There are no cutscenes or dialogue screens, so you’re always experiencing the story from Gordon Freeman’s perspective. Floating armour icons are replaced with HEV Suits and charge stations, grounding them in the world of Black Mesa. It boasts a (sort of) seamless world, wide-ranging interactivity, and manages to tell a captivating story in the process. 1998’s Half-Life embodied a lot of that, but it was also one of the first FPS games to bring puzzle-solving and narrative to the mix.
At the time, the genre was mostly about picking up guns, mowing down bad guys, and getting the best score possible. The FPS genre blossomed into life like a bloodstained violet in the faint heat of spring when id Software released Wolfenstein 3D.
