History YMMV / HalfLife1

** While the act of destroying a body is itself intentional to help give more impact to explosions if one uses the crowbar to attack a dead body in a specific spot (Which has an added bit of hilarity of being [[GroinAttack around the crotch on humanoid characters.]]) then the Crowbar will start hitting them as fast as the framerate will allow. The result is [[BloodyHilarious Gordon hitting someone in the crotch so fast that he reduces them to chunks.]] It's an economic way of destroying corpses that may happen to be blocking doors.

** The [[https://youtu.be/S7lvrg4yzAc giblet]] sound when a living or dead organism gets hit with [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill overkill]], usually accompanied by an amusing method like heavy machinery, EnergyWeapons (including environmental weapons), explosives, or even the crowbar among other methods.

* PortingDisaster: Zig-zagged with ''Half-Life: Source,'' a 2004 remaster of the game released before ''Half-Life 2''. While it does sport better lighting/water effects and converts everything to use ragdoll physics, the game itself is [[ItsTheSameSoItSucks something of a broken shadow of the original]]. Several glaring bugs and glitches exist in this version that don't elsewhere, and the actual quality of the remaster attempt is debatably on par with the colourization of film. Even patches that mysteriously rolled out in 2013 did little more than fix an ammo count oversight and add official support for the ''Blue Shift'' HD models (which can look worse than their originals with how shiny and fake they look in Source). To get an idea of how phoned-in the gameplay aspects of the port are, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cUc_DQ3JE the attack helicopters don't have armor against small-arms fire]] like they did in the original game, meaning that they can be killed with a ''handful of pistol shots''. Issues like this served as part of the motivation behind the FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa''. Speaking of which…

* SpecialEffectsFailure: If you pick the bad ending and get stuck in front of an army of alien grunts it's painfully obvious that all the grunts behind the first row are just static sprites (essentially the video game equivalent of "cardboard cutouts").

* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: In the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 version of the Hazard Course. "I, Gordon Freeman, hereby agree to the following terms, BlahBlahBlah, in any case of serious injury, dismemberment, toxic poisoning, burns, rashes, blah blah, etc. etc..."

* AssPull: The RoadBlock between the "Power Up" and "On a Rail" levels is a pile of cement dividers blocking the tram rail. It's [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief quite hard to believe]] that a slow-moving flat-car tram would be able to bust through this, and continue on as normal down the track as if it just busted through styrofoam.

** In the unpatched first version of the game, it was almost a certainty that the scientists would randomly die for seemingly no reason. This could happen as soon as you begin "Anomalous Materials" where you'll walk in, listen to the guard at the front desk...and see the scientist to your left suddenly fall to the ground like he had a heart attack. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKYggYcbXa0 It has to be seen to be believed]]. Suffice it to say, this turns the action FPS game into a horror survival one.'

*** Hell, just watch the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4kX9WEcZA World Record speed-run]] video.

* PortingDisaster: Zig-zagged with ''Half-Life: Source,'' a 2004 remaster of the game released before ''Half-Life 2''. While it does sport better lighting/water effects and converts everything to use ragdoll physics, the game itself is [[ItsTheSameSoItSucks something of a broken shadow of the original]]. Several glaring bugs and glitches exist in this version that don't elsewhere, and the actual quality of the remaster attempt is debatably on par with the colourization of film. Even patches that mysteriously rolled out in 2013 did little more than fix an ammo count oversight and add official support for the ''Blue Shift'' HD models (which can look worse than their originals with how shiny and fake they look in Source). To get an idea of how phoned-in the gameplay aspects of the port are, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cUc_DQ3JE this video]] shows that the attack helicopters don't have armor against small-arms fire like they did in the original game, meaning that they can be killed with a ''handful of pistol shots''. Issues like this served as part of the motivation behind the FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa''. Speaking of which…

* SoBadItsGood: ''Half-Life: Source'' is a notoriously broken and messy port of the original game which is bad enough to spawn a few memes of its own (floating scientist, seizure-inducing geometry leak in ''Residue Processing'', eternal Barney vs. Tentacle battle, etc) but, as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-ls5G07RLM this video]] shows, it's still entertaining just because of how janky it is.

