🚀 go-pugleaf

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Mon, 12 Sep 2016 07:44:18 -0400, Xocyll <Xoc...@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>>Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
>>the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>>
>>>On 2016-09-10, Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>>I preferred Xen to the monorail level. In fact I didn't get the hate
>>>at all until I read about it years later on the web.
>>
>>I never understood the hate.
>>I can see why some people didn't like it since it was a drastic change
>>of pace, but that's also what made it good - it was extremely different
>>and _ALIEN_.   Instead of some alien shit in our world, you have the
>>occasionally bit of human stuff in their world, the exact opposite of
>>what happened in the first 80% or so of the game.
>
>Well, the platforming segments at the very beginning probably had a
>lot to do with it. Platforming in FPS games - and especially early FPS
>games - is terrible. That first Xen level had you jumping onto
>floating platforms over an infinite abyss; one slip and you were
>toast. That's not a great introduction to the world. 

It actually is - you're not in the facility you know like the back of
your hand, with allies and such, you are in an alien world and your life
could be snuffed out in a second.

Besides, this was before the over consolization of PC games and it had
save anywhere didn't it?  Save, try jump, fall, reload no biggie.

Now had it come out post 2010 that would be: jump, fall, reload at save
point, watch long annoying cutscene, travel some distance to reach the
jump point again, try the jump again.

>The Xen levels
>also had much poorer direction than the Black Mesa levels; it wasn't
>immediately obvious where you were supposed to go next. Again, this
>was a fairly radical change compared to the Black Mesa levels, where
>you usually had a good idea of what your next step was. Also, one of
>Half Life's most impressive features was its friendly AI; you met and
>worked with computer-controlled allies in a way that felt fairly
>lifelike. There was none of this in Xen. 

Yeah, cause it's an alien world, not your place of work where you know
the place and the people, you aren't supposed to be comfortable, or know
what to do or where to go instantly, you're in an alien dimension and
have to figure it out.   You do have the advantage of knowing you aren't
the first in and the previous people will have left signs, and they did.


>As I said, I understood what the developers were going for: they
>wanted to change things up by creating a world that felt different and
>alien, shaking the player out of his complacent understanding of the
>game's mechanics. Unfortunately, I think - and popular opinion seems
>to agree with me for once - that Valve did it in a half-assed way,
>resulting in a less-than-stellar experience. For a lot of player,
>these changes were too broad and sudden and just not fun. And since
>the rest of the game was so good, Xen compared very poorly.

The pre-Xen world in half-life was on rails.
Very pretty, very lifelike, very well done rails, but rails nonetheless,
and methinks that people had a big problem going from on rails to "I
have to think now" and just started whining and bitching about how they
weren't being handheld anymore.

>I think player's reception to Xen would have been less negative if
>Valve had introduced the players to the region more gradually; perhaps
>by having parts of Xen "bleed over" into our dimension (sort of like
>Hell did in the later levels of Doom 3), or if the player was briefly
>teleported to Xen for a quick puzzle before returning to Earth
>(similar to how was done in the Blue Shift expansion). 

I doubt it - they got used to being told exactly where to go and what to
do, in an environment that didn't really let them go off the rails, then
they're placed somewhere that's not true anymore.
Unless they were sent to XEN as part of an expedition under orders and
told exactly what to do at every stage, the bitching would have happened
exactly as it did.
The mindless shooter suddenly made them think and they didn't like it
one little bit.

Probably thought it was a nasty trick; Valve gave them a fun mindless
shooter and then suddenly made them think - what a dirty nasty trick!

I'd almost be willing to bet you the people who didn't have a problem
with it at all were all older gamers and/or RPG players, used to games
that weren't on rails and that required thought, so the XEN levels were
no big deal at all.

For the DOOM type "just shoot everything" players on the other hand ...

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr