thousands, if not millions who play the game, even though it's been 15 years since the release. So, what is Counter-Strike all about?
Counter-Strike is a FPS (First Person Shooter) game, where people online can join two teams, and fight eachother. One of the team is the "Terrorists", and the other team is "Counter-Terrorists". They are hereby known as T's and CTs. The Ts have different goals depending on the map type, but they can either plant a bomb which the CTs will have to defuse in a set time (default: 45s), they have hostages to defend, have to kill a VIP CT, or just to eliminate all of the CTs. CT's tasks are to rescue the hostages, defuse the bomb, escort an VIP or eliminate the Ts. On a hostage rescue map, the Ts and CTs can win by eliminating the opposite team. This also applies to maps with no other goal and on bomb maps if the Ts haven't planted the bomb yet. If they have, the CTs can win by just defusing the bomb while the Ts are alive, or they can kill all of the Ts to guarantee safety while defusing. The VIP task is built up by two teams as usual, but one of the CTs are the VIP and have to be escorted safely to a location.
The VIP has 200 in body-armor (where 100 is max otherwise) and a USP pistol to defend himself with. This means that the CT team will have to cooperate to keep the VIP safe while escorting him. These gameplay types are called for "classic", but thanks to custom content there are more.
Maps have a type of indication on what gamemode it's made for:
"cs_name" maps are the hostage-rescue maps.
"de_name" maps are bomb defusing maps.
"as_name" are VIP escort maps.
Military weapons can be bought at the start of the round, and they vary from sub-machine guns (SMGs), to pistols, rifles and Light Machine Guns (LMG). Both Ts and CTs have unique weapons and shared weapons. As an example, the first rifle on the buy menu is an IDF-Defender for Ts, and FAMAS for CTs. These are unique rifles for the teams. Guns such as the Scout (light sniper rifle) and the P90 (SMG) are available for both teams.
You can and drop a weapon by default pressing 'G', which will throw your current weapon on the ground. You can either pick it up or leave it to others. When you get killed or kill others, the primary weapon is dropped, allowing you or others to pick it up. This way, you can easily save money by using the free pistol at the start of the round, and then kill an opponent with a stronger weapon to pick it up.
Customization is a key to this game, there are custom servers with zombie survival, gungame, deathmatch, surf and more. Custom maps can be downloaded from websites and easily put into a folder, then launched in the game. Skins, models, viewmodels and GUI can all be modified easily by replacing existing files.
Pressing default 't' you will tag an image onto the surface you aim at. This can be used for any kind of image, and will stay there until the round ends. Either a clan image, a warning for "campers" (player who stays still at an area, guarding), or funny pictures. You can use the pre-loaded symbols or you can import your own.
The most known Counter-Strike version is 1.6 (called Counter-Strike 1.6), as earlier versions were unknown until 1.5/1.6 where it really exploded in popularity.
Graphics:
By being a mod of the original Half-Life means that the graphics are the same, however some tweaks/improvements were made. Textures and models got a bit better in the newest Steam release. However, the overall environment and graphics might seem better than Half-Life because of the change of location/setting depending on the map such as the map "cs_italy".
Audio:
Summary:
Counter-Strike: Source
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Half-Life: Source & Half-Life Deathmatch: Source
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Half-Life 2
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Half-Life 2: Episode 1
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Half-Life 2: Episode 2
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Mods and expansions
Half-Life: Blue Shift
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Half-Life: Opposing Force
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Team Fortress Classic
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Deathmatch Classic & Richochet
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Half-Life: Decay
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Garry's Mod
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Team Fortress 2
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Black Mesa:
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Sources:
as u can c my topic is about to be turned down maybe lol
