Yet so many Half-lifeThe best touches are based on realism. The most famous example is humorously pointed out in the game’s manual, which touts the fact that the game’s weapons are in convenient locations rather than just floating in the air. Titles like Golden Eye 007 played with similar ideas, but there really is an internal logic to the placement of almost every weapon and item in Half-life it goes beyond whether a weapon magically floats or waits.

On top of that, you have awesome details like the fact that crossing a body of water that touches an exposed electrical source will electrocute the player or enemies. This all sounds simple, but at a time when the shooter genre was still trying to escape the “Loss clone”, this is one of the ways in which Half-life showed that even more action-oriented FPS titles could still benefit from a dose of realistic design.

The logic of the HEV combination

Before Half-lifeThe concept of health and armor in most first-person shooters (and many other games for that matter) was pretty simple. You simply collected health packs, armor, and power-ups as you went, and didn’t ask any questions. Half-life changed all that by introducing Gordon Freeman’s HEV suit during the game’s opening sequence.

Not only did the HEV suit serve a practical purpose in the game’s story (it’s used to protect Freeman during the experiment that sets the story in motion), but it assigned logic to the game’s objects, which at the time were generally treated as objects. if they were magic mushrooms Super Mario. Health was what kept Freeman’s body alive, while the suit, which functioned as additional armor, had to be charged in order to continue protecting Freeman from danger. Health and recharge stations were also found in locations that generally made sense to the environment and narrative. It also featured a switchable flashlight, which was either the first appearance of this mechanic in an FPS or a very early example of it.

It could be argued that Gordon’s relationship with his armor would even lead to things like the rechargeable shield in Halo: Combat Evolved. Interestingly, later games went the other direction by allowing characters to “magically” heal by finding shelter or resting, but there was a time when assigning logic to how health works of a player in the game in FPS titles was all the rage.

Enemies, grenades and you

We have already talked a lot about Half-lifethe revolutionary enemy and companion of the AI. Yet the ways in which Half-life The change in the art of PvE first-person combat can be best summed up by what happens when someone in the game throws a grenade.