More on Half-Life Beta: Ivan the Space Viking, and Company

Do you remember that picture that was on Digg a while back, which showed a model of Gordon Freeman from Half-Life, in his early stages?

 

Well, I was doing a search the other day for Half-Life stuff, like one does, and came across this.

There’s Ivan again

Surprisingly, unlike the first image, which got much more publicity, this one above was only dugg once on digg, and yet according to the dates on deviantart, where I saw it, it looks like it was added sometime in 2008.

Here’s some comments from the guy:

“1.The guy holding the gun is what Gordon Freeman looked like in the early betas.
2.The girl is a character from Half-Life Decay.
3.The small purple thing is a Chumtoad (Only seen in Blue Shift).
4.The thing that looks like a penis is A ACTUAL ALIEN PENIS! When it attacked you it would knock off Gordon's glasses and tentacle rape him (FOR REAL).
4.It is the beta version of a Advisor.”

In any case, that monster on the far right looks as though it would have been some scary sh!t to face off against. Certain parts of it remind me of Madonna! I remember seeing some images like these in a Half-Life review in NAG magazine years ago, just when the game was released, and long after Valve had gone past the beta stage.

I decided to search more for Half-Life beta stuff, and found a thread that’s started a few years ago that contains some interesting stuff on Half-Life Beta, with pictures of several character and all the stages they went through before the final version. Read this thread. It’s awesome. I promise…apart from the constant cursing all the time. But hey, forums, you know.

Mainly I decided to post about this, even though it’s nothing new, because I’m going through a Half-Life stage at the moment. I think I might actually play the games for the first time in years. By that I mean Half-Life, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift.

You can even check out some stuff about the Half-Life 2 beta on wikia while you’re at it.

More on Half-Life Beta: Ivan the Space Viking, and Company

Apocalypse Then: Half-Life

11 Years of Half-Life

Well, recently I covered Half-Life 2’s five year anniversary. Today is its older prequel’s 11th anniversary. I would have covered it last year, but I only started the blog this year.

Half-Life, a sci-fi FPS title, was developed by Valve Corporation, published by Sierra, and distributed by Electronic Arts for retail and Steam online. The game initially had trouble finding a publisher seeing as people claimed it was too ambitious. Originally for PC, it was later released on PS2 along with Half-Life: Decay, a PS2 exclusive addon, until recently when a team ported the addon to the PC. An unofficial Dreamcast port was leaked onto the internet, and there was also a Macintosh port too.

Released on the 19th of November 1998, it was Valve’s first game, in development since 1996 when Valve was founded by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. The game has since been praised several million times as revolutionizing the FPS genre in areas such as AI, gameplay involving puzzles, and story, written by Marc Laidlaw. The game was hugely influenced by Doom in story and otherwise. It’s naturally won many “Game of the Year” awards, and scored high in reviews, to say the least.

It involved the player taking the role of Gordon Freeman, a man in his late twenties, graduate from University of Innsbruck and MIT, and scientist involved in Theoretical Physics at the Black Mesa laboratory, an abandoned missile base out in the desert, in New Mexico, USA. Gordon gets involved in a teleportation experiment in the anomalous materials department, and “things go awry”, and creatures from another dimension start pouring out in to the base. Gordon’s main aim initially is to fight his way to the surface, and after that make his way to the Lambda Complex whilst fighting the aliens and zombies all the way, as well as marines and black-ops assassins whose main goal is to kill everyone, even the marines. You get to team up with security guards and other scientists who will help you along the way, and not to mention you are aided by your HEV suit which provides protection as well as access to your HUD, and a boost while jumping.

Many people think that the game used the Quake II engine, when in actual fact it was mainly a heavily modified Quake engine, with some elements from Quake II, called GoldSrc. The game also had no cutscenes and employed scripted sequences, unlike most FPSs of that time. It came with a level editor, WorldCraft, which was notoriously hard to use. Unlike most games, especially of the build era of the mid-late nineties, Gordon didn’t speak at all.

The game received two expansion packs for the PC and one for the PS2, namely Opposing Force, Blue Shift (originally meant o be packaged with the Dreamcast port), and Decay for the PS2. And the sequel, Half-Life 2, which I covered the other day, came along a few years later, taking about double the amount of time to develop, and has been followed by the episodes which chronicle what happens after the fall of City 17.

Half-Life has also spawned many mods over the years, some of which have since been ported to or recreated in HL2's Source Engine. Valve is also very pro-modding, and Gabe Newell claims that half of Valve is made up of former modders.

Interesting things and my experiences with the game:

• Memorable moments while playing the game many times over the years include the tram ride at the beginning through sections of the base, the Surface Tension level with the marines, and the ending with the G-man in the tram. A few of the earlier levels weren't really to my liking, and neither were some of the later levels either. Some of the best parts were in-between.

• Best weapon in the game, besides the crowbar- probably the MP5 (later M4A1 with the HDP), which could shoot grenades from the attached launcher, and probably the crossbow as well, which could kill most of the low to mid enemies with one shot.

• Favourite enemies were the marines, in all their different forms.

• The entire series contains double meanings when it comes to titles, such as Half-Life, Decay, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift.

• The lambda symbol almost looks like a crude drawing of an arm holding a crowbar. This I never really knew or thought about before.

• The scientist models that were pretty common (only about 4 all in all), came back in Half-Life 2 as Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance. The other 2 still need to be made into characters in HL2 as far as I know.

• The one variation of the security guard came back as Barney Calhoun in HL2.