** In the original game (not the Source port), laser cameras, and Snarks, could be used as ''solid'' objects to allow for the player to get boosted up to reach locations you wouldn't be able to get to until much later in the map.

** Near the end of ''Surface Tension,'' you reach a map layout that requires you to find, and escort, a security guard to open a door to the next area. Getting stuck indoors usually does a slight bit of damage to you. However, due to an error in the scripting for this map, the doors instead do the exact opposite and HEALS you; to the point that purposefully getting stuck in the door will allow the player to obtain health levels ''beyond'' the 100 health limit. Want 4000+ health? Just get yourself stuck in the doorway. This tends to be a commonly used bug for speed-runners as it allows for players to explosion jump all over the place, and not have to worry about dying to the self-explosions.

*** Hell just watch the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4kX9WEcZA World Record speed-run]] video.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The vast majority of the game's innovations have since been copied by every single first-person shooter to come since, which can make it difficult for newcomers to appreciate what a landmark title it was in 1998. Perhaps most noticeably, the opening "Welcome To Black Mesa" train ride where you can't do anything except wander around the confined space you're trapped in looking at things outside while you're carried through the facility would seem ''painfully'' quaint to modern gamers, unaware of how creative this kind of environmental storytelling was at the time, or how mind-blowing the graphics were compared to what had come before.
-->'''[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee Croshaw]]:''' ''<describing the intro>'' "Ooh, look at all the crazy shit we've done with the ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' engine! Is that a big thumping laser machine being presided over by a dude with skeletal animation? I THINK IT BLOODY IS!"

** Is Freeman's aptitude at combat and his willingness to kill an indication that he is more than just a scientist caught in the middle of extraordinary events? G-Man's mention of his "employers" being impressed by Freeman's "limitless potential" also seems to hint at such.
** Are the [=HECU=] and Black Ops really as ruthless and cold-blooded as they seem, or were they covertly assigned to protect earth from an invasion by [[spoiler:the Combine]] (as ultimately happened before the start of ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'') by terminating the science team because TheyKnowTooMuch?

** Alien Grunts come in squads, have close to 100 hit points, fire [[BeeBeeGun bee projectiles]] that chew through your armor and health as fast the soldiers' assault rifles, can make said projectiles home in on you rendering cover effectively useless, take zero damage from bullets when shot in the armor, and can kill you in a few punches if you get close. The only safe way to deal with them is to use a powerful weapon with rare ammo (e.g. grenade launcher, rocket launcher, Gluon Gun), or circle strafe while firing your submachine gun/assault rifle or shotgun secondary fire, hoping that they miss enough shots so that they die before you do... if you hadn't taken out their buddies yet. ''Half-Life: Source'' on the other hand basically turns them into a joke, as now ''anything'' will stun them for at least a little bit, which combined with their larger profiles means that they won't even be able to fire back if you spray automatic fire at them.

* DisappointingLastLevel: There's a reason this trope used to be called "Xen Syndrome." Xen is plagued with annoyingly-designed jumping puzzles seen throughout the alien world levels. While the Earth-bound potion of the game had player the frequently interact with [=NPCs=] to relay bits and pieces of the story, point them in the right direction, and provide occasional comic relief, Gordon is, by design very much alone on Xen, leaving the player frequently bereft of a sense of direction, any idea of what they're supposed to do next, and in short supply of any real pause from the oppressive and alienating atmosphere of the border-world. A drastic DifficultySpike due to the overuse of [[GoddamnedBats Alien Controllers]] didn't help either.[[note]]An annoyance that justifiably got {{nerf}}ed hard in the Source port. The "Interloper" level in particular really toned down on the Alien Controllers that can spawn in.[[/note]] Players do agree however, that the artwork for Xen is actually quite unique and nice to look at. The FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'' took fixing the issues with Xen so seriously that they decided to completely rebuild the entire area effectively from scratch, which is why [[ScheduleSlip/VideoGames it delayed the completion of the game for over half a decade]] (the first half of Xen, up to Gonarch's Lair, entered public beta in July 2019 before the final version of the game finally released at the end of November to a widely acclaimed reaction).

