Yesterday I purchased the Half-Life Complete pack while it was on special at Green Man Gaming. I have never played Half-Life before, and I have a couple of questions. (I decided to ask here instead of on the Steam forums as I think that overall GOGlodytes are more on my wavelength).

1) Should I play Half-Life before Half-Life 2?

2) Should I play the original Half-Life, or Half-Life: Source? (Assuming I had to pick just one). From what I understand, the Source version is basically an upgraded engine with better special effects, but are there any other differences which would make it better or worse? (I'm thinking about gameplay here, graphics I'm not fussed about).

I'm in the same boat as you and did some research. I found some old thread (and other comments here and there) here at GOG I decided the following.

1. Play Half-Life before Half-Life 2 since it's not unanimous that Half Life 2 is better.
2. Play the original, then Opposing Force, then BlueShift and eventually Half Life Source

Maybe my results will be useful to you.

Black Mesa != Half-Life: Source.
Black Mesa is a mod, completely recreating Half-Life in Source engine - every single level, monster and weapon has been remastered and redone to fit the source engine. It's excellent, but misses the last bit which is supposedly still in development.

Half-Life: Source is HL1 put into Source engine, without any real changes.

Also, yeah, expansions of the original are definitely worth playing, especially Opposing Force which is brilliant.

Funny. I agree concur completely with your facts, and yet I would offer the exact opposite advice. Go figure :P

So, my suggestion for the OP:

1) Not really. HL2 works rather well as an independent story. That said, you should play the first game as soon as possible because it is an absolutely phenomenal game and is, to my mind, the better of the two (modulo the six years between them)

2) I'd say go with HL: Source. Otherwise you'll find grenades behave really weirdly. Not much else is different, though; some water sections might be marginally easier.

+1 Opposing Force recommendation - at points it was better than the original game. Shame HL2 doesn't continue the Race X story.

The difference between us is that you're objectively wrong in everything you say :-P

Seriously tho, it doesn't really matter whether one plays Source or the original original - the differences are so small that the're close to nonexistant. It does, but you're going to enjoy it more if you have played the original since there are references to it troughout the second game fairly often. And if OP is going to play the first game anyway, it doesn't really make sence to not play it first.

Black Mesa has a little problem : it is unfinished because the last part on Xen is still in development and will release on Steam to an unknown date !

So, play HL 1, Opposing Force, Blue Shift ( which contains a HD patch for characters and weapons), then HL 2 (that I never played myself, because I don't have it. Shame on me !).

Link for Black Mesa after you finished HL1 : http://www.blackmesasource.com/

Half-Life is a great title, is not too long and you MUST play this.
HL2 contains some boring sections, like the Highway 17 one.

You don't HAVE to play the first one, but why not? It's excellent. I like it better than the sequel, which got too enamored with its physics.

Oh, and it doesn't matter if you play the Source version or not all that much. Some things do look out of place in the Source version, though.

You should play black mesa! (it the remake of half life 1 but with the source engine)It fucking rules and it's free, looks like a job made by a real company and not just fan made, then play half life 1 and then 2, because you wont understand many things of the story if you first dont play the first one and you meet a lot of old characters too.

Noo, no, no no, if the remake was finished then perhaps, but as it stands it's a terrible idea to play it first for multiple reasons.

That is just a stupid idea. Just as stupid as playing a sequel before the original.

black mesa source is not a sequel, yes it's not complete(all the alien levels are still being developed) but still it pretty amazing. It's just a remake of the first one.

In regards to someone playing HL now, who did not play it when it was new, chances are that you'll be a bit underwhelmed. It simply can't live up to its hype. HL was a rather special game when it was released, it helped shape shooters quite a bit. It was not the first game that tried to combine shooters with a story, but it did it surprisingly well (most of the story is not told through dialogue, but rather through the environment & the events going on around you), thus it showed the world that shooter with a story was not an oxymoron. A lot of games that came after did what HL did, but better (NOLF anyone?), but when it was released, it was almost groundbreaking

HL2 takes the storydriven part of HL and cranks it up further. It works, the story is, for a shooter, pretty well told. But you'll also see many of the negative aspects that people associate with modern shooters, like how railroady they feel, but unlike modern shooters, it's not all that good at distracting you from this. Also, HL2 acted as a bit of a tech demo, showing what the source engine could do, and thus it tends to put too much focus on the physics of the game. While very impressive at the time, these days it just feels annoying.


But yea, play the games in order. And as for Source or regular HL, it's really up to you. There are some minor improvements in source, but some of the graphics improvements do feel a bit out of place.