Incline Half Life 2 is great and I love it

[Morenatsu.]

You should get your eyes checked because Episode Two is even more of a 'gimmicky' story driving game than the original.

 

[ds]

The best part by far is Episode 2, it seemed like they were finally putting effort into level design

You mean the tiny arena where you get swarmed with antlions, the tiny arena where you get swarmed with antlions but also zombines, the slightly larger but still tiny arena where you get swarmed with hunters, the still pretty tiny arena where you get swarmed with combine or the other tiny arena where you get swarmed with combine before the victory totally-not-a-cutscene?

 

[Hag]

The vehicle sections are often criticized in the game. But seriously is there any other FPS were it is an actually a good gameplay mechanic? Always felt as an interruption of the core gameplay in the context of the genre

It was a multiplayer game but vehicles were a core part of BF1942. You could command a warship before taking a landing barge, steal a jeep and dash for the enemy airfield to hop on a plane but get wrecked by some guy in a howitzer. So fluid and over-the-top fun.

 

[DemonKing]

I give Half-Life 2 a 5/10. Purely average

There's a lot to criticise 20 years on, but it was pretty ground breaking back in the day - the physics and facial animation work were amazing.

I still prefer the original game, but I think 5/10 is a bit harsh unless you're comparing it with more modern titles.

 

[JC'sBarber]

You should get your eyes checked because Episode Two is even more of a 'gimmicky' story driving game than the original.

Not saying it didn't have any problems, a lot of the same issues from the base game and Episode One carry over into Episode Two. The difference is the level design seemed to have more effort put in, and setpieces like the antlion chase was more thrilling than anything in the prior two installments.

The best part by far is Episode 2, it seemed like they were finally putting effort into level design

You mean the tiny arena where you get swarmed with antlions, the tiny arena where you get swarmed with antlions but also zombines, the slightly larger but still tiny arena where you get swarmed with hunters, the still pretty tiny arena where you get swarmed with combine or the other tiny arena where you get swarmed with combine before the victory totally-not-a-cutscene?

Half-Life 2 in general is filled with horde sections, it's the devs lazy way of padding out the game.

 

[Morenatsu.]

What the fuck is a horde section. Last time I checked HL2 was nothing like Left 4 Dead/Serious Sam/Shitty Doom wads

 

[JC'sBarber]

You defend a specific area from an incoming 'horde' of enemies. I thought you as a gaymer would know what "horde" means.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I give Half-Life 2 a 5/10. Purely average

There's a lot to criticise 20 years on, but it was pretty ground breaking back in the day - the physics and facial animation work were amazing.

I still prefer the original game, but I think 5/10 is a bit harsh unless you're comparing it with more modern titles.

I've been fairly critical of HL2 in the past but 5/10 is a bit much even by my standards.

Of course, i can understand the negativity. Underneath the brilliant presentation there's much in the game that is actually kinda uninspired.

The original did a lot of things one might consider to be decline and yet for a lot of us it was a 9/10 and that's because the game made you forget many of its problems through the sheer charisma of its set pieces.

Half Life 2 wasn't able to pull off the same trick because it just doesn't have the same level of inspiration. In many places it has that "made by committee" feeling to it, especially in how the game keeps coddling the player.

 

[ghardy]

I'd say:

• Half-Life 2: 7/10
• Episode 1: 6/10
• Episode 2: 8/10

Episode 2 is more fun as a whole than either of the other two.

 

[Morenatsu.]

You defend a specific area from an incoming 'horde' of enemies. I thought you as a gaymer would know what "horde" means.

'Horde' brings to mind nuts.wad, not defence missions with only a few soldiers attacking at a time. And anyway what's lazy and padded is UR FAEC

 

[JC'sBarber]

I give Half-Life 2 a 5/10. Purely average

There's a lot to criticise 20 years on, but it was pretty ground breaking back in the day - the physics and facial animation work were amazing.

I still prefer the original game, but I think 5/10 is a bit harsh unless you're comparing it with more modern titles.

I've been fairly critical of HL2 in the past but 5/10 is a bit much even by my standards.

Of course, i can understand the negativity. Underneath the brilliant presentation there's much in the game that is actually kinda uninspired.