** For a rather literal example, while the idea of the "On a Rail" level is to ride a tram to the surface, it is found to be much easier to just walk on foot and destroys the train adventure. This can happen quite often with players.

** Pro long-jump module users can skip having to traverse some sections of Xen, and bypass world triggers that would spawn in new enemies; particularly when you're in the Alien Grunt factory.

** Prior to ''Half-Life'', First-Person Shooters were generally "shoot everything you see" with no sense of tactics or strategy, and the extent of puzzles were just simple "search for the key and lock" puzzles. ''Half-Life'' changed that with a stronger narrative focus and more complex enemy A.I., requiring much more care on how you progress.
** The dueling philosophies of shooters in the 90s could generally be divided into a TechnicianVersusPerformer debate: on the one end, games like ''VideoGame/QuakeI'' and ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'', which had [[TechDemoGame highly advanced tech but didn't do anything particularly creative with it]] beyond their core gameplay loop, and games like ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' and ''VideoGame/Blood1997'', which lagged behind technologically but compensated by using that tech to show more realistic and highly interactive environments with a strong sense of character. The idea of a game to try to be as cutting-edge as ''Unreal'' and as characterful and interactable as ''Duke Nukem'' was therefore downright revelatory, and became the standard from that point on.

** In the unpatched first version of the game, it was almost a certainty that the scientists would randomly die for seemingly no reason. This could happen as soon as you begin "Anomalous Materials" where you'll walk in, listen to the guard at the front desk...and see the scientist to your left suddenly fall to the ground like he had a heart attack. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKYggYcbXa0 It has to be seen to be believed]]. Suffice to say, this turns the action FPS game into a horror survival one.'
** Also in the unpatched retail release, it's possible to cause a resonance cascade '''by throwing a snark into the anti-mass spectrometer''' (the same result also happens if you shoot at it with the hivehand). While it's been patched in the Steam version, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ516r9l-V8 the bug remains present]] in ''Half-Life: Source''.
** Near the end of ''Surface Tension,'' you reach a map layout that requires you to find, and escort, a security guard to open a door to the next area. Getting stuck in doors usually does a slight bit of damage to you. However, due to an error in the scripting for this map, the doors instead do the exact opposite and HEALS you instead; to the point that purposefully getting stuck in the door will allow the player to obtain health levels ''beyond'' the 100 health limit. Want 4000+ health? Just get yourself stuck in the doorway. This tends to be a commonly used bug for speed-runners as it allows for players to explosion jump all over the place, and not have to worry about dying to the self-explosions.
** While the act of destroying a body is itself intentional to help give more impact to explosions, if one uses the crowbar to attack a dead body in a specific spot (Which has an added bit of hilarity of being [[GroinAttack around the crotch on humanoid characters.]]) then the Crowbar will start hitting them as fast as the framerate will allow. The end result is [[BloodyHilarious Gordon hitting someone in the crotch so fast that he reduces them to chunks.]] It's actually an economic way of destroying corpses that may happen to be blocking doors.
** Due to the game using scripting quite often, scripted behavior can be heavily abused. Especially useful with one Gargantua - it's spawned neutral and if you remove the chasing script trigger (which can be done with the pistol), it will remain as so. ''This can be done twice in the whole game''. MiniBoss fight easily averted.

** The Gonarch will get transported with the player to the next chapter if it happens to be on top of the teleporter to the next level. The moment you realize that you just glitched the Gonarch into the Interloper chapter is not only a huge WTF moment, but its downright hilarious.

