1 mo. ago • 98%

Half-Life 2 peaks at 52,000 concurrent players, 20 years after its release

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76 comments

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.

82
- 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.
  
  29
  
  I disagree, I cannot see why people dislike those parts—the tension is fantastic in both
  
  23
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.

51
- 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.
  
  9
- 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.
  
  6
41
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.

40
- You just changed my life.
  
  14
  
  You just changed half my life.
  
  2
- It just works like the way Skyrim VR just works or will it make HL2 the same kind of experience as HL: Alyx?
  
  2
  
  I mean half life alyx's entire mechanics revolve around VR controls.
  
  7
How many games receive any update after 20 years?

28
- Most, if not all Valve games
  
  29
  
  Ricochet hasn't recieved the love it deserves. We've been waiting on Ricochet 2 for decades. The fans need closure.
  
  14
  
  Artifact? Both of them?
  
  2
I mean the game was given for free and just received an update. It's also a really good game as well

27
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.

27
- You're not biased. You're completely correct.
  
  5
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.

21
they should make another one of these

19
- Hey that's a good idea, lemme just email gaben
  
  10
  
  It will be a Duke Nukem forever situation at this point. It will never live up and it'll flop
  
  1
Brb.
18
- Is there formatting on this post? It seems to have broken voyager slightly
  
  26
  
  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.
  
  6
  
  i am also on voyager and its also broken for me. how interesting. i wonder why.
  
  2
  
  I posted from Boost for Lemmy, but formatted nothing.
  
  1
Nostalgia's a helluva drug. I've done my best to try to avoid it, but we all like that hit from time to time.

17
- Played Half Life 2 for the first time in my life at 25, 10/10 perfect game.
  
  22
- Avoid nostalgia?
  
  8
  
  Yes, ignore false history.
  
  1
Is the update actually anything significant?

13
- 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.
  
  32
- If you're into the nuts and bolts of game development at all, the commentary is fantastic.
  
  7
  
  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.
  
  4
I keep trying to play half-life and keep quitting everytime because of motion sickness

8
- I was totally fine playing HL1, and HL2, and HL2 episode 1.... but I never finished episode 2 because of motion sickness. The problem isn't really with episode 2 though. The problem is just that I got old, and now I get motion sickness from FPS games that didn't affect me before.
  
  But I do know that not every FPS makes me sick. I think mouse-look smoothing helps. I'm not certain what else, but I'd try messing with the field-of-view angle and stuff like that.
  
  4
  
  I thought it was just me! I played every HL game as a teen. Now 20 years later, my old eyes seem to struggle a bit.
  
  And yeah, changing FoV is what solved it for me.
  
  2
- Have you tried increasing FOV?
  
  3
- 1 or 2?
  
  2
  
  couldn't get pass 1
  
  2
- I'm the same with 1. I'd recommend trying out Black Mesa, it might be the best game remake ever made.
  
  1
Imma go make it 52001

5
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.

3
Is half-life cyberpunk?

3
- 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.
  
  6
- Not really.
  
  2
How does that compare to Concord?

2
- I don't think these two games can be reasonably compared. HL2 is currently free, while concord was a paid game.
  
  20
  
  Also, Concord is so old that they don't even sell it anymore...
  
  21
- Man , it's dead just let it go. Digging on Concord was funny the first week it was shelved
  
  10
  
  Digging on Concord was funny for longer than its server were online.
  
  22
  
  Fair enough.
  
  3
I'm up to the bridge. Still a classic.

2

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