So, thanks to numerous Steam sales, I own all the Half-Life games. I loaded up 1 and found it pretty good despite it's age and I'm debating on when to play 2. I'm wondering if I should wait until HL 3 is announced to load it up. I know the torture fans are going through because of other series I've become a fan of that had long lapses before the next part is made. So HL fans should I join you in your torturous wait or play when the new one is announced.

Just play it, HL3 might not even be announced anytime soon and I wouldn't say that the story is forgettable enough to not remember anything if another HL game comes out.

2004

play it, you still have episodes 1 and 2 to check out after it

Whenever you have time. That's a real good game.

people have been waiting for HL3 to be announced since 2005. If you wait to play HL2 until HL3 is announced you might never play it.

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

ASAP

@AndrewVerse said:

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

it's not THAT bad.. the only bad thing i can say (without having tried the game for the last 2-3years) is that the water textures repeat waaaaaaaaaaay to often, so it's like looking at minecraft water. (the blockyness of them, not the textures themselves, if that makes sense?)

You should play it, but you shouldn't feel bad if you feel the need to noclip through some of it or otherwise cheat. That game really drags in a lot of really unfortunate ways.

Play it right now for sure.

It will be well worth a few more playthroughs before HL3 actually arrives anyway.

When you have a computer that can make it look good.

Now. Nownownow.

@AndrewVerse said:

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

I would disagree and say that it has aged really well. The graphics are a little bit dated yet but the gameplay is still excellent. I played though it a few months ago and was suprised at how much fun it was. It is still one the best FPS games ever in my opinion.

I wouldn't say you ever NEED to play it. Its not that the game isnt good, it just doesn't exactly live up to the praise people give it. If your going to play it then just play it. Dont bother waiting on HL3 announcements.

Play it as soon as possible. That game is only going to age and if you really need something to tide you over until the hypothetical HL3 then there's always HL2: Episode One and Two.

i hadn't played it until late last year, and i thought it was just okay. episode 1 was much more enjoyable to me (haven't got around to episode 2 yet).

@Heltom92 said:

@AndrewVerse said:

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

I would disagree and say that it has aged really well. The graphics are a little bit dated yet but the gameplay is still excellent. I played though it a few months ago and was suprised at how much fun it was. It is still one the best FPS games ever in my opinion.

I would disagree! I think the gameplay is absolutely abysmal!

But hey, different strokes for different folks!

@AndrewVerse said:

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

Many people (me included) would strongly disagree with this. I think it's aged better than many shooters, though this may be more due to the fact that shooters haven't evolved much since the original Halo, beyond some nuances and shortened attention spans (shoot this turret! Now drive this car! Now shoot these dudes! Now get in this helicopter! Grab this rocket launcher! All in less than ten minutes!).

Anyway, the series itself has divided opinions at this point. Some don't see why it was considered so great. That's OK, just opinion, but be aware that you might be disappointed.

You should finish Half-Life 1 first just because it's amazing how well that game holds up, then jump into HL2 and the episodes. Do not expect anything even remotely resembling closure, though. It's like "Sir, finishing this fight"*, only worse.

*Final words uttered in Halo 2, if you were wondering.

@Jimbo said:

2004

It has some weird pacing issues and dated level/mission design but it's still worth going through. I wouldn't wait for an announcement.

u shood play right after u take a wiked sik rip of da bong bro yeahhhhhh hella stoned makes evry game bettr

i would play it now, it may have aged but i played it again last year and i still totally had alot of fun with that game, and i played the game fairly late too so its not nostalga speaking, i would still rate it as one of my fav gaming experiance's.

@Cloudenvy said:

@Heltom92 said:

@AndrewVerse said:

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

I would disagree and say that it has aged really well. The graphics are a little bit dated yet but the gameplay is still excellent. I played though it a few months ago and was suprised at how much fun it was. It is still one the best FPS games ever in my opinion.

I would disagree! I think the gameplay is absolutely abysmal!

But hey, different strokes for different folks!

True dat, brother

What kind of question is that? It's not like you would be playing out of order, just do it!

Dont listen to these philistines .... Half Life 2 has and will always play wonderfully , beats the crap of all "modern" FPSs , its has the best pacing and a lot fun stuff to do all the time. (All say that it has bad pacing only because Jeff says so ... bullocks) And if you enjoyed Half Life 1 then no doubt this game is for you

Sheesh these lying guys >:3

Dont listen to these philistines .... Half Life 2 has and will always play wonderfully , beats the crap of all "modern" FPSs , its has the best pacing and a lot fun stuff to do all the time. (All say that it has bad pacing only because Jeff says so ... bullocks) And if you enjoyed Half Life 1 then no doubt this game is for you

Sheesh these lying guys >:3

@Cloudenvy said:

@Heltom92 said:

@AndrewVerse said:

You should've played it when it came out. It hasn't aged well at all.

I would disagree and say that it has aged really well. The graphics are a little bit dated yet but the gameplay is still excellent. I played though it a few months ago and was suprised at how much fun it was. It is still one the best FPS games ever in my opinion.

