Poll: Let's clear this up. Do you like Half-Life 2?
- Thread starter curty129
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I like it, mostly. I liked the atmosphere and immersion, the physics engine, and the characters but the gunplay was just irritating with poor AI, and weapons that did not feel powerful or satisfying to fire. Puzzles I felt were also kind of stale.
Alot of peoples love for HL2 is very much rooted in the 'you had to be there at the time' mentality. When that game came out it was doing a tonne of crazy awesome stuff no other game had before but naturally with time those elements have become less unique and less impressive. This was a game that released at a point where people were still being blown away by the fact you could walk up to and interact with characters in first person and they would actually animate and emote believably.
Imagine that Uncharted, Assassins Creed, Killzone, Gears of War, Halo and any number of other current gen big budget impressive games didn't exist and the closest thing to them was HL2, that is what that game was, it was a demonstration of the future of story development, character realization and immersion evolution in the gaming medium, it was a fucking masterpiece of its time. All of your favorite modern games have it to thank for showing so many studios 'this is how you do this awesome shit well' and Valve continues to do that to this day with the likes of Left4Dead, Portal and so on.
Everything from Dead Space to Bioshock, HL2 in some way had an impact on them just as Doom, Mario, Zelda and other classic games of the past changed the industry forever.
To not understand why HL2 mattered and why it was amazing for its time is to fail as a gamer, to judge it now based on modern standards is unfair at best and utterly moronic at worst. Yeah its kinda slow paced now and the environments are sparce, the enemies simple, the puzzles easy and the graphics pretty dated, why? BECAUSE ITS FUCKING OLD NOW.
Imagine that Uncharted, Assassins Creed, Killzone, Gears of War, Halo and any number of other current gen big budget impressive games didn't exist and the closest thing to them was HL2, that is what that game was, it was a demonstration of the future of story development, character realization and immersion evolution in the gaming medium, it was a fucking masterpiece of its time. All of your favorite modern games have it to thank for showing so many studios 'this is how you do this awesome shit well' and Valve continues to do that to this day with the likes of Left4Dead, Portal and so on.
Everything from Dead Space to Bioshock, HL2 in some way had an impact on them just as Doom, Mario, Zelda and other classic games of the past changed the industry forever.
To not understand why HL2 mattered and why it was amazing for its time is to fail as a gamer, to judge it now based on modern standards is unfair at best and utterly moronic at worst. Yeah its kinda slow paced now and the environments are sparce, the enemies simple, the puzzles easy and the graphics pretty dated, why? BECAUSE ITS FUCKING OLD NOW.
I'm afraid I never played the bloody thing, but it looks great. And Valve rarely managed to disappoint me, so..
Video games are extremely context sensitive. To use Halo as an example. I played Halo maybe a year after it came out on the PC. One of the really big things about Halo, the thing that no other AAA single player campaign had done before were the vehicles.LazyAza said:
But by the time I played it, vehicles were standard issue. In point of fact, I thought the vehicles in Halo were utter shit, because I was used to vehicles where you could drive *and* shoot at the same time. Even the two-weapon limit and recharging shield/health had filtered into the games I had already played. Halo simply did nothing I hadn't seen at least two times before.
To this day, I have a hard time putting Halo in its proper historical context. It'll always be that derivative game with the shitty vehicles with even shittier driving controls.
I liked the original Half-Life, when it was just another FPS that was surprisingly above average. But in most cases, I tend to start disliking something, even if it's good, if it gets overhyped as "the best ever", like what happened with both the Half-Life and the Halo series.
I like it, but I don't LOVE it.
Sure, it has a great story and good graphics, but the gameplay (which for me is the most important aspect of a game by far) didn't win me over.
The gunplay felt mostly stale and bland with the possible exception of the Overwatch Pulse Rifle aka the Fuck Off gun, which packed one hell of a punch. And the constant "Oh look we made a physics engine and you can do stuff with it! Now switch to your gravity gun and solve this puzzle which isn't really a puzzle at at!" just felt like filler.
And I don't want a sidekick at all. There's a reason I never do multiplayer.
Sure, it has a great story and good graphics, but the gameplay (which for me is the most important aspect of a game by far) didn't win me over.
The gunplay felt mostly stale and bland with the possible exception of the Overwatch Pulse Rifle aka the Fuck Off gun, which packed one hell of a punch. And the constant "Oh look we made a physics engine and you can do stuff with it! Now switch to your gravity gun and solve this puzzle which isn't really a puzzle at at!" just felt like filler.
And I don't want a sidekick at all. There's a reason I never do multiplayer.
Apart from the upgraded gravity gun at the end, I generally found the game kind of dull. Atmosphere was nice at times though.
I thought it was very well produced. Excellent quality. However I couldn't help but feel a bit bored by some of the levels - particularly those on the boat. Very linear - too long - a bit dull. There were some game moment highlights, but I put it down partway through and I have not gone back.