It was absolutly fine. Having exactly the same look as previous helped it tie in to the rest of the story.
Poll: Was half life 2 episode 2 behind the times?
- Thread starter tino1498
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I really like the source engine, especially in the HL2 games. They kinda tried something new in Episode 2 with those sort of stylised painted backdrops, which were pretty, but not jawdropping. There was still some jawdropping moments in the game, though. *escapes house through hunter ridden basement to free trapped car, and then remembers to exhale*. To me, the game never really felt dated, and I never felt the graphics weren't up to par. This could be due to my lack of realatively new games - it didn't look as pretty as CoD4, but I understand that CoD4 is game that is considered to be a benchmark in current graphics (without Cryengine). I haven't got anything like the PC to fully appreciate Crysis, though I've been urged to give it a try on my Dell XPS 600, Intel Pentium 4, CPU 3.2GHz, 3.19GHz, 1.00GB of RAM. What do any of you think?
Anyway,like people have said, everyone loves the physics, graphics look fine to me and there are FANTASTIC facial expressions (except for Dr. Freeman's). I imagine that HL2Ep3 will be built on the Source engine, and Valve will assign some monkeys to make a nice shiny new one for Half Life 3. Which will kick all of our arses into hell with its awesomeness. Yeah, uh, no Half Life fanboys here? : /
Anyway,like people have said, everyone loves the physics, graphics look fine to me and there are FANTASTIC facial expressions (except for Dr. Freeman's). I imagine that HL2Ep3 will be built on the Source engine, and Valve will assign some monkeys to make a nice shiny new one for Half Life 3. Which will kick all of our arses into hell with its awesomeness. Yeah, uh, no Half Life fanboys here? : /
Of course it's behind the times, it's an expansion to a game that's 5 years old.
Don't make it bad.
Of course, by that same logic Wrath of the Lich-King is behind the times. *ponders*
Don't make it bad.
Of course, by that same logic Wrath of the Lich-King is behind the times. *ponders*
In my opinion, the campaign of Call of Duty 4 had serious design flaws that made it one of the most dissappointing games I've ever played (i.e. infinitely respawning enemies excacerbated by the fact that the AI was even more thick-headed than the Gumbies of Monty Python, frustratingly linear gameplay, un-accomadating level design, overuse of AI novelty tricks like whipping out a pistol with their dying breath, and a dependence on making the AI throwing ludicrous amounts of grenades in a feeble attempt to make fighting the enemies interesting when they could have been, well, I don't know, flanking). Really, the only two high-points for me in the single-player was fast-roping from the Black-Hawk in the first Marine mission and the AC-130 gunship level.
Crysis, as pretty as it looked, was an incredibly boring shooter compared with games like Rainbow Six and Half-life. My opinion wasn't helped by the fact that the plot made a movie directed by Ed Wood look deserving of an Oscar (Its a bit jarring to me that the NKA is so quick to ally themselves with the US after your character slaughtered them in droves, and which cretinous voice-casting director decided that it made sense that someone from the UK was fighting for the US army?)
Crysis, as pretty as it looked, was an incredibly boring shooter compared with games like Rainbow Six and Half-life. My opinion wasn't helped by the fact that the plot made a movie directed by Ed Wood look deserving of an Oscar (Its a bit jarring to me that the NKA is so quick to ally themselves with the US after your character slaughtered them in droves, and which cretinous voice-casting director decided that it made sense that someone from the UK was fighting for the US army?)
Is the Source engine a little bit behind the cutting edge? Maybe. After all, the "dynamic shadows" bit they put in for the flashlight in Ep. 2 was nothing more than stencil tracing from the player's viewpoint; notice that all other shadows in the game are the same as always. And it doesn't pull off all the nice visual effects that the STALKER or CryTek engines do (progessive day/night schedules and lighting, weather effects, etc.).
But unlike far too many other games on the market, Source puts everything that it DOES do right out in front of you, and it makes all those snazzy effects pertinent. From the vista of a blasted city with a stream of unstable energy arcing into the skies, to the screen distortion when an Advisor had you pinned to a wall with the power of its mind, to the abject obliteration of a building as a force of Striders stormed towards the last hope of humanity- it felt like every last nifty feature that Valve came up with went into pulling the player further into the game. The design never said "what sort of thing can we throw in here to provide more eye candy", but instead said "what can we do to make this particular moment as powerful as it can be".
