Ara69 said:
There is no talking, no story, it keeps swapping between dull shooting and a zombie game.
WTFamireading.jpg
Seriously, jsut because a game doesn't have cinematic cutscenes, that doesn't mean there is no story. FUUUUUU...
The story is easy to follow if you actually listen to the TALKING!
Also it would help to play the previous games but basic synopsis:
-Gordon Freeman works at Black Mesa research facility
-They conduct experiment into teleportation but portal opens into parallel dimension that aliens invade through
-Freeman fights to save scientists, also meets mysterious "G Man" several times, always observing.
-US Marines arrive to start fighting aliens also killing all scientists, including Freeman who is however able to fight back.
-Freeman succeeds in opening a portal to alien dimension that he travels through to Xen, the alien world.
-Progresses through Xen and kills the leader of the alien race.
-G-man abducts Freeman and holds him in stasis revealing himself as a chief manipulator supposedly on side of humans.
-G Man is the person tellign you to "wake up" at beginning of Half Life 2
If you listen in Half Life 2 you'd be told that the Aliens have still invaded earth and taken over Earth using the portals. The story is NOT spelled out to you, you have to intelligently figure it out from the clues presented to you.
Look around in the lab at the newspaper clipings and the NPCs will fill you in on what has happened, particularly Dr Breen's involvement.
You have to recognise that "Barney" is the security guard you played in Half Life 1 expansion: "Blue Shift" and apparently you knew each other as friends. He escaped and went "out of range" and explains to you a lot that has happened in the mean time, if you listen.
Remember, there are several clues you have been ins statis for the past decade or so:
"My goodness Gordon, you don't seem to have changed a bit"
They also talk assuming you have been wandering around for the past several years and have only just re-united, assuming you know about the combine. Remember, Gordan is a mute, and his friends talk to him accordingly to communicate you must look at things to prompt their interest.