Half Life 2 - just why is this game so great?
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Try out Minerva:Metastasis; Its level progression is less linear then HL2 ones.
I can understand you. Sometimes the game feels like a "let's see what we can do with the technology"-demo. I recommend that you try out the episode 1 and 2. They are better.
I can understand you. Sometimes the game feels like a "let's see what we can do with the technology"-demo. I recommend that you try out the episode 1 and 2. They are better.
I love the whole "feel" of the world in it, it takes a lot of time and detail to build up a good picture of City 17. I personally love the vehicle sections because, like the ocean-trawling in Wind Waker that everyone but me hates, it makes the world feel *real*. It feels like you're actually going on a journey rather than taking 2 minutes to get somewhere and characters acting as though you've come a long way. The combat is nothing spectacular, granted. I never noticed any problems with the AI. I guess the reason I like it so much is because I just love games that provide a really cool and believable setting. This, Wind Waker, Shenmue (yeah, yeah, I know), Skies of Arcadia and Metroid Prime are three of my favourite games, precisely because of the setting and the worlds they create. In fact, when HL2 gets really combat-heavy at the expense (in my opinion) of the setting, I lose interest. Having beaten the game 2 or 3 times I stop playing it after I get to Nova Prospekt.
But up to that point I think it's one of the greatest gaming experiences ever. Different strokes for different folks.
But up to that point I think it's one of the greatest gaming experiences ever. Different strokes for different folks.
Yup, kinda like that. All the people you meet expect that you know the things that happened that led to the world to be like it is. It's like 9/11. No one would say something along the lines of "Remember when Terrorists captured planes and crashed them into the Towers of the World Trade Center? That sure changed America quite a bit!"corroded said:
Actually, it was planned originally that over the course of the game, Alyx and one of the scientists (Kleiner or Eli) show Gordon a kind-of-dia show and explained the events after HL1, but it was canned because Valve thought it would hurt the pacing too much. So the Information is very gradually revealed (even if you can find most Info on the pinboards in Kleiners Lab and on Black Mesa East)
Well I think Half-life 2 is fantastic. It's just a really fun game, and episodes 1 and 2 are even better in terms of enjoyment.
I'm not going to debate all the points, but I am going to say that I am in favour of linear games. I love linear games - I'm not afraid to say it. Some of the best games I ever played were linear - and you know why? Because it streamlines them. Choice is never a bad thing, but when a game goes for breadth and not depth, it often shoots itself in the foot.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Fallout 3, but the characters could've been so much more developed if the world hadn't been so big. And as cool as that game was, the main quest and endings, quite frankly, sucked. Linearity certainly has its benefits!
Maybe Half-Life 2 just isn't your cup of tea. That's cool, everyone has their own taste.But personally I found it highly enjoyable and finished it multiple times.
I'm not going to debate all the points, but I am going to say that I am in favour of linear games. I love linear games - I'm not afraid to say it. Some of the best games I ever played were linear - and you know why? Because it streamlines them. Choice is never a bad thing, but when a game goes for breadth and not depth, it often shoots itself in the foot.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Fallout 3, but the characters could've been so much more developed if the world hadn't been so big. And as cool as that game was, the main quest and endings, quite frankly, sucked. Linearity certainly has its benefits!
Maybe Half-Life 2 just isn't your cup of tea. That's cool, everyone has their own taste.But personally I found it highly enjoyable and finished it multiple times.
Ah I'm with the OP on this, the game is very much over-hyped and it's difficult to see why.
First playing it on a PC I found it a bit difficult to get into, the controls seemed too loose in my opinion, so I borrowed the Orange Box from a friend on the 360 and it felt a lot better with the 360 pad but still, it seemed a bit loose and even empty at times.
What is so good about Gordon Freeman? the glasses-wearing geek mute that saves the day on more than one occasion? well I'm guessing it's the fact that he's hard as nails, or seems to be, he's a bit like the Masterchief but nevertalks.
Anyway it is a good game to play but it seems more like hype has gotten to reviewers and players of the game, which is why it gets 'best game ever' labels and such.
First playing it on a PC I found it a bit difficult to get into, the controls seemed too loose in my opinion, so I borrowed the Orange Box from a friend on the 360 and it felt a lot better with the 360 pad but still, it seemed a bit loose and even empty at times.
What is so good about Gordon Freeman? the glasses-wearing geek mute that saves the day on more than one occasion? well I'm guessing it's the fact that he's hard as nails, or seems to be, he's a bit like the Masterchief but nevertalks.
Anyway it is a good game to play but it seems more like hype has gotten to reviewers and players of the game, which is why it gets 'best game ever' labels and such.
