Half-Life 10 Years Old Today

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Half-Life 10 Years Old Today

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 11:06am 20/11/08 | 37 Comments

Our Valve contact has reminded us that today sparks the 10th birthday of everyone's favourite sci-fi first-person shooter series, Half-Life. The mute every-day-man, Gordon Freeman, first dealt with the Black Mesa Incident back in 1998 as the protagonist in Valve's debut product as a development studio.

Launched 10 years ago today, Half-Life was greeted with overwhelming review scores (Metacritic of 96%), earned over 50 Game of the Year Awards, and birthed a franchise with over 20 million units sold to date.

Clearly Freeman's success throughout the last 10 years resonates now as Valve is one of the most respected games developers/publishers/distributors in the industry.

Can you remember when you first played Half-Life?

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parabol
Posted 11:07am 20/11/08

Summary:

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 11:10am 20/11/08

^^that was awesome

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Lynx
Posted 11:13am 20/11/08

Half-Life 1 is available on steam for 98c today only too.

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ravn0s
Posted 11:27am 20/11/08

hahaha

"Blah blah blah Mr Freeman"

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Spook
Posted 11:30am 20/11/08

wow, cant believe its been 10 years:

still remember the joy of playing through this on my amdk6-2 300 with voodoo2 (struggled, had to upgrade to a tnt2 for moar frames)

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MrHardware
Posted 11:31am 20/11/08

First played this in 2000 on a celeron 566, onboard video into a Voodoo2.

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thermite
Posted 11:35am 20/11/08

HL always crashed for me when I got up the bit with the ninja bitch in black vinyl. Shame I was getting into the plot too.

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trog
Posted 11:39am 20/11/08

Can you remember when you first played Half-Life?

I sure can! I remember walking around a corner then waiting 5 minutes for it to load, then walking around another corner and waiting again. Also sometimes, you'd walk around another corner and it would load some more.

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scuzzy
Posted 11:40am 20/11/08

Ha, nicely done.

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mongie
Posted 11:44am 20/11/08

Remember that this game basically invented the story-based FPS. I remember watching the intro movie and thinking that this was going to be the best game ever.

(it was pretty close).

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Articuz
Posted 11:46am 20/11/08

this game scared the shit out of me back in the day...

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VRBones
Posted 12:03pm 20/11/08

I played it because I was told the enemy were smarter. After 5 minutes I turned it off, never to play it again. Smarter must have translated to "Smarter than the last shooter and only if you had ever played shooters and not multiplayer".

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Snakeman
Posted 12:09pm 20/11/08

Yeh but the AI was pretty good for its time, even though it was scripted. Apart from Quake 2 this is one of the first games to use online keys thus forcing me to go out and buy it. Money well spent IMO

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demon
Posted 12:24pm 20/11/08

haha that vid is tops parabol :D

yeh i remember buying halflife thinking this'll changeup the deathmatch a bit... then dethon got the gluon gun, spawn rape, spawn rape, spawn rape, this game sux, the end. :D

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parabol
Posted 12:31pm 20/11/08

yeh i remember buying halflife thinking this'll changeup the deathmatch a bit...

Or HL2 deathmatch?

toilet-death, toilet-death, toilet-death.

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reload!
Posted 12:40pm 20/11/08

if it wernt for half life every fps would still be like quake

ie shit

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ctd
Posted 12:44pm 20/11/08

HLDM rocked if you could use that gauss cannon+jump pack properly. Otherwise you were noobd all day.

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Fireblood
Posted 02:06pm 20/11/08

Ha I remember lanning back in the day to HL, one of the guys was super leet. Would always pwn everyone, then I spammed that charge up lightning bolt gun and fluke killed him, gawd he was pissed, then he came back a 2nd time and I killed him again! MWHAHA....then he pwned my ass the rest of the game :(

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demon
Posted 02:49pm 20/11/08

if it wernt for half life every fps would still be like quake

nah. halflife brought nothing new to the game. it was made from the quake/q2 source so that's not surprising. everything in multiplayer hl was already done in quake with mods.

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Freewheelin
Posted 03:09pm 20/11/08

so hl1 is about $1.50au on steam today? id buy it again because.. well just to throw money away

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Lithium
Posted 04:17pm 20/11/08

Still the best game ever made IMO.

First played it in 2002 on Celeron with onbaord video.. i used cheats to finish it -.-

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TicMan
Posted 04:27pm 20/11/08

Half-Life 1 is available on steam for 98c today only too.

Until someone points out the conversion rate and we end up paying AU$89.95

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Chucky
Posted 05:06pm 20/11/08

$1.50 or so for a game...why not.
Thought i might as well buy it when it's cheap, otherwise i probably won't ever bother playing it

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Protius
Posted 05:12pm 20/11/08

Who could forget the most awesome game ever created that is spawned!!?!

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HeardY
Posted 06:37pm 20/11/08

HLDM was mad cainer.

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koopz
Posted 08:06pm 20/11/08

Can you remember when you first played Half-Life?

yeah I can.. I packed the bear neccesities into my backpack (mobo/K62 300 chip/512mb ram, tnt vid card and Quantum 6gig hdd) and went to Launceston, Tassie to hook up with the old Vision locals (little bro and his mates) for a lan or two :)

playing the CS betas meant far more to me though.

fun game, great to play on dialup, and best of all free of hackers.

my, how things change :/

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Spook
Posted 08:09pm 20/11/08

repect koopz, k6-2 brothers

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nF
Posted 08:18pm 20/11/08

hl1 was awesome right up until you got to zen.

then it sucked balls.

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Raider
Posted 09:18pm 20/11/08

hldm, cs v1.. aww those were the days.. where u had to lead with your sniper cause of flag, head shotting SAS nubs (the clan)

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Carson
Posted 09:18pm 20/11/08

I agree with nF. I was so confused for a few years about what purpose Zen had and that guy with the fat head. Even today, I am not sure where in the game it's explained.

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Creepy
Posted 01:30am 21/11/08

I wonder if there's a new vid that covers episode 1 and 2...

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Le Infidel
Posted 02:20am 21/11/08

why do they always have to put aliens in games to fuck them up?

- duke 3d
- hl1
- far cry

thats all i can remmeber now

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fpot
Posted 02:44am 21/11/08

How did aliens fuck up duke3d???

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nF
Posted 08:48am 21/11/08

they busted up his ride

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ravn0s
Posted 11:48pm 21/11/08

if anyone is interested, the mod team that is remaking half life using the orange box source engine have just updated their site with new images etc. its looking bloody sexeh.

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whoop
Posted 11:58pm 21/11/08

^^ they should use the crytek engine

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Kimbo
Posted 01:13am 25/11/08

Far Cry wasn't aliens it was genetic technology.

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