** The [[https://youtu.be/S7lvrg4yzAc giblet]] sound when a living or dead organism get hit with [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill overkill]], usually accompanied by an amusing method like heavy machinery, EnergyWeapons (including environmental weapons), explosives, or even the crowbar among other methods.
** The Xen healing pools. Someone even liked them so much they made an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cIzJ-wtS94 hour long video of just the sound]]
* {{Narm}}: Especially these days, the largely amateurish voice acting combined with poor audio quality and clunky animations can cause a fair bit of Narm. Many of the death scenes are rather chuckle-worthy as a result. In particular, the infamous ElevatorFailure scene is [[https://youtu.be/aFRXO6Ro8F0?t=24 quite slapstick in its timing]], with the doppler effect of the screaming scientists inside, the fact that they just ''stand there'' in perfect formation with no movement whatsoever while falling, and the LudicrousGibs once they hit the bottom. Not to mention that if you get close enough to the elevator as it falls down the shaft, its quite possible to trigger the elevator scientists to say their casual voice-lines. You could very well hear a scientist being all "Ah, it's good to see you!" as he's ''falling to his death''. Interestingly, the remake, ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'', makes this moment more upsetting and [[ShooOutTheClowns removes pretty much]] ''[[ShooOutTheClowns all]]'' [[ShooOutTheClowns the narm factor]].

* PolishedPort: The [=PlayStation=] 2 port, released three years after the original, runs very well and features updated graphics superior to the ''Blue Shift'' High Definition Pack. It also adds a nifty (and toggleable) lock on feature, a co-op multiplayer expansion (''Decay''), a couple of secret levels, and a cheat code that lets you play as a Vortigaunt. Overall it was one of the best shooters on the system. Its only real problem is that it doesn't include the other add-ons (which were never ported), even ''Team Fortress Classic'' which came free with the original PC version. Though given the lack of online support for the [=PS2=], the then-lack of bots for the multiplayer add-ons, and the fact that ''Blue Shift'' was originally supposed to be a Dreamcast exclusive before that port was abruptly cancelled, this is understandable. ''Opposing Force'' never being ported is the only glaring issue.
* PortingDisaster: Zig-zagged with ''Half-Life: Source,'' a 2004 remaster of the game released before ''Half-Life 2''. While it does sport better lighting, water effects, and converts everything to use ragdoll physics, the game itself is [[ItsTheSameSoItSucks something of a broken shadow of the original]]. Several glaring bugs and glitches exist in this version that don't elsewhere, and the actual quality of the remaster attempt is debatably on par with colorization of film. Even patches that mysteriously rolled out in 2013 did little more than fix an ammo count oversight and add official support for the ''Blue Shift'' HD models (which can look worse than their originals with how shiny and fake they look in Source). To get an idea of how phoned-in the gameplay aspects of the port are, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cUc_DQ3JE this video]] shows that the attack helicopters don't have armor against small-arms fire like they did in the original game, meaning that they can be killed with a ''handful of pistol shots''. Issues like this served as part of the motivation behind the FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa''. Speaking of which…
* RemadeAndImproved: While ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' is still beloved and considered as one of the most iconic FirstPersonShooter games of all time, many ''Half-Life'' fans consider the FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'' to be a massive improvement over both the original and especially 2004's ''[[UpdatedRerelease Half-Life: Source]]'', the latter of which just ported all of the original game's assets to the Source Engine, with little effort made to actually improve it. The ''Xen'' levels of ''Black Mesa'' in particular are seen by fans as the best improvement done by The Crowbar Collective, effectively averting the DisappointingLastLevel sections of the original.

** You very soon learn to quicksave before trying to get on, or get off, a ladder, because both have a chance of misbehaving which increases linearly with the likelihood that such misbehavior will get you killed. The ladders in "Blast Pit" are a particularly ''lovely'' example.
** The game's close range combat is generally believed to have aged poorly, due to how difficult it is to judge the distance between you and the target, the weapons being weak, enemies often having fast reaction time, and the game not being balanced around close range combat. It's to the point that if a GameMod features strict ammo management in its gameplay, forcing you to rely upon close range weapons, it's ''very'' likely going to be marked down or criticized in a review for it.

