Half-Life

Let me start by saying this is all my opinion. I'm not the most professional or the most subjective on this matter so I won't be mad if you disagree, that's where you can use the comments.

All pictures i use in this article are taken from their respective Wikipedia pages... 

So yeah, I've played through pretty much all official versions of Half-Life (Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (I'll abbreviate them with HL and HL2), Episode 1 and Episode 2) and I liked it.

Why?

Well, the games don't consider their players to be the largest retards ever. In the first game there wasn't a tutorial incorporated in the story (you could play the tutorial if you really wanted to know what ways of movement are possible but nothing too complicated...) and in the second one it was a very minimalistic one in a (later in the game unexisting) HUD popup (wsad to move and picking stuff up).
Further on there are no indication of where to go to, which way to go or what to do, you have to figure that out for yourself. Of course there's only one right way which becomes obvious after a few tries, but still, that isn't too obvious from the start.
The game does tell you a lot of things indirectly. When introducing a new enemy for example it does this from a distance and mostly while fighting something else so you already know how it attacks and how to avoid it. Usually there are a few health packs lying around for the hard learners and the usual way of killing it is by firing a lot of bullets at it.

The game takes its time to give you a weapon. In the first one you get the crowbar pretty early, but only receive a gun once someone carrying it dies. Later you may find a shotgun laying in some guard's locker or an assault rifle after you've shot a trooper... It's never handed to you, you have to "earn" it in some way.

Introducing new areas happens in an interesting way. For example Ravenholm in HL2. Before you even get there you hear the sentence "We... We don't go to Ravenholm".
Eventually you wander in and see some improvised traps, mangled zombie limbs and some booming voice you are not sure to trust. Combine this with a new howling zombie type, a town without any visible human residents and a pitch black night and you have one hell of a level.
Sure, everything is linear, But it doesn't feel that way. There are no invisible walls, if the level designer doesn't want you to go some way there is a pretty good reason for. A giant canyon, a huge wall or a radio-active river prevent you from wandering off course.
Sure, in the original game some level elements aren't logical ("Why is there a railing here?", "How would anyone get up here?", "Where was this ladder supposed to lead to?") but this is less the case in HL2. Not only that, but the source engine in HL2 was used to its maximum to show off that can be done. This with an improved level design makes HL2 one of the best looking games I can run on my laptop.

The Half-Life series ware also the inspiration for many mods that in some cases became even more popular than the original game. CounterStrike, Portal and Team Fortress are all spin-offs or mods from one of the HL games and have a huge player base.
There is even a Half-Life revisited mod available for free, called Black Mesa, that recreates the original story of HL in a more recent Source engine, making it more beautiful to play and still keeping as close as possible to the original story. Only the last chapter is unfinished and should be released some time next year.
The mod didn't just take all the original HL models and placed them in the Source engine like Half-Life: Source did? The team recreated most of the models and sometimes they used models from HL2 or Garry's mod. They also re-imagined most of the levels so every platform has a (closed) door leading onto it, every ladder seems to have a purpose and sometimes they improved the design of some levels to look better.

It made me ooh and aah more than once, laugh at some details and sometimes jump up from my chair when something jumps out of a dark corner... I'll embed their launch trailer which shows only in-game footage. It's just incredibly beautifu

There is even a comparison video that compares the first few scenes of the original with the Black-Mesa version. IGN did a commentary video with two Half-Life veterans where they give their opinion on what's awesome about the game.

Best part of all: Half-Life has no cutscenes. if you have a gun and a guard is giving you directions of where to go you can go and shoot him, cutting off his monologue and continue playing the game. If that guard was supposed to open up the next part of the level you're stuck. There is also a lot that can be going on in the background (a scene comes to mind where a scientist smashes a headcrab with a monitor, but still gets headhumped by one behind his back) which you can miss without being too much in a rush, which may be not optimal, but you as player of the game stay in control of your character at all times.
Compare that to some modern shooter (Spunkgargleweewee if you like) where you as Tanker McTank get bitchslapped around by some dude with only a handgun while you have a minigun on your back but can't use it because it's a cutscene...

Anyways, I like the Half-Life series a lot, if you haven't figured it out yet. I recommend you to go and play at least one of these games to know for sure what I've been talking about..

Thank you for reading all this and see you next time.

-ThOR