I would disagree! I think the gameplay is absolutely abysmal!

But hey, different strokes for different folks!

The biggest problem going back to HL2 is the fact that it has no iron sights.

To the OP, it's still a fantastic game series in many aspects, but you should have played it when it came out. For me personally, I liked the original Half Life when I first played it on PS2 (later on PC), then when Half-Life 2 came out, that was my favorite game of all time, I probably played it every day five hours straight searching every nook and cranny for a few years until F.E.A.R. took its place. When the Orange Box came along, I was somewhat excited for the Episodes, but once I had beaten them, I was severely disappointed because it just didn't match my experience with the original.

It took me two years (until 2009) to take a step back, and approach it a bit differently with expectation and I liked it a more. See, the point is, like some other game series other people miss out on (MGS or otherwise) you miss out on memories and experiences that just can't happen if you play them all together after the fact. With that said though, play them now and I hope you enjoy them. I recommend after going through them you go to a wiki and read upon more of the story, because it's big, and you'll probably learn a lot of stuff that you somehow didn't catch when going through it, no matter how immersed you were, or how much attention you payed.

The games age shouldn't bother me as I played through HL1 recently. Also the hype was seven years ago so I have no expectations as to what the games quality should be. It's more for the story why I've held off of it.

You should always be playing HL2.

@mikey87144 said:

The games age shouldn't bother me as I played through HL1 recently. Also the hype was seven years ago so I have no expectations as to what the games quality should be. It's more for the story why I've held off of it.

While the character stuff and your moment-to-moment goals are easy enough to understand, the backstory (i.e. everything between Half-Life 1 and 2) is alluded to very thinly. Like, imagine BioShock had no audio logs, and you just had to piece together what had gone down based off of the snatches of conversations you have with the handful of NPCs on your com (Andrew Ryan, Atlas, Tenenbaum). The beginning of Half-Life 2 is a considerably different world to what you saw during Half-Life 1.

My point is, you have to pay attention extremely closely, but even then, I swear some of the backstory info is only found in interviews with Valve staff and in that coffee table book that Valve released showing the art and world of Half-Life 2. There are some backstory details I've read in the wiki that to this day, having played through Half-Life 2 at least twice, I don't recall ever actually hearing in-game.

I don't know where you guys have been, but Gabe's knives already announced Half-Life 3.

Also, play it ASAP. There's no sense in waiting to play any of those games. They've aged amazingly, but not perfectly. Then join us as we wait on what has become (given how long we've been waiting for the next game) one of the most torturous cliffhanger endings to a video game ever. If I have to endure, then so do you.

Though to be honest, so much time has passed and my love for the characters diminished that the amazing ending to Episode 2 has kind of dulled on me. It affected me in a big way when it happened, but now I just look back on it and think "oh, right... that happened."

Why do people act like HL3 hasn't come out yet? It's been out for years and it's amaz- oops, my computer time is up for today. Nurse says it's time to take my pills and go back to my room.

the only reason you might be in need of immediate HL3 after playing is the cliffhanger ending of Episode 2, not the story of the main game.

just play it, have fun in ravenholm, be annoyed by the vehicle sequences and throw some shit around with the grav gun :)

@IAmNotBatman said:

Just play it, HL3 might not even be announced anytime soon and I wouldn't say that the story is forgettable enough to not remember anything if another HL game comes out.

As there's no clue about when HL3 might show up I'd say to play HL2 first chance you get when picking something to play as it's good. Not sure if the episodes are going to be crucial to HL3 so you can play the episodes 1 & 2 if you want but the core game of HL2 is solid and well worth the time in it.

@TheSouthernDandy said:

Now. Nownownow.

I'm playing through Episode 1 now, for the first time, and I think it's aged amazingly. I'm playing on my laptop, and not even with everything on high, and it looks fine to me. Half Life 2 has an awesome art direction and use of lights, so it works even now. The story is really good, and it's true that the world has changed in 2, but you don't feel lost, all the extra info is exactly that, extra, and was meant for people going through every corner of the game to find i'm sure. Also simply to create atmosphere.

Just do it

Now, since it's one of the greatest games ever made.

Never.

Even back then it was a pretty boring game.

@Jimbo said:

2004

Ditto

Right now because you'll probably replay it. It's probably the best game ever made. After reading some of the comments, it makes me question what some of you think of as "good."

Play it when you want to play it. It's still the best FPS campaign to date, admittedly, there hasn't been a single good FPS campaign to come out since, but that's neither here nor there.

@gorkamorkaorka said:

It's probably the best game ever made."

I'd say it's a competent and polished shooter. Nothing more. I was pretty disappointed with it.

For those of you that have played it, how crucial is it to have played the original Half Life before jumping into Half Life 2?

I'll throw my hat into the "Right now" ring.

@believer258: Absolutely. The end of Episode 2 made me audibly react. No other game has done that.

@C0V3RT: I didn't and never felt like I missed anything crucial.

I'd blast through it on easy mode.

The aesthetics and story are genuinely interesting, the combat and enemies are not for the most part.

Just play it now.