** The Hivehand, aka the Hornet Gun. The only good thing about it is that it can regenerate ammo, and that the hornet ammo can home in on targets around walls and such without the enemies ever being alerted to the player. Other than those, it's the most ineffective and useless weapon in the series, to the point where you'll hardly be using it at all and instead be using all the other, more superior weapons, though it ''can'' be surprisingly handy when it comes to killing enemies without putting yourself in harm's way.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The vast majority of the game's innovations have since been copied by every single first person shooter to come since, which can make it difficult for newcomers to appreciate what a landmark title it was in 1998. Perhaps most noticeably, the opening "Welcome To Black Mesa" train ride where you can't do anything except wander around the confined space you're trapped in looking at things outside while you're carried through the facility would seem ''painfully'' quaint to modern gamers, unaware of how creative this kind of environmental storytelling was at the time, or how mind-blowing the graphics were compared to what had come before.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The Vortigaunts are slaves to the Nihilanth, which the game doesn't really allude to, or delve further into in any way, that it's something that can go completely unnoticed to the player. Even when the player comes across that one group of Vortigaunts who don't attack you in Xen's Grunt Factory, it doesn't really tell all that much. It's for this reason that it comes as a complete surprise to some people when they first witness the Vortigaunts now as allies in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2''.

** The Long Jump Module. You get it so late in the game that the only time you can actually use it on Earth is within the final teleporter room of the "Lambda Core" level. One can only imagine how fun it would have been to long jump on the earlier levels, such as the long stretches of "Surface Tension."
** Using Snarks starts to become rather pointless once the HECU starts to drop out of being an enemy to fight. From "Lambda Core" onward (with the exception of a second run-in with with a female Black Ops group), there's no enemies that the Snarks will outright choose to attack since they don't view the Xen aliens as enemies to eat away at. Thus, you're usually just left carrying around a bunch of Snarks with nothing to use them on. This is especially odd when you consider that it's ''still'' possible to come across additional Snark ammo in these later levels.

-->"Sometimes we're just sitting around and we're tired and somebody comes up with a goofy idea like, "Why don't we put a giant testicle on a 20-foot-tall armored spider?"

* DisappointingLastLevel: There's a reason this trope used to be called "Xen Syndrome." Xen is plagued with annoyingly-designed jumping puzzles seen throughout the alien world levels. A drastic DifficultySpike due to the overuse of [[GoddamnedBats Alien Controllers]] didn't help either.[[note]]An annoyance that justifiably got {{nerf}}ed hard in the Source port. The "Interloper" level in particular really toned down on the Alien Controllers that can spawn in.[[/note]] Players do agree however, that the artwork for Xen is actually quite unique and nice to look at. The FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'' took fixing the issues with Xen so seriously that they decided to completely rebuild the entire area effectively from scratch, which is why [[ScheduleSlip/VideoGames it delayed the completion of the game for over half a decade]] (the first half of Xen, up to Gonarch's Lair, entered public beta in July 2019 before the final version of the game finally released at the end of November to a widely acclaimed reaction).

* AntiClimaxBoss:
** The female Black Ops units at the end of "Apprehension". While they're difficult if you're out in the open, there's only three of them and you can easily take them out with the grenades from the SMG [[ArtificialStupidity or hiding behind a corner and waiting for them to come to you.]]
** The fight against [[spoiler: Nihilanth]] at the end can either be this or ThatOneBoss, depending on how well it goes. One of the most common methods to make the fight a joke is to just [[spoiler:sit behind one of the room's larger spikes the whole time to avoid being hit by the Nihilanth's electric and teleport balls]]. You can also [[spoiler: [[GoodBadBugs clip through the Nihilanth's head]] and whack at its brain yourself,]] and it won't be able to reach you most of the time.
* ArcFatigue: "On a Rail" is a MarathonLevel whose main gimmick (the trams you can drive) will probably get old long before you get to the end.
* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: The "background crying noises" that are heard twice during the ''On a Rail'' level.
* BreatherLevel:
** The first Xen level (simply titled "Xen") serves mainly as a tutorial for how the mechanics of Xen work (such as the lower gravity and the healing pools), has no enemies except houndeyes, some sentry turrets and a single Vortigaunt. It's also only about five minutes long.
** Due to your weapon arsenal being stripped away, "Residue Processing" doesn't have much fighting compared to the levels it's sandwiched between. It's basically a platformer level with a few headcrabs, barnacle tongues, and bullsquids sprinkled here-and-there.
** "Forget About Freeman", while not as easy as "Xen", is still much shorter and easier than the levels before and after it.

