Yet Another Half-Life 2 Discussion

[Campion]

I love HL1's multi. Doublecross was one of my favorite maps.

 

[you know what time it is]

Dat crossfire bunker tho. Good times.

 

[Sceptic]

as a story driven, single player campaign HL2 was quality entertainment. After that generally forgettable, though a bit less, because of great art design as was already mentioned. Saying it's ''shit'' is just Suite suiting. No middle ground, i get it. Don't get why you're playing a low brow genre like this to begin with, LS. ALL FPSs are fucking shite, dumbass.

You sound like someone who's never played a good FPS and for whom the entire genre doesn't exist outside of the Half-Life games and the on-rails linear design that they popularized.

Oh wait.

 

[Metro]

Why do people keep discussing this game. It's better than average. Nothing more to say.

 

[an Administrator]

It's better than average

 

[DeepOcean]

I don't get this hatred, HL 2 was Valve valving, they like new technologies and tried to innovate the FPS genre with physics, adding vehicles, they created a new engine to show the graphix. The fascist inspired Combine, world reminding of 1984 and the cool art design are entertaining. The biggest flaw of HL 2 is that it failed to make use of all its gameplay elements into some coherent fashion, there is the driving section, there is the puzzling section, there is the antlion section, there is the turret section, there is the gravity gun section. It would be a far better game if there were some maps designed for you to play around with all this stuff at the same time instead of being so staged.

Saying HL 2 is shit is just be plain retarded, it was a game that ended disappointing for sure and at the time most people felt disappointed by it with reason but if you say Half Life 2 is shit, what do you call Call of Duty then on the scale of shittyness? Please, don't even compare Half Life 2 with the terrible modern popamole shooters, at least HL 2 was sort of a failed experiment with some virtues, modern shooters are just cynical corporate Michael Bay style, no taste trash appealing to the lowest common denominator.

 

[Gnidrologist]

You sound like someone who's never played a good FPS and for whom the entire genre doesn't exist outside of the Half-Life games and the on-rails linear design that they popularized.

Oh wait.

No, i sound like someone, who acknowledges the limitations of a genre. It's a good exercise in hand-eye coordination and thus worth for what it is. THE POPPING OF MOLE. Only thing where i could get behind a criticism of FPS single player modes is, when they are dull in terms of design. Like being boring corridor shooters. HL2 was nothing like that. Multiplayer is a whole different beast and i could easily concede what it sucked in this game, if you say so. There aren't ever any deeyup tactics involved in single campaign games anyway. It's 90% reflexes and 10% common sense/experience in the genre. Didn't see any meaningful criticism about that targeted at HL2 haters ever. Shit like ''shit Ai'' is redundant. there no ''good'' AIs. Shit like ''omg, weaponz are not as 1337 as in da furst gaem'' is completely laughable. Was Max Payne worse than the sequel because of lesser weapon choice?

Valve did introduce some nice things that i didn't ever experience in any of the previous action games and that was a good thing. Levels were better than most shooters unless you compare it to likes of DX. Enemies were shit like in all FPSs, unless you don't know what you're doing. All in all 8/10 game for me bonus being great atmosphere and setting.

Agreeing with
DeepOcean that it felt too staged though.

but all in all yada yada, codex tryhards harding

 

[Parsifarka]

Half Life 2 was even worse than Doom 3. Luckily we got Painkiller and Far Cry that year.
HL2 is a decline landmark.

 

[Average Manatee]

Speedruns are not a very good way to gauge how fast paced both games are in comparison to one another.

Default move speed for both games is about the same, advanced movement mechanics are fairly comparable, what do you want?

"A large percentage? Like 5-10% of your time? Yes, a completely unique area never seen before in FPSs is great even if a small percentage of it is sub-par."

No, a large percentage. There are about four maps (Maybe five, I can't remember.) of Xen and Bosses take up two of them. Then you have to take into account the Testicle's high HP and the Fetuses portal projectiles. Maps focusing on shitty platforming, no matter the theme, are nothing unique to the FPS genre.

The actual fighting of the bosses took maybe 4 30-second chunks of gameplay. Even the boss levels were mostly trying to navigate the environment and search for secrets.

