Just how good was Half Life 2 ?

[Artheval_Pe]

I realized the story was rather sub-par

You really need to take a look at this : http://www.members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/timeline.htm

Anyway, what was really interesting in the Half Life 2 story was the fact that it just went beyond Half-Life's story and generic shooter's stories, and instead included deeper themes, like dictatorship, manipulation of the masses, ecology, human experiments, etc... It showed pretty much every important aspect of a authoritarian political regime, and did it very well.
For anyone willing to take a look beyond the main dialogs, it was a very interesting story. Just listen again to the Breen speeches about instinct, it's a very interesting exemple of how good speaches can influence people's opinion.
On many aspects, the story was a good mix between War of the Worlds (Alien Invasion) and 1984 (Methods used by a Dictatorship), even if the story didn't cover the same details.

I don't know how people can compare it with Halo's story. It hooks you like nothing else, but it's just a cheap Sci-Fi story about humans fighting aliens in space, with some excellent inspirations and art assets. But in the end, it's just a really simple story about how we should kill the aliens because they're a threat and they're mean.
The religious themes behind the covenant are insteresting, but for what I've seen it doesn't go very deep and the entire Halo story is build on the false belief of a single alien leader.


And I tend to agree with the original poster. While I have played other games since Half Life 2, no other game except maybe Portal was as much fun and interesting to play. That's why Valve fans are expecting so much Half Life 2 : EP3, I guess.
(On a side note, even if EP2 was good, I tend to agree with Yahtzee on the idea that it used too much the same set pieces)

As for the vehicules : I hate the vehicule controls in Halo. I guess the way you enjoy the vehicule sections pretty much comes down to what you're used to. But if you know how to drive vehicules in Half Life 2, I think that their controls are more precise.

 

[j0z]

I completely agree with you. I went retro a few days ago and stuck in Halo for some co op. I stopped before I had rescued all the survivors, it just wasn't that fun for me. So then I popped in HL2 for xbox ( a graphically inferior port ) and played it. I then grew tire of the poor graphics and braved my bad RAM Gaming PC to play it in all of its glory.
I have yet to play another shooter than can even begin to compare with HL2 or Ep2. The only one that even comes close is Bioshock, and that is a distant second.

 

[hopeneverdies]

One immersion problem I had, part of the scout car section didn't get rendered until I entered the "foggy area". But I generally like the characters, especially Barney's joke about Gordon's MIT characters, your squad mates while not geniuses are willing to keep you alive over them and stocked on ammo. The vehicle sections are a bit hard to control though. And the Magnum is my best friend in that game, it actually gave some use to the suit zoom so it was like a crossbow that made a bang

 

[R.O.]

It had a good beginning presentation. I thought it copied off of Halo too much though. The actual game play was boring and I didn't even feel like finishing it unlike Halo which I beat on Legendary and played multiple times. I guess if you want to feel like video games are a movie or art or something you like it but then you are a lame if you do.

 

[UnderOath1617]

If Halo didn't have multiplayer, everyone I know that bought the game, wouldn't have bought it. The single player in HL2 far exceeds that of Halo in storytelling, gunplay, and overall immersion. I had to literally force myself through Halo's single player and I had no desire to see what happened next. As for multiplayer you have HL2 to thank for bringing the source engine, allowing for CS: Source, Left 4 Dead, and several player made mods that are highly enjoyable. To be honest I've had way more fun playing multiplayer in CS, HL2 deathmatch, and TF2 than I ever will in Halo.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

I realized the story was rather sub-par

You really need to take a look at this : http://www.members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/timeline.htm

Anyway, what was really interesting in the Half Life 2 story was the fact that it just went beyond Half-Life's story and generic shooter's stories, and instead included deeper themes, like dictatorship, manipulation of the masses, ecology, human experiments, etc... It showed pretty much every important aspect of a authoritarian political regime, and did it very well.
For anyone willing to take a look beyond the main dialogs, it was a very interesting story. Just listen again to the Breen speeches about instinct, it's a very interesting exemple of how good speaches can influence people's opinion.
On many aspects, the story was a good mix between War of the Worlds (Alien Invasion) and 1984 (Methods used by a Dictatorship), even if the story didn't cover the same details.