The original did a lot of things one might consider to be decline and yet for a lot of us it was a 9/10 and that's because the game made you forget many of its problems through the sheer charisma of its set pieces.

Half Life 2 wasn't able to pull off the same trick because it just doesn't have the same level of inspiration. In many places it has that "made by committee" feeling to it, especially in how the game keeps coddling the player.

I don't mean "5/10" by IGN standards, which means woeful garbage. I mean "5/10" by ordinary standards, meaning average. Because despite it's technical prowess, Half-Life 2 is very much an average game. It's gameplay is unremarkable, and it's Saturday Morning Cartoon melodrama doesn't do much to keep your attention. Despite how basic Half-Life's plot was, it kept you engaged because it was more of a survival story for a good 75% of the game. It was you up against insurmountable odds, with both aliens and humans gunning for your ass. Half-Life 2 feels so much more generic by comparison, and it didn't have to be. If we're talking about an inter-dimensional empire, you expect to be facing dozens of enemy types, and multiple different vehicles and machines. Instead you get generic masked soldiers, headcrabs/zombies, striders, antlions, and buzzsaw drones. That's pretty much it. Those are the only enemies you'll be facing for a good 15 hours of gameplay spread across 3 games. It's laughable.

It feels like a game Valve felt they had to make, because Half-Life was so popular and because they needed to push new tech alongside their Steam service. It all feels so redundant to me.

 

[Morenatsu.]

If you hate the game so much, why don't you know anything about it?

 

[None]

I've been playing Raising the Bar: Redux lately. Very much a case of modder's megalomania, but if you can get past the eye roll inducing G-man monologue and equally tiresome intro you'll find it isn't a half bad game. It's often way too busy when it comes to the environments, but I think it's probably some of the best work I've seen in the Source engine. Gunplay feels much better, and they even momentarily give you a few weapons from the base game that were otherwise unobtainable, like Alyx's or Grigori's guns. Would recommend it to anyone who liked some of the beta visuals and doesn't mind some moddyness.

 

[orcinator]

Finally decided to replay HL2 and during one of the city uprising sections I walked ahead and got killed by the headcrab artillery.
And then I thought, "If this was CoD the artillery would simply do no damage" which basically sums up the post HL2 AAA shooter scene, instead of trying to make the gimmicks and cinematic moments more interesting they just made it so they won't frustrate the player.

Remember Bioshock?

At least the current crop of boomie shooties are prevented from going down this route by low budgets (for the most part, recall the shit Ion Maiden sequel), though obviously there's plenty of other problems to solve in that community, like hormone addiction.

 

[JC'sBarber]

I'll give Half-Life 2 the benefit that it still outcompetes nearly every AAA FPS released in the 2010s, for the reasons pointed out in the image. It may be a heavily scripted experience, but at least those sequences follow the same rules as everything else in the game.

 

[orcinator]

I'll give Half-Life 2 the benefit that it still outcompetes nearly every AAA FPS released in the 2010s, for the reasons pointed out in the image. It may be a heavily scripted experience, but at least those sequences follow the same rules as everything else in the game.

What AAA FPS is even tolerable in SP besides the NuDooms and Titanfall 2?

 

[Inec0rn]

Post the list of superior SP FPS for judgement.

 

[Ash]

I'll give Half-Life 2 the benefit that it still outcompetes nearly every AAA FPS released in the 2010s, for the reasons pointed out in the image. It may be a heavily scripted experience, but at least those sequences follow the same rules as everything else in the game.

What AAA FPS is even tolerable in SP besides the NuDooms and Titanfall 2?

Wolfenstien 2009, Far Cry 4 (especially modded). Nothing else.

Post the list of superior SP FPS for judgement.

I already did in the other "Half-Life 2 sucks" thread: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/honest-opinion-on-half-life-2.148156/post-8648151

 

[JC'sBarber]

I'd say F.E.A.R decimates any 2000s-era FPS in sheer technical prowess. The enemy A.I, lighting and tasteful physics really accomplishes what they were trying to do, which is to embody the frenetic action of an early John Woo film in video game form. It makes the gunplay of Half-Life 2 look like a NERF session between school children.

