Half-Life’s Seamless Transition from Menu to Gameplay is Pure Immersion—More Games Should Do This!
Half-Life’s Seamless Transition from Menu to Gameplay is Pure Immersion—More Games Should Do This!
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Neither WON, nor Steam or even 25y anniversary jump from menu to gameplay. There is an obvious static image (or cool background for WON) and then a black screen. Half-Life 2 and Black Mesa backrounds are cool, but still not seamless. All games have obvious pause with a nice “LOADING” text when loading.
ESC to game is pretty standard on all games. Bunch of other games have better pause screen/ESC menu…
Level loading is extremely fast, next to none, so I get that part.
Also: “Node graph out of date. Rebuilding…”
HiFi Rush may tickle your fancy with its transitions from cut scene to gameplay.
Darksiders 2 has a seamless transition from menu to gameplay.
Best implementation of it I’ve ever seen.
I don’t think this is worth investing in with current consoles. I frequently suspend games and not close them. I only see the main menu once in some.cases.
Isn’t this pretty standard now?
I believe both of the new God of War games do this.
Just Cause 3 does this perfectly. The main menu just disappears and you take control of your character.
You’re using ChatGPT, aren’t you?
Please rewrite the original prompt.
Anyone else remember crouch jumping out of the Tram before it was patched?
Elevators in Mass Effect
Metal Gear Solid 4 had me sitting for a minute before I realized I was in control. It does seemless transitions all the time in it.
Which Half Life game has a seamless menu to gameplay transition?
This just made me realize Half Life 1 came out in 1998.
THAT WAS 26 YEARS AGO! More than a quarter of a century ago. HL2 came out in 2004, and well, let’s not talk about HL3..
the only parts of the Half-Life games that age are the graphics – everything else about them fully holds up IMO
Half Life had this philosophy that you never ‘leave’ your body. Every cutscene in the series is always from your perspective, and there is never a cut or skip in this continuity. Also when you transition to new areas. Thats why the game feels like one big level.
There are actually not that many games that have this and most of them are pretty old. Unreal is another one but Unreal 2 suddenly had missions and cutscenes. It’s a shame because I really love this concept.
All of your favorite games use smoke and mirrors in some way to create effects like this. It’s the coolest part of game development imo.
Like recently everyone was bashing on the new star wars game for having loading screens transitioning to planets and saying no mans sky doesn’t use them. It actually does they just hid the loading better and every planet is a loading screen at some point you just never feel.
Cases like this one they use a screenshot from your last save or a cut from the level you’re on and make that the menu screen. Computers process faster than our brains and eyes so tricks can be pulled off like that.
Darksiders 2 does it
Loading game smooth hard tho
Is there a clip of this in action?
Is it really gameplay though? I mean does it count if I can do my taxes in the time it takes the game to have me in a situation where I can actually play and not just pace around a tram.
Not a transition but I love how Spec Ops: The Line handled its main menu. With progress in the story changing it, in interesting ways.
Dont forget map to map loading with the trains movement
From menu to game play?
It has no Seamless Transition. Only games I can remember at the top of my head that do have it are both new God of Wars and its only when you first start them and never again and recently Wukong which also has it at the beginning.
Little quality of life improvements. 🙂
I mean wouldn’t the OG Doom be a better example the ‘menu to gameplay’ transition?
Hell, a lot of FPSes around this era had instant ‘gameplay to menu’ where the menu just went away. Am I missing something here?
thanks, this static screenshot really helps