* ThatOneLevel:
** "On a Rail" is an extremely difficult chapter since there are many hiding spots for enemies and plenty of times where you will get ambushed. What makes it even more difficult is that health and ammo are sparsely located around the level.
** "Residue Processing" takes a huge GenreShift in the game, being more of a platformer in a first-person shooter game. Your weapons are taken away; all you have left is a crowbar and all you get in the level are both pistols with one spare magazine each and some satchel charges. It's also possible to just not get the regular pistol if you decide to save the security guard before he runs off and gets eaten by a Barnacle. Needless to say, this makes the enemies and hazards in this level far more irritating than they usually are.
** "Surface Tension" has one particular ladder on the cliff-side map that is nearly impossible to jump on, but the trick is to just press the jump button once.
** "Interloper" is essentially the meat of the Xen levels, packed with misleading, difficult to understand cues, somewhat cryptic means of getting through, and all the low-gravity platforming the game has to offer.

* GoddamnedBats: While not the most dangerous enemies in the game, The Alien Controllers, MiniMook versions of the Nihilanth with small bodies and big heads, are rather annoying. They're one of the few enemies in the game that can attack and move at the same time, making them mildly more difficult than usual to take down. And while their projectile attacks are generally not that strong, their damage output can pile up over time. Worst of all, these are late-game enemies, so most of the challenge surrounding them is combined with Xen's tricky level design.

* GoddamnedBats: While not the most dangerous enemies in the game, The Alien Controllers, MiniMook versions of the Nihilanth with small bodies and big heads, are rather annoying. They're one of the few enemies in the game that can attack and move at the same time, making them mildly more difficult than usual to take down. And while their attacks are generally not that strong, their damage output can pile up over time. Worst of all, these are late-game enemies, so most of the challenge surrounding them is combined with Xen's tricky level design.

* GoddamnedBats: While not the most dangerous enemies in the game, The Alien Controllers, MiniMook versions of the Nihilanth with small bodies and big heads, are rather annoying. They're one of the few enemies in the game that can attack and move at the same time, making them mildly more difficult than usual to take down. And while their attacks are generally not that strong, they can stack up over time, especially their uncommon homing attack.

** The dueling philosophies of shooters in the 90s could generally be divided into a TechnicianVersusPerformer debate: on the one end, games like ''VideoGame/QuakeI'' and ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'', which had [[TechDemoGame highly advanced tech but didn't do anything particularly creative with it]] beyond their core gameplay loop, and games like ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' and ''VideoGame/Blood1997'', which lagged behind technologically but compensated by using that tech to show more realistic and highly interactive environments with a strong sense of character. The idea of a game that was as cutting-edge as ''Unreal'' and as characterful and interactable as ''Duke Nukem'' was therefore downright revelatory. Nowadays, a high-tech singleplayer game would consider ''Half-Life'''s level of story, realism, and world design the absolute bare minimum.

* GenreTurningPoint: For the FirstPersonShooter genre. Prior to ''Half-Life'', First-Person Shooters were generally "shoot everything you see" with no sense of tactics or strategy, and the extent of puzzles were just simple "search for the key and lock" puzzles. ''Half-Life'' changed that with a stronger narrative focus and more complex enemy A.I., requiring much more care on how you progress.

