These Houndeyes would have been much more aggressive, and their models were more emaciated, as though the population trapped on Earth was becoming malnourished.

The Houndeye was set to return in Half Life 2, with a new model so detailed that we could have seen individual fly-like hairs between its many lenses, but it was sadly dropped during development. This is not only adorable, but it was one of the earliest, rare instances of a video game enemy programmed with behaviors not immediately relevant to killing or obstructing the player. What's also interesting about the Houndeye is that it has programmed curiosity! Idle Houndeyes in-game will closely inspect noisy machinery and flashing lights, even gently pawing at them. I still think that would have been more interesting, and that they could have still used it to 'see' by emitting sonar. When I first saw these creatures, read their name, and heard how they attack, I assumed the 'eye' wasn't really an eye at all, but strictly a sound-producing organ, a sort of biological speaker system. The Houndeye changed little from its original conceptual art, but it sure was an eerie drawing it's always made me think of a decapitated pig or cow, the kind of unsettling nightmare entity you would expect from the first three Silent Hill games, although the original Silent Hill would only come out the following year. It's timid on its own, but it's bolder and deadlier in packs, which is of course the origin of the common everyday phrase 'hound eye coordination.' Its mouth is located on its underbelly, and it attacks with a grating sonic screech canonically intense enough to cause internal bleeding. 'Sonicanis myriops' was the first creature I ever saw from this franchise, so it's the first one I actually associate with the game and the first I'm going to review! A simple but effective design, the Houndeye is a fat, yellow-skinned creature with three roughly dog-like legs, and instead of a head, the front of its torso opens up into a dark, insectlike multifaceted eye. Today, we'll go over the original selection of these alien things along with a few of their facelifts in the years since, and a handful of my favorites from the rest of the franchise. You likely don't need a refresher on Half-Life's general premise: a secret research facility accidentally opens a dimensional rift to an alien world, and alien things come out of it. So many games have built upon this model in the decades since, it's easy to forget that it was ever something radically new. Instead, they found a relatively seamless virtual world in which NPC characters are fighting for their own survival independently of the player, creatures exhibit more than 'kill on sight' behavior and there's never just one way to get around the next threat. Gamers who went in blind to Half-Life may have expected to simply shoot little monsters until the monsters are all gone, shoot the big monster until the big monster dies, teleport to the next level and repeat.

In 1998, We were all still used to video games with rigidly distinct levels, linear progression, tightly scripted events, and AI that rarely surpassed that of the average Koopa Paratroopa. The author of this piece, and many like it at the time, was awestruck by how the game played out 'like a movie,' and perhaps rightly so. I first heard of Half-Life from an article in 'PC Gaming's' January 1998 issue, which for some reason I owned before I owned a computer that could play games. It also still feels to me like a relatively 'new' or 'modern' game, somehow, even though for many of you, it's a relic of an ancient time before you were ever born.

So I've never actually played Half-Life, but through over two decades of cultural osmosis, it sure feels like I have. Finally Reviewing Classic Half Life Creatures

Half life source hd models