Patient Gamers

HL2 didn't feel like a it has a technical leap as big as its predecessor

Gotta disagree with you on this one. Half Life was basically the Quake 2 engine with different textures and models. It was applauded for being a good game, it did not really set any technical benchmarks.

Half Life 2 was absolutely mind blowing with the physics, facial animations, and shaders. It's the first game I can recall with that level of physics realism, and set the stage for many games to come. The Source engine was a massive technical leap from Quake engine.

Seeing the HL2 E3 demo was a peak moment in my gaming life.

Give the Deus Ex series a try, the story in the original is IMO one of the best, and the later games have awesome stealth and cool world building.

Deus Ex and System Shock should definitely be on your list, just skip Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Also, as I don't see them listed, did you check out Blue Shift and Opposing Forces? They're 2 Half-Life expansions made by Gearbox, back in the day, that show the events of HL1 from different points of view.

Half Life 3 should be out any day now.

Portal 1 and 2

Oh sweet, I have something either not suggested or I missed...

titanfall 2's campaigned challenged me like the first half-life and moved me like the second half-life. and it's often like 4 usd. the bad is that it's a short campaign but the good is the campaign and its replayablitity. i hear they fixed multiplayer but i can't play with those gods.

• Mirror’s Edge: wholly unique, meh story but fun gameplay. More accessible than Kreedzmod but similar vibe of first person platforming and emphasis on ‘flow’ like you’d perform irl in parkour. Get it on sale, under $10/€10 it’s worth it
• Knights of the Old Republic: D20 based RPG set in pre-BBY Star Wars universe. Excellent story and characterization, great gameplay and progression - I’ve replayed it at least six times. If you like Mass Effect at all you should enjoy this. The sequel is worthy but not the same gem that moved the genre, but a worthy title
• Deus Ex 1: Unmissable. Accept the inventory management jank, it’s a product of its time. Absolutely worth buying
• Fallout 1 (and 2): Revolutionized the top down RPGs of the time, but will feel dated in retrospect. Make sure you save manually and make choices carefully, you can dead-end your play through or loose hours of progress because there’s no auto save
• STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl: Diceroll on this title, you’ll either hate it or love it if you enjoyed Fallout 3, 4, NV, etc. Great mood and atmosphere, solid progression once you get out of the starter areas, and understand the monster’s behavior. Dont you dare join Duty tho
• Freespace 2: Personal recommendation but nieche. “Flight sim space combat” is too simplistic yet accurate, but has excellent gameplay and story tone. Technically Descent 1 & 2 were the revolutionary games, but those have zero plot beyond arcade shooter ‘kill aliens for highscore’. Went open source years ago, and has a dedicated mod team keeping it alive and adding features.
• Command and Conquer Red Alert: The daddy of almost all RTS games, but you’ll have more fun with Red Alert 2 imo. Story is meh, but if you go online be ready to get smurfed hard by veterans.

I'm really happy that I completed the games and can put them down

Good luck. I've played them countless times and they are installed permanently on my drive. 🙂

Alyx was really fun. The first time a soldier reacted to my reaching out and touching them with my controller scared the bejeezus out of me!

Maybe the Metro or BioShock series? They play quite a bit differently, but they scratch the same itch for me, and I see them on sale quite a bit (especially Metro).

More action and environmental storytelling:

• If you want to play more Portal, try community-made campaigns! I recommend in particular Portal: Revolution, a prequel to Portal 2 that features a few new mechanics, and Portal Stories: Mel, which has basically no new mechanics but turns up the difficulty by making you combine mechanics in clever ways.
• Bastion — Action RPG with a rich story and lush art. A humble narrator tells the story of a place literally torn apart by war, and you play the kid trying to rebuild. This was the debut game from Supergiant Games, which later made Hades.
• Tunic — Mysterious, exploration-focused adventure. A little guy in a green tunic picks up a sword and goes on an adventure, but the game is in an unknown language and you only have a few pages of the manual. It’s like a metroidvania but your progress is based on knowledge.

