Half Life's Varied Gameplay | Cascade 

Fun fact about the Human Grunt AI, no more than two will ever attack you, even if you're in a room full of them. Because, otherwise, they would gun you down so fast it wouldn't be fun or very fair.

10:15 me talking to my parents about videogames

I couldn't explain this games combat better. It's not about brute forcing your way through crowds of enemies. It's about outsmarting your enemies. You don't play as a space marine you play as a scientist. That's why I love this game to death so much! To this day it still feels unique among shooters.

10:13 Dont you find this all rather fascinating? -no.

8:11 I love how gordon can tight rope walk like a circus performer while wearing a bulky suit of power armor

"In Doom you are always in control" Well, someone haven't played Plutonia.

"Soldiers telegraph what they're doing with voice lines..." Soldier: *WHEUGHAEYGH!!!*

I've always liked HL1 a lot more than 2. at least in part due to setting, but mostly due to presentation and story.

Apparently RU-vid removed polls, here are the options: 1. On A Rail analysis 2. Video on 3 Enemies (Alien slave, controller, agrunt) 3. Music and Sound Design Edit: It's been decided, next episode will be an On A Rail analysis.

This is actually one of the most well written video I’ve seen on RU-vid

That grenade tossed right into the pipe is an accurate summary of 90% of my encounters with the army grunts in Half-Life. Just... Pin point grenade tosses that I'm too busy thinking "What in the goddamn was that throw" to move out of the way.

"Don't you find this all rather fascinating?" "No." A more eloquent way to express the relationship between a scientist and a security guard doesn't exist.

i love how the game forces gordon back into cozy relaxed areas after intense fights

5:01 Yeah it's funny how good the game AI is compared to even new game's AI, like I once saw a video recently comparing the literal cockroach AI to the mess that is cyberpunk 2077's AI in some cases and somehow it works better in some places.

I watched a RU-vidr (can't remember who), that played Half-Life using stealth. He would lure enemies to choke points. I never seen it played that way. Very slow and methodical.

8:46 Or in Waynes case he and the science team will run the fuck away because the helicoptor spawn point is bugged and is just constantly spawning more and more helicoptors, creating an eldritch amalgamation of metal and government military budget

3:27 I just realized that we can destroy the osprey in this section.

9:56 an alternate way is to go behind the tank via pipes. You will be in an open area (inside the water to be exact) for some time but if you are dast and silent enough it is no problem. I always choose since it enables me take out enemies much more easily but also it prevents the tank from shooting you.

"and work together, to simulate an actual squad of well-trained marines" *scientist guns them all down*

What about a video detailing Black Mesa's questionable ethics towards otherworldly experiments? A friend and I played through Decay for the first time a couple years ago and were pleasantly surprised to see more interesting Black Mesa experiments and studies done on Xen's flora and fauna, especially the "Bullsquid Juicer." I think even Opposing force had some neat Race X stuff.

Ah yes. The one fight in HL1 which I will always think of as the "modern major-general" fight.

9:10 WHERE'S MY CHORUS?!

I was never really into HL1's combat until watching this video, I was playing it too much like a modern shooter instead of it's own thing, after watching this I've replayed HL1 and now its combat is some of my favorite combat in an FPS ever.

This video was awesome and neat comedic moments. Keep up the work man! :D

Ah, You've Read the back of the Half-Life PC Disc Case yes I recognize that.

Run, Shoot, Live, Think. I'm pretty sure that's how that goes

8:00 idk if the joke is that you didn't notice it, but there's a narrow ledge to the right of the bridge that takes you around it :)

Is funny how you had to use classic Doom when you were talking about games using projectiles based enemies and completely ignored that it also included some of the most deadly hitscan enemies in any game.

I thought this vid was made by a bigger youtuber, the quality is just stunning, will be looking forward for more things from you

everyone keeps thinking Half Life has super AI for its time. Squad based tactics for soldiers but... the devs said it themselves. There is no squad based tactics. They all act independently and people are thinking its more complicated than it really is.

9:42 "DED"

0:55 Fellow Accursed Farms fan!

Daaamn. Now THAT'S what I call "a masterfully made video". Your style is unique and well thought.

