Which FPS games you consider are miles better than Half Life series?

Name 10 FPS games that play like Halflife.

@uninspiredcup:

Isn't it the beginning of the rail shooter fps?

?

Not a single section of Halflife 1/2 shooting is on the rails.

It changed the way FPS operated from brown-key hunting corridors with no story to scripts being used with story-telling, keeping the player in the game uninterrupted. About the closest thing to a controlled on-rail sequence is introductory tram ride which practically every FPS game in some form has emulated, as it's a solid way to introduce as game world.

The tightly controlled 4-5 hour FPS movie at the expense of game-play, where it merely serves as an fodder for multiplayer can be pin-pointed to a corruption of Halflifes influence.

WOW, lots of Hate for Half Life in this thread. Come on guys, play The Orange Box specially episode 2 as HL 1 & 2 has become bit dated by now if you may or may not enjoy it. But definately try Episode 2 :)

Half Life is a classic, and so is HL2 and the episodes.

But it's just ... I can't care much for a series when Valve itself couldn't care less.

Having said that I will start replaying every half life once Black Mesa finally releases :P

@uninspiredcup:

The original is loaded with scripted sequences, as is the second. The games are very very linear. I'm not sure how you can say otherwise.

Me too, thanks for the update man, will keep an eye out for BLACK MESA complete on Steam from today :)

Metroid Prime

A lot of people here are too young to appreciate how good halflife was and that's understandable, when you only started playing fps games in 2006 there were a lot better fps games than halflife. As revolutionary halflife was as a game, halflife 2 had a lot more competition, and the formula wasn't new anymore. There were games like far cry and fear and the bar was set a lot higher with the launch of the x360 and ps3. When you had a gaming pc in 2007 crysis set the bar even higher.

Not to mention the fps genre had major competition from the tps genre, rpg and multiplayer oriented games in the mid 2000's.

People that appreciate halflife today have a keen eye for gaming history or are at least in their thirties. Next year the first half life is 20 years old and the year after that halflife 2 15 years old, that's a lot of time in gaming development.

Compared to a modern FPS Halflife (1) barely has any scripted sequences. And when used, the player is in complete control to move around with the scripting accommodating, rather than limit game-play.

Halflife 2's levels are generally quite open by linear fps games standards. Multiple sections allow the player off-the-beaten path exploration. completely optional. The levels themselves do masterful job of giving the illusion of being much larger than the actual reality.

The response to your on-the-rails comment, never was about linear shooters being inherently better or worse, nor did Valve invent that. Halflife, and all Valve titles are linear. as are most FPS made. The extent and usage of scripted sequences is what differentiates the series and generally, what exactly you're doing within that context.

The only case of what it tantamount to removing player freedom is Halflife 2's, where-by a player enters a room, a door shuts and they are forced into listening to narrative. But this is essenailly, 3-4 sequences, 5 minutes long in a 8-12 hour game.

Or of course the citadel tram ride, which takes the opening of Halflife 1's Black Mesa introduction, and places it at the end of Hallifife 2 to show a world, within a world, which is a a masked version of the hero climbing the dark wizards tower to save the princess, 200% genius.

Probably 300.

I plunked in (probably) thousands of hours just roaming around the Rest Outpost worlds of Far Cry 3 and 4. Don't ask why. There's no campaign. No story. No leveling up because my characters are already maxed and everything is unlocked. The flip side is all the restrictions in the campaign were removed. I just love dropping me into the world and causing mayhem. I never tire of it. Once I cleared all outposts and fortresses, I simply reset outposts and do it again. ;)

The mod Call of Chernobyl for STALKER: Call of Pripyat is the same way. I can free-roam and progress as I see fit. While my main goal in the Far Cry games were to cause mayhem in as many ways as possible in short bursts, Call of Chernobyl gives a better sense of progressing and leveling up because the character starts at the lowest level. It's almost like a western where the character takes on odd jobs that takes the player to different locations not in the original game.

I could not get into Half Life and similar type FPS games although I finished HL2 not too long ago and I currently have System Shock 2 installed on my netbook.

