Half Life 2, why?

[Freemon]

So I´ll start by saying I have never played the first Half Life game.

I was bored with the games I had and noticed I could pick up this highly praised gem for just 8 euro, awsome.
You start out in a creepy city with lots of guards you for some reason have to dodge, you meet the girl from "Beyond good and Evil" and someone who really wishes he was Morgan Freeman.

And then you have to go somewhere else (for some reason), this fails because of a pet...
Then the running starts, you run, stop solve puzzle, sail, stop solve puzzle, drive, stop solve puzzle.

There is no talking, no story, it keeps swapping between dull shooting and a zombie game.
Now, I am only at the prison level thing, and am so bored I doubt I´ll be finishing this. But does it get better? Is it ever explained why Gordon is doing all this stuff?

I disliked just about everything about this game, and to be honest have a hard time seeing why anyone would enjoy it.

So the question is, did you like it? And why?

(FYI, loved portal/L4D/team fortress - not hating on valve)

Problem starts in the first sentence. You never played the first. Means you don't know what the story is about, who's who, why are they doing what they do. Nothing makes sense to you. Lets say you grab a great movie for the first time and watch just the last 20 minutes. Is it any good? Probably not.

Also, Threads like this show up all over the internet on a daily basis. Half Life 2 was released a few years ago. Stop coming online and asking why everyone like because you sure don't. When it was released it was a revolution. It was the best game around. Back when it was released. Not now.

It has a great story. It had amazing graphics, It has an amazing soundtrack and amazing sound effects. It was long. It was complex and really fun from start to finish. It was a masterpiece.

Still, if you haven't played the first you will finish half life 2 (or not) without a clue of what it is all about.

Now, if you excuse me, there's someone on another forum saying he doesn't understand all the fuss about [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE GAME FROM THE 90's HERE] because "the graphics suck" and "the gameplay is crap".

 

[Ubermetalhed]

Its a decent game. Immensely over-rated but well made.

Although I have to say that, when I first played it, I finished it and was like is that it? I wasn't blown away by any of it, I mean it was all just improvements on other games ideas. Such as wow they've improved the psi-amp from system shock 2, it's now called the gravity gun.

The story was... well forgettable, I really cant remember why I was at these different locations shooting different things. Not a good sign. I preferred the first by far, I felt a little short changed by valve with the sequel.

Episode 2 had some enjoyable moments though.

Also the game lacked variety. Especially in the enemies you faced.

 

[blindthrall]

First was better. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Awexsome]

I played through it on the Orange Box... left a bad impression. Not only were the controls and the way it handled far inferior to other games out today, but I had to reload a checkpoint a few times from either gamebreaking bugs like getting stuck in scenery. Got disoriented a few times and didn't know which was I was supposed to go, for all the talk of the story I can't remember a damn thing about it besides, "super scientist saves world."

In short I find everything about it when I played through it underwhelming compared to the praise it gets. IMO, I would call Halo better than it in every aspect save maybe for characters.

 

[Papadam]

Half life is like Batman begins

Half life 2 is like The dark knight

And 99% of the FPS genre is like Michael Bay blockbuster movies... some people like Transformers 2: Revenge of the fallen and think TDK is crap too.

I cant think of an FPS outside of Bioshock that come close to the quality of HL2 since it was relased.

 

[Nomanslander]

....to be honest have a hard time seeing why anyone would enjoy it.

So the question is, did you like it? And why?

(FYI, loved portal/L4D/team fortress - not hating on valve)

Half Life 2 is praised more for what it represents compared to what it really is, another one of those moments when the legend is far greater than the truth.

The first game was the first smart mans shooter, mixed in with enough outer limits mystery and at the time revolutionary interactive sequences to bring joy to any PC nerds heart.

The second game to tell you the truth was even a weaker game than the first when it came to gameplay. I mean going from facing the Special Forces from the first game to the Combine in the second was a joke.

But by this point the series was so famed by nerds alike that they overlooked all the gimmicky gameplay bull ("For fuck sakes! How many more boards do I have to stack to make a path to the other side? Fuck this is boring!!). But once again, at the time the game changed things, it sported some of the best facial models and animations to date.

The story was more fleshed out but still not enough to fill a half an hour episode of...well...Outer limits.

