The new commentary is really good, tbh. I had no idea how much research and R&D they did. It looks fucking amazing for a 2004 game. The characters in particular.
Valve wrote literal research papers on player experience and level design. The stuff they came up with have just become the norm in other games. For example, Valve found that players never look up without a reason to. They came up with ways to get the player to look up without directly telling them to with level design choices. Things like rays of light coming in from above, or ropes hanging from the ceiling.
Barnacles exist just so Valve can say “haha made you look up.”
Are people playing the multiplayer? I used to play so much deathmatch back in the day, it was so much fun with the gravity gun.
I played last night and showed those young’uns how to use the gravity gun.
Hadn’t played regularly in about 15 years, but the reflexes are still there.
So many amazing total conversions spawned off that MP.
No MMR, BP and all of theses scraps,