Saying HL 2 is shit is just be plain retarded, it was a game that ended disappointing for sure and at the time most people felt disappointed by it with reason but if you say Half Life 2 is shit, what do you call Call of Duty then on the scale of shittyness? Please, don't even compare Half Life 2 with the terrible modern popamole shooters, at least HL 2 was sort of a failed experiment with some virtues, modern shooters are just cynical corporate Michael Bay style, no taste trash appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Depends on how you define shit. An argument can be made that a 6/10 game isn't worth the time spent playing it and is therefore shit, even if there are far worse games.

 

[Durandal]

Pros:
-Great art direction
-Enemy designs are memorable and striking
-A lot of effort was put into the sound design, if you are reading this you can hear the punting sounds of the Gravity Gun
-Atmosphere is unique and superb
-Alot of variation between levels (walking sim -> running from cops -> hovercraft chase -> zombies -> a little more walking and shooting -> coast drive etc.)
-Music plays in the right situations. The ambient sounds carry the atmosphere whenever the music doesn't play
-puzzles and platforming are decent enough, the gravity gun allows for alot of cool stuff to happen in puzzles
-Facial animations are still great to this very day
-the player not being completely forcefed everything that happened in his absence, and having to pierce everything himself together is a good thing
-Gravity gun and the physics engine save the gameplay of HL2 from being COMPLETELY mediocre

Cons:
-too much 'cutscenes' where a bunch of people talk to you as you do retarded shit to kill time
-hovercraft chase goes on for too long
-another cliffhanger ending after HL1
-feels too linear, shit like the Coastal Drive where you at least had some sense of freedom stood out more because there was actually some stuff to explore
-popularized the explosive red barrel meme
-gravity gun feels like wasted potential at times. At least for combat situations. In combat it's only good for throwing props at zombies and throwing red barrels/grenades at Combines. Singularity at least tried to give its main gimmicks a larger focus in combat and expand them more, as combat is what you will be in for half the game.
-there's red explosive barrels fucking everywhere
-I don't really care about what happens to any of the characters because I can only move forwards in one direction, nor do I feel like I can bond with my allies as opposed to having been through 600 battles with my RPG party when your sidekick just comes and goes whenever
-the actual gunplay isn't really that great, the shooting just feels barebones and you are just holding down LMB to make something die. Compare this to older shooters where you are constantly on the move, have to pay attention to the enemies' location, and actually dodge bullets. there's no bullets to dodge when all ranged enemies are hitscan enemies anyways
-the cooler guns don't have enough ammo, and the SMG (your main gun, basically what the shotgun is in Doom) feels and is garbage
-gimped shotgun range
-could have used more variation in combine soldiers. HL1 had only two or three military type enemies you fought, but it balanced this out by letting you fight more alien creatures.
-a lack of interesting experimental guns like the gluon gun, tau cannon, alien weapons, or at least more weapons with their own purpose in combat
-weapon balance and variety could have been better, the gravity gun is the only real standout feature here. Just look at Unreal, Blood, Turok, or HL1 for that matter what I mean when I am taking about varied weapon arsenals
-this is Eastern Europe, why the fuck am I shooting MP7's instead of AK's?
-shit replay value
-multiplayer is a seperate module, as opposed to HL1
-alot of level-based gimmicks. You won't have as much fun with props past Ravenholm, you can't take the Tau Cannon from your car, you won't lead an antlion army past Nova Prospekt, there's no squads before and after the City 17 rebellion, we never see the vehicles again, etc.
-level designs swings alot from 'casual garbage thanks to red barrels' to 'engaging'
-particularly the city levels feel too staged
-squad mechanics are worthless aside from the medics anyways
-supply placement is a bit too lenient
-lack of variety in voice actors, alot of people sound the same despite being deported from all over the world into Eastern Europe
-AI doesn't really do much but move around and shoot you/attack you head-on
-hard mode just gives enemies more HP
-Where's the gore, Eggman?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Half Life 2 was even worse than Doom 3. Luckily we got Painkiller and Far Cry that year.

Neither of which were particularly great, either.