* MemeticMutation:
** Scientists
*** ''"Do you ''know'' who ate all the doughnuts?''"
*** ''"Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?''" [[labelnote:Explanation]]One scientist's complaint during ''Anomalous Materials''.[[/labelnote]]
*** ''"Gordon doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional"''
*** ''"They're waiting for you, Gordon...in the test chamberrrr..."''.
*** The ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'' fan remake even recreated the bizarre way the scientist says this line in its redone voice acting.
*** ''"I predicted ''all'' of this you know, ''all'' of it.''" This one usually gets used as a comical IWarnedYou phrase.
*** '''HUEGH!/STAHP!/DARGH!/NO!/UGH!''' [[labelnote:Explanation]][[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uy5UGNCGp0 The Scientist NPCs scream this]] when they get wounded by enemies or [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential the player character]].[[/labelnote]]
*** ''"Gordon, you lousy motherfucker. Get your dork ass down to the test chamber or else I WILL shove the sample up your ass!"''/''"STOP FUCKING WITH THE MICROWAVE!"'' [[labelnote:Explanation]]Originating from a modded gameplay video by [=YouTube=] user The Pootis Saver (in addition to the [=ElevenLabs=] AI voice generator), where one of the scientists threatens Gordon for being late to the test chamber [[WhatTheHellPlayer before chewing him out for nuking the microwave casserole]].[[/labelnote]]
** Redubbing movie scenes with ''Half-Life'' samples can make for a good laugh. [[https://youtu.be/tV8IzC0fb50 Back to the Future]], and [[https://youtu.be/7F1ma_0vwog Chernobyl]] for instance. The latter actually winds up just as tense and scary as the source material due to the effective usage of the sound effects, only for the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCE7GDkOhMM follow up]] episode to remove the tension with a technician running frantically into the control room to ask if anyone knows [[SkewedPriorities who ate all the doughnuts]].
** The game's sound effects and HUD are edited on other videos to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrNpo3o1-Y4 spectacular use]], especially with the health and [=HEV=] charge stations, the crowbar, and scientist lines.
** ''"FOR GOD'S SAKE, OPEN THE SILO DOOR! THEY'RE COMING FOR US! IT'S OUR ONLY WAY OUT! OH MY GOD, WE'RE DOOMED!"'' [[labelnote:Explanation]]The panicking scientist at the start of "We've Got Hostiles!" has become a bit of a meme in recent years. Partly because of how memorable his dialogue is the moment you first enter the level, and because said scientist running off into a trip mine is scripted really weird to the point of it coming off rather comically. He not only runs through the explosion perfectly unharmed, but he then immediately falls to the ground screaming in death shortly afterwards. A lot of players have found amusement in this, and has resulted in them messing around with the scientist.[[/labelnote]]
** '''"MY. ASS. IS. HEAVY."''' [[labelnote:Explanation]]Due to the way dialogue is generated in the game's engine, players can make character voice clips play via console commands and have certain words play in certain order similar to a text-to-speech software. A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DKwJ-yxQpQ video]] of a HECU soldier shouting "MY ASS IS HEAVY" gained popularity among the fandom and the quote is often associated with the old HECU grunt speech. [[/labelnote]]
** (dives through window) "Greetings."[[labelnote:Explanation]]A famous moment within the fandom in the "Office Complex" chapter, where a scientist escapes a headcrab zombie by diving through a window, rolling into an immediate upright stand and happily greets Gordon like nothing's wrong at all. Noted for just how weird the game's scientist AI can be.[[/labelnote]]

** The first Xen level (simply titled "Xen") serves mainly as a tutorial for how the mechanics of Xen work (such as the lower gravity and the healing pools), has no enemies except houndeyes, some sentry turrets and a single vortigaunt. It's also only about five minutes long.

** (dives through window) "Greetings."[[labelnote:Explanation]]A famous moment within the fandom in the "Office Complex" chapter, where a scientist escapes a headcrab zombie by diving through a window, rolling into an immediate upright stand and happiyl greets Gordon like nothing's wrong at all. Noted for just how weird the game's scientist AI can be.[[/labelnote]]

* NarmCharm: On the other hand, some enjoy the subpar voice acting and audio quality for the late [=90s=] video game vibe it gives.

** Due to your weapon arsenal being stripped away, "Residue Processing" doesn't have much fighting compared to the levels it's sandwiched between. It's basically a platformer level with a few headcrabs and bullsquids sprinkled here-and-there.