To answer your final question. Yes! I did enjoy it at the time, but the game had no replay value. It is what it is.

 

[Treblaine]

My favourite type of game is WRPGs...
I like Halo (though it has definitely gotten stale)
I just do not enjoy Half Life 2.

After about 5 minutes, the novelty of the change of pace to that of driving a boat wore off, when I realised I didn't want to drive a boat any-more. It was boring. I drove past lots and lots of the same environment, periodically stopping to go into some random place, to push some random button, guarded by the same identical clone soldiers I had been fighting all throughout the game, so that I would be allowed to carry on moving forward again. This felt to me like it was just padding out the level, for no good reason

When I was actually in the boat, all I had to do was drive past all of my enemies. There was no dodging or chasing or evading involved, as they simply couldn't hit me unless I outright stopped, which I never had any reason to do, except when I had to push one of those buttons I mentioned earlier.

As for storytelling there was none in that boat level. None that I noticed, or cared about, anyways. I got no satisfaction with re-uniting with Alyx because I didn't care about Alyx, or any of her friends, or even Gordan himself. None of them had given me any particular reason to like them.

Well why am I not surprised.

You "like" Halo yet that entire block of text of your spiel against Half Life 2 applies far more pertinently to Halo! You say after ONLY FIVE MINUTES you get bored of the boat ride and chase and gunfight in Half Life 2. Yet you don't get bored of Halo's slow and predictable pace?

This all makes me suspect you dislike Half life 2 for reasons you have yet to admit to. I simply do not believe your excuses as they are contradictory.

Though you have left some hints where you complain about:
"stopping to go into some random place, to push some random button"
"all of the pointless see-saw puzzles"

You seem to have zero appreciation for when the game forces you to stop and think. You see puzzles as "pointless", rather than a mental challenge to feel accomplishment on solving. You dismiss navigational challenges as "random" yet you can't seem to THINK about what you are actually doing. Don't you remember WHY you had to get off the boat and what pushing the button did?

Also WRPGs are well known for their complex conversation trees where you can ask every possible question and get them all answered and explained to you till you understand.

I think you may be WAY too dependent on that to follow a games plot that isn't spelled out to you.

Halo does much the same with unnecessary cutscenes for exposition spelling out what is happening in a very impersonal way. But it is lazy and foolproof way of telling a story. I don't like it when games fall back on cinematic techniques for storytelling especially when they don't do a particularly good job of it.

Cinema used to suffer the same, they'd keep falling back on prose to exposit; long text crawls, banal narration, subtitle aided scene transition. The rule in cinema is "show don't tell" unless you have to.

The rule in gaming should be "Do, don't show".

In fact, you seem to have very flawed ideas of gaming when you say:

"(Gordon Freeman) didn't have great character depth"

He's not Supposed to! He's an empty vessel, his journey is YOUR journey, it is a literal approach to the idea of a role-playing game, you are in his boots, his physicality, you are supposed to be invested in the story via this role like in Bioshock (a game you supposedly like) there is no Jack character, YOU are Jack! The player.

Half-Life 2 is the Seinfeld of video games.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny

I'd say HL2 is more like Arrested Development; really good, got loads of awards but way too many people "didn't get it" because the humour wasn't blatant enough with laugh tracks or awkward pauses.

So the series got put on ice, with a cult following, long awaiting a return, the talent does lots of great stuff in the mean time, while everyone else started copying it but dumbing the ideas down for a wider audience.

Yeah, HL2 = video game equivalent of Arrested Development

 

[DEAD34345]

Well why am I not surprised.

You "like" Halo yet that entire block of text of your spiel against Half Life 2 applies far more pertinently to Halo! You say after ONLY FIVE MINUTES you get bored of the boat ride and chase and gunfight in Half Life 2. Yet you don't get bored of Halo's slow and predictable pace?

This all makes me suspect you dislike Half life 2 for reasons you have yet to admit to. I simply do not believe your excuses as they are contradictory.

Though you have left some hints where you complain about:
"stopping to go into some random place, to push some random button"
"all of the pointless see-saw puzzles"

You seem to have zero appreciation for when the game forces you to stop and think. You see puzzles as "pointless", rather than a mental challenge to feel accomplishment on solving. You dismiss navigational challenges as "random" yet you can't seem to THINK about what you are actually doing. Don't you remember WHY you had to get off the boat and what pushing the button did?

