I have just finished the Half-Life series. Prompted by the 20th anniversary of HL2, I decided to play HL1 (1997), then HL2 (2004), and both episodes. I’m currently playing through Black Mesa and it’s very enjoyable so far, it’s like they took everything from HL1 and removed the annoying parts, I’m excited to see what more changes they decided to make, and what other references are present.
HL1 aged badly imo, but I recognize the technical achievement that it was at the time it was released. It’s full of good ideas, and I’m amazed by what they’ve accomplished.
HL2 didn’t feel like a it has a technical leap as big as its predecessor, but the gameplay ideas in there feel more modern than most game 20 years later. The game has some long stretches that were a bit annoying but the whole journey felt worth it. During the last chapter where you get the upgraded gravity gun, I started seeing the seeds of Portal games, more so in Episode 1, it was like I suddenly understood Valve as game devs and their philosophy. Episode 2 was the most fun I had and despite being short it felt like a full fledged campaign.
Alyx was fun to watch on youtube 🤡
I’m really happy that I completed the games and can put them down (compared to grinding endlessly in live service games), I’m really glad that I now understand why the series is praised, why people are aching for the third Episode, why Valve backed themselves into a corner because of their technical ambitions.
But now, I want more of this, more of those one of a kind experiences that push the genre forward. More gameplay ideas. I’ll probably replay the Portal games, but what other games would you recommend?
Some times, Half Life reminded me of more modern immersive sims I played before (Dishonored, Prey, I’ll probably go back to them at some point), maybe Deux Ex, System Shock should be on my list?
For historical perspective developed in parallel with Half-Life 2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is worth a look. With Call of Duty being the revenue juggernaut it is now, I think we sometimes forget how it started. Allied Assault is a landmark game that’s an ancestor in CoD’s lineage.
On the other end of the timeline, the founders of the studio that developed the original Call of Duty went on to make Titanfall. Titanfall 2 has an excellent single-player campaign that holds up very well.
Mirror’s Edge: wholly unique, meh story but fun gameplay. More accessible than Kreedzmod but similar vibe of first person platforming and emphasis on ‘flow’ like you’d perform irl in parkour. Get it on sale, under $10/€10 it’s worth it
Knights of the Old Republic: D20 based RPG set in pre-BBY Star Wars universe. Excellent story and characterization, great gameplay and progression - I’ve replayed it at least six times. If you like Mass Effect at all you should enjoy this. The sequel is worthy but not the same gem that moved the genre, but a worthy title
Deus Ex 1: Unmissable. Accept the inventory management jank, it’s a product of its time. Absolutely worth buying
Fallout 1 (and 2): Revolutionized the top down RPGs of the time, but will feel dated in retrospect. Make sure you save manually and make choices carefully, you can dead-end your play through or loose hours of progress because there’s no auto save
STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl: Diceroll on this title, you’ll either hate it or love it if you enjoyed Fallout 3, 4, NV, etc. Great mood and atmosphere, solid progression once you get out of the starter areas, and understand the monster’s behavior. Dont you dare join Duty tho
Freespace 2: Personal recommendation but nieche. “Flight sim space combat” is too simplistic yet accurate, but has excellent gameplay and story tone. Technically Descent 1 & 2 were the revolutionary games, but those have zero plot beyond arcade shooter ‘kill aliens for highscore’. Went open source years ago, and has a dedicated mod team keeping it alive and adding features.
Command and Conquer Red Alert: The daddy of almost all RTS games, but you’ll have more fun with Red Alert 2 imo. Story is meh, but if you go online be ready to get smurfed hard by veterans.
And they abandoned the IP to focus on Saints Row 😥
FS2 was the first game that really ‘caught’ my attention. Other game were fun sure and had bigger budgets or larger market appeal, but FS maintained that narrative tone of a existential struggle to survive in a cold and uncaring universe, humanity ignorantly plodding the galaxy and awakening xenophobic forces beyond our comprehension.
FS1 is also excellent, but it’s a rare event when the sequel is hands down the better game in almost all aspects, while respecting the source material and keeping the story moving while being faithful to that original tone
Knights of the Old Republic: D20 based RPG set in pre-BBY Star Wars universe. Excellent story and characterization, great gameplay and progression - I’ve replayed it at least six times. If you like Mass Effect at all you should enjoy this. The sequel is worthy but not the same gem that moved the genre, but a worthy title
The sequel has Sara Kestelman as Kreia, that alone makes it worth playing IMHO.