 

[Sceptic]

Depends on how you define shit. An argument can be made that a 6/10 game isn't worth the time spent playing it and is therefore shit, even if there are far worse games.

I don't agree, but then I see more people calling HL2 mediocre-to-average, which is exactly what it is. What puzzles me is that even those who defend the game like DeepOcean have to actually acknowledge that its only virtues are being a failed experiment, made up of pieces that don't fit together, and not as bad as the worst FPS ever made. Which is... well, somewhere south of mediocre I guess? So... what are we disagreeing about, again?

OK so LS does think it's shit, but he also is comparing it to HL1. Which even I, who doesn't think that highly of HL1 to begin with (unlike him, but that's another matter), agrees with.

Then there's Gnid, whose only reference in FPS seems to be those exact worst FPSs that you want us to compare HL2 to. Sorry, but I'm not going to compare it to the worst, I'm going to compare to the best. And it doesn't really hold that well to older or contemporary games that have been already cited, ie Doom, Far Cry... and even HL1. This is not the hallmark of a great game.

I've complained about this before about HL1, and it applies equally (even more?) to HL2: it's an FPS designed by tech demo people who wanted to do a platformer. But it's an FPS. Cue problems if you're actually trying to play an FPS.

 

[Dev_Anj]

FPS is a shit genre to begin with - you're a floating gun that points at things for them to die.

By those standards, RPGs are nothing but games where you control a bunch of numbers and raise them to kill things faster/get through the game better. Adventure games are nothing but games where you use items on the environment or other items to solve puzzles. Strategy games are nothing but top down games where you make and control a variety of small people to defeat the enemy.

See where I'm getting at? Anything can be oversimplified to look dumb if you try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's a good or accurate description.

I don't care for most FPSes either but I don't assume that they are only about twitch shooting.

 

[Daemongar]

Read the second post in this thread replying to the first one. That's me replying to the first post. How about you go fuck yourself.

Come on, don't be a baby. Who exactly are the fanboys in this thread? I see people who said they liked the game, but not many people claiming it's incredible.

 

[Average Manatee]

Depends on how you define shit. An argument can be made that a 6/10 game isn't worth the time spent playing it and is therefore shit, even if there are far worse games.

I don't agree, but then I see more people calling HL2 mediocre-to-average, which is exactly what it is. What puzzles me is that even those who defend the game like DeepOcean have to actually acknowledge that its only virtues are being a failed experiment, made up of pieces that don't fit together, and not as bad as the worst FPS ever made. Which is... well, somewhere south of mediocre I guess? So... what are we disagreeing about, again?

I agree entirely. If I let slip the word "shit", it's strictly in retaliation for the ridiculous amounts of cock sucking HL2 gets from its fanbase.

I've complained about this before about HL1, and it applies equally (even more?) to HL2: it's an FPS designed by tech demo people who wanted to do a platformer. But it's an FPS. Cue problems if you're actually trying to play an FPS.

HL2 isn't even really a platformer in any notable way. I'd say that HL2 is an FPS made by people who didn't even realize at the time that the game they really wanted to make was Portal. Thankfully they eventually made Portal.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Then there's Gnid, whose only reference in FPS seems to be those exact worst FPSs that you want us to compare HL2 to. Sorry, but I'm not going to compare it to the worst, I'm going to compare to the best. And it doesn't really hold that well to older or contemporary games that have been already cited, ie Doom, Far Cry... and even HL1. This is not the hallmark of a great game.

I didn't say HL2 is a great game. I said it's ''good''. At some points i believe it was even great, but only at some points. The same way how FarCry is only ''good'' for me, because the starting open-ended areas were great, but around mid game it turned into shit with corridor shooting monster fest, which was the reason i never finished it. Never understood what was so great about Doom anyway. It's an archetype of run-n-gun monster fest, even if i can concede that level design was nice. It's still a severely dated game (and i don't mean graphically). Never played HL1 so i take your word that it was much better.
There's a thing that comparing classical FPS to the open ended ones will always be unfair, because the later allows for more options and is generally much more fun experience that floating a gun through linear, enclosed spaces. When matched against other classical FPSs HL2 certainly fares well.

