egwidalin said:
uhm, ok? this is my first time ever posting, thanks for giving the warm welcome? And so what if it is a repeat topic? I really dont think i ruined anyones day by doing so, god forbid u read the same thing twice, it was an honest question.
orannis62 said:
Thing is, I played HL2 for the first time with the Orange Box, and the original even after that, and I still love them. So it really comes down to personal preference I guess.
In that case, I apologize, I don't want to spoil the excellent image of Escapists' user-friendly community (no, I am actually not sarcastic, I mean it).
However, this topic has been done to literal
death over a million times,
everywhere. It's just not an original question, and you should've known that just by making a thread about this you'll just get uninteresting and biased answer and noone will actually answer you in a way that will actually help you. It's just logic.
"Hey guys, why isn't game 'xy' fun? Can someone explain it to me?" It's just doomed from the beginning. If you don't find HL2 fun, it's you. It's your preference, it's how you saw the game, many factors affected it, and I'm pretty sure that by this point, nothing will change your point of view or the fact that it's not fun for you.
If you're really that interested and want to find legit answers, go and watch some reviews, and you'll see what you missed out on.
My personal view is that Half Life is now just that stock, kinda generic game for many, since people nowadays search for something so impossibly immersive and fun that it actually doesn't exist and they typically don't like games in general. But if you ignore the fact that it's not 2004 anymore, the game was fantastic back then, since it set the bar for what games should start with. It was Earth, before it had any lifeform. It was based on the immensely popular Source engine, which is very easy to work with, the graphics were pretty realistic and could run on your dad's toaster if you wanted to play it there. The gameplay was fun, it changed pace a lot of times, the enemies were solid and you actually felt like there was a large force called Combine and you're actually doing something to stop them. We can't ignore the fact that it was also largely devoted to fans of the first installment. The weapons were generic, I agree, but they worked. You had a gun. That was all you actually needed. Since along with the gravity gun(which worked splendidly in that game, I can't really imagine it working in some other game that well) was tons of fun too. And sure, we could use some more diversity in enemies, but it worked well enough. It still is extremely moddable and tons of fun mods are being released each year. It's like Quake for its time. A solid, recognizable franchise.
On the other hand, you find many of the same arguments like the story sucks, that it's just 3d seesaw puzzle simulator or "WTF STUPID GAME YOU CANT EVEN SEE YOUR OWN HANDS HOW REALISTIC IS THAT??? BARRELS JUST FLOAT THERE" and other similar comments, but I didn't really find anything of that to bother me, it wouldn't actually work as well if those comments were taken into consideration. People read it somewhere and forward it. Kinda like all those comments about all the games that Yahtzee reviewed. Whenever a thread about a game like that pops up, 3/4 of the comments are just quoting Zero Punctuation.
You might not have enjoyed the game(s), since you were expecting something else, hearing all that much hype about it you probably made up your own vision of the game and the real game was very different from what you expected. You can't really play a game by critizicing it. You have to
play it. Immerse yourself in it. I've done that in countless games and it worked every time. Unless of course, the game is broken, then you can't really enjoy it. But if you throw yourself into the game, ignore what you heard, play it your own way, discover your own fun bits of the game, you'll actually realize you've half-reviewed it already. And you had a blast too. Especially if it's well done and unbroken.
But if you run into the game and frustrating yourself about Water Hazard taking forever.. you're not actually playing the game. You're looking for excuses to stop playing. You're not motivated by the goal the game originally set (fight the combines, save City 17) and that kinda ruins half of the game. And never forget, it's an old-ish game, which in todays standards means a lot, so try and take that into consideration when playing old games. The world would just be so much better if everyone didn't give a shit that Monkey Island? is pixelated and actually enjoyed the fact that the series is awesome.
The Half-Life series succeeded because it consists of good games to begin with, and on top of that, it also has a cult following. That's kinda like if Psychonauts was commercially successful or if God of War had a cult following(it does not, it just has many fans).
Fuck man, now you've done it and made me write a wall of China of a post and I don't even really care about Half Life 2. I just can't stand people not knowing how to criticize correctly. I'd do the same if it was a thread how Halo was boring, unfun, repetitive and unoriginal (many a debate on the internet), and I'd still write a long post how I enjoyed the epic battles and space theme, etc, etc. Because the game was good and it was good for a reason. I don't make shit up.
