Why was Half Life such a big deal?

Why was it so popular back in the day? I remember not liking it enough to play more than a couple hours. I saw a remake just came out called Black Mesa and gave it a shot. Same review from me. After about an hour I just don't feel like I'm having any fun. Each time I enter a room with electricity shooting all over and some lasers and a turret to get past, I just feel like stress but no fun.

I think it does a good job of setting a mood and telling a story, but the gameplay just doesn't do it for me. Anybody else feel the same? What made it so much different from other shooters back in the day?

 

It was a big deal because it demonstrated that a game can be part of interactive narrative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter#Advances_in_3D_graphics:_1995–1999

Unfortunatley, I'm missing some of the titles mentioned in FPS history, for example, I've not played GoldenEye.
However if we go from Quake to Half Life 1, the changes are massive.

First, you're now part of the narrative, instead of cutscenes, and the plot is not something simple and trivial that is explained in readme. You're within it.

Level design featured huge multi-level locations and those could be revisited. For example, in Quake 1 a level is self-contained, you reach the end, that's it. There will be a next level. Half Life 1 they're connected seamlessly, so rather than set of stages it resembles an actual world. Not level streaming, yet, but going in that direction.

Then there's matter of NPCs. Talking friendly character you could interact with (and optionally murder) was quite new thing. Friendly scientists, security guards and so on. They actually had personalities. Sorta.

The AI wasn't bad, and it featured that curious thing, where soldiers would use text to speech of sorts to bark out orders and exchanges. Something along the lines of "You. Find. Freeman!" It was cut into multiple wav files and constructed on the fly.

One other thing that stood out then was nearly persistent decals that didn't really go away with time.

There are also things like design (it is inspired by Mist) and things like interesting mysterious anatagonist plus nods at something bigger (what is that train at the end, for example?).

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So, long story short prior to that point, people focused on things going splat in spectacular fashion.
Half Life 1 came by and say "Hey, here's what you can do if you take story seriously".
And it was a success.

An interesting thing to compare it with is Morrowind. In Morrowind Blood Moon expansion Bethesda introduced voiced characters that actually spoke out the lines of their dialogue and those could change based on your actions. Blood Moon was released in 2003. Half Life 1 had talking scientists and guards in 1998.

 

A few things spring to mind for me.

The first is that it's the first game that I'd describe as "cinematic". Since Half Life that has come to mean set piece battles, fancy effects and lots of bespoke action, but I'm not referring to any of that stuff. I'm referring to the fact that it's the first game I played where each level lead seamlessly into the next, and each made narrative sense in terms of what was going on. The game wasn't arbitrarily broken up. Someone goes to work in the morning, and the game is just the seamless sequence of the weird stuff that he gets into that day, culminating in defeating an alien invasion.

It was also super immersive for its time. Partly because of the seamlessness of the events that take place, but also in part because it didn't have stuff like glowing, bobbing plus signs to increase your health. Stuff you picked up just looks like it does in the real world. They set up the suit thing at the start so that using a box on the wall to get health makes sense. In other words, they removed a bunch of the immersion breakers that reminded you "you're playing a game" rather than "you're a character in a sequence of events".

It's one of the first 3D games I played where there are a variety of friendly NPCs who were more than just a glorified menu. The things you could do with them were pretty simplistic, but it still made the game feel far more alive and far less contrived than other games at the time. You aren't the only person on your side of the conflict.

Finally, each part of the game had its own bespoke goals or aspects separate to "kill all the bad guys and get to the exit". In other FPSs I'd played each level was just a larger or harder challenge than the one which came before. Everything was obviously just a variation on the framework of the game's mechanics with a theme loosely hung on top, and that was particularly evident in that most games stopped you between levels ti give you a score card. In Half Life the idea of "levels" felt secondary to whatever narrative situation you're in and whatever you need to do as a result. You never even had explicit, game-style goals as far as I remember, you always found out your goals from in-world events.

All of those things have since been adopted by and used in countless games since, so none of them are special or even interesting any more. But for me that was the first game which did all of them together and well, and for that reason it's one of my favorite past games.

 

By seamlessly you mean with weirdly long loading times that would make changing zones in EverQuest jealous.

I don't get Half Life's popularity and I didn't get it back then. It gets a lot of credit for being the first narrative something or other, but it's not like FPSes didn't have narratives before. Dark Forces, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, Blood, Blood 2.