Now, I played the first game and thought it was...alright (I've seen much better games, namely Red Faction) everything that was good about that game had a huge annoyance get in the way of it which in turn dragged it back down to normality.
The same can be said of Half Life 2 although it's dragged down to just below average in my opinion since the fans of the game keep making unjustified claims of it's greatness (which means one of two things, either I have suffered a grievious head injury and woken up in a paralell universe or there are some people who just can't admit that maybe they were being a bit too optimistic).
Firstly, the confusion over the story. It is confusing, very little is explained and while some people can justify this with the whole 'you're suposed to be a little bit unsure' explaination I personally don't buy this. Refusing to explain anything just leaves the player confused and disoriented in most cases, why am I fighting these bad guys? why do I care what Alyx thinks? why the hell am I throwing myself into harm's way to rescue a Morgan Freeman look-a-like?
Without any motivation or justifacation for my continued efforts it's almost impossible to connect with what is happening or the characters which in turn just makes the dialogue sequences boring and pretentious.
The only genre in which telling the player little or nothing about the situation is acceptable is horror since this adds to that 'fear of the unkown' and the anxiety surrounding the threat or danger (we can safely say that Half Life is not a survival horror).
Quite a lot of fuss has been made over the gravity gun, fair enough, back in the day it was a unique idea but I would hardly say that gives it lasting appeal or automatic greatness (the Virtualboy was unique and original back in the day and look how that turned out), throughout the game it is used more or less as a utility item for solving physics puzzles.
While I'm the topic of physics I'll take a moment to point out the needless and not overtly important fact that the grav gun isn't scientifically accurate and wouldn't really be that useful, the object being lifted by the gg still has weight/mass and the strain of that would have to be taken somewhere (an airplane in midair is still heavy) so not only would the device not aid with heavy lifting at all but firing the object with great force (like you do in the game) would send you flying in the opposite direction at the same speed as the object you fired (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) potentially killing you if you collide with a solid object.
That's the science bit over, in Episode 1 and 2 (to a certain extent) they tried to force the player to become adept with the grav gun by making it your only weapon for quite a long time when I personally would have prefered to just shoot the zombie hordes rather than running around looking for suitably solid objects to hurl at them.
Even with all of these critisisms that can be made I can acknowledge that Half Life isn't bad, it's just not as good as everyone keeps making it out to be.
(I apologise for turning this into a small essay, I've been writing them all week and it's begining to affect me slightly)
The same can be said of Half Life 2 although it's dragged down to just below average in my opinion since the fans of the game keep making unjustified claims of it's greatness (which means one of two things, either I have suffered a grievious head injury and woken up in a paralell universe or there are some people who just can't admit that maybe they were being a bit too optimistic).
Firstly, the confusion over the story. It is confusing, very little is explained and while some people can justify this with the whole 'you're suposed to be a little bit unsure' explaination I personally don't buy this. Refusing to explain anything just leaves the player confused and disoriented in most cases, why am I fighting these bad guys? why do I care what Alyx thinks? why the hell am I throwing myself into harm's way to rescue a Morgan Freeman look-a-like?
Without any motivation or justifacation for my continued efforts it's almost impossible to connect with what is happening or the characters which in turn just makes the dialogue sequences boring and pretentious.
The only genre in which telling the player little or nothing about the situation is acceptable is horror since this adds to that 'fear of the unkown' and the anxiety surrounding the threat or danger (we can safely say that Half Life is not a survival horror).
Quite a lot of fuss has been made over the gravity gun, fair enough, back in the day it was a unique idea but I would hardly say that gives it lasting appeal or automatic greatness (the Virtualboy was unique and original back in the day and look how that turned out), throughout the game it is used more or less as a utility item for solving physics puzzles.
While I'm the topic of physics I'll take a moment to point out the needless and not overtly important fact that the grav gun isn't scientifically accurate and wouldn't really be that useful, the object being lifted by the gg still has weight/mass and the strain of that would have to be taken somewhere (an airplane in midair is still heavy) so not only would the device not aid with heavy lifting at all but firing the object with great force (like you do in the game) would send you flying in the opposite direction at the same speed as the object you fired (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) potentially killing you if you collide with a solid object.
That's the science bit over, in Episode 1 and 2 (to a certain extent) they tried to force the player to become adept with the grav gun by making it your only weapon for quite a long time when I personally would have prefered to just shoot the zombie hordes rather than running around looking for suitably solid objects to hurl at them.
Even with all of these critisisms that can be made I can acknowledge that Half Life isn't bad, it's just not as good as everyone keeps making it out to be.
