Egregoros

@phnt @iamtakingiteasy @lain @cell @sun >Half-Life without the story is boring and quite mediocre
In my experience, that's because Half-Life's gameplay is ass. I'm only talking about 2 and 1, with the former being bland, rotten ass and the latter just regular ass.

A lot of people seem to agree in spirit, because what I see the most in HL discussions online are lore speculations, roach AI demonstrations and What Could've Been (if Valve was given just a couple more months, years, decades etc.). Not fond memories about guns that didn't do shit unless you played on Easy, bullet sponge upon bullet sponge, cutscenes that totally didn't take you out of the gameplay because you still had control of your character, plinking your toy gun rounds at Playdoh Combine and what have you.

I guess you really can salvage the game by compensating with story, but only to an extent. The gameplay needs to have that zing still. Old imsims are a great example.