Half Life 2, why?

TheFPSisDead

New member
Jan 3, 2011
510
0
0
How old are you, just out of curiousity, because that may shed some light on why you can't appreciate it.
 

Macrobstar

New member
Apr 28, 2010
896
0
0
Ultratwinkie said:
SammiYin said:
Ultratwinkie said:
SammiYin said:
You won't get far on this website by dissing the 'BEST GAME EVAHH'
Even if it is a heap of shit
Pics orit didn't happen.

Evidence supporting your claim or its flame bait.
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.
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.
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."

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.
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 franchise
 

Souplex

Souplex Killsplosion Awesomegasm
Jul 29, 2008
10,312
0
0
Oh, didn't you know? It's all just a big joke. Nobody's sure if Valve is pulling the joke on us for us putting up with it, or we are pulling the joke on Valve by convincing them that they're competent and likable. But it's still a joke.
 

YesIPlayTheBagpipes

New member
Oct 27, 2009
109
0
0
oh so just because everything isn't served up to you on a silver platter there's no story? try opening your eyes, paying attention to what's happening. also if severing zombie in two by flining sawblades at them with you gravity defying gun isn't fun for you then go start writing poetry and self harming because you're obviously an EMO.

now that we have got that fanboyism out of the way. i do enjoy half-life 2 for its very good gameplay and story. just because there is not much dialoge doesn't mean there is no story. you just have to look. in kliener's lab there are newspaper cuttings of the Seven Hour War (along with a drawing by Alyx and a note to pick up watermelons for Lamaar) behind a fuel tank there's a dead man and a revolver, a matress, cans and rebel graffiti. across the road was a combine base. was he a spy? did he kill himself? why? Lazlo is dead. his freind needs to "do something". a shotgun blast later he's dead. who was Lazlo? why would his friend kill himself rather than go on without him? why were they there? try using your imagination. it can put a girdle around the world faster than Puck could ever hope to.
 

GoddyofAus

New member
Aug 3, 2010
384
0
0
Do not pin the blame for your ADD and general lack of intelligence on a perfectly good game. What sort of a moron plays a sequel without having played the first game? It's old, fine, but if you're wanting to find out what all the fuss is about, suck it up and look past the shitty graphics, and you'll find one of the most comprehensive and fascinating stories left in the gaming industry, ESPECIALLY for a shooter.
 

Coldster

New member
Oct 29, 2010
541
0
0
Played it for the first time last year on the Orange Box on Xbox 360. I thought it was awesome, even better than most (if not all) the other games that came out in 2010. I also liked episode 1 and 2 just as much.
 

kasperbbs

New member
Dec 27, 2009
1,855
0
0
So you didn`t like a game, get over it. I personally loved it when it first came out and my friend is playing it for the 10th time probably, he still enjoys throwing cans at that douche of a guard at the beginning. I wonder if i should make a thread because i didn`t like 'Darksiders'..
 

Radoh

Bans for the Ban God~
Jun 10, 2010
1,456
0
0
Hooray another Half Life 2 thread. I suppose what with the virulent pony threads subsiding we needed to replace it with something, but why oh why is there never anyone who knows how to use the Search bar?
 

xPixelatedx

New member
Jan 19, 2011
1,316
0
0
Yeah as someone who enjoyed Half Life 1 quite a bit, I can say I didn't like #2 much either. Aside form the first meeting with the black head craps, there wasn't a single intense moment in that game for me. I think one of the things that made it so boring is half the game is just driving (insert vehicle here) over long stretches of nothingness. Also, instead of cool aliens most the time you are just fighting guys in masks. Yawn.

Episode 1 and 2 were much better though.
 

Beryl77

New member
Mar 26, 2010
1,599
0
0
The only thing that threads like this achieve are flame wars. Alright, Half-Life 2 is quite popular on this site but I don't understand why people have to make a thread about it and tell everyone that they don't like it. There are several games that are considered good and I don't like them but I don't see the point in telling everyone that.

Anyway, I'll still contribute to the topic but I'll only quote myself from a different thread, that is only on the second page on the forum.
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.
 

Harmondale2

New member
Nov 18, 2009
205
0
0
You can't complain about not understanding some things in a sequel if you didn't play the first one, I have a friend who played portal 2 but wasn't bothered to play portal 1 first, now hes bitching to me about not understanding the ending, and companion cube and blah blah blah, I just told him to shut up and play the first one if he really wants to know. its not complicated
 

hyker

New member
Feb 2, 2010
143
0
0
Ara69 said:
There is no talking, no story, it keeps swapping between dull shooting and a zombie game.
umm, actually yes there is a story and quite a tedious amount of blabbing

Ara69 said:
why Gordon is doing all this stuff?
you weren't paying attention, everything he does is said beforehand

looking at it, I still don't understand why I played it so much (completed it 3 times on normal and 2 times on hard),maybe it's how it elevated from being searched for in the streets to battling giant striders in the main citadel, but I see your point, it's nearly not as great as its reputation and what people say about it, it's pretty utdated and it's nearly not as new as it was back then
 

WorldCritic

New member
Apr 13, 2009
3,021
0
0
If you liked it, congratulations, you're part of a large group.
If you didn't like it, congratulations, you're part of another large, but somewhat less large group.

You can like or dislike a game and people will be ok with that, I'm just a little curious though as to why a thread has to come up about it.
 

coheedswicked

New member
Mar 28, 2010
142
0
0
Ara69 said:
So the question is, did you like it? And why?
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.

As far as should you continue... if you really don't like the combat at all... I would say no. But I think that the game drastically improves immediately after nova prospekt as the action and tension build to an incredible climax... and while some questions will be answered about the story, more won't be. But thats why people like it. The mystery, seeing what little bits of information they can peice into the big picture with each installment of the series.
 

Trogdor1138

New member
May 28, 2010
1,116
0
0
Christ, the forum has gone way fucking downhill recently, this thread has popped up several times recently and offers nothing the other ones did. Did we get a sudden influx of idiots register recently?

Maybe people liked the game? I know it's hard to believe, but really, this is the reason.
 

Kyle Roberts

New member
Feb 18, 2011
154
0
0
I really enjoyed it they didn't attemp to sell out like Hmm i don't know bioshock, call of duty ect...
Its different to most other games since it doesn't jump into the action right away its a while before you get a gun anyway while on games like call of duty your blowing up buildings right away and it stays that way.
It requires the right approach to the game if your a hard-core Gamer who can't go 18 seconds without ending a young promising life then its not your style if your NOT a deranged moron and enjoy games where you get straight to it then again its not your game if you allow immersion,pacing and great story telling then its your game.
ive lost my train of thought and went into a review and can't be bothered edit it to a normal post You get what i mean.

Plus you could always play portal.