Does Half Life 2 Hold up?

[DSK-]

I played HL2 many years after its' release and I enjoyed it. In fact I don't have a doubt in my mind that I would still enjoy it despite playing it through 2 and a half times.

The pacing and the fact that you need to think about how to approach certain segments makes it better than shooters like Halo or COD in my opinion. If you were bored in the cutscenes there were even opportunites to mess around with equipment and stuff littered around.

 

[deathzero021]

i bought the HL pack trusting my fellow gamers who told me it was an amazing game.

...long story short, i was very disappointed. i thought the game was terribly amateur-ish. i'm not going to go into detail because i've replied to way too many HL topics but the game just feels lazy and clumsy. The combat sucks, the AI is stupidly easy and the game's world feels like a complete mess of different ideas shoved into one game. with some levels being focused in horror and than another or boating and another on blazing guns and soldiers.

i'm getting really tired of developers trying to shove every demographic into their game. it makes for a messy experience that no one can get fully into. i liked the horror levels but everything else sucked because i don't like every thing that's out there. it just didn't feel consistent at all.

and i'm just talking general stuff here, don't get me started on the gameplay. it's frustratingly annoying and the game constantly had me restarting levels because of stupid reasons or bugs that broke the level. F*** Valve and Valve's fanboys. The only game that was any good from them was Portal.

 

[Vigormortis]

god, what's up with this site and hating half-life 2?

I think you get a badge for it. I suppose the badge is just not finished yet because I don't see it in anybody's profile, I dunno, it seems the most logical thing.

That's because it's a secret badge. One that comes with an invite to the super secret "High Society of Haters Club".

It's a prestigious, if rather pretentious, club. A club wherein members sit around in a lounge in their high-back leather chairs, sipping tea or coffee laced with non-alcoholic brandy, laughing wryly at the "lowly commoners and their overrated (insert famous game title here)", all the while trying not to drop their monocles into their cups and not look too obvious as they bend over to smell their own farts.

I got my badge a few months ago by secretly starting my own "Half-Life sucks" and "Call of Duty is the bane of humanity" threads. The club members were skeptical at first, but I eventually won them over. Especially when I lamented on how Valve is not only the least creative but also the most dangerous and greedy develo...sorry, publisher...in the industry today. Oh, and that RPGs are the only "true" video game.

It was all a ruse, of course. My infiltration of the club now complete, the plan to strike can finally be set in motion.

Are the torches and spray-paint cans ready?

 

[Bad Jim]

A club wherein members sit around in a lounge in their high-back leather chairs, sipping tea or coffee laced with non-alcoholic brandy, laughing wryly at the "lowly commoners and their overrated (insert famous game title here)", all the while trying not to drop their monocles into their cups and not look too obvious as they bend over to smell their own farts.

I think I should correct you there.

"A club wherein members sit around in a lounge in their high-back leather chairs, sipping tea or coffee laced with non-alcoholic brandy, laughing wryly at the "lowly commoners and their overrated (Half Life 2)", all the while trying not to drop their monocles into their cups and not look too obvious as they bend over to smell their own farts."

It's always Half Life 2. If they threw a variety of games under the microscope these threads might actually be interesting. Just for once I'd like to see someone post a "Chrono Trigger sucks" thread. Just for a bit of variety.

 

[Vigormortis]

I think I should correct you there.

"A club wherein members sit around in a lounge in their high-back leather chairs, sipping tea or coffee laced with non-alcoholic brandy, laughing wryly at the "lowly commoners and their overrated (Half Life 2)", all the while trying not to drop their monocles into their cups and not look too obvious as they bend over to smell their own farts."

It's always Half Life 2. If they threw a variety of games under the microscope these threads might actually be interesting. Just for once I'd like to see someone post a "Chrono Trigger sucks" thread. Just for a bit of variety.

To be fair, I originally typed Half-Life 2 in the same location, but realized that, though Half-Life 2 gets an inordinate amount of "hate" threads, there are still a few other, key games/series that receive similar "hate". And, often from the same people.

So, in the interest of fairness, I couldn't discount all of the Halo, Call of Duty, Dead Space, and other "hate" threads we see; even if far more infrequently.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

I played HL2 on PC when it was released and couldn't understand the fuss. The facial animation and physics were good for that time, but the internet had only just stopped going on about how great tech does not make a great game (following the release of Doom 3) so it was weird to see the same hive mind raving about HL2 because of its tech. The actual gameplay was, for me, the worst part of HL2. It was scripted-to-death. It felt like watching a movie rather than playing a game. But apparently people love that, and scripted-to-death shooters became the norm and are still going strong nine years later. That's a ball that HL2 started rolling almost single handedly, which ought to put into perspective the comparison that you're making.

 

[xDarc]

Why can't we just all agree that Half-Life 2 is a beautiful example of a video game of the year 2004 and stop trying to degrade it just because video game quality has *gasp* progressed in the last 9 years?