(I apologise for turning this into a small essay, I've been writing them all week and it's begining to affect me slightly)
This man's points are spot on - the levels are no less linear than many made subsequently, the AI is considerably above-par compared to many current games, with AI that can make decisions on where to run to, where cover is, the shortest route to the player (compared to CoD, where every enemy spawns in the same place, runs to the same place, dies, respawns in the same place, runs to the ... zzzz..., Halo, where the only difference between replays is the rank of the elites you might face in each aquad etc etc.), and also features seamlessly integrated flying enemies and jumping enemies, has several three way battles throughout its full length (Episodes included). Soooo, yeah, the AI really sucks, doesn't it? And look, I didn't even need to exaggerate to make my point!Yokai said:
Yeah, ok, boring guns. I agree to some extent with this point, though to me it was because they all sounded so weedy, and because Gordon's not the best at controlling recoil the average engagement range when using the smg was about what you'd be using the shotgun for. Which wasn't a great bit of weapon design, imo. I quite liked the pulse rifle, but it didn't carry enough spare ammo to make it useable as a primary weapon.
No, this game was practically built around the shotgun and crossbow for me, just cause they were both so damn awesome. Pretty sure the HL2 shotgun was the first one that would blast your enemies back across the room, flailing and rebounding off walls like the poor foolish mortals they were. Oh, wait, Painkiller got there first, and had a stake gun that was remarkably like the Crossbow, but could shoot grenades. Oh well, it might not have been original but HL2 still had some great guns.
Now, level design... I have yet to see a fps put as much attention to detail in their design as the valve team - not even the expansive arenas of Crysis, because they loose their way by trying to make it look like a natural environment, thus loosing out on opportunities to do all those nice little tricks that good level designers put in - subtle attention guiding features, like local lighting, use of colour, framed views, windows that hint at your next destination to build anticipation, platforming sections across precarious drops to solve puzzles and all that jazz. Just so much more interesting than, say, a series of rooms containing badguys to shoot, a la the Rainbow series, or certain sections of Halo.
If you listen to the developer commentary, you gain a nice insight into the thoughts and designs of the team, noticing things that had seemed natural and fitted seamlessly but were actually carefully thought out and designed to enhance the experience of the game.
That said, much of the early sewer section sucked. Oh well, can't win them all.
The story is great, in depth and interesting - you just have to get into it, to want to listen to the various announcements and snippets of dialogue to piece together little bits of the big picture. It's all a big jigsaw, nothing's spelt out for you in a mission briefing or some such crap, and if you can't be bothered to use your brain to work out what's going on then you probably dont deserve to know. Knowledge of the first game is unnecessary, you should be able to work out that you're some sort of legend to these people pretty quickly, and the feeling of confusion you might get is intentional. Even having played HL1 this world and many of its denizens is new to you, but with that knowledge you understand that this could have been, in some way, your fault, and the presence of the G-man lets you know that soon the shit will hit the fan and things are going to get messy fast.
You do realise that one of the two vehicles you drive was an AIR BOAT, and that as such was liable to differ in handling from the average family saloon? Perhaps the idea of drifting your hovercraft through the long, sweeping, radioactive-waste-filled sewers whilst being molested by a helicopter gunship doesn't appeal to you? I personally loved it. The other vehicle was built from scratch by a couple of guys, some scrap metal and a blow torch. Not that surprising they couldn't find some offroad tyres for your comfort. Yeah, so the handling wasn't pretty or comfortable, but hey, it fitted beautifully into the world of the rebels.
The characters were also done far better than many games that I have seen since, seriously above par. Compare Alyx's emotional depth to characters in Crysis, Halo (well, Cortana was pretty well written), Rainbow games, CoD, etc etc. I understand Gears II is supposed to have some emotional depth, but this is coming 4 years later, and is the only fps I know of that can even begin to potentially compare.
Finally, if you found HL2 boring or too linear, try playing through it in one sitting, and experience it as a movie. I did that once, and it was one hell of a cinematic experience, with each set piece fitting in almost perfectly to keep the pacing right and the action dynamic. From slipping through zombie infested sewers, to dualing helicopters over radioactive wastelands, to clambering across the underside of a rickety rail bridge exchanging rockets with a bio-organic gunship, to battling alongside the rebels against the Combine invaders or the insectoid Antlions, and taking the fight to the Combine in a bid to break their hold on your planet. It's just all so cinematic, providing you dont close your mind, and open up to take in the view as you climb out of the sewers, relish in saving mankind, and just allow yourself to enjoy the game. It's easy to decide not to like a game before you play it, but I make a point of approaching every game with an open mind (even abysmal ones like Frontlines). You should do so too, especially one that is held in such high regard.
Half Life 2 is probably the best game I've ever played. EVER. It's an example of how any great game should be made. It got awards from almost every publication ever, and is known for raising the bar in the half life series, valve's games, and also for gaming in general. Want more proof that this game is the best I've played ever? Name one game that I have gone back to and beat a total of 7 times and it never got old. Yeah. I thought so.
