I wanted to try playing through this series (excluding Alyx, I don’t have a headset) because of the HL3 rumors- I had played around the first 30 minutes of Half-Life 2 around a year ago, got stuck on Route Kanal, and quit. I started Half-Life around November of 2024, played like a level a day every few days, then paused in mid-December, started playing again in January, then yesterday and today I beat the last 6 levels.
I'm shocked at how little I needed to consult a walkthrough. I didn't use one at all while playing the first half of the game (I did technically use one once in chapter 2 only to realize I had already gotten through it and hadn't realized it). Even in later levels where it got more confusing, I didn't need to use one nearly as much as I thought I would going into a 90's shooter. I even beat On A Rail without ever looking for help online. My favorite chapter was probably Questionable Ethics, and Gonarch's Lair was really boring.
Overall, I don't think I'm old enough to properly understand why this game was so revolutionary- I know that it was the first game to deliver the story through the gameplay, without cutscenes, never taking you out of Freeman, but I haven't played many 90's shooters so I don't really understand what it was like before. It was fun, I don't regret playing it, but I doubt I'll want to replay it or play the expansions.
But this game did however make me extremely excited to play through Half-Life 2. Now that I understand where we're coming from, I can't wait to experience this game in a larger scale. Half-Life 2 is still impressive to me today- I remember when I got G-Mod I spent like 20 minutes just fucking around with the Physics Gun.