Zero Punctuation: Half-Life 2 Update - Gravity Gun > Modern FPS

[Sledgimus]

Honestly though, all the Gravity Gun is, in essence, is telekinesis. Something I've been banging on about for games to explore more since Psi-Ops. The Gravity Gun is a very solid weapon/gameplay mechanic indeed, but it wasn't revolutionary or anything like that.

Psi-Ops! Thank you, I'd forgotten about that game. Had so much more fun with it than Half-Life 2. I mean seriously, any game with unskippable cutscenes can go fornicate itself with an iron stick.

 

[irishda]

Confession: I was so underwhelmed when I played Half-Life 1 that I never played Half-Life 2. To this day, the internet's obsession with Gordon Freeman remains a mystery to me.

 

[deleted+75193]

DELETED

 

[truckspond]

since your allies like to block your cover.

That is my biggest complaint in the game. You go into a small room for some health and when you try to get out again you have to push through all of your allies who are now blocking the door. And what makes it worse is that they constantly say "Let me get out of your way" while constantly moving even more into your way!

 

[Vigormortis]

I gotta say, the mod does make the game look good. It received quite a face lift.

Ofcourse, I did play it on the 360.

Well, there's the problem.

Valve outsourced the Xbox port to another dev, and that dev botched it horribly. Serious 'dropping of the ball' on Valve's part. :/

Gordon being praised as a the almighty savior always kept bugging me, while in the first game (which I still love to play) he was just a scientist trying to leave the hellhole that's called Black Mesa.

He has that messianic status because he effectively saved the world from the Nihilanth. He was the one sent on the mission to Xen to close the portal through which the Nihilanth sent his invasion forces. Those at Black Mesa who knew of Freeman's actions spread the story after the incident.

 

[AstaresPanda]

HL2 and HL in general still holds up well today. But the source engine is like a decade or so old now and we have had alot of games come and go that look pretty as fooook. I think its partly a you had to have been their moment. It was a HUGE step back then both games were and then the explosion of mods. I started playing HL1 back in 1999. Its not fucking 2015 ive done school and now work and am a "big boy" now and im still fucking waiting on HL3.

wishlist

Half-life 3
Left 4 Dead 3
Portal 3
Dawn of War 3
Space Marine 2 & 3

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Also, I'm digging all the people in these comments who spell Alyx' name incorrectly.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Graphics are like public toilet cleaners, you know they're doing their job properly if you never notice or think about them.

Thank you for that, Yahtzee.

 

[Metalrocks]

well, at least its for free, so sure no complaints there.
but agreed; you really need a side to side comparison to really see the difference. i have noticed the shadows are much nicer than in the original but still a damn fine play regardless.
cant say i ever had huge issues with the ladders either. there were only 2 or 3 spots were the it behaved a bit iffy to get off it but otherwise no issues.

 

[Nazulu]

since your allies like to block your cover.

That is my biggest complaint in the game. You go into a small room for some health and when you try to get out again you have to push through all of your allies who are now blocking the door. And what makes it worse is that they constantly say "Let me get out of your way" while constantly moving even more into your way!

I think it's a prank. When I send them out to get killed, sometimes it doesn't happen, even when I'm standing the doorway and they are being constantly fired upon.

Also, I'm digging all the people in these comments who spell Alyx' name incorrectly.

Well excuuuuuuuuuuse me princess!

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I used to think that way... but I've come to really like it. And the gameplay isn't unintuitive. It just doesn't funnel you along an entirely linear path like most hand-holding modern shooters. Also, Half-Life redefined shooters. Before Half Life, shooters were like DOOM and Quake. After, they weren't. Ergo, without Half-Life, the history of the shooter would be entirely different.