It also got praised for other things (AI, set pieces), but at best these were all very incremental improvements compared to other games at the time.

 

I mean with the loading not resetting the game. If I finished a level in a sewer then I started the next level in the same sewer. Yes there was a loading break, but it was still pretty darn good continuity of experience.

And yes, other games had stories. I distinctly remember also playing and enjoying Dark Forces 2, for instance. It still did the very typical "stop you playing at the end of a level and put you somewhere else" thing. There's nothing wrong with that, and that game did it particularly well, too, by using a somewhat episodic structure to its story. But it was doing the same old thing with better presentation, where Half Life was doing something I'd never seen before.

 

To make my point differently... Dark Forces 2 was a bunch of neat levels. Half Life was one huge, epic level.

 

Fair enough, I guess that aspect just didn't make an impression to me at all at the time. Not sure if I had seen it before or not (in other genres maybe?).

 

Some projects had elements, but none had it all in one package, as far as I know.
Continuous world + voice + skeletal animations + npcs + story.

 

Besides all points above, HL become super popular in modding community, leading to multiple branches.
And hence famous Counter Strike (not GO), which I sunk quite a bit of time back then.
It still sticks in my mind, the fact I could look round, when normally I would have cinematic otherwise.
Train example, nice way of introducing into a game

Half-Life Intro Train Ride

Riding the train - Black Mesa Gameplay (Half-Life Mod)

 

I remember playing it back when I was in a counter-strike craze. I didn't like it very much, didn't think it did a great job at creating an atmosphere. Felt claustrophobic and lacked variation.

It's been a while, so my memory of it is a bit hazy.

 

I never actually understood why half life got the buzz it did, I just couldnt get into it! Its a shame because I missed out on all the craze, but I did enjoy half life 2 and episode 1 + 2 a lot and alyx is looking very interesting

 

There was also very important aspect regarding first HL and following CS. It was so well damn optimized, it did run smoothly on pretty much any potato. Later doom iterations for example, require mid-high end PC. But CS spread faster than coronaV, gaining popularity.
That was its wining point.

 

I literally finished replaying this two days ago(*). I think really it was the first FPS-style game where the overarching narrative had more significance than 'you are the hero. kill the enemies to win'

it changed the relationship between the game protagonist and the bigger plot.

i can stll remember playing it the first time ever and just being completely amazed at the 'intro' tram ride; a combination of the scale of what you were being taken through, and the sheer fact that they would do that with you as a compltely passive observer, and that even then you hadnt actually 'started'. The fact that there was a setup, foreshadowing, proper 'cinematic' stuff; that stood out.

(*) And boy was I glad when I'd finished it. I always forget how much game control systems have matured in the past 20 years; cant climb a ladder or pick up an object unless you're pixel perfect in position and orientation, every surface is glazed with ice, Freeman basically has a hovercraft's inertia etc etc.... Deus Ex was the same. :

 

The Black Mesa reboot fixes those pesky issues with ladders.

I can appreciate the progress Half Life made technically. And definitely when I played it the first time, and still when I replayed it, I find the story engaging and I want to get sucked into it. It's just the style of gameplay, I think, delivers me no fun. I didn't enjoy Half Life 2 either.

I think, in general, I don't like video game puzzles. Because to me what it boils down to isn't critical thinking or ingenuity, but either searching around to find some hidden key, or using trial and error to discover what arbitrary combination of things developer thinks makes the most sense.

Like in one room pretty early on, there is a locked door. So the first thing I do is search every corner of the area for some other way. But it seems like that locked door is the way to go because its the "interactable" model. I can see that the eye scanner access control thing has been blown off the wall and is hanging only by a cord. So my first thought is that there is a security guard laying nearby, and I need to get his eyes in the scanner.

I can't drag his body. I can budge it a bit by hitting him or throwing things at him. I can grab the scanner but can't drag it all the way to him. Finally, I realize that you have to plug this eye scanner unit back into the wall. WTF, I am thinking. This entire thing just plugs into the wall? Why on earth would it work like that. Who would expect that.

Well that's one example, but I don't enjoy video game stuff like that. To me, that's like 90% of Half Life.