I don't know how people can compare it with Halo's story. It hooks you like nothing else, but it's just a cheap Sci-Fi story about humans fighting aliens in space, with some excellent inspirations and art assets. But in the end, it's just a really simple story about how we should kill the aliens because they're a threat and they're mean.
The religious themes behind the covenant are insteresting, but for what I've seen it doesn't go very deep and the entire Halo story is build on the false belief of a single alien leader.


And I tend to agree with the original poster. While I have played other games since Half Life 2, no other game except maybe Portal was as much fun and interesting to play. That's why Valve fans are expecting so much Half Life 2 : EP3, I guess.
(On a side note, even if EP2 was good, I tend to agree with Yahtzee on the idea that it used too much the same set pieces)

As for the vehicules : I hate the vehicule controls in Halo. I guess the way you enjoy the vehicule sections pretty much comes down to what you're used to. But if you know how to drive vehicules in Half Life 2, I think that their controls are more precise.

Story's depend on your taste, I found HL2's story to be droll and rather lackluster, while I loved the story of the Halo series, stories come down to personal preferences.

 

[spuddyt]

I thought it was pretty average.

Woohoo! That didn't take long.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.119704?page=2#2329968

Thats the thing, there AREN'T any truly amazing FPS's - they all use the exact same wheel (unless maybe you count portal), true HL2's is well polished and the pacing is excellent, sound effects are still great and the graphics were amazing at the time, but compare it to today's offerings and you find that actually, it hasn't got that much over them apart from reputation. Just to clarify, I think HL2 is above average, but the level of praise it gets confounds me - its a good, even excellent game, but people treat it like the best game ever and I just don't agree, COD4 has everything it has and then some in my view, but no one says its stupendously amazingly awesome.

 

[Vrex360]

*leaves protection of the flame cruiser*

How did this become ANOTHER "Half Life is better than Halo because...." thread? How?
What is it about the word 'Half Life' that inspires everyone to say 'so much more awesome than Halo' god I thought we had finally gotten over that ugly habit and that Halo was getting a tad more respect. But nooooooooooo even in a thread solely about Half Life 2 we HAVE to mention Halo don't we? I love how people condemn Halo for being all about:
"Evil aliens kill them because they are evil!*"
Then condone Half Life for having a VERY similar premise. I'm just sick of this. Halo has nothing, I repeat NOTHING to do with this thread so why the hell are people here BASHING on it??? Let it go, please.
I liked Halo over Half life 2 okay that's my preferance, if you like Half Life 2 then I respect your choice, I really do... but seriously can you just leave well enough alone just for once?

*Massive oversight Halo's story is decent and has a lot more going on than just 'kill evil aliens'.

*returns back into the safety of flame proof battle cruiser barely escaping buring to death*

 

[mGoLos]

Speaking of HL2, check this out:

http://spikedhumor.com/articles/137277/If-Half-Life-2-Was-A-Movie.html

Valve pissed me off with Left for Dead 2 ... won't be paying much attention to them until news of HL3 and/or portal 2 are available.

 

[Cuniculus]

It was better then Halo at the time of its release. That's how I usually mark it in my mind. It doesn't really say much though, since Halo is pretty low on my scale of interest.

 

[LordCraigus]

Took me about 3 attempts to finally 'get into' the game, but once I had it definitely had the inexplicable feeling of being something a bit special. Pretty much all Valves games seem to ooze with atmosphere and personality and HL2 was no exception. I think these are the things that help raise HL2 to above average status with a lot of gamers, from my own experience I can't think of another FPS that 'felt' like that.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

*leaves protection of the flame cruiser*

How did this become ANOTHER "Half Life is better than Halo because...." thread? How?
What is it about the word 'Half Life' that inspires everyone to say 'so much more awesome than Halo' god I thought we had finally gotten over that ugly habit and that Halo was getting a tad more respect. But nooooooooooo even in a thread solely about Half Life 2 we HAVE to mention Halo don't we? I love how people condemn Halo for being all about:
"Evil aliens kill them because they are evil!*"
Then condone Half Life for having a VERY similar premise. I'm just sick of this. Halo has nothing, I repeat NOTHING to do with this thread so why the hell are people here BASHING on it??? Let it go, please.
I liked Halo over Half life 2 okay that's my preferance, if you like Half Life 2 then I respect your choice, I really do... but seriously can you just leave well enough alone just for once?

*Massive oversight Halo's story is decent and has a lot more going on than just 'kill evil aliens'.

*returns back into the safety of flame proof battle cruiser barely escaping buring to death*

Seeing as we are of similar mindset, might I come aboard the safety of your cruiser?

