Half Life 2 15 to 20 hours...? What?

[ablac]

Id say i agree with you. It took me about 8-9 hours. I wasnt particularily good so maybe people just spend more time searching for hidden secrets or whatever or maybe they jazz up the length to make it seem better because people only really have good things to say about it and want to make it seem even better. I didnt see what all the fuss was about honestly i mean it was good but it didnt grip me the way other games have. maybe thats why i went through faster than others seem to as i wasnt really encouraged to stick around.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Depends on the way you play I think, especially with a game like HL2.

If you do all that nonsense that lots of people suggest you do to 'fully experience the full story' then it could take you 15-20 hours easy. If you treat it like every other FPS then probably 9 hours is about right. Which of course highlights the problem with storytelling the way they do, with nothing to tell you what's important, eventually you ignore everything that isn't actively out to get you.

It's why games like Mass Effect can claim to have hundreds of hours of gameplay but the main quest can be done in ten hours easy. If you experience the 'full' game as vaguely defined by the publisher then it will of cours elast longer. If I stopped to examine every leaf on my path when I was out walking it certainly would take me longer to get home, but it doesn't necessarily improve the quality of my walk, it just means I come to a halt every two steps.

 

[wurrble182]

half life two is a maratahan not a sprint, if you're not hunting in every nook and cranny for goodies you might have missed, in my humble opinion you're doing it wrong =P 15-20 sounds a little long but 10-15 maybe. if you take your time and enjoy the ride : )

 

[Swifty714]

I have a better question....

What class do you have, where you evaluate games.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I'm guessing the same thing goes for Mass Effect with the Mako? This... yeah, it's starting to make a lot of sense.

I kinda thought the Mako was ok, just the terrain itself was kinda annoying to navigate!

 

[maddawg IAJI]

.....Did they try walking the Vehicle sections? Or did they just get lost during their stroll through Ravenholm?

 

[Artemicion]

I found HL2 to be an extremely boring game. I completed it in about four months.
Episodes 1 and 2 were brilliant, though. A remarkable step up from the source material.

 

[Mystify]

You really can spend a lot of time just messing around. Stopping and listening to broadcasts, messing around with throwing pop cans at combine guards, throwing TVs out of windows, etc. It should not be hard to imagine somebody taking a bit longer to get through the game, due to getting lost, dying more often, a more conservative strategy, or whatever, coupled with several hours of messing around over the course of the game, and of course the playtime will vary wildly.
For instance, there is a room during the hovercraft course with lots of grenade boxes around. You can simply storm that place with machine guns and punch through it easily. Or you can take it on with grendades alone, and it can take much longer.
I do think its fair to say you missed out if you only completed it in 9 hours. Even if you did find all of the dialog(and how will you know if you didn't?), the shorter playtime means you spent less time messing around, and that type of messing around is part of the game.
How often did you tackle a section with inly 2 hp remaining, resolved to not load a save any further back, and instead play a section a half-dozen times to figure out a method to do it without getting scratched? How much time did you spend trying to tackle ravenholm with the gravity gun alone? At a certain point, it is fair to say that you did not physically play the game long enough to experience everything it has to offer. Its not just about the content they put in the game, its the interesting experiences you have from exploring the game in-depth.

 

[Cazza]

Personally I can't remeber how long it took me to finished 10 hours maybe less. I was watching a friend playing it the other day. They aren't a big gamer it took them so long to complete the simple battles & puzzles. The game was set to easy. my guess is it takes 15-20 hours for some people because they just arn't good at the game. Or they must explore everything.

 

[Darth_Dude]

Steam says I did it in 13 hours, so yeah, sound pretty correct.

Although, I did stop and listen to EVERY broadcast and try and mess with almost everything. For example, the mini teleporter in Dr. Kliener's Lab at the start of the game. I love that thing.

Granted I played on Normal for the most part.

 

[Akimoto]

As I have beaten the game in 9 hours.

You sir are a super gamer. I took 30 hours or so to complete. I'm usually stuck on the puzzles and my combat is sub-par so I die repeatedly. I took longer on Ravenholm though because I was having fun dissecting the zombies.

Some other games like COD MW took me 17 hours to finish where others took 4 hours or less.

 

[Freechoice]

I played the game for about 50 minutes, went to lie down, woke up 3 hours later with a headache that lasted well into the next day.

For what it's worth, I'm actually decent with games. It took me 25 hours to beat Mass Effect 2 on insane with roughly 60 deaths and most of the content being done. Strangely, the more I played Resident Evil 4, the longer it would take. It took me like 7 hours the first time around and now it takes like 16.

Was any of that relevant? Nah, but I like flexing my g-peen.

 

[Poetic Nova]

It took me 20 hours back in 2007 when i played it for the first time (not counting the episodes).

 

[repeating integers]

And for the record, Water Hazard is my one of my favourite sections of the entire game. And that's because of the hovercraft. The car levels aren't quite as good, but I still have no idea why people vehemently hate the vehicle levels.

I'm gonna hazard a guess that you're playing on PC?

On the 360 I found the controls for the vehicle to be loose, counter-intuitive and cumbersome due to the very badly ported control scheme. Made the vehicle levels a bit of chore.

Ah, that explains a lot.

I'm guessing the same thing goes for Mass Effect with the Mako? This... yeah, it's starting to make a lot of sense.

Personally, I think the Mako is still roughly 3 times as fun as the vehicle sections from any other game ever, but that's a thread derail.

I have traumatic memories of trying to play HL2's Water Hazard level on the 360. The controls were... inconsistent. Several times, when motionless, I pressed the thumbstick to the right and the vehicle turned left - when I started pressing the thumbstick left, the vehicle continued to go left. Real bloody irritating, that was.

 

[Poetic Nova]

I have traumatic memories of trying to play HL2's Water Hazard level on the 360. The controls were... inconsistent. Several times, when motionless, I pressed the thumbstick to the right and the vehicle turned left - when I started pressing the thumbstick left, the vehicle continued to go left. Real bloody irritating, that was.

Don't forget the obvious auto-aim which made shooting rockets out of the air almost impossible.