Recently I've been so bored when it comes to video games. They all just felt like a waste of time. Usually I could find something to play, but lately I just couldn't find anything that seemed worth it. I was aimlessly scrolling through my Steam library when I happened across Half Life. I didn't even know I owned Half Life but apparently I do. I had heard it's pretty good so I installed it and booted it up and here's how it went.
A lot of the reason I even play video games in the first place is because I'm fascinated by graphics programming. I love to see the strategies that are used and have been used to make things look good while still being performant. Half Life's aesthetic is unique because it's such an early game so the textures are all very low resolution. Despite that, it still manages to be an immersive experience. There's also this really interesting shader for the water effects in the game where it has this swirly distortion that's hard to describe and doesn't really look like water either, but it's totally mesmerizing.
Like I mentioned before, Half Life is super good when it comes to immersion. It feels like you're really shooting aliens from another dimension. The dialog feels natural, or as natural as you can get when their mouth is two and a half polygons. All of the sound effects are pretty realistic. I recognized a lot of them from Portal (basically a half life mod) and other places around the internet. There's also variation in the sound so that there's more reverberation when you're in large rooms and it's more sharp when you're in a tight enclosed area. I don't know how they pulled that kind of dynamic audio off in realtime back then but it only adds onto the immersivity. The whole time the campaign has you thinking about the situation and what you're going to do next in the story.
I would totally reccomend Half Life to anyone who hasn't played it yet. It might just be the funnest game I've played in years. I can't wait to try the sequel.
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