Holy crap that has to be the longest post I've ever made... didn't realise what an essay it wasYokai said:
still managed to miss one salient point: 'HL2 is a tech demo'... yeah, sure, in the same way that Farcry, Crysis and Painkiller are techdemoes. Wow, it features a weapon designed to showcase the game's advanced physics engine, turning mass into a weapon. Farcry feature a rendering engine that is able to look beautiful on systems what, 6 years later - it was seriously a piece of godly coding, and yet you wouldn't accuse that of being a rendering engine demo. What about Painkiller? Was that a Havoc 2 physics engine demo, or a no-holds barred frag fest? And Crysis - the same as Farcry, merely a fancy, pretty game engine to appeal only to those with a pimped out gaming rig? The answer to all these is, in my opinion, no.
What was a tech demo was HL2: Lost Coast, an abandoned HL2 level that was the first to demonstrate the HL2 engine revamped with dynamic lighting and new rendering abilities. It was essentially made purely to showcase their new technology, was very short and featured basic HL gameplay, with a single simple grenade puzzle to solve. Not a multi-chaptered masterpiece resulting from several years worth of hard work.
I really loved Halflife 1, but I have to say I agree with all the points in the OP. The level design is bland, the AI sucks, and the vehicle sections are just a waste of time. I really like to know what story everyone says is so great. All I remember from the game is waking up on the train, and then you find yourself in a large city area where "big brother" is messing things up. It doesn't get much deeper than that. In HL1, you had yourself just walking in on another day, experiment goes wrong, and suddenly your lab is merged with another dimension. To make things worse, its considered a security breach, so the government tries to kill you along with the aliens. Things continue to get worse from there as you find stuff out about the lambda team or whatever it was (been a long time since I played it). THAT was a story.
I don't hate HL2, but everyone says its the best game and I just can't agree. At the time, Doom 3 came out, and HL2 just seemed like a much better game at the time. I'll give it credit for that. But going back and playing both, Doom 3 actually had a good plot while HL2 just had good solid gameplay.
I'm also waiting for HL2:Ep3 to come out before touching episode 1. I'm hoping I'll see some of this "great story" in the sequels.
I don't hate HL2, but everyone says its the best game and I just can't agree. At the time, Doom 3 came out, and HL2 just seemed like a much better game at the time. I'll give it credit for that. But going back and playing both, Doom 3 actually had a good plot while HL2 just had good solid gameplay.
I'm also waiting for HL2:Ep3 to come out before touching episode 1. I'm hoping I'll see some of this "great story" in the sequels.
I agree with the topic creator / original poster.
Half Life 2 is long, completely linear, boring, tedious, and as a result, often just fatiguing to play. You have no options and there are no real puzzles (nothing that requires actual thought, anyway). Finally, there's no background. There are no notes to pick up, no audio logs, no books... everything that you experience is "here and now". True, it keeps you both in the moment and somewhat alienated, but being alienated... it also makes you wonder why you should give a damn about anybody or anything... which may result in you just plowing through the game instead of taking the time to interact with the scripted robots... I mean "characters".
And can we drop the "he's just a scientist, not a soldier" excuse for Gordon not being able to use whatever gun effectively? Anyone can use sights. It's not rocket science. It's just a bad excuse for underdeveloped gameplay. It's a first person shooter, people... not a "scientist accidentally thrown into combat" simulator... and it's not like Gordon's never used a gun before.
Half Life 2 is long, completely linear, boring, tedious, and as a result, often just fatiguing to play. You have no options and there are no real puzzles (nothing that requires actual thought, anyway). Finally, there's no background. There are no notes to pick up, no audio logs, no books... everything that you experience is "here and now". True, it keeps you both in the moment and somewhat alienated, but being alienated... it also makes you wonder why you should give a damn about anybody or anything... which may result in you just plowing through the game instead of taking the time to interact with the scripted robots... I mean "characters".
And can we drop the "he's just a scientist, not a soldier" excuse for Gordon not being able to use whatever gun effectively? Anyone can use sights. It's not rocket science. It's just a bad excuse for underdeveloped gameplay. It's a first person shooter, people... not a "scientist accidentally thrown into combat" simulator... and it's not like Gordon's never used a gun before.
I am sitting here puzzled as to see how Lord Of The Rings fits into this at all? The only thing that come's to mind is that is has sequels? Every man and his dog have read/played/watched etc. some kind of sequel, what makes this such an important fact... And also, while I agree with some parts of your reviewish, rant type thing, the game more then make's up for it. Halflife for the win.