Other Half-Life fans: can you recommend me a new(er) PC game?

The Game Room
1

I’m not a huge PC gamer by any stretch, but I’ve been playing them since the '80s and am now a die-hard fan of the HL series. From HL1 to OppFor to Blue Shift to HL2 and all its episodes, plus a bunch of excellent indie mods such as Minerva Metastesis and Poke646, I’ve played 'em and loved 'em. (I’m four years late to HL2 and the later episodes/mods because I only got a system that could play it last year.)

Now I think it’s time I spread my wings a little. It’s gonna be at least a year until the next HL2 episode and I needs to get my game on! Here’s some info that might help y’all with your recommendations.

(To open up conversation a bit: anyone else agree on any of these preferences? I’d be curious to know if others share my taste.)

Other games I like: Portal!!! I love this game so much I wanna take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant!

Before that I have to go ridiculously old school here – Wolfenstein 3D, Doom I and II, Duke Nuken 3D, the old LucasArts adventures such as Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island and so on, and even the really old side-scrollers Commander Keen and the rest of the fun iD / Apogee collection. Hell I’ll throw in the Infocom text adventures while I’m at it, so you can see a) my love of puzzles/smart games and b) my ancientness.

Other games I’ve tried but didn’t like: Psychonauts, but only because of the control problems – if I’d just been able to work my little guy I think I’d have loved its sensibility and gameplay. BioShock (just the demo) didn’t run very well on my system, and honestly the gameplay seemed to alternate between chaotic attacks by ridiculously repetitive, unthinking enemies and convoluted power-up/‘weapons’. I know it’s gorgeous, with a very cool creepy environment and according to many reviews some interesting storytelling choices towards the end. But it seemed convoluted to me.

What I have, systemwise: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ 2.3 GHz with 2gig of memory, ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB card. Running Vista Home. So it’s not exactly a screaming gameplaying machine. As a result I don’t mind older games at all, if they’re good.

What I need: solid single-player games. I’ve never dared try multiplayer because I know I kinda suck and I know I’d get my ass handed to me in under a second. So please no games with half-hearted single player.

What I hope for: FPS ideally but I’m not averse to adventure or even a cool sidescroller/platformer as long as it’s possible to play it on keyboard/mouse. I also would like atmosphere, intelligence, decent AI (especially in an FPS), a variety of gameplay, humor if possible (though not essential if it doesn’t fit the storyline), interesting storyline (though that’s optional … I mean, before I found HL1 my favorite FPS was storylineless Doom!).

What I don’t want: Games that are too freakin’ hard on a PC. For example, Psychonauts seems excellent in style and humor, but in the demo my keyboard/mouse failed me when it came to trying to control my character. I also don’t particularly like war games, though for some reason Call of Duty tempts me. RTS, RPGs, sports and sims don’t interest me.

Whew! Any ideas? Or if not, anyone care to discuss some of the HL mods you’ve enjoyed, or some of the other games I mentioned?

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Scrolling through what I have installed right now, I came up with the following. All are FPS, none are WWII-themed.

F.E.A.R.: Good shooter, some creepy and scary moments, above-average enemy AI. Amazing gunfights - walls get chipped away and after a furious shootout you’re left listening to the echoes die away while the smoke clears. It can be fairly demanding on your system, as it’s the most recent game on this list. Download a demo and see how it performs.

Far Cry: Another solid choice. It has amazing visuals but has been out for a while so your system should handle it fine. Equal parts fun and challenging, as you can choose how you want to fight many of the battles.

No One Lives Forever 1 and 2: The oldest games here, so don’t expect to be wowed by the graphics. But the gameplay - oh, my! Great story, tons of humor (banana peel!) and amazing atmosphere. Think 60s spy movie send-up with a female protagonist. One mission you are taking out a bad guy with a sniper rifle and the next you are chasing a mime down some back alley on a scooter. Crazy amounts of fun!

