First, the term "overrated" basically means that a persons opinion of something is generally in the realm of "not as good as others think". This shouldn't mean that your opinion or thoughts aren't valid, but that there's a disagreement between 2 or more people on what can be qualified as "good". I don't want to turn this into a flame war on how another user is lame just for a saying that he thinks something isn't right for him, like it's an attack on your opinion.
What we can gain from this is what makes a game great or disliked in other peoples eyes then our own, giving us a different perspective and more insight into a piece than it first appears.
That out of the way? Good.
Half-Life 2 is a good game, but might be slightly overrated to me. It's a great game still. The atmosphere is excellent, the pacing is good, locations are vast and varied, and the enemies are spread out just right to not feel totally recycled. I played the hell out of it and liked most playthroughs, but there are some problems.
One thing that's always bugged me is that Half-Life 2 fells a little too long, like moments or set pieces were stretched out just a little too much and put in an extra 5 hours to the game. Best example would be the Highway 17 section and the constant road blocks. The dune buggy always gets me to where I need, but it feels like a great weight, and not the good kind. Each road block expects you to do some very simple puzzle, a manual task to open the gate to the next area, or shoot all the bad guys before continuing. Repeat as necessary. It felt tedious after a while before the entire buggy section was over and was glad when the combine wisked it away over the coast. It wasn't until I found a cheat later that you can skip the entire section just by bunny hopping... and it was faster than the buggy.
Another thing was probably the over recycling of enemies and the general easy-ness of the game. The Combine Clone-O-Matic was on overdrive when Freeman started shooting up the place with the hundreds of foot soldiers that all went bowing down to your feet in blood. Or the several Strider battles you had to face down, I can't remember how many. And it feels like I fought the Strider 5 or 6 times as a boss before the end of the game, and these were supposed to be the challenging fights. It also feels like the Helicopter and the flying monster are almost the same too sometimes except when the bombs are being dropped. It's always difficult at first in Half-Life 2, but when you figure out the pattern and the location of the infinite ammo caches, the game gets pretty easy sometimes. No really, I had to check the Options menu sometimes just to see if it was still on Hard instead of Easy.
One other thing that I know might have got under some peoples skins was the ending. Before the Episodes, Half-Life 2 had a sweet lead up to the final boss before it suddenly stopped and kicked you out of the game. Dr. Breen taunting you and making remarks about how all Freemans violence is futile while you're running up gangways full of Combine trying to gun you down. You're doing all this for the freedom of mankind, for Alex, and yourself. You use the energy balls, shoot down Breen, Alex says you need to escape, EXPLOSION!, then... What the hell? So Alex dies? (This was before the Episodes.) No real resolution as to what happened to Earth? The Resistence? Did the remaining Combine take over? No, just used like a rag-doll and locked in a sub-space cryogenic tube again by that child molester until the next sequel. You can bet I was confused, then pissed at how that ended. Episode 1 should have been, and is, the real ending to the original and is far superior.
Half-Life 2, a good game, but not that legendary "best game ever" that I think some like to say.
I want to hear what others have got as there own overrated games. Just explain clearly what you didn't like about it.
What we can gain from this is what makes a game great or disliked in other peoples eyes then our own, giving us a different perspective and more insight into a piece than it first appears.
That out of the way? Good.
Half-Life 2 is a good game, but might be slightly overrated to me. It's a great game still. The atmosphere is excellent, the pacing is good, locations are vast and varied, and the enemies are spread out just right to not feel totally recycled. I played the hell out of it and liked most playthroughs, but there are some problems.
One thing that's always bugged me is that Half-Life 2 fells a little too long, like moments or set pieces were stretched out just a little too much and put in an extra 5 hours to the game. Best example would be the Highway 17 section and the constant road blocks. The dune buggy always gets me to where I need, but it feels like a great weight, and not the good kind. Each road block expects you to do some very simple puzzle, a manual task to open the gate to the next area, or shoot all the bad guys before continuing. Repeat as necessary. It felt tedious after a while before the entire buggy section was over and was glad when the combine wisked it away over the coast. It wasn't until I found a cheat later that you can skip the entire section just by bunny hopping... and it was faster than the buggy.
Another thing was probably the over recycling of enemies and the general easy-ness of the game. The Combine Clone-O-Matic was on overdrive when Freeman started shooting up the place with the hundreds of foot soldiers that all went bowing down to your feet in blood. Or the several Strider battles you had to face down, I can't remember how many. And it feels like I fought the Strider 5 or 6 times as a boss before the end of the game, and these were supposed to be the challenging fights. It also feels like the Helicopter and the flying monster are almost the same too sometimes except when the bombs are being dropped. It's always difficult at first in Half-Life 2, but when you figure out the pattern and the location of the infinite ammo caches, the game gets pretty easy sometimes. No really, I had to check the Options menu sometimes just to see if it was still on Hard instead of Easy.
One other thing that I know might have got under some peoples skins was the ending. Before the Episodes, Half-Life 2 had a sweet lead up to the final boss before it suddenly stopped and kicked you out of the game. Dr. Breen taunting you and making remarks about how all Freemans violence is futile while you're running up gangways full of Combine trying to gun you down. You're doing all this for the freedom of mankind, for Alex, and yourself. You use the energy balls, shoot down Breen, Alex says you need to escape, EXPLOSION!, then... What the hell? So Alex dies? (This was before the Episodes.) No real resolution as to what happened to Earth? The Resistence? Did the remaining Combine take over? No, just used like a rag-doll and locked in a sub-space cryogenic tube again by that child molester until the next sequel. You can bet I was confused, then pissed at how that ended. Episode 1 should have been, and is, the real ending to the original and is far superior.
Half-Life 2, a good game, but not that legendary "best game ever" that I think some like to say.
I want to hear what others have got as there own overrated games. Just explain clearly what you didn't like about it.
