Community MetaSteam | November 2021 - Bienvenidos a Mexico. Sombreros no incluidos

Arulan

Lizardman
Dec 7, 2018
563
1,979
93


I finally got around to playing Half-Life: Decay. It's not particularly great or noteworthy, but just something I wanted to play at least once. It was a PS2 exclusive co-op HL game, and was fan ported as a HL mod to PC. You play as two female scientists, one of which is the lady from the HL training tutorial. It begins by you preparing the specimen for the experiment that Freeman would then perform triggering the Resonance Cascade event. It continues the Gearbox HL expansion motif of showing you alternative perspectives during the Black Mesa incident, which I always enjoyed. The level design and enemy placements aren't great though. It's a lot of enemies spawning in. The co-op puzzles are interesting though -- the only real highlight unfortunately. Unlike actual HL or its expansions though, you don't always start the next level where the last one ended, which doesn't make it feel like as connected. Maybe a PS2 limitation or just a design choice, I don't know.
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
2,463
8,355
113
Im playing it. Its alright. More of an update to the first one rather than a massive leap forward. There are some nice changes. Just going through the campaigns which are basically 'build a park and do specific things until it says complete'. It has been crashing a fair bit, more than any other game i can remember in recent time. There is a bit more on the management side but it is still pretty basic and so if thats your thing then i wouldnt pay full price for it. Otherwise its good looking and im having fun - 20 or so hours in.
 

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Oct 19, 2018
200
638
93
Ibis Island


I finally got around to playing Half-Life: Decay. It's not particularly great or noteworthy, but just something I wanted to play at least once. It was a PS2 exclusive co-op HL game, and was fan ported as a HL mod to PC. You play as two female scientists, one of which is the lady from the HL training tutorial. It begins by you preparing the specimen for the experiment that Freeman would then perform triggering the Resonance Cascade event. It continues the Gearbox HL expansion motif of showing you alternative perspectives during the Black Mesa incident, which I always enjoyed. The level design and enemy placements aren't great though. It's a lot of enemies spawning in. The co-op puzzles are interesting though -- the only real highlight unfortunately. Unlike actual HL or its expansions though, you don't always start the next level where the last one ended, which doesn't make it feel like as connected. Maybe a PS2 limitation or just a design choice, I don't know.
I actually have the PS2 co-op this is from and didn't realize that it recently became a bit rare. I still plan to give it a go at some point.
 
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Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
4,297
12,185
113
Speaking of Half Life, I'm planning to play Half Life Alyx later this year and want to revisit the older games and DLC first.

I never really finished the first game, only played like its first half multiple times. Would people recommend to play Black Mesa as a sort of "definitive version" of HL1?
 
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Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
7,110
26,229
113
I noticed its peak CCU was quite a bit lower than JWE 1 (20k for 2 and 60k for 1). JWE 2 is also on EGS so the Steam numbers don't account for all PC sales, but that obviously isn't making up the 40k gap.
Nah, it has nothing to do with stores, it's like Joe Spangle said, it feels more like an update than a sequel.
 

kio

MetaMember
Apr 19, 2019
1,618
5,180
113
Speaking of Half Life, I'm planning to play Half Life Alyx later this year and want to revisit the older games and DLC first.

I never really finished the first game, only played like its first half multiple times. Would people recommend to play Black Mesa as a sort of "definitive version" of HL1?
In a way yes, you can play BM as a way to get the HL1 experience. The first 3/4 of the game, the part on earth, is mostly faithful to the original game but the Xen part is completely different, for the better.
Afair all of the setpieces and story beats of HL1 are in BM.
 
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Stallion Free

I <3 Achievements
Apr 17, 2019
281
886
93
Maryland, USA
steamcommunity.com
Speaking of Half Life, I'm planning to play Half Life Alyx later this year and want to revisit the older games and DLC first.

I never really finished the first game, only played like its first half multiple times. Would people recommend to play Black Mesa as a sort of "definitive version" of HL1?
If you haven’t played the original HL1, I would recommend playing it over Black Mesa. It has aged well and I still find it to be the superior experience. I haven’t played the Xen portion of BM yet, but I never found it problematic in the original as it is quite short.
 