More "genre pushers":

• Puzzle games
  • Mosa Lina — It calls itself "a hostile interpretation of the immersive sim". It's an aggressively random puzzle platformer where the levels are random and the tools you have to solve them are also random. Mosa Lina is a puzzle game that wants you to be clever, not smart.
  • Viewfinder — First-person "photography" puzzles. The featured mechanic has a "wow" factor that rivals Portal's: Take a picture of the level, then hold up the photo and click to copy the photo back into the level. The plot is pretty meh, but like the original Portal, it's pretty damn short.
  • Baba is You — Push blocks and break rules. Blocks with words written on them define the rules of the game: Baba is you, wall is stop, flag is win. The rules themselves are puzzle pieces. If you can't solve the puzzle, change the rules!
• Inscryption — You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It’s an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be. You want one-of-a-kind experiences? This is one of them.
• The Stanley Parable — Comedy walking simulator. You enter a room with two doors in front of you. The narrator says, "Stanley entered the door on his left." What will you do? The Stanley Parable has many endings and it questions what video game narratives are really for.

I would suggest Bioshock 1 and 2.

Bioshock: Infinite is verry meh, and hops that it's meh gameplay will be overlooked due to it's story, but to me the story was just annoyingly confusing.

Should have played Black Mesa instead of HL. It's everything HL is but better. It was incredible even having played HL back in 1998. I recommend people who've never played HL to just do BM.

As a lifelong Half-Life fan, I really liked some of Frictional Games' titles. I liked Penumbra a lot and I think Soma was an absolute masterpiece. It's at a level similar to Half-Life for me. If you don't know anything about it, don't read, don't watch. Install and play.

FYI, there's an No-VR mod for Alyx in case you want to play it, and lack of a headset is what's stopping you.

It wasn't mentioned yet: Abiotic Factor is essentially Half-Life 1 but with coop.

If you have a friend or two interested in the same type of game I can only recommend it.

If you found HL1 dated, there's a good remake in source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Even as a purist (HL1 is my favorite FPS period), I love how Black Mesa handles the source material. It's on sale for $5 right now too. Besides Valve's other games, check out F.E.A.R (2005), Doom series and the Bungie Halo games.

Quarter-Life.

I've been getting into boomer shooters and some more "retro" styled games.

Selaco and Hedon: Bloodrite are imo more immersive sim than boomer shooters, but they can still fit that description as well.

Golden eye 007 for the N64 was pretty revolutionary. As was perfect dark and perfect dark 0, if you don't mind going back to half-life 1 times those are worth a playthrough.

Deus Ex and both System Shocks should be on everyone's lists. I don't really "like" any first-person games (going back to Akalabeth), and I enjoyed both of those games. If you like that style of game, you might also want to try out Thief: The Dark Project.

But I think what comes after HL, given everything, is just Portal. You said "replay" about them, so I guess you already have. So maybe, Narbacular Drop would be the next best thing - it's the game that the Portal devs made before it was Portal. Maybe you'd want to look at The Stanley Parable, too.

There's also Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior that's more FPS-y. I don't think you must know anything about 40K to play it, but I couldn't tell you, because I already was into it when I played. Also, the two Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force games, built on expanded versions of the Quake 3 engine.

The new System Shock remake is very cool and quite underappreciated. The original is far more dated than HL1, IMO. System Shock 2 is playable, though. You could also give the Thief games a whirl, if you played Dishonored. I think along that trajectory you could also go revisit the Hitman games. Hitman 1 and Thief are two takes on the same idea that were happening more or less at the same time. I was more of a Hitman guy at the time, and I think that first game, clunky as it is to control, was mind-blowing.

Are you looking for FPSs specifically? Blizzard is threatening to delist Warcraft 1 and 2 from GOG, so it's a great time to revisit those. 2 holds up.

If you're only looking into FPSs, I'd revisit Quake 2. It's the missing link between HL1 and the arcadey Doom-style early FPSs, and if you have the hardware, the path-traced remake looks really nice.

A few hot takes here: 1) I know I'm in the minority, but I love HL1 and could never get through HL2. The vehicle levels suck, as do the more open areas. The more contained original with its interconnected "Aliens meets Die Hard" setup was so groundbreaking, HL2 is meandering and slow by comparison.

2. I know what you mean about the gravity gun, but also, the Portal devs weren't there for that, but also the puzzle design in Portal is more Valve-y than the stuff in the original Narbacular Drop. I don't know where that lands in reality.

3. I hate the name "immersive sim". What is being "simmed"? Why is it immerisve? Isn't Halo immersive? I was immersed AF. And it's simming at least as much stuff as Dishonored, I assure you. It's such a dumb name, just words mashed together. Ditto for "character action game". Unless your action game features exclusively rocks, it's "character action", that means nothing.