Maybe I was a little jilted coming into Kotor 2 directly after Kotor 1 - I really enjoyed the sequel, but you can feel the cut content in some areas, whereas the first game feels ‘complete’.
I might owe it another play through, it has been a while
It’s a shame they forced them to release it unfinished. If you decide to play it, install the Restored Content Mod from the Steam Workshop. It restores a lot of cut content, making the game a bit more complete.
If you want to play more Portal, try community-made campaigns! I recommend in particular Portal: Revolution, a prequel to Portal 2 that features a few new mechanics, and Portal Stories: Mel, which has basically no new mechanics but turns up the difficulty by making you combine mechanics in clever ways.
Bastion — Action RPG with a rich story and lush art. A humble narrator tells the story of a place literally torn apart by war, and you play the kid trying to rebuild. This was the debut game from Supergiant Games, which later made Hades.
Tunic — Mysterious, exploration-focused adventure. A little guy in a green tunic picks up a sword and goes on an adventure, but the game is in an unknown language and you only have a few pages of the manual. It’s like a metroidvania but your progress is based on knowledge.
More “genre pushers”:
Puzzle games
Mosa Lina — It calls itself “a hostile interpretation of the immersive sim”. It’s an aggressively random puzzle platformer where the levels are random and the tools you have to solve them are also random. Mosa Lina is a puzzle game that wants you to be clever, not smart.
Viewfinder — First-person “photography” puzzles. The featured mechanic has a “wow” factor that rivals Portal’s: Take a picture of the level, then hold up the photo and click to copy the photo back into the level. The plot is pretty meh, but like the original Portal, it’s pretty damn short.
Baba is You — Push blocks and break rules. Blocks with words written on them define the rules of the game: Baba is you, wall is stop, flag is win. The rules themselves are puzzle pieces. If you can’t solve the puzzle, change the rules!
Inscryption — You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It’s an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be. You want one-of-a-kind experiences? This is one of them.
The Stanley Parable — Comedy walking simulator. You enter a room with two doors in front of you. The narrator says, “Stanley entered the door on his left.” What will you do? The Stanley Parable has many endings and it questions what video game narratives are really for.
100% yes on Talos principle, and I will openly simp for Antichamber. I have never had my brain so full of fuck as that game, simply sublime progression and variety of puzzles👌
In the years since I finished Antichamber, my opinion of it has cooled somewhat with hindsight. The early game and some of the mid-game are full of dazzling, logic-defying spectacles, which is what draws you in, but the magic fades later on and you get a lot of puzzles with the block gun until the ending. The teaching style mostly works.
The team for black mesa is working on Black Mesa Blue Shift, where you play out half life 1 through the eyes of Barney! I have been meaning to go through the latest chapter that was released. It is on the steam workshop for black mesa.
Deus Ex and System Shock should definitely be on your list, just skip Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Also, as I don’t see them listed, did you check out Blue Shift and Opposing Forces? They’re 2 Half-Life expansions made by Gearbox, back in the day, that show the events of HL1 from different points of view.
Thanks! I knew of their existence but didn’t know if they were worth it, I think I’ll play them a bit later because at some point I was really struggling with the pacing of HL1
I’ve noticed that no one has mentioned Decay yet. It’s a two player coop expansion campaign also made by Gearbox for the Half Life 1 release for PS2. There’s a PC port with a singleplayer mode.
Like others keep saying, check out the System Shock remake. It’s fantastic.
But also with Black Mesa, another team is remaking Blue Shift within that game, and you can get it as a workshop addon for free. They actually just came out with the next level they’ve been working on a couple weeks ago. So far, it’s pretty damn great imo.
Deus ex and system shock 2 should definitely be on a retro shooter/rpg list.
Shock 1, you’d probably be better off playing night dives shock remake from last year… or perhaps a modified remaster of the OG. The controls from shock1 are outright painful
It really impressed me with its detail and scope as a mainly solo effort, by a developer who worked at Valve for a while. It’s a big, cinematic shooting adventure, like Half-Life, so the game calls itself a half-like! There are cool bosses, memorable characters, and wildly varied environments. The story is pretty much a flipped Half-Life: you’re the alien who got teleported in after a big science disaster and you’re fighting your way back home. Compared to Alyx, which takes places around a handful of city blocks, Vertigo 2 throws you around a much larger-scale setting, so it’s more like the Half-Life 2 kind of linear gallery of wild shit.
