This is a close one, since I've played both games extensively. But in the end, Unreal is my choice.

It's the vast openness and that feeling of solitude that keeps me coming back. I don't really know why, but I enjoy being in such an alien landscape. In contrast, Half-life felt cramped and almost claustrophobic with all the crawling, crouching and jumping around - not to mention that "certain someone" showing up when you least expect it 😒 .

As far as online play, I never did. I'm just not good at it. So it was single-player only - and I enjoyed (and still enjoy) every minute of it 😀 .

leileilol wrote:

I also liked Klingon Honor Guard at the time.

Me too. It was the first Unreal engine licensee too AFAIK. They did a pretty good job with it.

Unreal, it was amazing (for its time) technology-wise and was FUN, Half Life just bored me, really (I did see it through to the end...but it was just...meh...).

I love both games, but my preference definitely goes to Half-Life. Granted, I didn't play either of those games until a decade after they were released, but I have played both quite a bit.

When I bought Unreal, I played a few levels, then got bored and dropped it. Did the same thing a few more times before I finally finished it. I think it just took me that long to figure out how to play it. I kept expecting Unreal to turn into a Quake-style, run-and-gun shooter, which it just isn't. It's slow, cerebral, and kind of an acquired taste. I've grown to like it, though 😀

Half-Life, on the other hand, clicked right away. It's just a fun, immersive experience from start to finish. Never seems to get old, either.

Pros of Unreal:

• beautiful art design
• awesome music
• technologically impressive for its time

Cons:

• non-existent story
• uneven weapons
• obvious lack of playtesting

Pros of Half-LIfe:

• good story
• smart level design
• awesome weapons

Cons:

• graphics and sound are a little rough
• last-gen engine technology

Take your pick, each game is great in its own way.

Well i am a big fan of FPS games all the way to the beginning...

So i played Wolfenstein 3D it was primitive, but DooM really blew me away.

Then came Duke Nukem 3D and Quake(The dreaded thing what compelled me to exchange my 486 DX2/66 to a Pentium 133), but Half Life was like real life, i played Unreal allso, but i never really liked it.

But if you compared Unreal Tounrament and Quake 3 Arena, then Unreal Tournament wins... these are the games what compelled me to exchange my Pentium 166MMX to a Celeron 333 ATX box.

So i think Half Life really revolutionize the industry, and Half Life 2 did it again, because Doom 3 what launched same time, was dark, in small spaces, and needed more recources, because Doom 3 and Quake 4 are the reasons that i eventually exchanged my Athlon XP 2800+ to a Core 2 Duo 8400 (I still use it!).

luckybob wrote:

I'm with you. Both games defined FPS genre as we know it today, so choosing one of them sounds like an impossible task to me.

INORITE? I mean seriously, both games are era defining. Its like trying to choose between kirk and picard...

luckybob wrote:

INORITE? I mean seriously, both games are era defining. Its like trying to choose between kirk and picard...

101 reasons why Picard is better than Kirk

http://www.math.utah.edu/~wisnia/picard.html

🤣

i'd say it's like choosing between sisko and picard.....

Never finished Unreal and finished Half-Life few times, Half-Life wins!
Picard wins as well!

Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight

Hatta wrote:

Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight

Agreed! 🤣
Of the three, I would say that is the one I'd pick as well!

Harekiet wrote:

Never finished Unreal and finished Half-Life few times, Half-Life wins!

Agree with this. I pick Half-Life because of story and the way it was told in 1998. It was something new!

vetz wrote:

Harekiet wrote:

Never finished Unreal and finished Half-Life few times, Half-Life wins!

Agree with this. I pick Half-Life because of story and the way it was told in 1998. It was something new!

See I never totally got this. What was so amazing about the story and storytelling techniques used in Half-Life? Was it really all that different compared to games such as Shogo, Sin or even Blood II?
I love Half-Life and especially Half-Life 2 and its episodes as much as the next guy and I totally dig the whole G-Man thing and just sheer awesomeness of those games, but why is the first one really considered so revolutionary in the story department?
And don't get me started on the whole "There are no levels in Half-Life" excuse. Of course there are levels. The transitions are just masked better and on some occasions some backtracking is involved, but that's it.

Realms of the Haunting never gets mentioned for the 'story fps!!!' thing.

Having a silent protagonist obviously cuts down quite a bit on storytelling. This fits perfectly into concept in HL where no significant interaction with NPCs happens, but in HL2 those long drawn out stupid cutscenes with unnecessarily added characters don't make any sense at all when he doesn't interact with them, another reason why I hate this game...

This would probably sound weird here but I've never played Unreal 🙄 . Loved both Half Lifes and played them a lot however. Liked the alien world part in HL1 and Ravenholm in HL2 specially (those fast running gargling zombies, my favorites! 🤣 ).

This is worth seeing for HL fans 😳 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4kX9WEcZA

Two of my favorite games (if you judge "favorites" by by which games I have spent the most time playing).

I played the demo version of half-life when it first came out - on a pentium 166 with no video acceleration. As you can guess, it was slow as molasses and I was frustrated with it.

I didn't get unreal until several years later. Someone gave me a monster fusion card with a demo version of unreal. Man, once I started I was hooked. After playing the demo version I had to go buy the game

I never bought half-life until much later - and I got the whole pack with blue-shift, counterstrike, and the others.

Both games are outstanding, I always though that unreal was technically superior. I think that with half-life they had the difficulty level set too high - especially "surface tension." And I never really liked the alien levels.

Half Life for me, it just has so much character, good all around game play, awesome design. I appreciate Unreal, but as a game goes it falls short for me... unmemorable and unbalanced. I very much enjoyed Quake , Quake II, Dark Forces, Outlaws, Duke 3D , Shadow Warrior and Blood also. I wasn't really interested in how good graphics are (and I'm still not) I just want a good GAME that's fun to play more than anything else. Great graphics, music and story are just icing on the cake to me. Characters are also important, both antagonist and protagonist... Creating a world which you can get lost in, and some kind of lore to go with it doesn't always require a great story (Doom, Quake).

Communities can also make games great, Most of the games mentioned have/had awesome communities that extend the lives of the games and make them that much more enjoyable and memorable.