Half-Life 3 is the black sheep of gaming. Or rather, it's the phantom of the gaming opera, phasing in and out of the collective consciousness much like the Borealis goes in and out of reality itself. However, we're going to have to make do with what we have, and this upcoming mod might just scratch that itch.
Half-Life: Element 64 reimagines the original 1998 game as a boomer shooter, influenced heavily by other FPS games of the time, even more so than Half-Life 1 already was. With gameplay, movement, and shooting taken straight out of Quake, HL Element 64 is a new way to play a classic title, albeit the story itself is also significantly altered.
Many fans have already dubbed it as Half-Life 0.5, inspired by other mod names like Quake 1.5 and Doom 2.5, both of which expand the original games with new and unique mechanics that fundamentally alter the overall experience, usually for the better.
The amount of attention Element 64 has attracted, and the fact that it even exists, prove to me that old-school '90s shooters aren't dead by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, we've gotten tons of "boomer shooters" over the years that are generally much more modernized both in feel and gameplay, but I'm quite surprised that a true, 1990s-style mod is gaining this much traction.
It could be the prospect of Half-Life 3 that's leading Valve's fans to grasp at literally anything, or, more likely, the fact that old-school shooters are an impeccable genre. Decades of FPS games have come and gone, and we are still looking back to that golden age, trying to imitate it to the best of our abilities.
It's when shooters peaked, and, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The post Who needs Half-Life 3 when we’ve got boomer shooter Half-Life 0.5 on the way? appeared first on Destructoid.
