I realize that the thread title is a bit provocative and that of course it's very dependent on personal perspective, but give me a chance to explain before I get torn to pieces. :)

I never played HL back in the days, I only started it last year to see what it's all about, partially as a lesson in videogame history and partially because I was curious if it would still be fun to play. And to a certain extent I discovered it was. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the somewhat awkward platforming and crate pushing, and the sounds are a bit tinny for my sensible ears, but in general I quite liked what I saw and I've already spent more than a dozen hours with it so far, overcoming some short annoying spots and having a blast with the rest of the game. But at least since reaching Surface Tension the game has become more of a chore to me. I'm the first to admit, I'm not the most skilled FPS player, so maybe it's just me, but all those traps and mines and snipers and instadeaths make the game quite aggravating and tedious to play for me. So I wondered, is it just one long and frustrating level that I need to overcome to have fun again or will it only get worse from now on? A thread I read about the worst levels in HL mostly lists those that are yet to come, so that's not very encouraging ...

I would also like to try Half-Life 2 at some point, but I'm hesitant whether it's a good idea to play it without having completed the first one. Does HL contain some important story revelations near the ending, or have I learned enough already to understand and enjoy HL2?

I played Half-Life ages ago and didn't complete it, but I went through Half-Life 2 a couple years ago. So I'd say it is totally doable to go through the sequel without playing through the first.
As to the rest, I'm not really in a position to answer :D.

Half-life hasn't really endured time that well. All the featurs it has have been much better in other games. As a whole the series is, at least IMO, relatively bland and for the life of me I can't figure out what other people see in it. Valve has done much better titles.

HL2 is much better game IMO, but again, I don't see the fuss about it. I don't think I ever bothered to finish that one either.

I played Halflife from the day it came out, but only got about half way through single-player when multi-player dominated my gameplay for quite some time. I ended up not finishing it but then a year or two went by and I started it over again on a more powerful computer and in a few days time finally made it through the game.

Overall, I would say that it was without a doubt one of the best games made to date at the time and was quite innovative in many ways however it was not without fault either. I really enjoyed the earthen part of the game a lot and thought they did an excellent job at that. To be honest though I really hated it when the game gets to the alien world of Xen which was very surreal and required a lot of suspension of disbelief for me to play. Xen had a lot of silly 3D platformer type jumping around but no structure or sense to it and the longer it went on and on I hoped the game would get back to earth soon or get over or something. When I finally did get to the very end, I was happy to have finally completed it but I found the final gameplay personally to be quite stupid (Nihilanth). I wont mention the specifics of the ending here to avoid giving a spoiler but it was pretty goofy and far removed from how the game started out. The cut scenes after the ending were decent though and a nice teaser for the long wait for Halflife 2.

So while I really disliked Xen and the ending, overall I thought the game was fantastic and video game hall-of-fame winning sort of experience. I'd definitely recommend anyone play it through at least once even if on the easiest difficulty to make it through faster, or in lieu of that to watch a full playthrough on Youtube or something just to observe it (without cheats or hacks etc.)

Unfortunately, I did not ever finish Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Halflife 2 or it's expansion packs etc. yet. I've started them and have yet to plough my way through them all but it is on my list and I'd like to get that done this year finally or at least before Halflife 3 comes out (or whatever it ends up being called). ;o)

I played Half Life, as you, not in its time, but I finished because it really thrilled me (I usually don't finish games even if I like them). I don't know why, but it really captured me. Nevertheless, even if I like it, I think it has been quite overrated, so I can get your doubts and my personal opinion is, that if you really can't get past that level, don't bother with it. I would try to finish the level, because as I said, I like the game, but if you are stuck and don't feel like trying anymore, I don't think it's that bad. You can skip to the second without and issue, as the storyline is somewhat cryptic and doesn't unveil that much and get back to this someday.
tl;dr: Finishing the game is a good thing to do, but not worthy if you don't really feel like it.

If I may ask, are there FPS's that you do like?
But no I don't think you're going to like this game more by completing it.
Personally I love the game, so damn creative, from leveldesign, enemies and I even liked the Xen levels.

It's probably the best FPS I played, and one of the best games overall for me, so I'm probably going to be a bit biased towards it.

I'd say: continue. Though of course I can't tell how much or how little tedious it's become for you. Still in my opinion it's worth completing.

Like skeletonbow, the level I disliked was the last one on Xen. But fortunately it's relatively short, and by the time you reach it you're so close to finishing you just want to get it over with quickly so you have a huge incentive to play it out.

Opposing Force is a great expansion. Blue Shift on the other hand has very little new content and is a bit boring. It's very short though.


That said, you don't really need to play HL1 to enjoy HL2 storyline wise. You'll miss out a few references made, but overall you'll pretty much get everything. Again, it depends on how important it is to you.

Yes, plenty, but I only discovered it later in my gaming 'career', during the 90's I wasn't that into them, and I prefer FPS with story and no army/war setting. Among others I like Outlaws, XIII, Red Faction, Unreal, Far Cry 3, The Darkness 2, BioShock Infinite, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Shadow Warrior 2013, Tower of Guns, etc. also those Fantasy crossovers like Enclave or Dark Messiah of M&M, if they can be considered FPS. (Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Heretic/Hexen, too, but I never played through them.)

Strange, Unreal hasn't really got a story as well and even though I did like it I found it much more tedious than Half-Life and Red Faction was pretty difficult as well from what I remember.

Well, tbh, I haven't completed Unreal yet, and I don't love it like some of the others, but so far it gave me a bit less trouble than HL. Maybe I just got lucky though. Red Faction was alright though, it only got difficult in one mid-game boss fight and in the very last level when there were next to no health kits anymore and lots of one shot one kill enemies. That frustration was comparatively short though compared to Surface Tension (which has quite a few instakill and low on health kits situations, too).

That's not to say I didn't die a lot, but I was always able to move on, while in HL it's become a save scumming orgy by now. I can mostly deal with the regular enemies, it'S all those traps, tanks and snipers that get one my nerves (the latter you can't even spot and target, you can only aim in their general direction and hope they get hurt).

Yeah, Half-Life has little healthrechargestations can be quite hard but somehow I adapted to it plus it has quicksave.
Is surface tension the level with the female ninja's? Cause that level was frustratingly hard.

I had somewhat of a similar situation last year when I played Metro 2033 and 3/4 into the game I ran out of gasmasks even though I thought I had plenty, but the game wasn't clear on how they functioned and combine that with you could only buy fresh masks in the beginning of the game. Short to say I just used a cheat in order not to play the entire game again and even when I wouldn't have cheated I would have to speedrun all surface levels which is not really fun either. Still a great game though.

It's not the femme ninja level but here is a pretty complete walktrough of the level. :^)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZgRIifpgHQ

I use quicksave a lot, but like I said save scumming isn't really fun, and I partially used walkthroughs already, just not sure whether it's worth it as the game still seems to go on for quite a bit.

I gave up on Metro 2033 because I don't like that it's checkpoint based. Which I guess is quite ironic seeing that I just complained about save scumming. ;) I guess in general I'd be okay with both systems if dying wasn't that frequent and seemingly random.

I don't think HL 1 aged well myself. Then again, I don't think 2 did either. And I've played both many times. That said, you don't really need to play 1 in order to play 2. You also don't really need to play 2 to play any of the Episodes. Valve are not very consistent story tellers which means there's little direct connection between any of the games asides from sharing the same characters and enemies.

Good to know, thanks.