I'm not a fan of first person shooters, but i can accept them. i played a ton of first person shooters and have yet to play any first person shooter that gave me the experience of half life 2. half life 2 was and is the game that got me into PC gaming in 2008. I did enjoy and loved the atmosphere of the metro series by THQ back then.

PLEASE STOP PLAYING FARCRY 3 and 4 ASAP. You are like playing it for ages now :P

@indzman:

Almost anything out right now. Half Life was great for its time but the pedestal people have put it on is waaaay too high. Like with Final Fantasy VII. The real games themselves can't live up to the hype. Anyone who never played them before would be disappointed as shit thanks to all the hype.

@R4gn4r0k said:

@ghosts4ever said:

I mean it looks good for 2007 standard but not for toady standard. and game is not even complete. its using half life 2 engine and looks alot like half life.

It's not.

You are just so wrong all the time it's just too easy and boring to prove you wrong.

@indzman said:

Haven't played Black Mesa Yet, looks fvcking awesome man. Is it complete or still in development phase (Beta)? If its complete i'll buy it this week :)

It does look amazing ^^

It's probably one of the best looking souce games, not counting Titanfall :)

I bought it in the last sale for 8 euro and it's definitely worth it, but I would recommend getting it the next time it's on sale, as the game will be complete in December (it's currently lacking the Xen levels)

These are some work in progress shots from them:

That looks really cool.

I love black mesa but i just couldnot call it proper remake so far. hopefully it will complete soon. it has been in development since forever. first part was already released in 2012. and game is still in early access.

Metroid Prime and many others.

Not miles better, but these games are up there, in my opinion:

DOOM (original)

DOOM 2016

Halo CE

Halo 3

Battlefield games

Bioshock Infinite

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2

...

Unreal, Quake, Tribes, Doom, FEAR, the Metroid Prime games. I mean Half Life 1 is a masterpiece. It certainly belongs among the GOATs. Not so much Half Life 2.

bioshock infinite is among the worst FPS ever and cant even be compare to anything half life. it even made bioshock 1 feel like system shock.

I f***ing loved Bioshock Infinite, but thanks for your opinion :)

metroid prime is not FPS.

Thanks man !

You are right, Black Mesa once started as a Half Life 2 mod, but they have since then updated the engine and graphics immensely.

I also played that mod back in 2012, and the retail release just looks so much better, there is workshop support, has more content, longer segments and of course ... upcoming Xen level ;)

i only played mod. and that was free. so i never played retail version. because i feel they are same. why would i pay for a game that i played free?

but i will pay for it once it complete. the game shown on steam is still in early access.

None. Miles better? I haven't experienced any.

@AzatiS: Agreed, I don't even understand how people can compare games released 20 years apart, without taking into account what the competition looked like 20 years ago.

90% of the time when I see someone claim "overrated" these days, it means they aren't old enough to have played the game at launch, went back and played it for the first time, after being spoiled by current titles.

There are plenty of games that are better than Half Life now, but those games are better because of Half Life.

Lots, depending on what you want out of a shooter, like if you want base gratuitous violence, a historically set shooter, or one more meant for multiplayer, or licensed IPs. But HL2 was not only great in its time, it still holds up well, and many games over the years have borrowed from it.

Halo: CE was the closest for me, too bad it came out in 01

I've heard good things about a game called Doom. I hear someone around here really likes the game.

That's what it is. Bunch of kids who are drawn in by more recent games. They weren't around to gauge the impact that older games really had.

Take Doom for example. There may be a few articles floating around about Doom being played at the workplace. But, there's no way to gauge the real (negative) impact it had on productivity. It's not just people slacking off. But, it's also company networks bogging down totally. Seriously, anti-Doom measures were literally part of every IT department's SOPs for a while.

The only other game that comes relatively close was Evercrack before the WoW days. ;) I recall many people buying multiple PCs just so they can play more than one character.

Maybe when Far Cry 5 comes out. But, Call of Chernobyl comes close to stealing Far Cry 3 and 4's thunder. ;) I can see why CoC was voted Best Mod for 2016.

Just recently started playing Far Cry 4 and I'm really enjoying the freedom to approach the game as I please.

I agree with you.

