I noticed a lot of people ragging on Half-Life. Truth is I personally despise multiplayer games [maybe because my ping is 900 my connection is 33.3 and I prefer storyline] and having that as a fact there have been THREE games that have really impressed me.
Half-Life Homeworld Deus Ex
Half-Life, okay the storyline isnt the MOST immersive, however you must consider frame of reference. In 1997 THE First Person Shooter was Quake 2, whose idea of storyline was 2 paragraphs in a readme.txt that nobody ever read - thats worse than even Doom2 was. Half-Life comes out from this unknown company [a year or two past deadline for those ragging valve on being late, because they wanted it RIGHT not good] and you got something that blew Quake2 away in every aspect. Far superior graphics, intelligent AI, fluid motion, interactive characters, a storyline that changes throughout the game IN the game, not presented through cutscenes [the most common of the era] or text [neither would make sense at all in the Half-Life environment], a universe that looked believeable if not totally realistic. Compared to the game by which all FPSs were compared to, it was revolutionary in every aspect, and got a HUGE following simply from the single player aspects.
From that alone it gets an utterly massive multiplayer following and from that releases TFC after the most popular mod for Quake 1. Success of that triggers development of TF2 [which may take years but valve likes to do things right, they were a year behind in releasing Half-Life at a time when nobody had any right to believe that the extra investment might pay off]. Hundreds of mods are released due to peoples love of the game and several become extremely popular, two have been adopted by Valve as official mods and both are utterly huge among the multiplayer community.
Now compare Half-Life to today five years later, the graphics are pretty bad, the engine is slow and doesnt support a lot of things, the storyline isnt as immersive as say DeusEx, the multiplayer isnt as cool, but remember you're talking about a five year old game. I dont expect HL2 to be released this year, not with Valves track record, but when it is released expect it to recieve a LOT of attention. It is STILL PC Gamers best game of all time, it STILL has more game of the year awards than many other games, and between it and its mods it is STILL more played than any of the more modern games.
One person said above something that I completely agree with. There needs to be a way to incorperate current mods into the new game, otherwise it MIGHT not do well. If it has that capability there is no doubt it will not only do as good, but better even if it has NO storyline and is just an engine update for the original Half-Life.
No, No Watch Star Trek The Motion Picture. It will find a bunch of super-intelligent aliens, get data on the entire universe, then fly back to earth as the center of some nebula looking for the creator and wanting to destroy all humans.
Shameless advertising but a main point seems to be people being able to interact in groups and as sub-groups.
As Dr Fro Mentioned above the Star Wars Combine {http://www.swcombine.com) is a free MUD-type game with a custom interface that users can interact in. It's not as pretty as EverQuest yet but the level of interaction is high, as a result of the Member Groups System. The Galactic Empire for example is divided into Navy/Army/Intel and has a complete command structure for coordinated attacks against rebel outposts.
Walked out of my house in Phoenix, Arizona. Got a great view of a red cloud with the naked eye... tried to explain what that was and seems that it in fact *was* the Aurora... amazing to see something like that outside of alaska.
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed a lot of people ragging on Half-Life. Truth is I personally despise multiplayer games [maybe because my ping is 900 my connection is 33.3 and I prefer storyline] and having that as a fact there have been THREE games that have really impressed me.
Half-Life
Homeworld
Deus Ex
Half-Life, okay the storyline isnt the MOST immersive, however you must consider frame of reference. In 1997 THE First Person Shooter was Quake 2, whose idea of storyline was 2 paragraphs in a readme.txt that nobody ever read - thats worse than even Doom2 was. Half-Life comes out from this unknown company [a year or two past deadline for those ragging valve on being late, because they wanted it RIGHT not good] and you got something that blew Quake2 away in every aspect. Far superior graphics, intelligent AI, fluid motion, interactive characters, a storyline that changes throughout the game IN the game, not presented through cutscenes [the most common of the era] or text [neither would make sense at all in the Half-Life environment], a universe that looked believeable if not totally realistic. Compared to the game by which all FPSs were compared to, it was revolutionary in every aspect, and got a HUGE following simply from the single player aspects.
From that alone it gets an utterly massive multiplayer following and from that releases TFC after the most popular mod for Quake 1. Success of that triggers development of TF2 [which may take years but valve likes to do things right, they were a year behind in releasing Half-Life at a time when nobody had any right to believe that the extra investment might pay off]. Hundreds of mods are released due to peoples love of the game and several become extremely popular, two have been adopted by Valve as official mods and both are utterly huge among the multiplayer community.
Now compare Half-Life to today five years later, the graphics are pretty bad, the engine is slow and doesnt support a lot of things, the storyline isnt as immersive as say DeusEx, the multiplayer isnt as cool, but remember you're talking about a five year old game. I dont expect HL2 to be released this year, not with Valves track record, but when it is released expect it to recieve a LOT of attention. It is STILL PC Gamers best game of all time, it STILL has more game of the year awards than many other games, and between it and its mods it is STILL more played than any of the more modern games.
One person said above something that I completely agree with. There needs to be a way to incorperate current mods into the new game, otherwise it MIGHT not do well. If it has that capability there is no doubt it will not only do as good, but better even if it has NO storyline and is just an engine update for the original Half-Life.
No, No Watch Star Trek The Motion Picture. It will find a bunch of super-intelligent aliens, get data on the entire universe, then fly back to earth as the center of some nebula looking for the creator and wanting to destroy all humans.
Simple (:
Shameless advertising but a main point seems to be people being able to interact in groups and as sub-groups. As Dr Fro Mentioned above the Star Wars Combine {http://www.swcombine.com) is a free MUD-type game with a custom interface that users can interact in. It's not as pretty as EverQuest yet but the level of interaction is high, as a result of the Member Groups System. The Galactic Empire for example is divided into Navy/Army/Intel and has a complete command structure for coordinated attacks against rebel outposts.
Walked out of my house in Phoenix, Arizona. Got a great view of a red cloud with the naked eye... tried to explain what that was and seems that it in fact *was* the Aurora... amazing to see something like that outside of alaska.