Half Life 2 - What was the big deal?
polycounter lvl 17
I just recently beat this game, after buying the Orange Box for my 360, and I'm trying to figure out what so many people saw in it. For me, it seems like the game was just a lot of long boring sections between a few fun moments.
I think my favourite part had to be the end, coming back to the city, and then having to deal with all the soldiers that were crowding the streets, before having to go outside into that courtyard, and taking out all those giant orange spider robots.
I just started Episode 1, and I barely have the will to play through it.
I think my favourite part had to be the end, coming back to the city, and then having to deal with all the soldiers that were crowding the streets, before having to go outside into that courtyard, and taking out all those giant orange spider robots.
I just started Episode 1, and I barely have the will to play through it.
Replies
Must admit that Episode 1 and 2 are much better though. Episode 2 is probably the best one of them and I´m really looking forward to episode 3. I think it will be greeeeeeeat!
-N
But I just didn't like playing through most of the levels. The basic gameplay felt like such a chore.
Example, all the games I loved as a kid are insanely frustrating to me now. There is a faint whiff of nostalgia, but the actual gameplay is shitty beyond words. No save games? Thanks, but I'll pass.
HL2 isn't terribly old, but it depended a lot on innovation that has since become commonplace. What was fresh for us back then is stale for you now.
I saw a strider kick a car over a house. That's how great it was.
Ep1 is very good, once you get past the initial citadel bit - which I didn't enjoy at all.
Ep2 is fantastic and is still quite nice looking. The story progresses really nicely and you get a great sense of pace. I'd even go as far as saying it's one of the best game experiences on offer, today. IMO.
It was incredibly immersive for starters. No elaborate cutscenes, minimalistic HUD, and a narrative that just sucks you in.
I actually didn't feel like I was playing a game, I honestly felt like I was escaping City 17.
The Gravity Gun was probably one of the most innovative uses of physics I'd seen. And seriously.. those Antlion pods when you're in the jail? That' was frickin NUTS man!
At the time, the visuals raised the bar significantly. They still do a LOT of things visually in that game that are pretty unparallelled by todays standards.
List could go on forever, but I'm really confused as to why you didn't like it as much as everyone else did. I personally think it aged VERY well.
-N
Super Mario 3
River City Ransom
AKI's early 2000s WCW and WWE titles, before THQ/Yukes murdered the genre.
Pac Man
Quake 1 On my n64 will never get old.
etc... (Don't want to list all day...)
But some games really don't get far when you remove the rose tinted glasses!
Half life 2 was actually the first FPS game I played in years and years. It just seemed like the action took a back seat to showing off the basic physics features. The enemies were sometimes too few, and too annoying to fight.
Reminds me of Quake 2. The single player was mind-numbingly boring.
For me it was a continuation to a revolutionary game. You also have to drop yourself back a few years, considering that the graphics still more or less hold up is a bit of a testament to how great it was back when it released.
Considering I haven't played it in a few years, here's a short list:
- I love to explore and not be railed or pushed along a path.
- I liked picking up saw blades and slicing things in half.
- I liked seeing old characters brought back and updated.
- I liked ducking and hiding, running from room to room as you're being chased, watching Childern of Men reminded me heavily of HL2. As opposed to just being a walking hulking tank that just needs to duck to reload before opening up the hose of death again.
- I liked that I spent 3hrs stacking props and driving around.
- I liked that I could control hordes of bugs that once tormented and plagued me.
- I
- I liked that a scientist kept a declawed headcrab as a pet.
- I liked being given the most powerful gun in the game and left just to run rampant. I wasn't given it with a limited supply of ammo I had to manage and it wasn't useless agaist the final boss.
- Control wasn't ripped from my hands every 30 seconds someone had to send me on a micro mission.
- Exploreing was rewarded in a few different ways, health and ammo and in funny eye candy.
- I liked a lot of the physics. For the time physics where mostly just ragdolls on dead bodies.
- I liked how the load screen was a blurry version of the game env and when it loaded the env would come to life. Often things would happen if you watched it.
- I liked being a scrabling rebel fighting a losing battle agaist huge, enemies.
- The pacing was great through out.
I guess that's the difference between trying to fall in love with this:
Long after its aged and become this:
What once was one of the hottest women of her time, is now known for her crazy friends, bad plastic surgery and cellulite that won't stop waving long after she does. Age its a bitch and it always wins. When it catches up to us all, hopefully it won't rob us of the memory of what once was.
Lets not start running down great games of the past because we're holding them up to different standards. The time to review and revise the scores originally given to a great game, has gone. But if we did, I think it might fair pretty well, even without retrospect to give it a boost.
A lot of the game's redeeming qualities were based on the quality of execution - the amount of well done scripted events, the art quality, the set pieces, etc. Since then we've had 4 and a half years or so to improve upon that. The actual shooting gameplay imho isn't that amazing - about half the guns are so-so. But the gravity gun was amazing, and the setting and set pieces and the constant action changeup was really good.
It loses some of its luster going back, but especially for the time it was exceptionally well done. The episodes have improved upon the gameplay, too, although I think Ep2 was much better done than Ep1.
Very true - My personal all time fav = Xcom1 1993. I still play the hell out of that game all the time.. The graphics and sound are outdated by phone-game standards, but I never get tired of blasting aliens.
-N
With HL2 I found myself constantly being treated to something new... be it a setpiece or a completely new area and it did its job of keeping me interested. I think some of HL2's sections are probably a bit too long and drawn out - which is probably why i love the episodes so much, theyre shorter but so much more intense and fun.