By those standards, RPGs are nothing but games where you control a bunch of numbers and raise them to kill things faster/get through the game better. Adventure games are nothing but games where you use items on the environment or other items to solve puzzles. Strategy games are nothing but top down games where you make and control a variety of small people to defeat the enemy.

See where I'm getting at? Anything can be oversimplified to look dumb if you try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's a good or accurate description.

See, even with your try-hard oversimplification of the other genres, they still sound a lot more sophisticated than shooters. Controlling a bunch of numbers to kill enemies more efficiently > clicking on things fast and precise enough for them to die.
Only types of FPS, where any sort of strategy can be applied are those, where you control a squad of several guys, who need to do different tasks like Brothers in Arms or the 3D Commandos sequel. And even then not really much deep.

With all this i don't want to say that FPS can't be enjoyed by teh sophisticated monocle crowd, just that the expectations of some people seem to be very moot, especially when they don't actually point at other games of the same genre that did a, b or c so much better. Most of them did it the same or even worst way. Subjective shit like ''gun feelz bettar in ti gaem'' are outright irrelevant. Besides, all guns in DX felt like pipe rifles even in comparison to the shooters released at the same time period. It doesn't seem to influence the cult following of the game here. Only rarely i see people criticize this aspect of DX here, because DX is infallible. This is how Codex works.

 

[Lemming42]

Beating a dead horse but it really is shocking just how mindblowingly shit the guns feel in HL2. The really baffling part is that, when it came out, I remember being impressed with most aspects of the game, gunplay included, and somehow the passage of time has just revealed all the glaring flaws.

We could argue about the level design, the crap vehicle segments, the lack of enemy variety, the lengthy non-cutscenes etc all day but the guns near-universally feeling like water pistols full of piss is the real killing blow to the game.

EDIT: Just went through the thread and the occasional hate for the original Half-Life is strange. I can understand arguing that it's shockingly overrated (it definitely is) and that it wasn't even particularly good but it has some good ideas and interestingly designed maps, which is more than HL2 can claim. It's not really fair to call it the harbinger of despair for the FPS genre either, even if it started the cinematics-over-gameplay thing. The original Call of Duty is surely far more responsible for pushing that idea, playing it recently it's pretty staggering how staged and boring the whole game is - enemies endlessly respawning until you walk past triggers, frequent turret/vehicle sections where you're fused in place and can't do anything other than shoot the targets that keep lining up, a squad of fucking stupid morons who keep getting in the way and dying, the entire game essentially being a series of "cool" hyper-scripted events strung together with crap arena shooting segments, etc. Compared to that and what came after, Half-Life is firmly in the classic age of FPS games, albeit at the very end. It never fixes you in place on a turret, never does lame-ass Saving Private Ryan shellshock shit, never takes control away from you, never forces you to sit through cutscenes with the exception of the terrible tram intro and a couple of very rare dialogue-heavy scenes, and even then they're under a minute long.

 

[Metro]

It's better than average

No, it's better than average. Average would be something like Dead Island or Doom 3. HL2 advanced the genre a bit, however, most of it is window dressing. And the tedious driving/boat sections undermine the pacing.

 

[Jick Magger]

Beating a dead horse but it really is shocking just how mindblowingly shit the guns feel in HL2. The really baffling part is that, when it came out, I remember being impressed with most aspects of the game, gunplay included, and somehow the passage of time has just revealed all the glaring flaws.

We could argue about the level design, the crap vehicle segments, the lack of enemy variety, the lengthy non-cutscenes etc all day but the guns near-universally feeling like water pistols full of piss is the real killing blow to the game.

I dunno if that's fully true. I did think the Magnum and Shotgun had a nice meaty shot behind it, and the pulse rifle had those satisfying deep thuds behind each of its shots, so those guns were satisfying as heck to use.