Oh I'm not arguing that Half Life wasn't a milestone in games. But that doesn't make it good so much as notable. Pong was notable, but hardly anyone would call it the greatest game ever or really even a fun game.
Likewise Super Mario Bros. At the time I'm sure it was the shit, but compared to Mass Effect or Bioshock, can we finally say Mario isn't all that anymore?
And the same is true for Half Life. At the time I'm sure it was great. Now, its merely okay. Its fine. Average. Not one point above 75%. I get that people are nostalgic but its not aged very well for those of us who didn't play it in what, '99?
A lot has changed since then.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

wishlist

Half-life 3
Left 4 Dead 3
Portal 3
Dawn of War 3
Space Marine 2 & 3

Meh
Sure
Meh
YES!
Yes and Sure

Poor THQ...lost before its time.

 

[JET1971]

Yahtzee, the use key gets you off the ladders. Look where you want to go hit the use key and you are off the ladder standing where you wanted. I prefer that ladder system than the ones you have to hit a key to get on and off plus it is a different key than the one used to pick stuff up or open a door.

HL2 has a few fun challenges you can do with the gravity gun, only use the Gravity gun and Dogs ball to get through Ravenholme is an achievement plus a fun challenge. After try to do the rest of the game with the gravity gun and found objects instead of guns.

As for silent protagonists, I use my imagination and fill in what he never says, I actually prefer silent protagonists over talking ones because half the time when the character speaks for me it is nothing I would have ever said and breaks immersion. I enjoy games with a silent protagonist far more than with a talking just because I make that character who I want him or her to be from an asshole to nicest of the nice.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

]Psi-Ops! Thank you, I'd forgotten about that game. Had so much more fun with it than Half-Life 2. I mean seriously, any game with unskippable cutscenes can go fornicate itself with an iron stick.

Actually, now I think about it, Psi-Ops did a lot of things awesomely. Level design was pretty darn good and allowed and sometimes forced one to use their powers in innovative ways. Mind Control could get really nasty too if used properly. Or knocking an enemy down and then running over and doing a full Mind Drain on them. XD

I miss that game... But of course, it's not compatible with the 360! Along with Mercenaries, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, and Painkiller: Hell Wars.

 

[Notshauna]

I used to think that way... but I've come to really like it. And the gameplay isn't unintuitive. It just doesn't funnel you along an entirely linear path like most hand-holding modern shooters. Also, Half-Life redefined shooters. Before Half Life, shooters were like DOOM and Quake. After, they weren't. Ergo, without Half-Life, the history of the shooter would be entirely different.

Oh I'm not arguing that Half Life wasn't a milestone in games. But that doesn't make it good so much as notable. Pong was notable, but hardly anyone would call it the greatest game ever or really even a fun game.
Likewise Super Mario Bros. At the time I'm sure it was the shit, but compared to Mass Effect or Bioshock, can we finally say Mario isn't all that anymore?
And the same is true for Half Life. At the time I'm sure it was great. Now, its merely okay. Its fine. Average. Not one point above 75%. I get that people are nostalgic but its not aged very well for those of us who didn't play it in what, '99?
A lot has changed since then.

I don't think that anyone really thinks new player would player Half Life 2 and think it's one of the best games ever, only that it's good. And you always have factor in technical limitations when considering whether a game is excellent or not (otherwise we'd have to remove all console games from the category), in truth game design is eternal and it's something you can always tell if it is quality or not. The reason why people go back to DOOM and Half Life but never go back to say Modern Warfare 2 is because they are good games that bear repeating, nostalgia is merely the memory of liking something even when you forgot why you did, it doesn't make the original liking invalid or future liking.

 

[Nazulu]

I used to think that way... but I've come to really like it. And the gameplay isn't unintuitive. It just doesn't funnel you along an entirely linear path like most hand-holding modern shooters. Also, Half-Life redefined shooters. Before Half Life, shooters were like DOOM and Quake. After, they weren't. Ergo, without Half-Life, the history of the shooter would be entirely different.

