It's Valve week! Exclusive videos, screens, interviews and more. Visit valve.1up.com now!




Download The Video - 38MB


Download The Video - 76MB

Half-Life

Opposing Force

Opposing Force

Blue Shift

Blue Shift

Team Fortress

Counter Strike

Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat
Half-Life? More like shelf-life.

he latter half of 1998 rocked our worlds. While the news media were in a frenzy over ex-president Bill Clinton's adulterous ways, we played some of the best games ever made across a variety of platforms and systems. There was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64, Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation, Panzer Dragoon Saga on the Sega Saturn, and... a little game called Half-Life on the PC. All of these games would go on to become genre classics, but none of them would have the impact and longevity of Valve's undying classic. Up until the arrival of Half-Life, meaningful narratives in first-person shooters were practically unheard of. Overnight, first-person shooters took on new life through characters and storytelling.

But beyond simply shocking the genre out of its complacency, Half-Life's heavily-modified Quake-engine would become a hotbed of homebrew development, spawning classic multiplayer offshoots like Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat. In fact, these user-created mods became so inseparably associated with the Half-Life franchise, Valve eventually hired the talent behind these projects and put them to work on making official versions of their games.

For our second cover-story Retro/Active, we've decided to re-review and replay all the pre-Source engine games in the Half-Life canon. After watching the video, we invite you to peruse these reviews below which scores - then and now - each of the games we discuss in the accompanying video feature.


Title: Half-Life
Console: PC, PS2, Dreamcast (cancelled)
Publisher: Sierra/Vivendi
Developer: Valve
Release: 1998
The game that started it all still has what it takes nearly eight years later. Sure, the graphics don't look as good (even in Half-Life Source), but the pacing, level design, scripted events, and enemy A.I. are some of the best ever put to code in a first-person shooter. Sadly, a much-hyped Dreamcast version was killed on the brink of release.


Title: Half-Life: Opposing Force
Console: PC
Publisher: Sierra/Vivendi
Developer: Gearbox Software
Release: 1999
Opposing Force may not exactly be as revolutionary as the genre-redefining title it expands, yet at the time of its release, no other FPS add-on had yet added as much fulfilling content. Its combat benefits from the expanded arsenal as well as the simple squad control -- though be prepared to be annoyed when your comrades get stuck behind walls or boxes. Yet for fans of Half-Life's narrative, the ability to relive the incidents from another perspective -- Special Forces soldier, Adrian Shepard -- makes the expansion pack worth your time and money, even today.


Title: Half-Life:
Blue Shift

Console: PC, Dreamcast (cancelled)
Publisher: Sierra/Vivendi
Developer: Gearbox
Release: 2001
If Valve had implemented Steam back in early 2000, Blue Shift would probably have been its first episodic single-player release. Taking place concurrently with the events from the main game, Blue Shift focuses on the adventures of side-character Barney, a security guard from Black Mesa who played a prominent role as an NPC in the first game.


Title: Team Fortress
Console: PC
Publisher: Vivendi
Developer: Gearbox Software
Release: 1999
Originally built on top of the Quake engine nearly 10 years ago, the Team Fortress multiplayer mod is widely considered the first deathmatch game to employ a class-based character system which later influenced games like DICE's Battlefield series. An oldie but still a goodie, fans of Team Fortress are still waiting for its sequel, aptly titled Team Fortress 2.


Title: Counter-Strike
Console: PC, Xbox
Publisher: Sierra/Vivendi
Developer: Valve
Release: 2000
Undoubtedly the most popular of the Half-Life-spawned multiplayer games, Counter-Strike has created subcultures within a subculture with its quirky pseudo-realism and cyclical round-based firefights. Be warned though, beginners are spanked quickly and methodically in this brutal dog-eat-dog world.


Title: Day of Defeat
Console: PC, Xbox
Publisher: Sierra/Vivendi
Developer: Valve
Release: 2003
Day of Defeat is basically what you get when you combine the pure deathmatch antics of Team Fortress with any one of the World War II shooters that's just become out of vogue in the past couple years. It's straightforward, to be sure, but remains one of Valve's most popular multiplayer games.


Recommend this feature?  



  Top Games:   SOCOM 3 | GTA Liberty City Stories | Shadow of the Colossus | Halo 2 | Age of Empires III | Fire Emblem: Radiance | Quake 4 | Madden NFL 2006 | F.E.A.R.

  Top Cheats:   God of War | NBA Live 2006 | Halo 2 | Battlefield 2 | Metal Gear Solid 3 | Midnight Club 3 | Devil Kings | Total Overdose | Nintendogs | DBZ: Tenkaichi | Fable

  Next Generation Platforms:   Xbox 360 | PS3 | Nintendo Revolution | Xbox 360 Contest

  1UP.com:   Advertise | Contact Us | Staff | Jobs | Contests | RSS | The 1UP Show | Podcasts | Magazine Subscriptions | Help | Site Map

  The 1UP Network:   1UP.com | FileFront | GameTab | EGM | OPM | CGW   Ziff Davis Media:   PC Magazine | eWEEK | Extreme Tech | Sync
Ziff Davis Logo