 

[Lokhir]

I'd say F.E.A.R decimates any 2000s-era FPS in sheer technical prowess. The enemy A.I, lighting and tasteful physics really accomplishes what they were trying to do, which is to embody the frenetic action of an early John Woo film in video game form. It makes the gunplay of Half-Life 2 look like a NERF session between school children.

Lol even half-life 2 is better than this fucking garbage. I just wasted 8 hours of my life playing it and in retrospective this is a shit and fucked up game on every single point. Oh wow, the AI can attack you at multiple directions, incredible; forgetting that the game-design was visibly made by people with mental retardation where you have to circle around for 3 hours and with little help because as it stands taking the name of a game as common as a single word used everyday, the SEO leads to almost no internet results on the game unless you really feel like going through 10 pages just to find a solution. The game by default is completely unoptimized and fucked with directx so you lose all FPS, going from 60 fps to 5-10 FPS after 10 minutes forcing you to restart every single time UNLESS you have a little bit of wit and find that you need to patch it yourself because the game was made even worse then bugthesda games which is already hard to do.

And then even when you patched up that fucking garbage of a videogame, you're here killing enemies with little lore other than 'they are psychically controlled and yeah you need to find and kill the bad guy who for some fucking reason spares you 4 times even though you should have died early on'; walking at the speed of a slug so most of the hours put into the game are hours walking and circling around to find the fucking way to progress because as it stands there is neither a map, neither guides, neither directions for you to be able to go next, and of course all of the places you need to pass through to progress are all hidden as hell, so you have nothing other than the 'saving checkpoint' if you are lucky and find it in less than 25 minutes per mission. The horror of the game is not scary at all and predictable, tries to be vague to look cool but at the same time gives little to no development over it, yeah so it was a gov project blah blah blah and the villain is secretly controlled and shit and whatever the fuck. I really cannot believe I wasted 8 hours of a single day just to play that garbage. The misc info lore with the laptops is useless, gives 1/100 of an actual piece of information, I can't believe they wasted so much time and effort just for phone voicemails that bring nothing interesting other than office mail exchanges.

And of course the classical 'the villain somehow just avoids you everytime for 15 hours and you fall to the bottom of the building then you need to go up oh shit dude you just fell again welp guess you have to do it all over again' because they just had to recycle every fucking level possible as if it wasn't boring enough. 'oh but look you have the ATC against you now!!!1§1§" for no reason at all and the guy talking in the mic to give useless info as usual doesn't even give a shit about it. Then you have the big faggot Norton (that you cannot not even shoot at the first encounter) which for SOME reason decides to fuck over the F.E.A.R (well more like just you because the unit doesn't exist, you're the janitor of the special forces and do missions for 8 hours straight while everyone else just plays cards or drinks coffee or something) trying to annoy you for 3 hours straight instead of leaving the building keeps risking to get shot at, idk it seems common sense that you don't try to impede the progress of a one man army dude who survived for 5 consecutive hours against 300 enemies, maybe it's just me, or maybe it's just that the writers are fucking retarded.

And what, F.E.A.R having a good AI? LOL. They can spot you through walls, sometimes do not even turn to the direction of you shooting, and if they're in 2 adjacent rooms they are somehow deaf and don't even give a shit unless the sound is near the 1 adjacent room. They don't search shit so you can just enter a room in crouch and then they have Alzheimer and no common sense. Making a mini-boss bullet sponge unit at some point was also retarded, the robot you need to unload 10 fucking clips to even kill a single one. Then the slow motion that just serves for spotting enemies more quickly but past that it's useless shooting with it with how slow the firing is. I didn't finish the first F.E.A.R because frankly it doesn't even deserve it.

Necessary note, I don't judge you for liking it, i'm just saying it's really not as good as advertised.

 

[Anomander Rake]

I'll give Half-Life 2 the benefit that it still outcompetes nearly every AAA FPS released in the 2010s, for the reasons pointed out in the image. It may be a heavily scripted experience, but at least those sequences follow the same rules as everything else in the game.

What AAA FPS is even tolerable in SP besides the NuDooms and Titanfall 2?

Wolfenstien 2009, Far Cry 4 (especially modded). Nothing else.

Post the list of superior SP FPS for judgement.