To be fair, the 'I think a lot of people get blinded by the nostalgia of doom, and forget that once you take away the demon shooting, the game becomes a chore' is a REALLY bad way of putting it. That's one of DOOM's big appeals-- you could say the same for almost any game. ''I think a lot of people get blinded by the nostalgia of pac-man, and forget that once you take away the ghosts, the game becomes a chore', or 'I think a lot of people get blinded by the nostalgia of Pokemon, and forget that once you take away the gym's and battles, the game becomes a chore'. Games are reliant on many different factors to make them fun. But I DO agree that the other areas of older shooters could get tedious, and that's because eventually you HAVE to stop doing those fun things, unlike the other games I've listed- - I just think it was a bad way of putting it xD Either way, great video!!! I love this Cascade series. =)

8:17, I go along the ledge underneath the pipe, I suspected that if I went across the bridge, the whole thing would break, never went across it

2:40 Me, being absolutely trash at navigation: Anything can be a maze if you put your mind to it!

Found this channel about a month and a half ago, seems RU-vid is finally pushing smaller channels that put in the effort straight to the front of the algorithm, the amount of small channels I've uncovered recently is amazing. Keep it up man, legit happy to see your hard work finally getting recognition.

very well done video. nice attention to the details. nice reminder of why the original Half-Life 1 is my all time favourite game :)

Colonel: (Explains the intricacies of the combat in this game) Me: I just shoot gun and quickload, now I feel stupid!

5:17 where are the links to those videos?

I think canonically Gordon is hopped up on stimulants. As for DOOMSLAYER…he’s just REALLY mad

INCREDIBLE, I've never learned so much about game design than with this channel.

I think what really made me love the game was how combat with the soldiers plays out. It feels so realistic, it's amazing is a 20+ year old game

Man that was a really good video, keep it up!

This episode was great! Can't wait for more :)

"Valve can't do ladders." Not even in VR, I tried to grab a ladder to go down it in Half-Life: Alyx and I lost my grip or something and fell to my death. I *could've* just been clumsy because I only had the Index for a few months at that point and migrated from the Rift but it felt like tradition.

"Fuel Storage" for gamers: Dopamine storage.

This is so epic i just subscribed!!

“Don’t you find this all rather fascinating ?” “Nope……..” *awkward silence*

Yesterday I finished half life, today was opposing forces, tomorrow probably blue shift and then half life 2. I still don't have the episodes but I will get them some day.

You know the bit with the marines, sewer, and the tank doesn't require you to kill all of them. Gold source is based on the quake engine. As a result, the enemies have in-flighting, just pop out once, maybe lob a grenade, and crawl back m you'll hear a lot of shooting and shouting. When it does down, there's usually 1 marine left, but most of the time even the tank is destroyed

Huh, I've always just jumped across that Rope bridge to leave as many planks intact when I need to return to the other side. I always assumed the ropes were set to be nonsolid.

Is the "falling in this hole by accident" part important? I always miss it :(

Man I literally finished replaying half life on hard difficulty yesterday but watching your videos makes me want to replay it again lmfao

this series so far is so so good

If you're looking for feedback, you should equalize the audio levels. certain parts (like when you cut to the doom music) your voice was completely drowned out and I had to reach for the volume knob because my ear drums were being damaged

Soon it will be 22 years old and it is still the best game ever. awesome videos.

its interesting how there are different scenarios where two types of enemys are fighting and you have to pick and choose who to fight based on what you want to deal with at the end of the fight

Solving the puzzle is easy, but finding which puzzle to solve, that's the hard part

Despite all the Half Life videos out there, yours is one of the only videos to touch upon the things that made the game stand out to me as a storytelling and gameplay experience. Keep these up! Maybe you should do Dark Souls next? lol...

It's good to see one of my favorite gaming franchises see some love. Your videos are really good and well written. I'd love to do a collab sometime!

It's still weird how Half Life's AI was so far ahead, and is still a hundred times better than in a lot of modern shooters. Most of the AI soldiers in, say, Battlefield V just stand there and wait to be gunned down, whereas the soldiers in a 23 year old game have a full squad system and actually act like marines

Funny thing about that big fight with the tank in surface tension is that you can just peak your head out of two of the several pipe exists, duck back into cover in said pipes and listen as all the soldiers kill themselves and their tank with grenades.

'scientists can give the player extra health'!!! I'm in the middle of my first play through... i didn't know that, I've been killing them

great video. Your anyalysis is interesting

2:14 the suit is dosing gordon up on morphine all the time

Great video!

Ily for that ross scott quote

Ladders: look where you wanna go press and hold “W”, to get off, look at the destination(preferably away from the ladder) and press “SPACE” Worked wonders for me Never had any problems with them

9:00 That area is so hard and I love it as much as how often I died there

If you want to use the ladders properly, hold shift and walk backward, the direction you mouse is facing will drift you off to one side or the other, but you can get it centered as you travel down. Still kinda wonky getting off ladders sometimes, but this surely helps GOING DOWN ladders.