Tron 2.0: Set in the universe of the movie TRON, if that means anything to you. A very solid shooter that mixes things up with upgrades and computer-related weapons. I loved the whole feel of the game, from the music to the feeling of running around inside a computer.

Hopefully you can find something on that list that you enjoy. You shouldn’t have to spend more than $10 on any of those games, either.

3

Check out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl. It’s an FPS set around the Chernobyl nuclear plant after a second “incident” creates an area of “anomalies” around it called the Zone.

Decent AI, interesting enemies and environment and atmospheric as hell. Be warned, it is more difficult than any of the Half-Life games; its very easy to die from gunfire and your opponents will duck behind cover and try to circle behind you.

Gets kind of weird at the very end, but hey…

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HL is only 3rd best game on my all time list because of Deus Ex and System Shock 2. I like both of these games more because of the character development within the game (you can choose to develop different traits or skills to make the gameplay different). Tied for 3rd is Far Cry. No character development, but absolutely stunning outdoor scenes and multiple ways to complete different missions.

ETA: Plus these games are a little older so should play well on your rig

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Those all sound great, guys, thank you very much! You’ve all given me good stuff to browse on Steam or other venues.

I’ve been eyeing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (God did the makers know how annoying this would be to type?) for a while thanks to the many descriptions of its awesomeness over at Rock Paper Shotgun, but I can’t imagine my system will be happy with it. Which is a shame, because I do enjoy exploring. One of my favorite sections of HL2 was the waterboat segment, where – when you weren’t being chased by the helicopter – you could just zoom around and soak up the atmosphere and poke around the reeds for goodies. (HL2:E2 was similar with the car and the White Forest driving scenes.) But I know the HL games are ‘on rails’ as opposed to giving you multiple options, which is the one slight downside to them. It would definitely be interesting to see what a non-rails game would be like.

Actually System Shock 2 has intrigued me also because of all the Portal fans who mention that GLaDOS seems to be a ‘relative’ of ‘Shodan’ (who’s apparently an evil AI in that game too?). OTOH I understand it’s a forerunner of BioShock, so if the gameplay is similar that lets me out.

F.E.A.R. (is that by the same people who made S.T.A.L.K.E.R.??) sounds terrific, as do the others. The No One Lives Forever series in particular seems … unique!

Would you recommend Deus Ex for me, Fear the Turtle? I’ve seen so many people who love that game.

Thank you all again for the recs! And please feel free to keep 'em coming.

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In your OP, you sound a lot like me! I love HL and certain mods, like They Hunger. (zombie mod! Yay!!) And, I even downloaded a little program to reverse my mouse axes, thinking that if I ran it first, and then played Psychonauts, they would cancel each other out. (so that the mouse would act normal.) It didn’t work. >sigh<

I like NOLF a lot. I also love love Tomb Raider; but real gamers sneer at me when I say that.

There is another game called Heavy Metal FAKK 2 that is REALLY cool. Apart from the fact that the protagonist has such enormous tits that she looks as though she must surely fall over forwards when she swings her broadsword, the gameplay is well-varied, there are lots of creepy aliens to vanquish, and there’s a really good backstory. The scenery is terrific, and the characters and monsters are wildly imaginative. I just love it!

There’s another one called Prey that I liked, but others seem to feel that it’s too easy because you can’t die. Maybe so; but I find it annoying sometimes, having to re-spawn all the time, or forgetting to save & having to go waaa-aaaay back when you get fragged.

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You should also look at Bioshock. That’s going to be my next purchase. NOLF and NOLF 2 are excellent games. I loved Far Cry, but the story is…well, “weak” would be giving it too much credit. I also liked FEAR. I didn’t get as far into STALKER (see how I’m cheating about the titles?), but that was because it was so damned hard I got frustrated.

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I’d definitely recommend Deus Ex, System Shock, and Bioshock. The first two games will run on your system if you can do HL2; Bioshock well might not (I bought a new computer, and I still had to buy a new video card, in order to run the game; I’m a fanboy of those guys). The AI is not as good in Bioshock as it is in HL, I think, but Deus Ex IIRC has a great AI, and System Shock has some pretty interesting enemies.

