Lots of good comments here.
First of, let me reiterate that this is
in my opinion. Obviously my tastes run differently than most other players on this board, since I thought Jedi Knight 2 was fantastic.
At the time, when it was released, Half Life was amazing. It was BY FAR the best game that had been released in its genre (although you DID need to be an FPS fan in order to think so), and it stayed on top for a long time. I merely mention the original System Shock because it had (once again in my opinion) a better story and a much better sense of urgency to it (Ever tried playing it with that seven hour time limit? You think those Gatorade guys in those commercials sweat bad, you ain't seen nothing yet). And seriously, what WAS the story in Half Life? Scientists open portal to strange world, demons come through. Scientist geek gets guns, fights off demons and Bad Government Black Ops and shuts down portal. It wasn't all THAT earthshaking was it? The way it was TOLD was great, but the story itself didn't earn any special merits in my book.
However, pretty much all of the mods that have made Half Life the no1 played game over the Internet are now rated by themselves, hell, they are GAMES by themselves and are released as such. Therefore, saying "Half Life is the best ever (because of these Mods)" is in my opinion not fair. In fact, if we did that, we'd have to say Quake2 was the best game ever, because Half Life was made with that engine. Right?
And the five games I mentioned (little separate column for the original system shock) in my opinion innovated and improved JUST AS MUCH as Half Life did, and since they were a lot newer, looked better, played better, weren't AS linear as Half Life, better levels etc, they deserved to be mentioned.
But if I get really technical about it, hell, pretty much every FPS released by Raven and Monolith since 1999/2000 is better than Half Life. (which is my "a lot" of games) That's simple aging. Doom was the best game ever, but eventually it does get surpassed, and those fond memories dwindle away until you fire it up again, then realise how annoying it is that it doesn't have mouselook, and no jump, and fake 3d levels etc (although I still get thrilled by having 50 monsters killing each other
).
So that's my opinion on Half Life. Great engine, great netplay, great Mods (even though I hardly play any of them, not much into online deathmatch etc), great single player game for its time, but it HAS BEEN BETTERED.
Valve has waited, in my opinion, way too long to bring this out. So, like I said, they better come up with some mindnumbingly fantastic gameplay, or they are going to go down mediocre lane.
And it's not so much that I'm not a big fan of Valve, but it's more that even fandom ages after awhile if the object of your fandom doesn't produce anything. I don't think anybody is a fan of the Blue Jays anymore because they won two World Series back to back during those days, right?
Hey, I'll be honest, will I buy this? I probably will, although it does depend a lot on what else comes out during that time. If this gets released for Xmas together with Doom 3, well, let's just say that I think the marine kicks a lot more ass than Gordon Freeman ever did
Creston