For the uninitiated, crouch jumping is a mechanic where you can increase the height of ledges you are able to jump on by holding crouch after jumping, like a simulation of pulling your legs up in real life.
I never really thought much about it growing up, some games had it, some didn't, but it always felt natural/intuitive, and today I feel like it is a way to increase the ceiling of player movement by a simple combination of two existing movements.
However I've heard that some people dislike it, and some actively hate it. Some of the arguments I've heard is that if a player needs to be able to get somewhere, then ledges should be lower and not gated, and that the whole mechanic is useless and just introduces an extra button press for no reason.
I can see the merit in some points, and others I feel like are nitpicky, but I'm interested in broadly knowing how Lemmy feels about it.
one of the main reasons i hated half life, along with slow as fuck intro and slippery platforming. super unnecessary and awkward.
skill issue
agreed, game design is indeed a skill. half life has some good examples of it, but in these aspects it failed miserably.
Do you think your age when you played it has anything to do with disliking it? It was leaps beyond anything else available at the time, and I was young and impressionable, so even for its faults it was amazing.
i wasn't very old but i was experienced enough i guess. i was used to games starting immediately for example. while the first time going through the intro is an impressive tech demo, it becomes quickly obvious that it's not meant to be replayed. similarly to Bethesda game intros, it sucks and it's bad for a videogame.
physics were also impressive at times but it led to slippery controls which wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't require platforming. it's frustrating and unforgivably so in my opinion. compared to much older games like quake and doom which had incredibly precise controls, it just felt floaty.
but the absolute worst was the crouch jump. Jesus Christ what were they thinking‽ unnecessarily complicated, unintuitive, badly implemented and barely even used so it was also unnecessary in general.
there were lots of technical feats and design choices that were good, mind you. level design was pretty good. enemy designs were cool. the mystery elements were very cool.
I've been trying half life for the first time recently and I'm struggling to enjoy it.