Oh I'm not arguing that Half Life wasn't a milestone in games. But that doesn't make it good so much as notable. Pong was notable, but hardly anyone would call it the greatest game ever or really even a fun game.
Likewise Super Mario Bros. At the time I'm sure it was the shit, but compared to Mass Effect or Bioshock, can we finally say Mario isn't all that anymore?
And the same is true for Half Life. At the time I'm sure it was great. Now, its merely okay. Its fine. Average. Not one point above 75%. I get that people are nostalgic but its not aged very well for those of us who didn't play it in what, '99?
A lot has changed since then.

I hope you don't mind me butting in, but No, Half Life is still amazing. I first played HL2 in early 2012 and the original Half Life in latish 2014, so take this from someone who's not keen on FPS games (which is why I didn't play them when they were released) and doesn't have nostalgia for it.

Half Life has very different strengths, progressive strengths. It's very out-dated with it's ice-skating movement, ladder snapping, not so perfect weapon aiming, jarring load points, fuzzy textures, odd moving mechanic, and many many bugs, etc. BUT, it really shines in how it progresses and unfolds, as well as how creative it is to switch up the action with each different room/area. It has probably has the best execution seen in gaming so far.

It's the ideas I became fascinated by, and the sounds and music are great for all of it. For example, it was very exciting for the lab to be suddenly... blasted, and be sent to weird alien zones before returning to survive all the random destruction and to gather as much of whatever you can.

Mass Effect and Bioshock are very plain and have very basic action set pieces compared to this with the usual introductions of characters and weapons. Nothing extreme about their intros at all. Plus I don't believe their game play is great either, Bioshock being especially clunky.

However, Half Life just keeps going with new obstacles, sometimes coming room after room. It's not a game that you can call repetitive, and it's usually really intense. It tests you in almost every way, and it really encourages you to think before just barging in. I find it very funny a lot of new people have a difficult time adjusting to that.

Meanwhile, Mass Effect and Bioshock are games I can call repetitive. Not boring, but once again they don't switch it up as fast as Half Life. And neither of those 2 get you running in fear like Half Life's tentacle beast, the Gargantuas, and Xen in it's entirety.

Those 2 examples you listed are definitely more dialogue and story focused, and that's their strengths, so I'm not sure if you believe they are superior just because of that. They are definitely not better for that.

I don't know how you are comparing them but they all do things differently, and Half Life's success should not be hard to figure out.

 

[09philj]

I only got around to playing the Half Life games a few years ago and man are they over-rated. Maybe it was a timing thing? Like, compared to Doom and Pokemon Blue/Red it must have seemed unique, maybe even fun.
But today? Half Life & 2 just look like any other terrible Steam Greenlight games.

Imagine if Half Life had never come out, and that an indie dev of today put it up on Early Access on Steam.
I can't imagine it wouldn't get an absolute shellacking for its un-intuitive gameplay, boring set-pieces and terribly written unskippable cut-scenes.

I used to think that way... but I've come to really like it. And the gameplay isn't unintuitive. It just doesn't funnel you along an entirely linear path like most hand-holding modern shooters. Also, Half-Life redefined shooters. Before Half Life, shooters were like DOOM and Quake. After, they weren't. Ergo, without Half-Life, the history of the shooter would be entirely different.

AH, but in between the eras of Quake and Half-Life, there was GoldenEye on N64. Probably the first FPS with real OBJECTIVES to complete in missions. Although it was missing some things, like anyway to replenish health during a level, being able to carry weapons and ammo over to the next level IN THE SAME MISSION, and a GODDAMN JUMP BUTTON! Thank God Medal of Honor remembered those parts.

Ah yes, I forgot about GoldenEye. GoldenEye was sort of the midway point between stuff like Quake and Half-Life. It was still very arcadey and unrealistic, but it was tending more towards realism than it's forbears. Quake's levels were obviously designed to be levels, Half Life's were more like real places that just happened to be where the action was occurring, and GoldenEye was in between.

 

[Silvanus]

I love HL2 to bits. It's one of those few things I feel truly deserves its mega-hype (alongside Rocky Horror).