 

Getting killed by things in deus ex because I couldnt mount a ladder was one of the most irritating repeating moments of my gaming younger years

 

I thought it was a cool game but I didn't feel like playing it more than once. Half Life 2 was a better game and a break from the tech dominance of id, which also powered half life.

At this point valve launched steam, and when steam became greater income, valve's priorities shifted. Now they have so much money that they can afford to breathe a bit of life into VR, which the staff apparently does enjoy, and I think this is a great move. I hope that they continue to specialise in VR because nobody else is, and someone has to.

So if anyone is critical of Alyx, I would only consider them a moron, given how much entertainment is available elsewhere.

 

I was just thinking the other day about how some people were wondering/criticizing the fact that the next Half Life is in VR. And I thought, probably those guys have so much money from steam they can just do what they want to do. That's what I'd be doing, anyway. (not necessarily VR, but doing whatever I wanted to do)

 

Probably because many wont be able to play modern version, of their favorite HL series game.
Is not like everyone wants, or can buy VR just for one, or even handful of games.

 

Oh yeah no question about why people are upset. I meant from Valves perspective.

 

Well, yeah, you earn it, you spend it as you want.

But it is a bit, like some get upset about tech giants, spending on space missions, rather feeding people

 

They are supposed to have an interesting company structure (flat structure) which makes one wonder how the hell they manage to ever release anything.
https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/sapm/2014...is-of-management-practices-at-valve-software/

Some people claim the whole thing is a facade/illusion.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...nagers-flat-hierachy-workplace-tech-hollywood

 

Yeah, I think if you remove standard operating procedures, you'll just get normal human behavior, which of course will be favoritism, etc. But running a business and undertaking big, complex projects are not normal human behaviors, so it's like, the wrong tool for the job.

My opinion anyway.

 

Valve made Alyx VR because they sell VR hardware, which means they're banking on it to help them turn a profit on two fronts.

 

Half Life is, in my opinion, the greatest game ever created. I've played through it sooooo many times, and I'm looking forward to playing Black Mesa since I've owned it for years but was waiting until it was further along to try it. Half Life 2 was excellent as well, but I still prefer the original.

Half Life is one of those things, though, where I think you had to be there. It changed everything about gaming. It was mind blowing. It still is, to me, but I understand why younger people might be like, "so what?" because they've seen everything Half Life did first a million times since.

Anyway, Half Life is the best game there ever was, and if anyone disagrees, let's fight.

I was there, man. It was the golden age of video games, and every game was perfect. There were no bad games. None. PERFECT, I tell you!

 

In what ways do you think it is better than Thief: The Dark Project? As far as I can find out they released in the same month. Not sure I want to fight about it, but I'd be curious to hear your reasons.

 

I was waiting for this.

 

@Martin_H clickbite?

Thief: The Dark Project didn't have CS
Never did hear of it back then, or at least never did play. So must didn't had a punch through for me.
Besides, they are completely different type of games, different climate and whatever more different.

 

Thief was absolutely amazing! I loved that game and also played the hell out of it. I just liked Half Life more. (... and don't even get me started on the latest version of Thief. Yikes.)

I was just talking with my wife about this thread, and we were talking about how we were in the games industry back then when Half Life came out. I was at E3 in '97 when they announced it, and was blown away, as were a lot of developers back then. I was also working in Redmond, WA when it came out, and knew people from Valve (our team at work used to play LAN/online TF and CS against Valve's team) so I was steeped in game dev at the time. And because we were all super aware of what had come before (I'd been working in games since the SNES and Genesis days), when Half Life came out it was just... whoa. Like, it's hard to describe. It was god-like, really. It was obvious that things had changed, dramatically, and nothing was ever the same since. My wife feels the same.

But... context is key. If you drive a Model T Ford these days, you might think "holy hell, why was this so popular?? It's bumpy and loud and uncomfortable," but damn, back then, it was the bomb. Same with Half Life. I have such fond memories of game development and game playing from back then, and I have stars in my eyes when it comes to Half Life. To me it changed everything, and I can still feel that when I go back and play it. Again, and again, and again.

 

To be on topic specifically, another thing that Half-Life had at the time that a lot of games didn't have at the time was a sense of verisimilitude that games, especially first person games, didn't have at the time. While Black Mesa as an environment was very labyrinthian, even without accounting for things like areas being closed off by the attack in-game, it also felt like a place that could exist. At that point, most games (especially popular ones) were dealing with largely abstract environments that superficially looked like places. Quake 2 had come out the year before and while it took place in a military base to start, that base was basically an abstract map to begin with that looked like nothing. The same can be said for the Strogg homeworld, but that kinda makes sense because the Strogg just like war but not so much interior planning.