I already did in the other "Half-Life 2 sucks" thread: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/honest-opinion-on-half-life-2.148156/post-8648151

which mod for far cry 4?

 

[Morenatsu.]

I'd say F.E.A.R decimates any 2000s-era FPS in sheer technical prowess. The enemy A.I, lighting and tasteful physics really accomplishes what they were trying to do, which is to embody the frenetic action of an early John Woo film in video game form. It makes the gunplay of Half-Life 2 look like a NERF session between school children.

Lol even half-life 2 is better than this fucking garbage. I just wasted 8 hours of my life playing it and in retrospective this is a shit and fucked up game on every single point. Oh wow, the AI can attack you at multiple directions, incredible; forgetting that the game-design was visibly made by people with mental retardation where you have to circle around for 3 hours and with little help because as it stands taking the name of a game as common as a single word used everyday, the SEO leads to almost no internet results on the game unless you really feel like going through 10 pages just to find a solution. The game by default is completely unoptimized and fucked with directx so you lose all FPS, going from 60 fps to 5-10 FPS after 10 minutes forcing you to restart every single time UNLESS you have a little bit of wit and find that you need to patch it yourself because the game was made even worse then bugthesda games which is already hard to do.

And then even when you patched up that fucking garbage of a videogame, you're here killing enemies with little lore other than 'they are psychically controlled and yeah you need to find and kill the bad guy who for some fucking reason spares you 4 times even though you should have died early on'; walking at the speed of a slug so most of the hours put into the game are hours walking and circling around to find the fucking way to progress because as it stands there is neither a map, neither guides, neither directions for you to be able to go next, and of course all of the places you need to pass through to progress are all hidden as hell, so you have nothing other than the 'saving checkpoint' if you are lucky and find it in less than 25 minutes per mission. The horror of the game is not scary at all and predictable, tries to be vague to look cool but at the same time gives little to no development over it, yeah so it was a gov project blah blah blah and the villain is secretly controlled and shit and whatever the fuck. I really cannot believe I wasted 8 hours of a single day just to play that garbage. The misc info lore with the laptops is useless, gives 1/100 of an actual piece of information, I can't believe they wasted so much time and effort just for phone voicemails that bring nothing interesting other than office mail exchanges. This is easily one of the worst FPS with a story that i've ever played and I would prefer doing HL1 even twice rather than this shit.

And of course the classical 'the villain somehow just avoids you everytime for 15 hours and you fall to the bottom of the building then you need to go up oh shit dude you just fell again welp guess you have to do it all over again' because they just had to recycle every fucking level possible as if it wasn't boring enough. 'oh but look you have the ATC against you now!!!1§1§" for no reason at all and the guy talking in the mic to give useless info as usual doesn't even give a shit about it. Then you have the big faggot Norton (that you cannot not even shoot at the first encounter) which for SOME reason decides to fuck over the F.E.A.R (well more like just you because the unit doesn't exist, you're the janitor of the special forces and do missions for 8 hours straight while everyone else just plays cards or drinks coffee or something) trying to annoy you for 3 hours straight instead of leaving the building keeps risking to get shot at, idk it seems common sense that you don't try to impede the progress of a one man army dude who survived for 5 consecutive hours against 300 enemies, maybe it's just me, or maybe it's just that the writers are fucking retarded.

And what, F.E.A.R having a good AI? LOL. They can spot you through walls, sometimes do not even turn to the direction of you shooting, and if they're in 2 adjacent rooms they are somehow deaf and don't even give a shit unless the sound is near the 1 adjacent room. They don't search shit so you can just enter a room in crouch and then they have Alzheimer and no common sense. Making a mini-boss bullet sponge unit at some point was also retarded, the robot you need to unload 10 fucking clips to even kill a single one. Then the slow motion that just serves for spotting enemies more quickly but past that it's useless shooting with it with how slow the firing is. I didn't finish the first F.E.A.R because frankly it doesn't even deserve it.

Necessary note, I don't judge you for liking it, i'm just saying it's really not as good as advertised.

You should try blood 2 instad its much bettar : )

 

[Ash]

I'll give Half-Life 2 the benefit that it still outcompetes nearly every AAA FPS released in the 2010s, for the reasons pointed out in the image. It may be a heavily scripted experience, but at least those sequences follow the same rules as everything else in the game.