You can probably get them both for super-cheap, which is an advantage.

Daniel

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If you do get Deus Ex, don’t bother with the sequel. It was no where near as good as the original.

BioShock was very different from SS2, so if you have reservations about BioShock, they shouldn’t effect your opinion of SS2. Never played the original System Shock, so I can’t speak for that.

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Deus Ex has awful, awful AI, but is nevertheless a fantastic game.

System Shock 2 is among my favorite games of all time, but there is a major caveat I have when recommending it: the combat is not good and the engine has not aged well. If you want to play a run and gun FPS, you will be disappointed. If, however, you want to play a game with an incredible story and atmosphere and one of the most memorable antagonists ever, you can’t do better.

No One Lives Forever is another great suggestion if you can get into that sort of humor. If I remember correctly, though, the first game hasn’t aged all that well. There are a lot of stealth levels where you’ll probably have to do a lot of saving and reloading. The second one, however, pretty much always gives you the choice between stealth and guns blazing and is generally more forgiving and, in my opinion, more fun.

STALKER is good, but be forewarned: it is much slower than pretty much all the other games being suggested. You’ll be running around and exploring a lot and may end up doing more backtracking than many people are comfortable with. If you have the patience, though, it is great.

FEAR is a very solid FPS. Can’t go wrong with it.

I’m gonna toss in my own suggestion, Max Payne and its sequel. They’re third person shooters and tons of fun. The writing is intentionally over the top in a gritty, noirish style and is great if you like that sort of thing, as I do. The sequel is a much better, in my opinion, and has aged pretty well. Plenty of fun running and gunning.

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Thanks, Fear the Turtle and Garula.

I should probably know this, but what exactly is ‘running and gunning’? I suppose it might be self-explanatory – just running around and shooting everything in sight, basically? If that’s the case, I’m not wedded to that style of play. I rather like some stealth exploring.

Can you tell me more about SystemShock II? The enemy intrigues me. Ditto with Deus Ex. I have to admit that a smart AI would be nice but let’s face it, HL2’s enemy AI isn’t exactly stellar. Not compared to HL1, anyway. Those marines were tricky bastards, way smarter and harder to kill than the combine.

(For that matter, I’m such a crappy player myself that maybe I don’t need too smart an enemy! Sometimes I think how funny it’d be to see a video of my character playing, like a third person flashback. It’d be a hoot to see so-called warrior genius-hero Gordon Freeman, as played by choie, running headlong right into combine fire, pointlessly smacking a Hunger with a crowbar, and ramming his car into every obstacle along the road to White Forest. I’m very very lame.

So where do y’all recommend I get these older games? I’m so used to the ease of buying stuff on Steam that I’ve been spoiled; a lot of these games aren’t available there.

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Ebay. I got a copy of an out-of-print Tomb Raider 5 there for quite cheap.

God, now you really sound like me! I panic in gunfights and my bullets-to-hits ratios are always very, very sad! But actually, in HalfLife I’ve found that running straight into enemy fire is often a good strategy, particularly with those %$#@&!! automatic machine guns.

Yeeesh, I forgot to mention my all-time favorite game, American McGee’s Alice. It’s not for everyone; but it’s worth playing for the music alone. And the giant clockwork! And the murderous Duchess! And the gorgeous green mirror maze in the asylum! And the Chess World!

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It runs acceptably on my machine, which is some way short of yours (A64 3000+, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB), so I think it’d probably be all right. And I can second the recommendations; despite some frequently annoying quirks, it’s one of the most fascinating games I’ve played in years. Can’t wait to see what their follow-up is like.

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I’ve got almost exactly the same system as the OP, albeit with a 256mb nVidia 8600GTS graphics card, and Bioshock runs beautifully on my system. It’s a really, really good game, and well worth playing.