When you couple this with how Half-Life presented its story as "people in the environment talking about what's going on" along with how the environment reacted to things (even if scripted), you've kinda got a recipe for a shooter that was like nothing else that was particularly popular at the time. The sense of place that Duke Nukem 3D had really only existed in parts of the game. Once you got past Hollywood Holocaust, Red Light District, and even really the first half of Death Row, Duke fell well into the abstract, and even Duke was lauded for how it felt "real" at the time.

Half-Life represented a major shift in how shooters presented their stories and environments, and that clicked with a lot of people for the obvious reasons.

 

My perspective is that I was there too, but I was in the target audience -- a kid who played games all day.

It just didn't stand out to me. I don't think I played it right when it came out though. I may have caught it a few years late. But I don't remember.

To be fair, I think Half Life still holds up and plays great. It's just the puzzles and pacing don't work for me I think, so I stop having fun.

The big shooter that really left an impression on my gaming glory days was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I also replayed Turok and Turok 2, and those are still as good as I remember.

 

Prior to Half Life, FPS games were pretty much just run and gun with at best a half hearted attempt at a story. Half Life went full story, but didn't sacrifice game play. As already mentioned, modding support was big. Multiplayer using mods was always far more popular than multiplayer with the base game. Even Counter Strike alone routinely had far more players than base game multiplayer at any given time.

Then you even had the insanity of mods of mods. Some of my favorite servers were the Rambo mod and a Zombie mod for original Counter Strike. Rambo would give everyone infinite ammo, and choose 1 person at random who would get a knife only but an insane amount of health, and it would be everyone against this one player. In zombies again everyone would have unlimited ammo, and a player would be chosen at random to be the first infected as a zombie. When a zombie killed another player that player would instantly also become a zombie. So many different ways to have fun with Half Life.

 

What about System Shock 1? Too janky to count it as an FPS? I could see the argument that it's technically an FPS, but didn't really feel enough like one to "count".

Yeah, I can see that. I think both Half-Life and Thief have shaped games to this day, but in terms of number of affected games Half-Life was more influential for sure. The "cinematic" trend in modern gaming was started by HL imho, and you can still see stealth mechanics, in almost every game that has them, heavily borrowing from the Thief series. For me personally the things that Thief invented are still very fun today, whereas I'm growing tired of some of the things that Half-Life brought us. I still like the sense of immersion, attention to detail and sense of it being "a real place", but I have stronger memories of feeling wowed by that for Duke Nukem 3D. I know I liked HL a lot and played it at the time, but I don't have as many or as fond memories of it compared to Thief or DN3D. And I played all of them more or less in the context of their time, when I was in school. I think the fact that HL was so influential makes it look a lot less cool today, because it's the opposite of feeling super special and like "they don't make 'em anymore like they used to".

I think the last part of you post might play an important role, because I never really replayed HL. I tried but quit, didn't even finish Black Mesa yet. There is something about replaying the games you love that strengthens those positive emotions. I did that with Jagged Alliance 2 (and ya'll know how I can't shut up about it being unsurpassed as mercenary tactics game even 2 decades later) and also to some degree with System Shock 2. I know some people even have scheduled rituals like playing through Max Payne again each christmas or stuff like that.

 

System Shock 1 used sprites for enemies.

Aside from System Shock 1, there was also The Terminator: Future Shock. Huge environments. Also sprites for good portion of enemies. Then there was Sin, which included gimmick like where you would accidentally knock down environmental thing on one level, and it would alter the next one.

 

Nobody has mentioned the audio design yet.

Again, nothing special by today's standards, but it's the first game I recall where the audio was an integral part of the design and experience. From memory the game only has music in two places, and I assume that's because there's a whole lot of quiet, subtle sound they didn't want us to miss.

"Minor lacerations detected."

 

Sin came out 10 days before Half-Life and it was probably Half-Life doing its narrative bits far better (along with not being a buggy disaster that barely worked on a lot of computers) that caused Sin's sales sharp falloff after released.

 

Yep. I noticed that the games were released close to each other.