It happens all the time

The unskippable cutscenes really suck. I played the campaign twice so I can see the different endings and the fates of some characters. After that, I stuck to Reset Outpost. If the game allowed Reset Outpost in the beginning, I wouldn't even play the campaign.

Right now, Call of Chernobyl has me by the balls. The mod is so addictive to me.

Good thread. The closest I see to HL1 is Max Payne 1 & 2. And even then, Max Payne is not better than HL1. TC, have you tried playing the numerous HL1 mods?? They’re amazing.

@uninspiredcup:

You are looking too far into what I had said. The events of the game are still very scripted--level events and enemy spawns. Replying an area--things will be the same over and over. The variance comes from the ai.

I'm actually not sure what you mean now. We've went from on-the-rails, to linear, to scripting. To replay value.

Again, scripting and linearly is not inherently a negative connotation and nor does the definition mean all games with that tag play the same.

Kim Justice (an excellent youtoober) does a grand job of summarize the difference.between good, and shite.

@uninspiredcup:

I'm saying it shares much in common with what is popular today, or what became popular last gen--so much so that I'd say it popularized how games have highly scripted sequences.

Imo Half Life is better compared to a game like Uncharted.

It did popularize scripted sequences. Call Of Duty took that concept and corrupted it. Because Call Of Duty made a shit ton of money, and Publishers like money, they chased after it. Call Of Duty owed itself to Halflife, but it's not Halflife's fault it and similar ilk are garbage anymore than Marvels fault DC can't make a good Avengers movie.

@uninspiredcup:

I didn't say that. Nobody can deny how popular half life was--hipsters are STILL wearing those fcking glasses. However it is the release that brought that style to the attention of developers.

This answer makes perfect sense.

I hate half Life 1&2 so I would consider every FPS ever made better than those terrible games.

And no, I am not trolling. I legit don’t like Half Life and find them boring.

I have tried multiple times over the past 10-15 years trying to replay those games, but they are so damn boring.

There is no fun to be found in them. I don’t care how “innovative” they were, they suck. Simple as that.

It plays more like the first-gen FPS games I remember than "real" FPS games. ;)

Its gameplay make the STALKER games look like RPGs which in reality, is the way the latter should be played.

I never got far attempting to play Call of Pripyat like it was Doom or something. But, playing it like an RPG is what got me progressing in the game.

I really like Metroid Prime and Bio Shock.

Timesplitters 2.

I'm struggling to think of a single player FPS better than HL2.

As for MP FPS - nothing can compare to Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. It's the best MP shooter ever released. In my humble opinion of course. Shame it's pretty much dead now :((

Certainly one of the best free ones.

Id should repackage Wolf/ET like they did with Quake Live and shove it on Steam.

But that would make too much sense.

Sorry but FF7 introduced nothing evolutionary nor revolutionary to JRPG genre othe than maybe memorable characters and a great sci-fi like story with some twists here and there which again is debatable if even story was great. And this is coming from a huge fan of FF7 like i am which as we speak ive installed FF7 with mods on my PC while ive finished game 5 times already thru the years. Im that huge of a fan. But i have to be honest aside my taste or nostalgia.

Half life pushed and introduced many things in fps genre that 99.99% of other Fps games didnt even think to try at its time. @uninspiredcup did a nice mention of many things HL did for its era and was ahead of competition by far. This was a revolution or a major evolution to a whole genre if that fits better.

Theres a difference to what you comparing here. Half life didnt become a legendary game because of hype, critics scoring and commercial success alone like many other games around including FF7.

@AzatiS:

Regardless of what Half Life did, it's a shell of what it once was thanks to the advancements we've made in fps games over the years. None of that revolutionary jargon makes it any fun to play. That was my point.

HL was nothing short of a milestone. It was very very good in its time. It hasn't aged all that well, but it's influence was huge, and for better, and sometimes worse, it changed FPS games forever.

HL2 wasn't all that great. It debuted the source engine and looked very nice for the time if you had a PC that could run it. It did nothing new, and in a lot of ways was quite boring. It ushered in the scripted battles that overrun modern FPS's and the level design was just plain boring. The story got off track and the whole thing just collapsed under its own weight. The only good thing to come out of HL2 was Steam.