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CommodoreKong

Mercenary in the Badlands
Jun 15, 2019
759
2,141
93
In a way yes, you can play BM as a way to get the HL1 experience. The first 3/4 of the game, the part on earth, is mostly faithful to the original game but the Xen part is completely different, for the better.
Afair all of the setpieces and story beats of HL1 are in BM.
Honestly I felt like Xen was worse in Black Mesa than Half Life mostly because of how long it was. It was like 4-6 hours when it probably should have been 1-2 hours at the most.
 

TioChuck

More Yellow 🤷‍♂️
Dec 31, 2018
1,764
4,379
113
38
And no Steam confirmation even though they showed Valve Index. Is it really that hard to confirm release?
They probably worried about people who bought 3 on EGS and transfer the content from 1 and 2 from Steam, and now want to buy 3 on Steam and can't transfer 1 and 2 back, shit show will probably ensue.
 

Arulan

Lizardman
Dec 7, 2018
563
1,979
93
Speaking of Half Life, I'm planning to play Half Life Alyx later this year and want to revisit the older games and DLC first.

I never really finished the first game, only played like its first half multiple times. Would people recommend to play Black Mesa as a sort of "definitive version" of HL1?
Personally I'd play the original Half-Life first and save Black Mesa for another playthrough later.

You can also smoothly continue right into Opposing Force & Blue Shift with the original.
 
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kio

MetaMember
Apr 19, 2019
1,618
5,180
113
Honestly I felt like Xen was worse in Black Mesa than Half Life mostly because of how long it was. It was like 4-6 hours when it probably should have been 1-2 hours at the most.
I agree it was long but, at least imo, it was quality content. The only change I'd make is cut the length of the factory level by half.
It's also not the first instance of an overly long level in BM as I remember Surface Tension being at least twice as long as the original, which was already on the longer side of things.
 
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SaberVS7

Average Date a Live Enjoyer
Jan 23, 2020
239
765
93
Honestly it is really strange that Hitman 3 got worst Year 1 support of all of the games and then Year 2 is announced and even from what we know now it has better content support than year 1 XD
That Year 1 support was budgeted off of past-sales, before the game was in anyone's hands.

Year 2 is being budgeted off how the game sold in reality.

In all likelyhood, IO didn't expect Hitman 3 to be a hit - That's why they took two moneyhats. That was where they expected to make their money after two previous Hitman games that didn't do so well.

Now they can have the first Hitman with a "Year Two" at all and can time it with the release of the game finally reaching a full audience and with a proper VR mode being created without PSVR 1.0 compromises.

(Sorta wonder what this means for their 007 game - Given that a lot of people assumed that Hitman was a Dud IP and the 007 license would take over for it as "Hitman with brand-power".)
 
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dex3108

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
3,446
15,806
113
That Year 1 support was budgeted off of past-sales, before the game was in anyone's hands.

Year 2 is being budgeted off how the game sold in reality.

In all likelyhood, IO didn't expect Hitman 3 to be a hit - That's why they took two moneyhats. That was where they expected to make their money after two previous Hitman games that didn't do so well.

Now they can have the first Hitman with a "Year Two" at all and can time it with the release of the game finally reaching a full audience and with a proper VR mode being created without PSVR 1.0 compromises.
But they are now further with James Bond development so they need more hands on that in comparison while Year 1 was in development. That is why i find it strange. In theory things should be other way around, more work while James Bond is in lower stage of development and less work when James Bong enters higher stage of development.
 