I *think* I played Half Life 2... It's the one with the outdoor environments? I turned it off after about an hour. Too boring. In 1995/1996, I was building my own Doom WADs and Duke BUILD maps. HL bored me to tears. Seriously. Call me an FPS hipster, but I just wasn't interested.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I never got it on release but remember watching a friend play it on his at the time top of the range PC and I was amazed and hugely disappointed by the graphics at the same time some of it looked so awesome and other parts were just terrible ok over exaggeration there but I thought they were bad in places as in seeming flat and pasted on typical PC graphics basically that has only recently started to change.

When I personally played it a few years later I found it very inconsistent some parts were great fun especially near the end with the gravity gun but most of it was dull or passable, not a lot stayed with me from the game and to be honest I was glad when it was over.

I dont think it has aged to badly though I mean its not that old really but the gameplay already felt quite old when I played it especially the first half of the game it reminded me of really old (ok older) games like Doom oddly in the way it felt even though they are very different the end felt a lot more modern and smooth with better design overall.

If you liked it back then you will probably like it now it didnt hold up to the hype though and even if it was the best game ever I think it would have still come short of it such was the ridiculousness of it at the time.

The impression I got when playing was it took to long to develop they started old school and gradually revamped the design as you progressed or I suppose I could say it lacked cohesion like a mild case of Duke Nukem forever it felt like it had all these wouldnt it be cool moments and usually coming short.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

There are a few ways to "look" at Half-life 2, however in my opinion it stands up in all of them - feel free to disagree.

In terms of First Person Story telling, Half-life 2 remains the champion. It's story is less told through lazy cut scenes and more through the world and incidental details present therein. The lack of children and pets, the deep philosophical ramblings that bombard the citizens, even the furnishings in the houses tell a story better than some pathetic shock-value opener. The trips to Ravenholm and Nova Prospect towards the middle of the game dip the world in a dark and terrifying vibe that supplants most full fledged Horror titles because it doesn't SAY anything. It just puts the details in the world and lets them speak for themselves.

In terms of Gun Play, Half-life 2 isn't as visceral as it's modern day counter parts, however the moment-to-moment gameplay is still well ahead of basically everyone in the industry save for perhaps Halo. The A.I. drives the scenario based combat, meaning it reacts to the player and allows them to employ wildcard strategies that the A.I. adapts to. Most modern shooters all but ignore A.I. in favour of scripted battles - Half-life 2 weaves it's scripting amongst the on-the-fly scenarios. The first real battle against the Combine drop ship on the freeway, the fierce firefights through the City during the game's final chapters, and even the moment-to-moment use of the gravity gun allow for a more varied and immersive experience.

Lastly, it's setting is incredible, though lacking the awe of something akin to Bioshock's Rapture. It's eschews the realism of the modern shooters, leaving behind your glocks and M14s for more inventive and "fun" firearms. Instead of simply killing "The Non-Americans" as is the norm for the industry today, you're fighting monsters and alien soldiers, not because they "Hate Freedom for [reasons]" but because they're simply trying to wipe out humanity, turning them into zombie soldiers for their army. It's escapism, pure and simple - and for the dreamer in me, it wins out over the endlessly boring Military Shooters of today.

All my opinions, of course.

Gah, what this is telling me is that Monolith got screwed over by Valve's hype machine not once, but twice XD

Half joking here, but Shogo: Mobile Armor Division came out around the same time as Unreal and the original
Half Life, did a lot (though admittedly not all) of what Half Life is famous for, did it extremely well, and then proceeded to sell so few copies that both expansions were cancelled, let alone the sequel.

Fast forward now to 2004: Half Life 2 comes out. So does F.E.A.R.. Solid Half Life-style storytellingPersonally I'd rather have a cutscene, the whole "sit in a room while two other people talk" routine doesn't do much for me., absolutely amazing gunplay, a sci-fi/horror plot (so not a modern military shooter) and Havok physics. Read: it matches or exceeds HL2's feature set outside of two areas, those being the driving sections (did anyone like those?) and the level design, which was kind of boring, but that had more to do with the writers than the mappers. The main thing I wanted to say here, though, is that game had absolutely friggin' amazing gunplay. Best Shotgun this side of Doom 2, and the other guns were no slouches, either.

As for HL2 itself, I think it holds up as a solid shooter, even today. Just don't go in expecting a choir of angels to suddenly appear in front of you -- no game could possibly stand up to the kind of hype that thing has at this point.

Edit: Side note, I think this thread is a big sign of how and why the current console generation has overstayed its welcome. I know the consoles didn't start coming out until 2005, but the PC games of 2004 were where then-next-gen graphics started showing up for the first time. 2004 was nine years ago. Given an average console life span of five years, this would be like a fan of PS1 JRPGs circa 1999 asking how the original Final Fantasy on the NES held up compared to FFVII, VIII, and IX, and expecting to get an answer somewhere in a range from "it's good but not as good" to "it's still the best JRPG ever made."

 

[Whitbane]

Half-Life 2 is better than most games released nowadays, even being overrated. It's graphics are still bearable, and it's fun, clever and doesn't treat the player like an idiot and hold your hand. You do feel a bit excluded since Gordon never talks or directly interacts with anyone except during scripted moments.