Too much story.
The original Half-Life had a story, and it was a good story, but it was always in the background. (I think, excluding the trainride "intro", and the debriefing "outro", there was only point where the player had to sit around and listen to someone talk for over a minute or so)
Half Life 2, on the other hand, tries too hard to tell a story, with a huge number of characters telling the player where to go, what to do and delivering a whole shit-ton of exposition at the slightest drop of a hat. Not that exposition is necessarily a bad thing, but when you spend a good half-hour dicking around some research facility while an NPC lectures you on stuff "you should know", it tends to break up the action a bit too much... hell, I'd rather have a jumping puzzle! D=
The original Half-Life had a story, and it was a good story, but it was always in the background. (I think, excluding the trainride "intro", and the debriefing "outro", there was only point where the player had to sit around and listen to someone talk for over a minute or so)
Half Life 2, on the other hand, tries too hard to tell a story, with a huge number of characters telling the player where to go, what to do and delivering a whole shit-ton of exposition at the slightest drop of a hat. Not that exposition is necessarily a bad thing, but when you spend a good half-hour dicking around some research facility while an NPC lectures you on stuff "you should know", it tends to break up the action a bit too much... hell, I'd rather have a jumping puzzle! D=