What AAA FPS is even tolerable in SP besides the NuDooms and Titanfall 2?

Wolfenstien 2009, Far Cry 4 (especially modded). Nothing else.

Post the list of superior SP FPS for judgement.

I already did in the other "Half-Life 2 sucks" thread: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/honest-opinion-on-half-life-2.148156/post-8648151

which mod for far cry 4?

Hardcore mode something or other. Don't recall the name.

 

[Inec0rn]

fear, blood 2 not 1, farcry 4 and nu-wolfenstein.

/thread.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Lol even half-life 2 is better than this fucking garbage. I just wasted 8 hours of my life playing it and in retrospective this is a shit and fucked up game on every single point. Oh wow, the AI can attack you at multiple directions, incredible; forgetting that the game-design was visibly made by people with mental retardation where you have to circle around for 3 hours and with little help because as it stands taking the name of a game as common as a single word used everyday, the SEO leads to almost no internet results on the game unless you really feel like going through 10 pages just to find a solution. The game by default is completely unoptimized and fucked with directx so you lose all FPS, going from 60 fps to 5-10 FPS after 10 minutes forcing you to restart every single time UNLESS you have a little bit of wit and find that you need to patch it yourself because the game was made even worse then bugthesda games which is already hard to do.

And then even when you patched up that fucking garbage of a videogame, you're here killing enemies with little lore other than 'they are psychically controlled and yeah you need to find and kill the bad guy who for some fucking reason spares you 4 times even though you should have died early on'; walking at the speed of a slug so most of the hours put into the game are hours walking and circling around to find the fucking way to progress because as it stands there is neither a map, neither guides, neither directions for you to be able to go next, and of course all of the places you need to pass through to progress are all hidden as hell, so you have nothing other than the 'saving checkpoint' if you are lucky and find it in less than 25 minutes per mission. The horror of the game is not scary at all and predictable, tries to be vague to look cool but at the same time gives little to no development over it, yeah so it was a gov project blah blah blah and the villain is secretly controlled and shit and whatever the fuck. I really cannot believe I wasted 8 hours of a single day just to play that garbage. The misc info lore with the laptops is useless, gives 1/100 of an actual piece of information, I can't believe they wasted so much time and effort just for phone voicemails that bring nothing interesting other than office mail exchanges.

And of course the classical 'the villain somehow just avoids you everytime for 15 hours and you fall to the bottom of the building then you need to go up oh shit dude you just fell again welp guess you have to do it all over again' because they just had to recycle every fucking level possible as if it wasn't boring enough. 'oh but look you have the ATC against you now!!!1§1§" for no reason at all and the guy talking in the mic to give useless info as usual doesn't even give a shit about it. Then you have the big faggot Norton (that you cannot not even shoot at the first encounter) which for SOME reason decides to fuck over the F.E.A.R (well more like just you because the unit doesn't exist, you're the janitor of the special forces and do missions for 8 hours straight while everyone else just plays cards or drinks coffee or something) trying to annoy you for 3 hours straight instead of leaving the building keeps risking to get shot at, idk it seems common sense that you don't try to impede the progress of a one man army dude who survived for 5 consecutive hours against 300 enemies, maybe it's just me, or maybe it's just that the writers are fucking retarded.

And what, F.E.A.R having a good AI? LOL. They can spot you through walls, sometimes do not even turn to the direction of you shooting, and if they're in 2 adjacent rooms they are somehow deaf and don't even give a shit unless the sound is near the 1 adjacent room. They don't search shit so you can just enter a room in crouch and then they have Alzheimer and no common sense. Making a mini-boss bullet sponge unit at some point was also retarded, the robot you need to unload 10 fucking clips to even kill a single one. Then the slow motion that just serves for spotting enemies more quickly but past that it's useless shooting with it with how slow the firing is. I didn't finish the first F.E.A.R because frankly it doesn't even deserve it.

Three out of four paragraphs are storyfaggotry related. For a 2000-s FPS

Hey guyzzz, did I told you that Doom sucks? I mean, making a base on Mars satellite, it's sooo stupid. And this hell portal thing, who would even come with such idea ohhh