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toxicitizen

MetaMember
Oct 24, 2018
1,635
4,191
113
  • Raytracing
  • PC VR
  • Elusive Target Arcade
  • Teasing new maps, modes, surprises
Welp, guess I'll add Hitman 3 my short-but-slowly-growing "might as well wait until I have an RTX card" list of games. I mean, I've already waited a year, what's a few more months? As always, Timmy is not the savior of the multistore future he wants to be but he definitely is the savior of my wallet. :upside-down-face:
 

SaberVS7

Average Date a Live Enjoyer
Jan 23, 2020
239
765
93
But they are now further with James Bond development so they need more hands on that in comparison while Year 1 was in development. That is why i find it strange. In theory things should be other way around, more work while James Bond is in lower stage of development and less work when James Bong enters higher stage of development.
Didn't they open and hire for an entire second studio in the past year?

More staff on Hitman 3 doesn't mean less staff on 007.
 
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dex3108

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
3,446
15,806
113
Didn't they open and hire for an entire second studio in the past year?

More staff on Hitman 3 doesn't mean less staff on 007.
It doesn't mean but when sh*t kicks the fan it happens. We saw multiple examples in this industry where teams were pulled from one project to help other project to be done. But they did open more studios and that kinda worries me because they opened it after they signed deal with Microsoft for that fantasy game if I remember correctly. So does that mean that they will go Remedy route where they will be signing deals left end right to survive?
 
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Sobatronix

MetaMember
Mar 9, 2021
797
2,615
93
Since everybody is talking about Hitman, I'll take this space to complain about the new Hitman Trilogy's naming scheme, which is an absolute clownery. First, they did the annoying trend of naming the reboot of a franchise " Name of the franchise" with Hitman 2016, then the next game was named Hitman 2 when Hitman 2 has already existed since 2002, and THEN they named the third game "Hitman III" using roman numerals when the previous game used a regular number. Like why?
 

Deku

Just nothing
Oct 19, 2018
4,362
8,857
113
20XX
www.seikens.com
Since everybody is talking about Hitman, I'll take this space to complain about the new Hitman Trilogy's naming scheme, which is an absolute clownery. First, they did the annoying trend of naming the reboot of a franchise " Name of the franchise" with Hitman 2016, then the next game was named Hitman 2 when Hitman 2 has already existed since 2002, and THEN they named the third game "Hitman III" using roman numerals when the previous game used a regular number. Like why?
Maybe I misremember, but the official name is not Hitman 2016. The year number is just added by fans for not confusing with the original Hitman game
 
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SaberVS7

Average Date a Live Enjoyer
Jan 23, 2020
239
765
93
Since everybody is talking about Hitman, I'll take this space to complain about the new Hitman Trilogy's naming scheme, which is an absolute clownery. First, they did the annoying trend of naming the reboot of a franchise " Name of the franchise" with Hitman 2016, then the next game was named Hitman 2 when Hitman 2 has already existed since 2002, and THEN they named the third game "Hitman III" using roman numerals when the previous game used a regular number. Like why?
Why Not?



Not a single one of these games has an overlapping title really, not in the same way as "PREY"

There never was a "HITMAN" or "HITMAN 2" before - There was "Hitman: Codename 47" and "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin" - Also it's hardly the first time a series switched to Roman Numerals mid-way.

GTA2 -> GTA III, MGS4 -> MGSV
 

「Echo」

Reaper on Station。
Nov 1, 2018
2,772
7,739
113
Mt. Whatever
As for which games left me with the feels after credits?

LoZ: Ocarina of Time (First game i ever beat by myself without help)
FF6
FF9 (I was sooooo happy the romance aspect worked out, and i was like 12 and emotional ok)
Drakengard
NieR
NierR Automata
Drakengard 3
Life Is Strange 1
Metal Gear Solid 2 (i mean... that ending is just whack even today)
Metal Gear Solid 4
999!!
The Desmond AssCreed games, literally each one ended with such a wtf twist... I was hooked.
FFXV of course (those final hours are just... wew)
FF Type-0 HD
Lightning Returns (a nice tie-up to a trilogy that lasted during my later teen years)
VA-11 HALL-A
DDLC+ (God I hope Team Salvato is working on another project)
Spec Ops: The Line
Valkyria Chronicles

Those are the ones off the top of my head.
Going from the great and varied responses I got though, it seems i could do to widen my own horizons a bit. Many smaller games passed right under my radar.