I love your videos

"Guards drop ammo" LOL

8:23 in my most recent playthrough the helicopter i think hit the wall while i was in the bunker. I just heard an explosion and came outside to see nothing at all.

I want a black mesa mod that has the same runnthink shoot live in OG HL

“Friendly npcs would be glad to help out Gordon…” just don’t shoot and kill them you freak.🙄

9:10 I played on hard mode and how I dealt was this was basically using the snarks to kill like most of the HECU leaving 2 and a tank which I could just gun down easily if I climbed in the sewer opening behind the tank

I remember the first time i play half life. I try to save everyone no matter what Miss the old day

1:02 excuse me?? Maybe if you play on I'm too young to die! Look for secrets, items you missed, powerups, take a breather or just open the map if you want to quickly progress forward and don't know how. Don't blame the game for your own faults.

Does anyone know what Ross Scott video that quote comes from? I have been trying to find it but have been incapable.

Me watching the beginning of the video and thinking about the question: Ya know shooting enemies point blank with the Magnum in Half Life is the one of the best feelings in gaming so I'd say yes I wouldn't get bored doing it the whole way through

It’s simply unfair to compare this game to the majority of others. For the main reason that this was released wayyyy back in 1998. Comparing it to games of that era isn’t fair bc it’s so far ahead and superior on many levels to everything besides maybe goldeneye and imo it’s much more fun than goldeneye. And comparing it to modern games isn’t exactly fair either bc well, besides the fact that it came out 25 years ago, so many games have stolen little tidbits from this franchise that it really helped mold FPS into what they are today. They were able to take what worked and focus on improving those elements. I’ll never forget the first time I installed this on my stepdads desktop and witnessed that iconic valve intro. Every step of the game back then was “wow look what I can do, oh what’s this”. Such great times I’ll never forget.

9:42 HEV suit: DED

I use this as a walkthrough, but I can never get "fall into the hole by accident" right.

I love this vid, i wish he didnt dunk on doom so much, but great vid nonetheless

I didn't realize I was using the HD models this whole time until I did some research to try to find out why the HL1 SMG was an assault rifle in my game while everywhere else I only could find people using the MP5. I have no model type preference. I think they both have equal pros and cons.

Looks like it's not only Black Mesa that has that helicopter bug out. When I played it before it became a paid game on Steam, the copter just stopped responding after I hit it with a few rockets. I don't even remember what I did to get it to finally explode.

"if you played a game where you did this for 8 hours would it be fun?" well, i'd say about 7% of my 1200 hours on gmod wants to say otherwise

dope

4:15 blood has a bunch of hitscanners, and they kill you quick..............

this is very well orginized and well explained, good video dude.

Nice doom reference

0:18 gmod construct

Honestly Barney's were more useful than the HECU in opposing force, like half of my deaths in OpFor where because the machine gunner friendly fired me

Hey PurpleColonel, can you review Descent 3 ? It tries too much, to be like Half Life, but ails, because the puzzles are often braindead. Half Life puzzles are based on Action Film physics, but D3s physics don't make sense.

Kinda odd, I know it's not related to Half-Life (even if I enjoy it A LOT), why do I prefer Serious Sam MORE than Doom (even if Doom has a community and has tons of mods for the Classics that I like and have played - Brutal Doom and Project Brutality) even if the game is an endless repeat (get weapons, shoot endless HORDES of enemies, proceed to the next area, do it all over again), and some areas can definitely fall on those "empty area" stuff? Is it because of Ancient history? Ancient Egypt, Mayans, Babylonians and the Medieval ages? Even Croteam's other game, The Talos Principle, goes with Rome, Egypt, Medieval and Heaven environments other than the Nexus areas. Serious Sam 4 too. France, Italy and Russia/Siberia.

Woah I never noticed enemies wouldn't attack while moving and only did one action at a time

Variety as scarce as it may be in Half-Life compared to some newer games, it's still something that sets it above Half-Life 2 and Black Mesa in my opinion. These games are more focused on telling a very specific, tight story, and don't allow you to get off a set path as much.

meanwhile modern games "here is randomized samey weapon and armor, equip them and shoot enemies in the head 20 times until they die and drop better weapons which look like the ones you are using but you gotta use them because your old weapons are weak.

Great content :)