The gameplay is solid, the story and atmosphere are interesting. Love the Combine as enemies. Love the tone, which manages pretty damn dark stuff at some points (headcrabs, stalkers) and eccentric dark humour at others (Kleiner's awkward broadcast about the reproduction suppression field going down). Love it to bits.

Ladders are a bit crap, though.

 

[JamesStone]

Meh, if you ask me, Half Life 2 isn't that good. Lots of stuff was left on the cutting room floor and what we got was made from scratch within a year.

Gordon being praised as a the almighty savior always kept bugging me, while in the first game (which I still love to play) he was just a scientist trying to leave the hellhole that's called Black Mesa.

"Just a scientist" who singleyhandely butchered entire detachments of Marines and Aliens, went through tanks, choppers and an entire alien world, destroyed the leader of an ancient alien conclave and killed a Gonard. Maybe the G-Man was helping him, or maybe Freeman is the personification of God when he gets bored and decides to turn Godmode off, but whatever Freeman was, he was no mere scientist. He wiped the floor with everything at Black Mesa. I like to assume the HEV suits have a camera, and that the G-Man publicly released the video of Freeman's escape while editing himself out. Even if he didn't, legends spread. A few surviving scientists and security guards meet after the event's done, they talk a bit how they were helped/rescued by Freeman, word of mouth starts spreading, and soon the legend of the One True Free Man goes around the Resistance, as legends are bound to do.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

SNIP

See I just completely disagree on just about every point. Having played Mass Effect and Bioshock both before Half Life 1 even, I can tell you there is no comparison. I could name 1 character from Half Life(up to 3 in Half Life 2!), and Mr. Freeman doesn't even have a personality. I'm using that literally, as in he doesn't count as a character because he's not really a person. Say what you want about the characters in ME or Bio, I can least point to them and say "Yeah, there's an established character here."
It may not be a well written character, I'll give you that. Andrew Ryan and Ashley Williams are kinda' comically stupid. But I'd take that over the boring non-existence of Gordon Freeman any day, where we just have to trust his coworkers that he's even there, let alone an established character with a personality.

And in terms of gameplay, maybe its because I wasn't a teen when I played Half Life, but I breezed through everything. It was like playing Doom all over again, as in no challenge what so ever. The hardest thing was the terrible jumping mechanics, but I died maybe once per jumping puzzle block thing. The puzzles were obvious, boring and completely killed the pacing and really any immersion I could have had. Like I'll go with the mute scientist, floppy aliens, stiff body mechanics and terrible voice acting. That's fine. But a top secret underground Hive laboratory having essentially incomplete jungle-jims in their air shafts or sewers? All the time, without fail?!
Or having built a floor out of neat little Lego pieces so when it falls into the room below you have 5 equal size and weight pieces that just so happen to perfectly fit into a balancing puzzle?!
I mean the puzzles are as forced as the jokes were in Duke Nukem Forever. I get that its part of the game, but it seems like gameplay padding rather than something that adds to the story or the immersion. It's just kinda silly.

And it terms of gunplay? I mean Bioshock may have seemed clunky(Not convinced, but I'm going with it.), but at least the fights were unique if not exciting. There were so many ways to kill Splicers in that game. SOOO many. At any given moment you could be shooting bees with your hand, lobbing fire grenades, using a steam-punk tommy gun or freezing Spliers with a flame-thrower that shoots nitroglycerin. And Mass Effect had more than a few tactics, especially with the different abilities of the squadmates.

Half Life only graduated with a Masters from the Doom school of gunplay, so its a little above Quake, but not by much. Its just a 90s FPS, with all the "Use the Shotgun" strategy that entails.

Look I'm sure Half Life was good back in the day. Just as I'm sure Star Trek TOS had impressive graphics for the time. Or how Joana Dark and Lara Croft used to be the peak of video game sexuality. But looking back, can please just say these things were good because we didn't have better?
And now that we do, those things of yesteryear can really go away.