Change of scenery, change of pace, godlike atmosphere, properly alien and hostile, and overall it's just a lot of fun. 

BRB DOWNLOADING IT NOW 

trying to remember my original impressions of half life.

- hitscan enemies pissed me off
- hated how much health the army dudes had, i remember turning on god mode, walking point black and emptying almost an entire clip from the smg before an army guy died, and thinking it was absolutely ridiculous
- liked how it felt like some long journey from start to finish, the passage of time shown with varying outdoor sunlight.
- got lost several times due to 90's mazelike map design.

that's it for now... 

headshots matter :) You can take the marines down pretty quick if you keep that in mind. 

Headshots do matter indeed. One revolver round or crossbow bolt to the head takes down any soldier. But otherwise they do feel spongy and unsatisfying to fight. It's rather incongruent because of how much effort went into the big alien soldiers with their armor plates, including that gap in the spine for a bolt to hit.

I can understand being spongy on torso shots as a basis of armor, but they also have helmets, so really face and neck shots should matter more, skull shots less - and the beret bearing ones could've been better armed or had better aim, but would have taken tons of damage from any head shot. The soldiers were definitely the PR focus, but they needed more attention in the actual mechanics. 

i think at the time, i didn't know headshots did extra damage. up till then, i had only played games like quake where it was just a hitbox. 

I've always aimed for the head in games if there was mouselook. I sometimes aim for the head in Quake, even though I know it does nothing - granted, I did play a metric ton of TF back when it was fun.

But I had also played a lot of Unreal before HL came out, a game I find to be massively superior, and since it focused more on 1v1 fights with high health monsters, and did have hit location, prioritizing headshots could end the fight a lot faster, so it was really ingrained into me come 6 months later. I was also conditioned by that awesome SiN demo. 

I played these games in the order above and found Half-life to be the superior of the two. Story-wise, at least. 

Story, Half-Life is... ...a first person shooter. Dudes poked with a teleporter, oh shit things that eat our faces, lets kill them first, oh shit dudes with guns for us to shoot with our guns, travel to the homeworld and kill something symbolizing a family structure. Other than the introduction order of dudes with guns, pretty Doomish. Yeah Half-Life tells the story better, but, it wasn't exactly riveting stuff.

Now moving beyond story and into the things which video games can do separately from other art forms: Unreal's AI, alien world, sense of wonder and exploration, unique weapons, and the most empathetic NPC this side of an RPG... I got a lot more out of Unreal than HL. The story wasn't astounding, but it also wasn't hammering me over the head with it. Like that time HL makes you plainly walk into an ambush so they can turn out the lights and take your guns away to pad the content feed. 

You're not giving Half-Life enough credit. 

Half Life being the prototype for the current day "interactive movie" form of games, Unreal being a great example of the oldskool lose yourself in this world and explore type of game (that wasnt a sandbox). 

I tried playing Unreal several times in the past and always got bored/annoyed. The weapons feel much less than HLs and the enemies' float skating is ridiculous. The world felt very sterile and plain. 

I disagree on the notion that HL is the prototype of interactive movie games. It is a linear game, that is true, but it has only one cutscene when you have no control over the character (when you are dragged by the two soldiers to the trash compactor). All the other story exposition cutscenes or scripted sequences still allow the player to be in absolute control, something that almost never happens in interactive movie games nowadays (see Bioshock Infinite for instance). In any case I'd argue that CoD 1 is a lot more to blame than HL, and I see HL more like a continuation of System Shock 1 without the sim elements with a pinch of Quake thrown in. 

"All the other story exposition cutscenes or scripted sequences still allow the player to be in absolute control, something that almost never happens in interactive movie games nowadays"

I think that gets a little overstated IMO ... Yes, you are in control of your character but 9 times out of 10, you're stuck in a small room or corridor. So what's the difference?

You can look around freely at these four walls. Oh ... great. 

The thing with HL's scripted sequences is that the devs encourage you to look at them, but they don't force you to do so. You can completely ignore what's happening if you want. Current games, on the other hand, force you to look at them by locking your view/immobilizing you because it took devs hours and hours to make these sequences. 

Yeah, that's true and it's also illustrative of how Half-Life benefited from a thin plot. If you missed one of the interactive scenes or something someone said, it didn't really matter. Or, more precisely, the designers didn't mind.

These days, designers often see themselves as master story tellers and therefore want to make sure you hear and see every detail of the web they're weaving for alpha bravo kilo squad in uzkatstan or where ever.

The reality is, nobody care. :) 

it's still a C grade story. 

So is pretty much anything. The value is in the execution, not the story. The story is just a catalyst for the experience. 

as in different formats like books and films can have better than C grade stories.

But yeah I agree execution can cover up simplicity and unorignality in a format like a game.

Also my comment wasnt directed at Half Life's story but your point about designers thinking they are master storyellers. 

Sure the story is nothing special, but the presentation is very nice. It reminded me of a lot of the environmental effects in Duke 3D but now in actual 3D. Eg the grenade thrown in your face as you crawl through a pipe or the air shaft being shot to pieces. The events are short and fun, not OMG SO EPIC!!!! DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING! AVATAR SAYS OMG TOO!!

I think what makes it better than "modern games" is that the scripted sequences are very short and to the point (ignoring the intro). Also no cringe-worthy things or actions the avatar does iirc. Pretty much the only thing like that is the weapon animation with the bugs? 

These days, designers often see themselves as master story tellers and therefore want to make sure you hear and see every detail of the web they're weaving for alpha bravo kilo squad in uzkatstan or where ever.

Agree completely.

They also see themselves as master directors, and it's important that you lose control during these sequences because they really really really want to frame the action like this and cut dramatically here.

To be fair, framing and camera cuts are basically free. If you can create a feeling of dread with good camera work, you're better off than if you tried to create it through palpable emotional tone in a room full of characters, visibly and audibly frightened, glancing with worry at each other, etc, even if the latter is much better for grounding the player in the world.

then of course you have the risk that as Dr. Manchester is giving his dramatic monologue about whatever, the player spends the entire scene trying to balance a trashbin on his head, but you've lost those players anyway. 

is just a sub-game... Also I feel like in a lot of modern shooters that I'm not THE guy. If I'm playing a game I want to be the hero of my own damn fantasy world. 

In my experience designers want to make a game.

The expensive bauble of FMV littered throughout a game is usually mandated by production and the client.

No level or game designer is going to wake up one day and say 'I really want to stick a tedious couple of minutes in the middle of my game today!'

After it's been done, they are the ones who enable the trashcan on head feature to mess about with the animation department's painstakingly constructed scene and productions pricetag justification feature. 

"In my experience designers want to make a game. "

Some want to make movies. They SAY they want to make games but, really ... 

That's true. There are many self deceivers.

But they tend not to last long and the games they work on are bad, so who cares.

Maybe those unlucky enough to have paid for the game. But if you don't take the time to read a couple of reviews before an expensive purchase then you've only yourself to blame.