Maybe the Metro or BioShock series? They play quite a bit differently, but they scratch the same itch for me, and I see them on sale quite a bit (especially Metro).
Oh yeah I forgot to mention them, I absolutely love the metro series, I actually read metro 2033 before discovering there was a game about it haha, never played the Redux versions though, thanks for the idea !!
The redux version of the first game actually looks worse in my opinion. The textures may be better in spots but the art design suffers because of it. Unfortunately you cannot buy the original anymore. I don’t remember exactly but I think (fact check me here) that the redux version of last light was much similar and not as large of a change.
HL2 didn’t feel like a it has a technical leap as big as its predecessor
Gotta disagree with you on this one. Half Life was basically the Quake 2 engine with different textures and models. It was applauded for being a good game, it did not really set any technical benchmarks.
Half Life 2 was absolutely mind blowing with the physics, facial animations, and shaders. It’s the first game I can recall with that level of physics realism, and set the stage for many games to come. The Source engine was a massive technical leap from Quake engine.
Seeing the HL2 E3 demo was a peak moment in my gaming life.
Give the Deus Ex series a try, the story in the original is IMO one of the best, and the later games have awesome stealth and cool world building.
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For historical perspective developed in parallel with Half-Life 2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is worth a look. With Call of Duty being the revenue juggernaut it is now, I think we sometimes forget how it started. Allied Assault is a landmark game that’s an ancestor in CoD’s lineage.
On the other end of the timeline, the founders of the studio that developed the original Call of Duty went on to make Titanfall. Titanfall 2 has an excellent single-player campaign that holds up very well.
Very much free space 2 here. 99 was a fine year for games.
And they abandoned the IP to focus on Saints Row 😥
FS2 was the first game that really ‘caught’ my attention. Other game were fun sure and had bigger budgets or larger market appeal, but FS maintained that narrative tone of a existential struggle to survive in a cold and uncaring universe, humanity ignorantly plodding the galaxy and awakening xenophobic forces beyond our comprehension.
FS1 is also excellent, but it’s a rare event when the sequel is hands down the better game in almost all aspects, while respecting the source material and keeping the story moving while being faithful to that original tone
As for the last, OpenRA is good too if you played RA(2)
The sequel has Sara Kestelman as Kreia, that alone makes it worth playing IMHO.
Maybe I was a little jilted coming into Kotor 2 directly after Kotor 1 - I really enjoyed the sequel, but you can feel the cut content in some areas, whereas the first game feels ‘complete’.
I might owe it another play through, it has been a while
It’s a shame they forced them to release it unfinished. If you decide to play it, install the Restored Content Mod from the Steam Workshop. It restores a lot of cut content, making the game a bit more complete.
Excellent listw thank you for the links!!
More action and environmental storytelling:
More “genre pushers”:
Puzzle Games:
The Talos Principal 1 & 2
100% yes on Talos principle, and I will openly simp for Antichamber. I have never had my brain so full of fuck as that game, simply sublime progression and variety of puzzles👌
In the years since I finished Antichamber, my opinion of it has cooled somewhat with hindsight. The early game and some of the mid-game are full of dazzling, logic-defying spectacles, which is what draws you in, but the magic fades later on and you get a lot of puzzles with the block gun until the ending. The teaching style mostly works.
I went into Inscryption blind and had an absolute blast once I got the hang of it. What an awesome little game.
I’ve been getting into boomer shooters and some more “retro” styled games.
Selaco and Hedon: Bloodrite are imo more immersive sim than boomer shooters, but they can still fit that description as well.
The team for black mesa is working on Black Mesa Blue Shift, where you play out half life 1 through the eyes of Barney! I have been meaning to go through the latest chapter that was released. It is on the steam workshop for black mesa.
Quarter-Life.
