Poll: Half-Life 2

[molesgallus]

It's one of only a few single player games I have managed to finish. For me, a game has to get me deeply interested in the story, to be enjoyable. I am not motivated by beating the computer, or racking up points. The fact that I know the computer could easily be made to beat me, means I get no satisfaction playing a game for it's own sake. As a result, I need a story to motivate me.

Half life beautifully involves you in the story by making Freeman an empty character. He has no personality, and never speaks, which makes it very easy for you to enter his body and become him. That with clever story telling, and frequent emotional turmoil(characters deaths, etc) keeps me hooked. The game play is easy, with some clever puzzle solving, but really only serves to drive the story along.

Half life 2 has received endless acclaim, and for good reason. It's definitely you that's missing something.

 

[Souplex]

It is the most average game I have ever played. I wouldn't hate it for that, if Valve Fanboys didn't proclaim it to be the 2nd going of Souplex. It is full of bad ideas. When ideas are popular, they are mimicked by other games, spreading. When bad ideas are popular it's like a cancer. Half Life 2 is game cancer.

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

It's good, but not anywhere near as good as Bioshock, System shock 2, Portal, Call of duty 4 or Goldeneye in my opinion.

Bioshock, System shock 2, Portal, Call of duty 4 or Goldeneye

Call of duty 4

Oh ho ho that slaps me on the knee

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

It is the most average game I have ever played. I wouldn't hate it for that, if Valve Fanboys didn't proclaim it to be the 2nd going of Souplex. It is full of bad ideas. When ideas are popular, they are mimicked by other games, spreading. When bad ideas are popular it's like a cancer. Half Life 2 is game cancer.

What was so bad about Half Life 2?
I still don't get what you didn't like.

 

[AlmostLikeLife]

I love the Half Life series. It's such a unique experience. I still play it to this day.

 

[gjendemsjo]

It's good, but not anywhere near as good as Bioshock, System shock 2, Portal, Call of duty 4 or Goldeneye in my opinion.

Bioshock, System shock 2, Portal, Call of duty 4 or Goldeneye

Call of duty 4

Oh ho ho that slaps me on the knee

Why? Because I think those games are better than Half life 2? That's just my opinion and you shouldn't make fun of it. Everyone has different opinions you know.

You do know right?....

 

[Je Suis Ubermonkey]

It's meant to be challenging, something that a lot of more recent games lack. It incorporates puzzles with shooting brilliantly and with some mucking about in the console it lets you ricochet an unending supply of crossbow bolts into the faces of zombies and spawn near infinite numbers of airboats on their corpses! That kept me amused for so long.

Seriously guys: open console, turn cheats on, bind impulses 83 and 101 to hotkeys, turn on godmode and let the crazy fun times commence!


To add to the challenge, on hard difficulty a gunship takes more rockets to down than you can carry. Good luck getting back to the supply crate.

 

[Audio]

It has plenty of flaws but if you waited for the first one to come out...loved it, then heard that the second game was coming out; Complete with top of the range graphics and physics. It was soooo brilliant!

You had to be there.

 

[Bloodstain]

I simply love how many people who never played Half-Life 1 say that HL2 is bad because they don't get the story.
Although you can figure the story out by simply listening to what is said, how about you play the first game?

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

It's good, but not anywhere near as good as Bioshock, System shock 2, Portal, Call of duty 4 or Goldeneye in my opinion.

Bioshock, System shock 2, Portal, Call of duty 4 or Goldeneye

Call of duty 4

Oh ho ho that slaps me on the knee

Why? Because I think those games are better than Half life 2? That's just my opinion and you shouldn't make fun of it. Everyone has different opinions you know.

You do know right?....

I only meant call of duty 4
All the others are on the same level of HL2 if not superior

 

[cornmancer]

My favorite FPS of all time, but that's my opinion. Not to say there aren't others that blow me away, like Metroid Prime and Fallout 3 (thought that's more RPG than FPS), it just does it better than everyone else.

 

[JWW]

It's still good after all these years, so I'd say that it's a damn good game.

For me, it's the atmosphere and the pacing. There are a couple of puzzles, and the gameplay's average, but what really keeps me playing is the feeling I get from it that no other game has copied so far.

It's like being in a pot of water, where the temperature is slowly turned up until you are boiled alive.

 

[nick_knack]

From what I gather here.....You're just bad at games.

 

[Megacherv]

You start off with no explanation...

The explanation is from Half-Life 1, and you need to actually pick out the bits that seem odd (i.e. Alyx being in her twenties, yet she said she was a young child during the Black mesa incident; Eli being really old compafred to how he looked in the last game (generic black scientist model being around his 40s/early 50s, Eli's model being around his late 50s/60s)

The depth of the story is what makes the story special, a lot like Portal (if you've seen Shamus' Thing About Stuff about story quantity vs. quality, you'll know what I mean)

 

[NLS]

I guess it is because HL2 doesn't spoon feed you the story, so if you're unlucky you'll just play through it and not catched much of the story. But if you take your time, you'll notice a shitload of story hidden here and there and everywhere. That's what makes it great, Valve doesn't need to pull out 3 hours of cinematics and waypoints and give you mission briefings and all that crap, because all you need to know is given to you throughout the game as long as you try to pay attention.

 

[Dango]

I really liked it when I did my first play through, but you can never play it a second time, it has absolutely no replay value, and that's why I think it's not deserving of the ridiculous amounts of praise it gets.

A game doesn't have to change itself every time you play it in order for you to want to play it again. Sure, it helps, but it doesn't set the replay value.
Movies never change after you see them, yet there are many movies I will have no problem and even be glad to watch again.

Well movies don't take up nearly the same amount of time as games, so no they don't have to be different.

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

Half-life 2 was pretty good game but I like episode 1 and 2 more because much more engrossing. Majority of the half-life 2 campaign is just Gordon shooting a being forced to drive really shitty airboat and car.The episodes are much more story driven and they do a good job at presenting this tired old story feel kinda fresh.

Agree on that one.
Valve said it themselves that they had learned many lessons from previous games.