* BizarroEpisode: ''Residue Processing''. On the level before you get knocked out, have all your weapons taken away, and are left in a giant trash compactor to die, assuming you escape, you then have to get through a [[EternalEngine factory full of conveyor belts, crushers, toxic waste pits]], and other things that seem like they would be more at home in a platformer game than ''Half-Life''. Appropriately enough, the level is [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment never mentioned again afterwords]] and the next level (Questionable Ethics) is a high tech laboratory similar to the early game levels.

*** ''"Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?''"

** [[spoiler:The Marines are out to kill you, not save you.]] Pretty much every review spoiled that.

*** The same can be said about using weapon explosions such as grenades and satchels to propel the player to areas much earlier than they are supposed to. A good example is the first map of "Interloper" by grenade jumping to the island with the teleporter to the next area; effectively skipping to have to traverse that entire map.

** ''"Do you ''know'' who ate all the doughnuts?''"

** ''"Gordon doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional"''
** ''"They're waiting for you, Gordon...in the test chamberrrr..."''.

** ''"I predicted ''all'' of this you know, ''all'' of it.''" This one usually gets used as a comical IWarnedYou phrase.
** '''HUEGH!/STAHP!/DARGH!/NO!/UGH!''' [[labelnote:Explanation]][[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uy5UGNCGp0 The Scientist NPCs scream this]] when they get wounded by enemies or [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential the player character]].[[/labelnote]]

* {{Narm}}: Especially these days, the largely amateurish voice acting combined with poor audio quality and clunky animations can cause a fair bit of Narm. Many of the death scenes are rather chuckle-worthy as a result.
** In particular, the infamous ElevatorFailure scene is [[https://youtu.be/aFRXO6Ro8F0?t=24 quite slapstick in its timing]], with the doppler effect of the screaming scientists inside, the fact that they just ''stand there'' in perfect formation with no movement whatsoever while falling, and the LudicrousGibs once they hit the bottom. Not to mention that if you get close enough to the elevator as it falls down the shaft, its quite possible to trigger the elevator scientists to say their casual voice-lines. You could very well hear a scientist being all "Ah, it's good to see you!" as he's ''falling to his death''. Interestingly, the remake, ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'', makes this moment more upsetting and [[ShooOutTheClowns removes pretty much]] ''[[ShooOutTheClowns all]]'' [[ShooOutTheClowns the narm factor]].

* PortingDisaster: Zig-zagged with ''Half-Life: Source,'' a 2004 remaster of the game released before ''Half-Life 2''. While it does sport better lighting, water effects, and converts everything to use ragdoll physics, the game itself is [[ItsTheSameSoItSucks something of a broken shadow of the original]]. Several glaring bugs and glitches exist in this version that don't elsewhere, and the actual quality of the remaster attempt is debatably on par with colorization of film. Even patches that mysteriously rolled out in 2013 did little more than fix an ammo count oversight and add official support for the ''Blue Shift'' HD models (which can look worse than their originals with how shiny and fake they look in Source).
** To get an idea of how phoned-in the gameplay aspects of the port are, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cUc_DQ3JE this video]] shows that the attack helicopters don't have armor against small-arms fire like they did in the original game, meaning that they can be killed with a ''handful of pistol shots''. Issues like this served as part of the motivation behind the FanRemake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa''. Speaking of which…

** In the unpatched first version of the game, it was almost a certainty that the scientists would randomly die for seemingly no reason. This could happen as soon as you begin "Anomalous Materials" where you'll walk in, listen to the guard at the front desk...and see the scientist to your left suddenly fall to the ground like he had a heart attack. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKYggYcbXa0 It has to be seen to be believed]]. Suffice to say, this turns the action FPS game into a horror survival one.

** '''HUEGH!/STAHP!/DARGH!/NO!/UGH''' [[labelnote:Explanation]][[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uy5UGNCGp0 The Scientist NPCs scream this]] when they get wounded by enemies or [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential the player character]].[[/labelnote]]