Half Life 2 Misconceptions.

[Arachon]

That was not logic. That was an observation about the majority of people out there. Otherwise not even I could enjoy Thief anymore, considering how outdated it is. Though tell my boyfriend or any of his friends to play it and they will wrinkle their nose at the graphics and stop playing after five minutes.

... oops. Accidentally quoted to people.

-_-

And then we're back to the argument "it's not for everyone". Personally, I didn't like HL2 too much, it was average. I found the plot to be relatively uninteresting, the characters to be archetypical, the puzzles gimmicky and the gameplay downright dull. In short, it doesn't matter when the game came out, I fail to see why it is so "revolutionary" as people claim.

 

[Quantupus]

Well your whole dated game argument gets a little doubted seeing as how episode two didn't come out in the last generation.

Even though Episode 2 came out in 2007, it remained a last gen game in terms of gameplay. Health Packs, run and gun, and one man army scenarios were still being used.

"run and gun, and one man army" How exactly has that changed recently?

Also maybe they kept the health packs to keep it similar to the original or perhaps they didn't like regenerating health.

Health packs aren't worse than regenerating health, it's just a choice. Health packs make sense in a game like HL2 where every fight is scripted and the makers of the game know exactly how many enemies the player will be fighting, what weapons the enemies will have, and what weapons the player will have at their disposal, and exactly where the players will be when they encounter the enemies. So they can lay health pack out wherever they know the player will need them.

But with a sandbox game like, say, Red Faction Guerrilla, the game designers don't know how many enemies the player will be fighting, or what weapons the player will be carrying, or what path the player will take to their objective. Enemy spawn locations are random and they spawn constantly, so you need to give the players a way to get health back on the fly instead of putting health packs every 6 ft.

 

[Lovelocke]

So to sum up, as this is a little long, Half Life 2 is an old game. It is a dated game.

I felt this at launch. Our expectations of a game need to be MET by developers, if not, then they've either done a poor job producing it or they promoted it incorrectly. That's the fun thing about being the end-user, everything leading up to it has to appeal TO YOU, FOR YOUR MONEY: Not the other way around.

Aged well? I think that's the only accurate thing you've mentioned. Source engine is still (ugh) in use today, but for many interesting applications (Notably the free-to-download "Alien Swarm") that it wasn't initially planned for. THIS is what I would consider an example of a developer exceeding expectations, the diversity of the technology underneath it.

Half-Life 2 as a game is, and has been, "Meh" for me... but I do like the engine it sits on. Low tech enough for modern PCs to handle, but it has been upgraded so significantly that it was largely stayed relevant.

 

[NoNameMcgee]

Half-Life 2 is still my favorite FPS game ever, hands down. Now I am most certainly not one for nostalgia clouding my judgment, and as a matter of fact I consider 90% of games older than 5 years to be inferior in most ways to most games coming out today. Though I don't like a lot stuff that comes out these days either; so I guess I'm just picky like that. =/

I think it has aged extremely well because its core gameplay design is simplistic and minimalistic in a way that stays satisfying, accessible, and doesn't age. At the same time the game is incredibly immersive and the storytelling methods (not the story itself, although there's nothing wrong with the story) are some of the best I have seen in a game. Throw in some memorable characters, amazing voice acting, great art style, great collection of weaponry, brilliant set-pieces and one of the subsequent episodes actually making me tear up at the end... All wrapped together in the pinnacle of linear level design, and there we have one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.

I bought it in November 2004 the day it was released and was absolutely blown away, I have played it through numerous times since including once this year and I find that very few things have actually aged. I still struggle to find flaws in the game, I really do. The flaws I can nitpick out are relatively minor.

Now where the fuck is episode 3?

 

[PhiMed]

Well your whole dated game argument gets a little doubted seeing as how episode two didn't come out in the last generation.

Even though Episode 2 came out in 2007, it remained a last gen game in terms of gameplay. Health Packs, run and gun, and one man army scenarios were still being used.

"run and gun, and one man army" How exactly has that changed recently?

Also maybe they kept the health packs to keep it similar to the original or perhaps they didn't like regenerating health.

Because most shooters are cover-based affairs where you're part of a squad. Other than Bioshock and the Halo series (which is moving to squad-based combat), I can't really think of any run-and-gun one man army games in the past few years.