10 Years of Half-Life
intenscia writes "After 10 years of Half-Life and dealing with its silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, ModDB looks back at everything that Valve made possible with the release of its first game. The freedom and flexibility the Gldsource platform gave modders resulted in a plethora of user-generated content such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. In this article they take a brief look at the mods that made the jump to retail as well as the top non-commercial mods that have become perennial classics."
Planet Half-Life used the occasion to look back at the history of Valve. Valve is celebrating by offering the original Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam.
Half-Life wasn't the first FPS game to capture my attention but it was the first to enthrall me to such a degree that I went out and bought the damn thing. Years of Counter-Strike, Natural Selection, Rocket Crowbar and other various interesting mods later, I'm damn glad I did. I garnered a metric fuckton of fun from that game and it feels like it's been a lot longer than 10 years since its release.
/salute
But then I guess that's what one can expect from a Valve game. Blizzard has a nice attitude: "when it's ready". Valve goes one further: "when it ready and only if it's fun". When HL2 was delayed by a year or so there was a lot of complaining... but nobody was complaining when that thing was released.
Here's to one of the best games ever released!
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!