Fullofkittens wrote:

Bill Dungsroman wrote:

FoK wrote:

I had never played Half Life until about 9 months ago, because it came out at a time when I was in college and my main recreational activity was drinking 24-7 and playing Elvis Costello covers in a badly misguided attempt to get girls to have sex with me.

So, I'm all settled down now, and I figured I could install it and belatedly experience the magic. I was perfectly willing to extend goodwill past the dated graphics, they're dated, so what. It was the audio that was seriously fucked.

Is this a problem on my side, or is this something that everyone has going on? Every sound on Half-Life sounds like it was run through the Waves Native Turn-to-Shit-Bit-Crushing-Ill-Compressor. I can't undertand the dialogue behind all the scratchiness, and the monsters aren't scary because I feel like they're attacking me from the grooves of one of the Sesame Street records I had when I was a kid.

Is this a known issue? Is it resolved?

Apparently, but I've never heard of it. The sound is supposed to be good, so you gots a problem. WTF version do you have? The first? Go to Fileplanet (or somewhere more off the beaten track) and get the latest patch. The graphics were updated (to a certain point) with another file, actually, so you can go to Planethalflife or wherever and get a link to it. I dunno, from playing Blask Isle RPGs, scouring the internet for patches and add-ons is de riguer for me.

BDR

After an 82 Mb (!) download and patch, it's like a brand new game. Everything looks and sounds approximately 1000x better. Thanks for the tip. I will begin playing Half-Life for the first time this evening. Must... work... on something... productive... first.

I had been sort of patch-skittish after the Sacrifice patch that fucked up all my strategies by completely rebalancing the units. This is making me reevaluate that thinking.

Thanks again,
FoK