I hated STALKER, though, which is odd- in theory, it should have been one of my favourite games, but in actuality it was buggy, illogical, glacial, and not very engaging.

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Hey guys. Thanks for the latest recs, Martini Enfield, Dead Badger and brujaja (s’up my fellow lousy but enthusiastic FPSer! :D).

So here’s an obstacle I didn’t think of when asking about older games: Vista. Looks like most of the coolest games mentioned here (F.E.A.R., Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever and System Shock 2) all have serious issues in my OS. Crapples.

As a result my first venture into Non-Valve FPS Territory (Post-2004 Division) will be … drumroll please … S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which is available on Steam for less than $20. I’ve taken into account the negatives you mention, Martini Enfield, and weighed them against the other folks’ positives, plus the awesome reviews over at my favorite gaming blog such as Why I Still Play STALKER and Advent Calendar: STALKER.

My guess is I’ll probably suck at it and will get frustrated and will come back to it weeks later only to continue to suck, but gradually improve and play despite my suckitude. Throughout it all I’m sure I’ll enjoy all the pretty. Plus the creepy.

In the meantime if anyone has suggestions for Vista-compatible FPSes – or for experience in making those older games work okay in Vista – please do continue to reply!

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Medal Of Honour: Airborne is a comparatively short but still pretty fun FPS. The first two Call of Duty games are also pretty enjoyable and win serious brownie points for featuring English and Russian soldiers and weapons, and I thoroughly enjoyed Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault as well.

Deus Ex is the greatest and best computer game ever created, IMHO- sharing the top of the gaming’s Mt. Olympus with Fallout/Fallout 2 and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. You should be able to get it to run in Vista using “Compatability Mode”- install the game as per normal, then right-click on the game’s dekstop icon, select “properties”, then the “compatability” tab. Select the checkbox “Run this program in compatability mode for” then select “Windows XP (Service Pack 2)”. Problem solved, for the most part. :slight_smile:

There are a few games that just won’t run under Vista, though; Max Payne, Scarface, and The Movies are the main three I’ve come across.

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As has been said, the AI in Deus Ex is awful. If you’re in an vent or something you can shoot a guy, hide for 20 seconds, and they’re forget all about you. Repeat and everything dies. Also, it’s amazing. It’s one of the best games ever. Oh man is it good. The world is in a state of collapse, lots of conspiracy theory type things are going on. I’m not going to say much more because the story is the best part about the game and it would be a shame if you didn’t get to explore it on your own. You can go about the game in two broad categories. You can be stealthy or you can shoot everything. You can go about both of those objectives in different ways. You can pick locks or you can blow the door up with a grenade. You can augment your abilities with skill increases and will nanotech augmentation. There’s lots more, you really should just go buy it though and start playing.

You can get it on Steam I believe.

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A word of advice, regarding STALKER: I thoroughly enjoyed it, but, when coupled with the character’s low carrying capacity, I found the stamina system to be agonizing: the merchants are so few and far between that you often find yourself deciding between scrapping good-quality equipment in order to keep moving forward or spending a long, long, long time walking back to camp to sell. If this ends up being a problem, I’ve found that the infinite stamina cheat significantly eases the grind effect.

In case you’re curious, to activate the cheat you simply need to:

open the console and enter “g_always_run 1” without the quotation marks. “g_always_run 0” will de-activate it.

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If you only play one game in the rest of your life, well, that would be an odd decision to have made, but if that one game is Deus Ex, it’s at least understandable.

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If you’re going to play STALKER you’re going to want to install the Oblivion Lost mod, which is a mod for the game made by an insanely dedicated and talented fan, that makes it about a hundred billion times better and more realistic. Along with improved system performance, better character models, more carrying capacity and stamina, there are things like all the guns having their real names instead of made-up ones and other little details that improve the experience. All the info that you could ever want about DLing and installing that mod and other mods, here.

It’s a great game. Very shitty ending, I agree, but the fun is in the journey.