It is a pity that SiN died off, though. There was something about those series.

The funny thing is that I played classics like Half Life 1 and Doom years after their release date. Found them to be great. Doom I is quite amazing mechanically to this day.

 

I was 28 when Half Life came out, and up until that point I'd played so many amazing games, but when Half Life hit it was like a total breath of fresh air and screamed of possibilities. I think if you were in your teens or even early twenties back then it's totally possible that it didn't have the same impact, as there wasn't so much buildup for you of all the games that had come before it, leading to that point.

For people who try out these old games nowadays and don't get all the fuss, I also think there's a huge difference between playing games today compared to the past.

To me there's nothing quite like the warmth and glow of a big beige CRT, the enveloping embrace of true gaming surround sound (thanks Microsoft for killing it with Vista), and the thrill of waiting for a game, getting it at the store, opening the box, waiting for it to install, and then preparing for a night of perfect bliss. These days with cold, harsh LED monitors, headphones, and an instant access library of hundreds of games you'll never even play, it just isn't the same.

And yes, I still run my Amiga and other systems through CRTs (got 4 of them in my studio (PVMs, etc.)) so it's not just nostalgia speaking through the lens of time, haha. But yeah, everyone eventually thinks their younger days were the best days EVER. Myself included.

 

Yeah I'm pretty jaded on games nowadays. Not the same as when I was younger. But I think that's more personal change than a change of the art form. I feel the same about movies and pretty much all entertainment.

I guess it's mostly targeted towards kids, but there just isn't ever anything out there that I can suspend my disbelief for. I think that's why I prefer pure-gameplay games with scant story or exposition. Then I can still believe without the authors ruining anything for me.

 

Regarding modern games, has anyone here tried Prey? To me that is a fine example of a modern game that nods its head clearly in the direction of the Half Life (and Bioshock (another of my favs)) days, and I loved every minute of it.

 

I didn't click with me.

 

Original Prey or the new Prey?

Regarding the new Prey - I played it. Didn't like it.

1. It looks like bioshock. Exactly like bioshock.
2. Nothing in common with original Prey.
3. Clunky combat.
4. Useless stealth.
5. Enemy design/variety not good.
6. Hideous NPCs.
7. Lots of running towards ammo manufacturing facility.

However, environments were interesting to explore. And it was refreshing to see that levels did not reset (you make a mess, it stays there)

The main issue was low enemy variety, and rogue-like difficulty of combat. You run around corner, make a single mistake and die in 2 seconds.

Studio behind the game made Dishonored, Dark Messiah of Might and MAgic and Arx Fatalis.

Their trademark is that they try to introduce non-linearity into their games, put huge amount of effort into world crafting and lore, but then they always screw up elsewhere which makes it all unsatisfying.

 

Speaking of CRTs I miss PROPER black color and crips low resolution images with square pixels.

I have 3 monitors right now.

Monitor #1: Black color does not exist. It is gray.
Monitor #2: Black color does not exist. Also everything is slightly purple.
Monitor #3: Gray color does not exist. It is BLACK! Oh you want gray? We can do that. Behold a power of thousands suns, directed at your eyeballs! Oh, too bright for you? Then no black color for you, weakling.

The CRT I had apparently was quite high quality one, and was easier on the eyes than any LCD I had afterwards. When I had to replace it, it took at least two weeks to get used to the crisp LCD display and reading text used to physically hurt.

 

It seems like it's always in one particular area: The games don't feel good to play.

Definitely I am beyond spoiled when it comes to games, but if it's not feeling good to play in my hands it's an instant quit. Such was the case with prey. Trying to shoot the weird enemies was frustrating, so then its, "Well im not doing this for another twenty hours."

 

See below, to some degree. I do think we are all (myself included) spoiled to death with instant gratification these days, and it's very easy to get bored with things if they don't immediately appeal. A lot of people nowadays can barely even read through a book, if they've even tried in the first place.

new one. We totally loved it here, and thought it was the best modern game we've played in forever. My son (29) played it, though, and said he stopped when he couldn't figure out where to go next. I think he's possibly spoiled by modern games that lead you be the hand every step of the way and don't really make you work for it. To his credit he does play (and streams) original Everquest and other older games a lot these days, so there's that.

 

Yes, they have gameplay problems, usually.