Also WRPGs are well known for their complex conversation trees where you can ask every possible question and get them all answered and explained to you till you understand.

I think you may be WAY too dependent on that to follow a games plot that isn't spelled out to you.

Halo does much the same with unnecessary cutscenes for exposition spelling out what is happening in a very impersonal way. But it is lazy and foolproof way of telling a story. I don't like it when games fall back on cinematic techniques for storytelling especially when they don't do a particularly good job of it.

Cinema used to suffer the same, they'd keep falling back on prose to exposit; long text crawls, banal narration, subtitle aided scene transition. The rule in cinema is "show don't tell" unless you have to.

The rule in gaming should be "Do, don't show".

In fact, you seem to have very flawed ideas of gaming when you say:

"(Gordon Freeman) didn't have great character depth"

He's not Supposed to! He's an empty vessel, his journey is YOUR journey, it is a literal approach to the idea of a role-playing game, you are in his boots, his physicality, you are supposed to be invested in the story via this role like in Bioshock (a game you supposedly like) there is no Jack character, YOU are Jack! The player.

First of all, when I said random see-saw puzzles, I meant random see-saw puzzles. They required no thinking whatsoever, especially after you had done the first one, as they were all pretty much the same. There were maybe one or two puzzles that weren't see-saws, and they never took long. If you're trying to imply I found the puzzles difficult, then you are wrong, I don't know anyone who could find those puzzles difficult. As for navigational challenges, that just made me laugh. Yes, I remember exactly why I was pushing the button. It was because there was giant gate in my way, and an entrance next to it, and I had to go in the bunker and push a button to open it. None of this forced me to stop and think.

I knew you would latch on to the fact that I like Halo, but would you care to explain exactly how my arguments applied more to Halo than Half Life? Halo's "slow and predictable pace" is a non-stop roller-coaster ride of action and variety compared to the boat level in Half Life 2.

""(Gordon Freeman) didn't have great character depth"
He's not Supposed to! He's an empty vessel, his journey is YOUR journey"

This is just pathetic, as my full sentence was actually "He didn't have great character depth, and he didn't really need it.". At first your arguments made sense, and I actually agreed that Half Life 2 has many good features, but now you are reduced to taking my comments completely out of context in order to agree with me completely, but make it seem as though I was saying something else?

This makes me wonder if you are reading my posts at all, or if you are just looking to latch on to some excuse as to why my opinion is invalid. First you assumed that because I didn't like Half Life 2 I was a COD player, then you claimed I must like JRPGs, and now suddenly you explode over the fact that one of the many, many games I like is Halo?

No, I don't think my points are contradictory either, so would you care to explain what it is about them that makes this so?

Does this post have anything left if you remove insulting my intelligence, cutting out parts of my sentences to make it seem like I said things I didn't, and claiming all of my points are "contradictory" without actually saying why?

Well, yes actually. You say "The rule in gaming should be "Do, don't show".". Something I have explained in my earlier posts is that this is one of the parts I actually really liked about Half Life 2. The first level in particular, before you even get weapons, is my favourite part of the game due to this approach. Unfortunately it falls flat when most of the rest of the story is just told by various characters spouting a bunch of exposition at you while you stand there doing nothing, or walking forward.

Now lets go back to having a reasonable discussion, please.

 

[THGhost]

Comment removed by user.

 

[plank_man180]

Every time I come on this website I see "Oh, why is Half Life 2 so crap because I've only just played it 7 years after it's release"

It's 7 years old? It doesn't meet today's standards at all! But back then it was a dream! I loved every minute of it! (Well, not every minute but you get what I'm saying) The story telling is great and the action isn't over the top and quiet refined. And damn could I swing a crowbar!

People need to realise that this game is old and to stop complaining about it. It's like a kid now watching the original Star Wars movie.

**Seriously? Google Chrome doesn't know the word movie?**

Sorry, a bit off topic... They're not going to be wowed by the special effects because they're dated!

Leave Half Life 2 alone. For everyone who played it in it's golden days it was pure heaven. Don't come in 7 years along the line and piss on our nostalgia. Just think, your precious Call of Duty will be dated and pointless in years to come...

muhahaha... Muhahaha... MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!