Half-Life 1
Half-Life was released in 1998 as one of the earliest 3D computer game. It's an action FPS (First Person Shooter) game, and is also a movememnt shooter. In shooters, usually gunplay in the game is one of the top priorities. Movement shooters however put more emphasis on the way you move. These games typically make it so you always have to be moving or it'll be easy for your enemy to target you easily. The whole Half-Life series of games (1, 2, and Alyx) have been known to be revolutionary. Half-Life 2 introduced great physics, Alyx with outstanding physics for a VR game, and Half-Life 1 introduced a story that is told while you are playing it. Up until this point, games usually used cutscenes as a way of progressing the story. It makes the player unable to control their character and they have to simply watch pre recorded scenes and dialogue. Half-Life 1 has rarely anytime in the game where you can't control your character at all. It's told in such a, at the time, unique way never done before. One example of this is after the Resonance Cascade, you find out through scientist NPCs you can interact with that the military isn't trying to help them, but rather kill them. Right after the Resonance Cascade they also don't explain the effects of it. You see the effects with yourr own eyes, effects you can interact with.
This story starts off with Gordon Freeman who has a new job at Black Mesa. On his first day Gordon heads to the Black Mesa research facility where he will be working at. He then grabs an HEV suit to protect Gordon from the radiation he will be experiencing. Once he's inside the chamber to work everything seems fine. Fine until Gordon inserts a crystal on a kart into a giant laser, causing the Resonance Cascade. An attempted shutdown is proceeded but it ultimately fails. Gordon gets teleported between what we later find out to be Xen and Earth as a result of the accident. When he gets teleported back he founds out that the accident caused several scientists to die and opened a portal between Xen and Earth. Gordon then sets off to the surface where he thinks he'll find help. On his journey he runs into several creatures of Xen including the headcrab, bullsquid, vortigaunt, and more.
Getting ever so closer to the surface, Gordon learns from multiple scientists that the military have arrived but not to help. It turns out the military has been ordered to kill Black Mesa scientists in an effort to cover up the Resonance Cascade. Gordon then changes his goal to closing the portal from Xen so the aliens stop coming through. Now fighting through Xen creatures and the military he eventually reaches an area where he can teleport to Xen. He jumps through and once in Xen finds his way to the Nihilanth; ruler of Xen and the one keeping the portal open.
Gordon kills the Nihilanth and then is teleported into stasis with a strange man. The tells Gordon that he would be very useful for him and would like to employ him. He can either face a battle he has no chance of winning, or join the mysterious man and in the end joins him. The story of Half-Life 1 ends there with Gordon being put on standby in a place called stasis for many years until he's seen as useful again.
Half-Life 1 features a famous in-game mechanic called bhopping (bunnyhopping). This mechanic allows the user to gain extreme speed with a combination of jumps and strafes. In simple terms you strafe in the air to gain speed, and then to preserve that speed you jump once you reach the ground and repeat the process to gain more speed. The timing for this is tight though, which is why players usually bind their mousewheel up or down to their jump key. This way there will be multiple "jump" commands inputted in less than a second depending on how far you scroll. The timing for bhopping then becomes more practical and lenient.
Being a game from 1998 Half-Life 1 has little to no recoil in any of their guns, just a simple point and shoot. There are a variety of unique weapons in the game though to keep it fresh like the Gauss gun which is the most unique gun in the game.
This weapons has 2 firing modes with one being a simple shot that instantly releases but has little power. The other firing mode allows you to charge up the gun and once fully charged can usually kill anything in the game in one shot. The second firing mode specifically has interesting property of launching you in the opposite direction when released in the air. This helps the player gain massive speed in a short amount of time or allow you to go to usually unreachable places. It also is the only weapon in the game that can shoot through walls. If you knew the general area of where you enemy is you could have the chance to kill them through the wall.