Besides, how can any game that can <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6KTnXx1bc>blow shit up like this be considered outdated?
But unlike far too many other games on the market, Source puts everything that it DOES do right out in front of you, and it makes all those snazzy effects pertinent. From the vista of a blasted city with a stream of unstable energy arcing into the skies, to the screen distortion when an Advisor had you pinned to a wall with the power of its mind, to the abject obliteration of a building as a force of Striders stormed towards the last hope of humanity- it felt like every last nifty feature that Valve came up with went into pulling the player further into the game. The design never said "what sort of thing can we throw in here to provide more eye candy", but instead said "what can we do to make this particular moment as powerful as it can be".
Besides, how can any game that can <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6KTnXx1bc>blow shit up like this be considered outdated?
A lot of people don't have amazingly great gaming computers anyway and can greatly struggle to run HL2 ep2 with graphics maxed out but graphics don't mean much at all. The physics are great still though maybe a improvement with destructible environments in ep 3 would raise its level or so as the game is started to show its age now.
Behind the times with gameplay? No. If anything todays shooters should be aspiring to be HL2 rather than Unnamed Shooter #3000183832.
Behind the times with graphics? No. Firstly if you* care about graphics that much you need to go back to Videogaming 101. A few hours shoving 10p coins into a Space Invaders cabinet should solve that debate.
Secondly, the Source engine itself is actually quite up to date, I think HL2: EP2, TF2 and Portal are all running on Source 2 iirc, or at least revision 2 of the engine if not a full sequel. I can't name any other engine that has lasted this long and yet managed to keep with the times. Sure its no crysis but its more than fuctional. Hell wern't source engine games some of the first to use HDR? Unsure on that.
Ultimately an engine is only as old as the games it runs. With Valve developing Left 4 Dead on Source2, as well as Ep3 most likely being on the engine, I don't think it is as old as people think.
*you as a subjective and not refering to anyone.
Behind the times with graphics? No. Firstly if you* care about graphics that much you need to go back to Videogaming 101. A few hours shoving 10p coins into a Space Invaders cabinet should solve that debate.
Secondly, the Source engine itself is actually quite up to date, I think HL2: EP2, TF2 and Portal are all running on Source 2 iirc, or at least revision 2 of the engine if not a full sequel. I can't name any other engine that has lasted this long and yet managed to keep with the times. Sure its no crysis but its more than fuctional. Hell wern't source engine games some of the first to use HDR? Unsure on that.
Ultimately an engine is only as old as the games it runs. With Valve developing Left 4 Dead on Source2, as well as Ep3 most likely being on the engine, I don't think it is as old as people think.
*you as a subjective and not refering to anyone.
@The Rogue Wolf:
That was awesome!
I salute Valve for taking a different route. Instead of developing new engines, they just re-use the old one and adds a few bells and whistles. The end result is a polished visual experience without the *extra* effort (in effect less time than it would take had they created a new engine from scratch). Though Valve should really put out new info regarding Episode 3. After all, Yahtzee said that the point of episodic gaming is shorter games, released more often (I'm pretty sure I missed something there).
That was awesome!
I salute Valve for taking a different route. Instead of developing new engines, they just re-use the old one and adds a few bells and whistles. The end result is a polished visual experience without the *extra* effort (in effect less time than it would take had they created a new engine from scratch). Though Valve should really put out new info regarding Episode 3. After all, Yahtzee said that the point of episodic gaming is shorter games, released more often (I'm pretty sure I missed something there).
We are probably going to see a new iteration of the Source Engine for Episode 3, but it won't surprise me if they make a newer one.
HL2 was the first game to have 'next generation' graphics. It's outdated if you think it's the same thing except with some different models but you'll notice if you open the dev console, that it's build 14. HL2 is build 7 i think. Thats a big step up. Also my PC is from 2005 and it can run Ep2 on medium, it's a laptop. How many games are that well optimized? Look at sims for instance, it crashes on my sisters PC and freezes all the damn time. Although it may be something completely different. Noodles.
In COD4 people had a certain glow to them, And so did the game. It was way to bright everywhere in multi-player and most other levels.(The ones not taking place during the night.) And well I wish more games would make better rain, Like rain that wets you and you would comment, Or it gets in your eye and you take a blink to clear it.