 

[Jamous]

Awesome game for it's time, meh-good game now.

 

[Pwnacus Maximus]

Upon putting the game into my PS3, the system immediately transformed into a helicopter and flew me to Atlantis.

Seriously though, it's a good game.

SHAME!
HOW DARE YOU PLAY A VALVE GAME ON A CONSOLE!

/s

 

[Cpt.Juggins]

Dare i say "Who would win in a fight, Gordon Freeman or Master Chief" =p

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Spoiler: SNIP

Any sapient being can see that HL2 was influenced greatly by Halo: CE, just mentioning.

They're both two completely different games that do different things to eachother. Half-Life 2 focuses more on storytelling and it was innovative for it's time (physics that was GOOD, amazing graphics for 2004 etc) as well as scenery and it's epic vehicle sections more than it does it's gunplay and violence, which're both still there it's just Halo was better at them, and it's actually possible for you to DIE on the normal settings which is surprising because I'd gone through Halo when I was still interested (Before they released Halo 2 and it sucked harder than a vacuum cleaner) on Normal and I'd only died once, to my own grenades... Although, most of my deaths in Half-Life 2 are attributed to Ravenholme (I FUCKING HATED THAT LEVEL) and the part in the mines shortly after that.

The only real similarities I can see in HL2 and Halo is the shields, although they don't recharge in HL2 and you instead need to find energy dispensers in walls, oh and you can actually die when you have your shields on from enemy gunfire, as well as the fact they're both FPSes with guns and things exploding.

Seriously, haven't we passed the fucking "LOLOLOL HALF LIFE VERSUS HALO" stage and moved onto "PROTOTYPE VS INFAMOUS ROFL ROFL ROFL" era in Escapist history?

Oh, and Halo didn't have better vehicles (in singleplayer), characters or story. The vehicle sections weren't anywhere near as good as Half-Life 2's were, in multiplayer they were pretty fun though but we can't compare multiplayer since Half-Life 2 is a singleplayer game if you don't include HL2M which didn't even use vehicles as far as I know. Halo's story telling was pretty good, not as good as Half-life 2's was, Halo 2/3 killed that down to average and the storyline was... well, aliens and humans are beating eachother up because... they disagree on something?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Halo: CE I was just very disappointed with the sequels.

edit: I didn't like HL2M either.

It's a great game, but I've always like Halo more.

Any sapient being can see that HL2 was influenced greatly by Halo: CE, just mentioning.

Is there still room in that flame-proof bunker?

Actually, I don't really see much influence at all. I see much more of Half-Life's influence in Halo. They completely ripped headcrabs from Half-Life 1.

I didn't say Half-Life 2 copied Halo, I said it was influenced by it. Halo is full of open but linear levels and so is Half-Life 2.

Concerning headcrabs and the Flood, the Flood seem more based on the Pod People from the Body Snatchers mixed with headcrabs. And headcrabs are of course just facehuggers with fewer legs and a different goal.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Kinda good.

 

[PauL o_O]

Let's put it this way:
I cannot complain about any aspect of this game.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

Dare i say "Who would win in a fight, Gordon Freeman or Master Chief" =p

Don't start that here, that's going to start a flame war.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

I like the linked response on the first page, it went something like:

"If Half-Life 2 is only OK, I'd like someone who show me these mind-blowing FPS's out there which you are comparing to."

HL2 had a story that was consistent and engrossing within the parameters it set and it's predecessor set. The FPS aspect of the game was well optimized and easy to handle with a wide variety of guns with varying degrees of originality (who doesn't love pinning Combine to walls with the crossbow?). The graphics were well above par for the time and the physics engine brought a completely new dimension to the game which was absent in all other games when it was released. There was a decent variety of enemies which forced you to use all of your weapons from regular combine, antlions, zombies, fast zombies, various machines and your run of the mill headcrabs.

Crysis has respectable FPS elements, a god awful story, and the requisite amount of innovation in the suit abilities. Bioshock has poorly integrated shooting, some innovation in the plasmids (even though I find half of them to be useless), and what I find to be a pretty immersing storyline and setting. Fallout 3 suffers from similar poorly implemented shooting, a well-traveled leveling system, a story which only gets in the way of the fun, and a good variety of enemies and settings (which was absent in Oblivion).

So the question is, what are you holding HL2 up to?