I managed to beat Prey, probably because exploration aspect pulled me through. However it was not a "happy enjoyable experience". It was a drag/chore.

 

Things that I enjoy fall under "thinking game" one way or another and kick brain into high gear. Meaning...

1. Amazing story which keeps my brain busy. Examples: Nier Automata, Silent Hill 2.
2. Gameplay that requires me to react to ever increasing stream of new events and things that are happening. Examples: Doom I (at later levels difficulty goes up, and you start dealing with ammo scarcity. There is not enough ammo to kill everything, pretty much)
3. Sandbox. You're given a world, and you can mess it up and see what happens/how it is going to react. Examples: Way of Samurai 4, visual novels.

A negative variation of that is (meaning I'll enjoy it, but ultimately will end up unhappy and disgusted with the game):
1. Building sandbox. You're given tools to build stuff, so you end up building stuff till you discover horrible horrible horrible horrible oversight in the game which makes you quit the game in disgust. Examples: Space Engineers, Zomboid.

Prey kinda didn't click any of those checkboxes for me. I coudl see they put effort into it, but that was it. Mechanical component was very unpolished and awkward.

For example, from the new games, things I really liked include Little Nightmares (story) and Yakuza 0 (ton of stuff to do, sandbox to explore).

 

Oh my, I love that game so much.

The game doesn't have levels. About a third of the way in it becomes completely open, and the stuff you've done in different areas is a major component of the game's mechanics.

I agree, but this didn't bother me as I didn't approach it as a combat game. It's somewhat of a survival game, in fact, so I never felt that combat was a thing I should enjoy. It was a thing I had to do sometimes and which made the environment feel dangerous. The fact that combat isn't slick made me feel vulnerable, because my skill at other shooty games wasn't going to get me out of trouble on its own. I liked that.

I think Prey kind potentially shot itself in the foot with a lot of people by letting them have false impressions of what it is. First of all, the other game of the same name was a straight up shooter, and this isn't that at all. I've also often seen it described as "Dishonored in space", but anyone who describes it as such has at best a superficial reading of one or both titles. It has a lot in common with those games, but that doesn't make it the same thing.

It's an open-world psychological thriller survival game. Even then, a bunch of that isn't clear until multiple hours in.

There's also a fairly significant change in style part way into the game. It fits into the mystery aspect of a lot of what's going on and works really well, but I get the impression that loads of people went in with expectations that may have spoiled some of the game (eg: combat is meant to be fun in a shooter), or potentially didn't try the game because they thought it was something it's not (eg: thought it was a shooter). I try to know as little as possible about games before playing them and in the case of Prey that worked an absolute treat.

I've heard a bunch of people raise this as a complaint and I've got to say, I don't get it. I don't see how sharing a name with a thing that is different diminishes the thing that you're playing.

Is it that fans of the original wanted more of that and got something different instead?

 

It actually does. There were very obvious transition phases. While they technically were "not levels", they felt like levels. Unlike the half-life load transition. While I knew that they represented parts of the ship, they felt "less whole".

Systen Shock and Bioshock handled it way better. Didn't make me feel vulnerable in the slightest, only annoyed. Non-working stealth makes it a combat game, and "no combat" is not an option, as the only way through is to perform a potentially lethal sequence perfectly so yo uget rid of another messy what-the-hell-is this-thing in the next room. In this situation, it is no longer a thill/entertainment thing, but rather figuring out how not to die sometims through trial and error. In contrast, in System Shock 2 while I was running around the ship in the wrench, I DID feel vulnerable and there was part of thinking game. Because there were those robots, those "sisters" and whatever else, all the while I really wanted to find bottle with <insert chemical ingridient name here>. It doesn't feel the same way in the (new) Prey.

An obstacle that can merely kill player does not create tension, it only increases time it takes for the player to find a way aroudn it. System Shock 2 had overarching goals, and in this case combat was slowly wearing you down. It was not a thing you could work around easily.

It is important to understand that if you give some gamers an unarmed character and pit it against abrams tank with artillery support, some gamers will figure out how to defeat the tank with their bare hands, unless you scrip the hell out of the encounter. They'll find a way. So because of that a buzzing bullet sponge of death that kills your character in two seconds is not seen as a threat but rather as an obstacle, and if that obstacle is not behaving in interesting way, it isn't fun.