Good luck. I’ve played them countless times and they are installed permanently on my drive. 🙂
Hahaha well I have all of HL2’s achievements to complete
Deus Ex and System Shock should definitely be on your list, just skip Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Also, as I don’t see them listed, did you check out Blue Shift and Opposing Forces? They’re 2 Half-Life expansions made by Gearbox, back in the day, that show the events of HL1 from different points of view.
Invisible War is fine. It doesn’t live up to the orginal but it’s still a good game.
Thanks! I knew of their existence but didn’t know if they were worth it, I think I’ll play them a bit later because at some point I was really struggling with the pacing of HL1
I’ve noticed that no one has mentioned Decay yet. It’s a two player coop expansion campaign also made by Gearbox for the Half Life 1 release for PS2. There’s a PC port with a singleplayer mode.
Opposing Forces is the better of the two, but if you enjoyed the general story/feel of Half-Life, they’re definitely worth at least giving a shot.
The System Shock remake was amazing, definitely give it a shot!
there is an ongoing project to remake them for black mesa, so if you wait you’ll probably get a better experience.
Like others keep saying, check out the System Shock remake. It’s fantastic.
But also with Black Mesa, another team is remaking Blue Shift within that game, and you can get it as a workshop addon for free. They actually just came out with the next level they’ve been working on a couple weeks ago. So far, it’s pretty damn great imo.
Hey I liked invisible war :/
Then add Thief 1&2 to the list so that you really get where those two came from. They both still hold up surprisingly well due to fan support.
I can’t believe I forgot the Thief games! Absolute classics. I need to get around to replaying them sometime soon.
I’d love to see a System Shock remake type project for them. It’s not as necessary due to NewDark but would still be nice.
Half-Life and Half-Life 2 have plenty of really good mods if you are interested in those, Black Mesa started as just a mod as well.
Some of my favourites for HL2:
Some of my favourites for HL1:
There are many more that I haven’t mentioned / played myself.
Deus ex and system shock 2 should definitely be on a retro shooter/rpg list. Shock 1, you’d probably be better off playing night dives shock remake from last year… or perhaps a modified remaster of the OG. The controls from shock1 are outright painful
Alyx was really fun. The first time a soldier reacted to my reaching out and touching them with my controller scared the bejeezus out of me!
The audio in the game is bonkers. Distant footsteps or floor creaking can really get you.
It’s the only really compelling VR application I have yet tried.
I’ll suggest Vertigo 2 as a worthy followup.
It really impressed me with its detail and scope as a mainly solo effort, by a developer who worked at Valve for a while. It’s a big, cinematic shooting adventure, like Half-Life, so the game calls itself a half-like! There are cool bosses, memorable characters, and wildly varied environments. The story is pretty much a flipped Half-Life: you’re the alien who got teleported in after a big science disaster and you’re fighting your way back home. Compared to Alyx, which takes places around a handful of city blocks, Vertigo 2 throws you around a much larger-scale setting, so it’s more like the Half-Life 2 kind of linear gallery of wild shit.
That DOES look good! I really appreciate you telling me about it.
It wasn’t mentioned yet: Abiotic Factor is essentially Half-Life 1 but with coop.
If you have a friend or two interested in the same type of game I can only recommend it.
Maybe the Metro or BioShock series? They play quite a bit differently, but they scratch the same itch for me, and I see them on sale quite a bit (especially Metro).
Oh yeah I forgot to mention them, I absolutely love the metro series, I actually read metro 2033 before discovering there was a game about it haha, never played the Redux versions though, thanks for the idea !!
The redux version of the first game actually looks worse in my opinion. The textures may be better in spots but the art design suffers because of it. Unfortunately you cannot buy the original anymore. I don’t remember exactly but I think (fact check me here) that the redux version of last light was much similar and not as large of a change.
Gotta disagree with you on this one. Half Life was basically the Quake 2 engine with different textures and models. It was applauded for being a good game, it did not really set any technical benchmarks.
Half Life 2 was absolutely mind blowing with the physics, facial animations, and shaders. It’s the first game I can recall with that level of physics realism, and set the stage for many games to come. The Source engine was a massive technical leap from Quake engine.
Seeing the HL2 E3 demo was a peak moment in my gaming life.
Give the Deus Ex series a try, the story in the original is IMO one of the best, and the later games have awesome stealth and cool world building.
FYI, there’s an No-VR mod for Alyx in case you want to play it, and lack of a headset is what’s stopping you.