Apocalypse Then: Half-Life

Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has a Problem Shutting his Mouth, it Seems

Randy Pitchford has brought up some arguments recently about Valve owning Steam being a bad idea, especially for small indie developers, not once, but twice. And Pitchford has also said that Gabe Newells’s refusal to develop on the PS3 is foolish.

Not to mention, earlier on in the year, he called out both Infinity Ward and Bungie, and told them to do something different, instead of Call of Duty and Halo, respectively, all the time.

All could be considered valid arguments, although I personally think that sticking up for the PC like Gabe does is admirable, but I still think to myself, damn, talk about biting the hand that feeds. Gearbox only got into the game industry, and is only where it is, because of Valve and Half-Life. If it hadn’t been for Opposing Force, and all the subsequent expansions it was involved in because Valve threw them a bone, Borderlands might not have even been released the other day.

I mean, I think that this is nothing new. Randy has had a big mouth, and an inflated ego since day one. Proof of this? In Opposing Force at the end of the game, when you fight that ugly beast, there’s a message played backwards, which says: “To win the game, you must kill me, Randy Pitchford”. Of course, this line was taken from Doom II, copying another attention seeker looking for the limelight, John Romero.

Speaking of Borderlands , I should go and get it sometime soon, to see if it's worth all of Randy's cockiness lately. It looks good, and I hear it plays well too. It definitely draws some inspiration f-Life. You can tell by the red damage indicators when the player is shot. I've seen that in trailers.

And by the way, Aliens: Colonial Marines had better be good.

And Duke Begins?...

Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has a Problem Shutting his Mouth, it Seems

Did you Know that November is Valve/Half-Life Month?

Yes. It looks that way. It's just something I've noticed over time. If you look at the dates like this, you'll see what I mean:

• November 1, 1999: Half-Life: Opposing Force
• November 1, 2000: Richochet
  
• November 3, 1962: Gabe Newell
• November 8, 2000: Counter-Strike (Retail)
• November 14, 2001: Half-Life (PS2 release)
• November 14, 2001: Half-Life Decay (PS2)
• November 15, 2005: Half-Life 2 (Xbox)
  
• November 16, 2004: Half-Life 2
• November 17, 2009: Left 4 Dead 2 (TBR)
  
• November 18, 2008: Left 4 Dead
  
• November 19, 1998: Half-Life
• November 20, 2000: Gunman Chronicles
• November 22, 2007: Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (PS3)
• November 22, 2007: Team Fortress 2 (PS3)
  

So, it looks like a number of major titles, including both Half-Life and Half-Life 2, among other titles were released in this month in years past. Recently I posted about the tenth anniversary of Half-Life: Opposing Force, and also Gabe Newell's birthday. I guess the next one I'll post about is the upcoming 5th anniversary of Half-Life 2, and perhaps the 11th anniversary of Half-Life. I can't believe how many years have gone by.

You could argue that they are all bunched together because it's right there near Christmas, or perhaps it's because Gabe's birthday is in the month, or there could be some other conspiracy theory as to why this is, but still. Interesting...

Did you Know that November is Valve/Half-Life Month?

Operation Black Mesa Update

I forgot to mention the other day, when I was talking about the ten year anniversary of Half-Life: Opposing Force, that there is a new update on the Operation Black Mesa site. It was posted especially for the tenth anniversary, and it's a media release with quite a few screenshots, concept art, and other stuff.

Operation Black Mesa Update

Apocalypse Then- Half-Life: Opposing Force

All Saints Day



On this day in gaming, Half-Life: Opposing Force was released on the PC, in 1999. This marks the tenth anniversary of the first expansion for Half-Life, developed by Gearbox Software, with some help from outsourcing of talent, and published by Sierra Studios.

I played it numerous times years ago. I first played the demo that was available on a NAG CD in 2000, although I later bought Blue Shift, which included "OpFor". I personally sent a letter to NAG, requesting them to review the game in late 1999, and the review was published in early 2000.

Opposing Force is a FPS title that sees you play in the same universe as the original game, except that you are a soldier, Corporal Adrian Shephard, like the ones sent to contain the events at Black Mesa Research Facility, and to eliminate the alien invasion. But soon the marines are overcome by numerous foes, even ones unexpected, like another alien race, Race X, as well as black ops.

Like Half-Life was revolutionary for the FPS genre, Opposing Force was considered an above average expansion by many. It introduced new weapons, enemies, and NPCs, including Senior Drill Instructor Dwight T. Barnes, a character meant to be modeled after R. Lee Ermey's Gunny from Full Metal Jacket. Of course the mysterious G-Man makes an appearance in the game too.

In Opposing Force there was one notable difference, playing as a marine, and that was that unlike Half-Life, you didn't have to kill the scientists, or the security force. In Opposing Force you can save them, and more often that not, they will aid you in parts of the game. Kind of like a "we're in the same boat" kind of situation.

Opposing Force was also available with Blue Shift, the second expansion, along with the High Definition Pack, which enhanced the look of the game's characters and weaponry, with the MP5 submachine gun notably changing into the M4 assault rifle.

At the end of the game, a similar situation with the G-Man unfolds, and the player is detained. Up until now, there have been no real confirmations that Adrian Shepard will ever be seen or be playable in a Half-Life title again, althought rumours still persist.

A fan-made mod is in development, Operation Black Mesa, with the aim of recreating Opposing Force in the Source engine, much like Black Mesa Source.

Just on a personal note: There was a sound when using the barnacle as a grappling hook to stick onto things, which made me "excited".

Apocalypse Then- Half-Life: Opposing Force