It is exactly that, because trademark non-linear elements that were present in Dishonored are part of the (new)Prey. People are referring to that, and not to rat swarms and chaos endings.
It is also a space shooter, because stealth mechanics don't work, and really, you will need to kill most things you run into.

I have not noticed the psychological component at all. It is a System Shock 2-style game. The twist in the end wasn't bad, mind you, but it did not have a huge impact. It is not an openworld either as this referrs to something slighlty different. Large level game, maybe, but it definitely doesn't feel open world.

Original Prey ends up with a scene which pretty much promises continuation which never happened.

Also, original Prey featured stuff that wasn't present in the new Prey, like non-euclidian geometry levels with seamless portals.

The themes were quite different too. Prey (2006) had elements of bio horror, creepier aliens, and cherokee in it.

 

One more thing.

Combat is absolutely meant to be fun, otherwise why is it part of the game in the first place?

"Fun" means "it should provide satisfying level of challenge. It doesn't mean "it should be easy" or "it should let you win", or "there should be a lot of pretty explosions for everything".
There's a category of games where you end combat encounter with shaky hands, cold sweat and new cracks in the gamepad because you gripped it too hard. And you enjoy every moment of it.

Those encounters are fun. A situation where you are placed to fight a bulletsponge which quickly kills you are not fun, because their behavior is dull, predictable, and you're losing due to numerical advantage which feels fake/artificial. That is the impression combat of Prey gives.

Games that handled challenge well include Dark Souls. Fight against Ornstein and Smough are memorable, even though it can easily fall into "new cracks in the gamepad" category.
For "quick death" kind of game, there's Katana Zero which requires you to perform impossible feats with the blade.
Doom I handles combat well, because it is constantly throwing things at you and ramps up the difficulty meanwhile.
Bioshock/Systemshock are games I already mentioned.
Then there's Alien Isolation where you have an AI opponent.

Those games handled it well.

(new) Prey is different. Because enemies are largely similar, tough, hit hard, but they are not interesting.

 

That's true but I didn't think it's relevant for whether it counts as an FPS because I think we all agree original Doom was an FPS.

The audio in Half-Life was pretty damn iconic! But I remember the audio in thief to be more technically impreassive with EAX 3D positional audio. I may even have had a proper 5.1 system at that time to be able to really hear steps from a guard coming up behind me. I'd argue audio is a more important part of Thief than HL, partly maybe because Thief looks pretty ugly .

I actually really liked all the games you mention. None of them are flawless, but almost no one else makes these "immersive-sim" type games anymore.

I absolutely loved Prey and thought it's perhaps the best of their games so far. I thought it's like a System Shock 2 sequel without any of the trademarked stuff or clearly connected lore. Since I didn't like Bioshock, all the similar games that I like will always remind me of System Shock 2 more than anything else I guess.

I enjoy when combat turns into a puzzle to experiment with and savescum through. For me that's often when the fun starts because I get a reason to start thinking and getting creative with the gameplay systems.
Did you play on hard or normal? I think hard might be too much for a first playthrough. Overall the game probably was a little too hard for most people, though I'm sure on normal on a first playthrough you should have had no problems with your shooter experience.
I remember I made my first playthrough of Half-Life on hard and it was brutally hard for me to get through it. In hindsight, maybe that was a little to the detriment of my enjoyment of the game too? Later I started playing everything on normal first, or easy when I think it's a game I'd have little patience for.

Do you think you might enjoy the gameplay of the Prey mooncrash DLC more? It's a rogelite where you can't savescum and need to escape from a moonbase with 5 people and the world only resets when you've attempted to escape with each one of them and to get them all to safety you need to prepare the escapes of the later characters with skills that not all characters have. So you're playing teamwork with yourself and everything is more oriented towards the bigger overarching goals and there is an element of threat randomization that prevents you from "perfecting a speedrun" of the game, you'll always have to be on your toes and react to different threats and challenges on each run. I don't want to talk you into it if you didn't enjoy base-game Prey, but I think for those that liked Prey, they should absolutely check it out. It's bold and unique gamedesign, with some severe technical flaws, but worth experiencing imho.

I don't disagree, but could you put into words what makes DS bosses more fun than the bulletsponge with high damage fights? On paper both are skilltests that prioritize damage avoidance and patience over aggressive playstyles, so what makes one boring and one fun for you?