I'm not quite sure what it is about Bioshock I find so irritating... I'm about 5hours in on hard and I just dont find myself wanting to load the game. I have to admit that the characters are great and learning more about then via the recordings is nice but theres so many niggles that sap the fun out of the game, perhaps I should switch it to normal so I die less to big daddys... not that dying means anything.
I disagree.
There is nothing like those games.
Mario 3 for me was the peak of the series, and they don't make them like that anymore. SMB3 was addictive, and had great design. It's been downhill (for me) ever since.
There hasn't been any brawlers with the playability and personalty of RCR. There are so many little sandbox like things you could do in there, and fake physics that no brawler after ever bothered to implement. Add that the genre is dead now!
I got into Quake very late. It was very outdated by the time I played it. I loved the gameplay mechanics, and the atmosphere.
THQ's Smackdown games are so bad it's deperessing. They are broken in every way imaginable, and other than the laser scanned models, they are behind Spike's 1989 FirePro series. Midway didn't help. I was looking at EA's fight night page, and reading the dev's blog, and I was wishing they could be making smackdown instead. :poly124: They seem to really love what they are doing, and own up to the sore spots of previous games, while showing what they have done to improve them.
***
Back on topic. I'm not here to knock HL2. I just found the core gameplay mechanics and level design to not be very fun, even though it had lots of cool moments.
Just my 2c
Indeed, getting off the train and seeing it all for yourself as opposed to having a cut scene to sit through is just so much... better?
I'm a fanboi though, I dont think there are any games so far that beat the way theyve delivered a story as a GAME yet.
But there's been so many "me too" games since then that it would probably feel played out now.
The Liz Taylor example was SPOT ON.
Granted the HL series are awesome, but for me, HL1 was the best. It told an awesome story for its time and was a huge game for me. HL2 is still an awesome game but I'll be honest, I'm fed up of waiting for Episode 3 now...
As fun as it was, you couldn't get away from it if you tried. Especially Halo3, Halo Mt Due, Halo cereal, Halo thumb drives, I was shocked when they issued orders for mandatory "What Would MC Do" tattoos, good thing that was quickly overruled by the supreme court.
I don't think HL2 is especially special in retrospect, but that's mostly because I rather dislike the heavy railroading.
Amen - I dont have a console, so I play the PC versions of everything... At the time it came out I really thought VISUALLY HL2 was far superior to Halo.
And that's mixed in with playing things like L4D and GOW2.
I like potatoes you like poetotoes.
also HL2 was above all else imersive, and when your face is a foot away from the screen is really forces you to get into it.
The whole thing felt like a movie and if you was hl1 fan then it was even more awesome.
I just keep my fingers crossed that after EP3 and anything that is there to come out of valve, we'll get a solid surprise game in next few years - just like we did with HL2
half life seemed like a step back, with its more linear levels, enemies that could take multiple bullets without reacting, and such.
still played through it 3 times though. as for half life 2.. meh.
gravity gun was nice i guess.
i also think that avp1 was the best shooter ever
non-stop killing gallery shootfests is my bet.
Think about it,
Good story
Good gameplay
Good graphics
Good sounds
How many games can you honestly say do well on every front? Most games you say oh well the graphics are amazing, but the gameplay is a little boring, etc. Its just so consistantly solid, that it provides on wonderfully immersive universe, you're not constantly taken out of it by how poor the voice acting is, how lame the story is, or how retarded the gameplay mechanics are. Sure, you can over analize it and find faults in most everything if you try, but overall its just a very solid game.
now thats a big joke. doom 3 more enjoyable? that must've been one of the worst troll-in-a-box shooters ever. the way the monsters came at you was just retardedly predictable.
jumping zombies of HL2> every monster in doom3.
Hahaha ouch :S. Do I come off as that bad? I didn't know not liking the HL series was such a bad offense. I like pretty much anything. I enjoy JRPGs, WRPGs, Shooters, Puzzle, Action, Platformer, Adventure and everything in between. Just nothing about HL2 grabbed me and made me care about anyone. Maybe if i played the original I might care about the characters but I don't know.
^This.
EQ, lets touch boners.
They switched gameplay up a fair bit (although IMHO not as much as HL1 did, that was REALLY varied and original especially for the time), and there were always interesting places to go. I didn't find it got boring much.
That said, I put down Ep1 about halfway through and haven't bothered with Ep2 at all yet. I may go through them eventually at some point but right now I think I'd prefer re-playing the original Half-Life.
I guess if you are the sort of gamer who needs 300 kills per hour, HL2 would seem dull. But for me, its about enjoying the journey. Try playing it on PC, maybe it blows on xbox; probably doesn't look as good, at the very least.
I felt the same way about all of that. Push through Ep1, Ep2 is pretty good.
HL2 was good, but I played it late (and on a console too since I didn't have a decent PC at the time, blech) and I found it didn't grab me as much as original halflife did back in the day. Still, it stands out as one of the best games of the period.
I joined the HL2 party a couple of years too late. And yeah, it's a great game. It is immersive, it still looks good, some of the level design and stuff is brilliant.
But I just didn't quite enjoy it. I can't put my finger on it. I know it's a good game, I could feel the quality under my fingertips, but I didn't have as fun as I thought I should. And it's not because it's aged. I played the first Half-Life the last time about a year before I played HL2, I think, and I enjoyed that a whole lot more.
I just... I don't even know. HL2 is a great game, but I don't feel like I wanna play it again. I've never even considered any of the episodes. I'm pretty much just waiting for them all to come out so I can read up on the story. That's what interests me the most, but the gameplay does so little for me I'd rather read it than play it.
Very strange. Especially since I kinda wanna go back to the first game again now... it's been a while since last time...