The biggest issue is twofold: the three guns I mentioned have a pathetically low ammo pool (the pulse rifle can only carry 90 extra shots, and the magnum can only carry eighteen), or are too situational (i.e. the shotgun's pathetic range means it's only really useful for headcrab zombies and antlions), which means for a majority of combat encounters you'll be relying on the SMG and it's much larger ammo pool of 210 rounds, which does feel like a flimsy little plastic pop-gun. The second is that this is coming off of Half Life, where all the weapons down to the measly glock you get at the start felt great to fire, along with an assortment of bizarro-tech guns that you can turn to and experiment with, whereas the most you'll get out of weirdness in HL2 is the pulse gun's alternate fire bouncy ball of death, which is honestly just as likely to kill you and any resistance member unlucky enough to be standing next to you than any combine you shoot at.

 

[buzz]

For me, that was one of the two killing blows for the game: the lack of variety in weapons and enemies. Number one was the separate, paid-for multiplayer, which was okayish but certainly not good enough to warrant extra money. And at "launch" (A few weeks after the SP campaign) it only had 2 maps as a fan of the multiplayer of the original game, I was heavily dissapointed by this piece of faggotry.

 

[Sceptic]

HL2 isn't even really a platformer in any notable way.

I'm not very far into it, and it's not as bad as the jumping in HL1, but one of the most glaringly platformy parts so far was the stupid mine dodging while on the hoverbike. It's something straight out of those hilariously shitty arcade minigames that Sierra felt obliged to include in the Space Quest games, except even more annoying.

Maybe platformer is the wrong word, "arcade-y" might fit better. But in any case it sucks, badly.

Pretty sure the people who made HL/HL2 and Portal aren't the same, wasn't Portal made by the Narbacular Drop team after Valve hired them?

Speaking of Portal, that one's a pretty good case of the sequel being much, much better. The coop portion of Portal 2 was a ton of fun, definitely the most fun I've had with a Valve game.

 

[Metro]

'Shitty vehicle sections' is the phrase you're looking for... and, yeah, it's got shitty vehicle sections.

 

[sullynathan]

Codex just can't

Half Life 2 was even worse than Doom 3. Luckily we got Painkiller and Far Cry that year.
HL2 is a decline landmark.

Can confirm that HL2 is better than doom 3 and far cry

 

[Gentle Player]

Never understood what was so great about Doom anyway. It's an archetype of run-n-gun monster fest, even if i can concede that level design was nice. It's still a severely dated game (and i don't mean graphically).

This is what I thought, having, until recently, last played Doom in the 90s. However, in the past few months I went on an FPS binge which included Doom (admittedly with ZDoom, but with no free-look and cursor - no mechanical changes at all, just a higher resolution) and my God: Doom is still sublime. The level design, which includes item and weapon placements, the bestiary, and the effectiveness of the guns are all in perfect harmony. It's so brilliantly designed that "I'll just play this for a few minutes out of nostalgia" turned into completing multiple episodes in one sitting, without my even being aware of it.

 

[JarlFrank]

I enjoyed HL2 back when it was new, mostly because my teenage self was impressed by the graphics and physics - and, to be honest, those are still pretty good and I actually really like the look of the Source engine in general - and because I was still comparatively new to FPS, so the genre itself still fascinated me.

But when I play it now - meh. It's just not that great, especially compared to contemporary or earlier games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein or the Jedi Knight series, which had such insanely better level design it's ridiculous. HL2 focuses too much on physics puzzles, vehicle sections, and fighting together with teammates like it's Call of Duty, and neglects the parts of an FPS that are actually important for an FPS to be fun: gunplay and level design. Most of the game's levels are decidedly unimpressive. They have little verticality, and are mostly linear - the open segments are usually filled with goddamn fucking vehicle sections, and vehicle sections suck in any FPS ever, because they're basically just a gimmick.

HL2 is a game of gimmicks. Gunplay and gun variety are shit, compare that with RtCW that has versatile standard WW2 weapons like pistol, SMG, long-range rifle, silenced SMG, the FG42 which serves as an assault rifle, oh wait I didn't even mention the Venom minigun and that electric gun yet and it's already a more diverse weapon set than what HL2 has to offer.

All in all, HL2 is like one of those mediocre early 00's shooters of which there were many. Solid entertainment for a few hours, but too many meh parts to make a replay worthwile. I'd rather replay RtCW for the seventh time, or Unreal, or the Jedi Knight series, because those are all better games. HL2 is the better tech demo though, that's the one thing it does right.