How old are you, just out of curiousity, because that may shed some light on why you can't appreciate it.
Dude its his opinion you cant argue with it with facts, he's not going to see that everyone on metacritics liked it and go "well fuck me I must have enjoyed it then" and if you think it being almost universally loved makes it a good game may i refer you to the Call of duty franchiseUltratwinkie said:except it was a masterpiece. You do realize Half Life was copied by so many games right? The people complaining often don't play the original, miss well over 70% of the game because they rush, and come back expecting something that hasn't been done before by other shooters now. However, everything Half Life did is now considered commonplace the same way DOOM is considered crap because it only has guns. Hell, the most used argument against Half Life 2 is because "the first level doesn't give you guns to rampage in the streets."SammiYin said:One would think the whining about this same thread popping up every week [because maybe a game regularly hailed on this website as the Second Coming is actually a below average shooter] is enough evidence to support my claim.Ultratwinkie said:Pics orit didn't happen.SammiYin said:You won't get far on this website by dissing the 'BEST GAME EVAHH'
Even if it is a heap of shit
Evidence supporting your claim or its flame bait.
You could also if you want, go back in time to 2004, remove the physics engine, don't call it Half Life, pretend Gordon Freeman isn't a masterwork of characterisation and then see how far the 'fantastic story' carries it.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/half-life-2
Metacritic disagrees with you. The only bad reviews are numbered 222 to the 1,000+ good reviews. If you think a few detractors make something true than:
Racism is justified. It's not.
Obama is a spy, and not the actual president. He is a normal president.
Bush was a good president. He wasn't.
Portal 2 had no story. It did.
TF2 was ruined by free updates. It wasn't.
Just because a few people say Half Life is bad doesn't make it true. It's still a much loved game with tangible effects on the industry.
Beryl77 said:You just stripped the story and the characters down to the raw frame, I could do that to any game out there and then it would sound boring or stupid as well.
Part of why many people don't often get the story, is because in most games, they just tell you everything and you don't have to think about the story but in hl2 you have to draw your own conclusions. There happens something and the game doesn't exactly tell you what/why/how etc. You have to think about it yourself and then come up with an answer that makes sense.
The narrative is just different than in most other games. A big part of the story is told through the environment. Let's take for example, the chapter "Highway 17". You drive along the coast and look at the "beautiful" scenery but what you see there is strange, a lot of stranded ships and landing stages far above the sea level. It shows that the sea level has sunk quite a lot in a very short amount of time. Thanks to that you can come to the conclusion that the Combine destroy our environment and need a lot of water, for whatever it is that they're doing (some even say that it's a warning from Valve, to look more after our environment or something like this will happen). Many don't really think about it or barely even notice it and just drive past it.
Another example from "Highway 17". A house is standing beside the road. The game lets you choose, you can just drive and leave it behind you, or you stop the car and go inside it. The house looks deserted, the windows are boarded and the front door doesn't open. On the wall there is a skull sprayed. This shows that the people try to tell others that the house is dangerous and no one should go inside, it's "infested". Upon entering, you get attacked by zombies and after getting rid of them, you look around. You see beds, cupboards, pans and other thing. Now you start to wonder, who lived here, what happened to them? Was it a family, or an outpost of the resistance? It's a perfect example of the cruel way, the Combine use to get rid of people from places, where they don't want them to be. They just shoot the headcrabs inside and then leave the rest to them. Now you're left to wonder, how many people made it out in time, if any at all.
Let's take something much more subtle and insignificant but something that I really like about the narrative. Right before you encounter the Manhacks for the first time in the sewers, you meet a man in an outpost from the resistance and then you two get attacked by the Manhacks. After fending them off, you go on and that man stays back. Shortly after that, you meet again some Manhacks. Now, after destroying every single one of them, most people move on because there is no reason to turn back. But if you do head back to that room with the rebel, a Manhack attacks you, even though you destroyed them all. It must have come through the way which you first entered the room from. Now again after blowing up the Manhack, when you look down, you see the poor guy lying dead on the ground. Most people easily overlook this and who could blame them, the game doesn't give any reason to go back to this room. But just because of that I love this scene. It just shows that you and your immediate surroundings aren't the only thing in the world, things continue to happen even if you don't witness them, they happen almost simultaneously with your actions and the game doesn't tell you at all that this occurred. It just goes unnoticed unless someone tells you about it, or you go back for no reason.
All this, combined with the personality of Gordon Freeman (won't talk about that now), leads to something else that's really good about Half-Life 2. The game is very personal. Everything that happens there, everything that you experience, is your own experience. No one else has it. Only you played the game that way and thought and looked at things that certain way.
I could now go on and on, about the atmosphere, the immersion, the characters, I could write another post with this length about the G-Man alone but I won't. I don't want to force you to like the game. I just tried to show you why I love it so much and why it got so much praise.
I think part of the problem is, that it has been praised so much, that a lot of people expect something entirely different, something like Mass Effect (not that I wish to imply that Mass Effect's Story isn't good) but then they play it for the first time and get disappointed because it wasn't what they had thought it would be.
Of course it's entirely possible that Half-Life 2's style is just not your cup of tea. There doesn't exist something that everyone likes.
umm, actually yes there is a story and quite a tedious amount of blabbingAra69 said:There is no talking, no story, it keeps swapping between dull shooting and a zombie game.
you weren't paying attention, everything he does is said beforehandAra69 said:why Gordon is doing all this stuff?
So in response to the actual question being asked, yes I liked it. In fact, it is by far my favorite series. I played the original when it first came out and loved it; it had a flow to it, it told the story through the player's eyes, the mystery unfolded for the character as well as the player. Half-Life 2 (which I also played when it first came out) continued this feel to stay true to the series (and also its just valve's thing, notice there aren't really any cutscenes in portal either, valve feels it detracts from the story by not letting the player experience it for themselves).TBH everyone was confused by the story of HL2, the only things that you would know from playing the first is that the aliens are there from the aftermath of your experiment, and the characters (except alyx) vaguely resemble the scientists and security guards you encountered in the first game. But this was part of the experience of the game getting to actually know the characters you had seen in the first game.Ara69 said:So the question is, did you like it? And why?