They two pretty different tones. Half-Life 2 has a tendency toward horror, even if it's simply a car drive through the sunny remains of civilization. It's the sense that life has taken a wrong turn here and you're exploring a world that shouldn't be. It's about seeing a familiar world transformed into something slightly alien, making it all just slightly creepy and unsettling.SnakeCL said:Not see, I do have to question Yahtzee's unabashed boner for Half-Life 2, and his nigh ambivalence towards Halo. They're not as far removed as their respective fanboys would like to think.
Well you can generalize pretty much everything. But the details make or break the games. Frankly I can't imagine how you could compare the two. Tone, gameplay, guns and focus are all different.SnakeCL said:Not see, I do have to question Yahtzee's unabashed boner for Half-Life 2, and his nigh ambivalence towards Halo. They're not as far removed as their respective fanboys would like to think.
There's also the issue that fans of the series have been gotten Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3 ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo CEA, and Halo 4, all in the time its taken another certain developer to count to three.
I guess my point is, different strokes for different folks.
Aside from the "bash you over the head HORRROOOOOR of Ravenholm" I personally don't consider much in Half-Life 2 horror. I wouldn't consider Planet of the Apes horror, but it uses many of the same ideas of HL2.Netrigan said:They two pretty different tones. Half-Life 2 has a tendency toward horror, even if it's simply a car drive through the sunny remains of civilization. It's the sense that life has taken a wrong turn here and you're exploring a world that shouldn't be. It's about seeing a familiar world transformed into something slightly alien, making it all just slightly creepy and unsettling.
Now see, that's where I disagree. There's this propensity for people to generalize Halo into "military shooter" without actually taking into account much of the nuanced story that goes with it. Heck, for most of the games, humanity is on the losing side of this conflict, getting beaten back planet by planet, entire population centers being lost.Halo veers more toward jingoistic military action movie. You're in a sci-fi world where the most horrifying thing is a bunch of exploding aliens that charge you from every direction and makes those levels suck. ODST seems to be the one game that really attempts to match the moody horror of HL2 as you explore a deserted city, but largely the series occupies the space Michael Bay has claimed as his own in movies: military porn.
"The humans are good, except the ones who are bad (and tried for warcrimes) and the aliens are bad, except the ones living on earth that are good, and the big one who is trying to kill humans which is bad, except for his wife which is trying to save humans which is good..." I think there's more ambiguity in Halo than you're willing to give credit for.But take a good hard look at the games he likes and dislikes. How many of his favorite games are moody horror games? How many of his most hated games are jingoistic military shooters? And the ones he does like tend to be the ones that undercut the military cliches by turning your indestructible U.S. marine into a walking radiation fatality or the ones forcing you to deal with the horrors you've unleashed. There's not a whole lot of moral ambiguity in Halo. The humans are all undeniably good, the aliens are mostly undeniably bad (save for the ones in Halo 2 which don't bother to suit up for future games), and it's your job to kill as many of the non-humans as you possibly can without the slightest hint that this diminishes your humanity.
I almost wonder if you've ever actually played a Halo game (or at least a game since CE), because it sounds thoroughly like you're talking from your arse. Heck, there's a LOT of lore within the games themselves, but it seems people don't want to acknowledge it in favor of an easy reason to dump on the franchise.Yes, I know there's plenty of people who like to go on about the rich lore of the Halo Universe, and I'll take your word that the Extended Universe is a magical land of brilliant science fiction, but the actual games have so very little of that. It's quite a lot of go here, blow this shit up, and excuse my stiffy as I watch these helicopters fly off into the horizon while the music soars.
I played Combat Evolved and Reach... unless there was a bunch of stuff hidden away in collectibles, it was basically moving me from one objective to the next, not unlike the Call of Duty games do. The great bulk of the characters being stock military cliches, not unlike the Call of Duty games.SnakeCL said:Now see, that's where I disagree. There's this propensity for people to generalize Halo into "military shooter" without actually taking into account much of the nuanced story that goes with it. Heck, for most of the games, humanity is on the losing side of this conflict, getting beaten back planet by planet, entire population centers being lost.
"The humans are good, except the ones who are bad (and tried for warcrimes) and the aliens are bad, except the ones living on earth that are good, and the big one who is trying to kill humans which is bad, except for his wife which is trying to save humans which is good..." I think there's more ambiguity in Halo than you're willing to give credit for.
I almost wonder if you've ever actually played a Halo game (or at least a game since CE), because it sounds thoroughly like you're talking from your arse. Heck, there's a LOT of lore within the games themselves, but it seems people don't want to acknowledge it in favor of an easy reason to dump on the franchise.
And I'm not exactly biased. I hated Halo with a passion, until I played Reach, and realized how much deeper the universe and games were than I originally believed.
They're both fun FPS games, but this idea that Half-Life is some intellectual golden child of gaming, and Halo is "just some scifi military shooter" is just plain wrong. They're both fun games, and great experiences to play,
They certainly increased her mammaries capacity.Vigormortis said:I guess you could say they implanted new bits of code.Casual Shinji said:I'm always bewildered how Cortana gets more unnecessarily sexy and voluptuous each installment.
Does she have like special firmware updates?
Try playing halo 2, that really mixed things up with the whole covenant religion thing, something which most people seemed to have missed, or atleast watch the opening cutscene for halo 2Netrigan said:I played Combat Evolved and Reach... unless there was a bunch of stuff hidden away in collectibles, it was basically moving me from one objective to the next, not unlike the Call of Duty games do. The great bulk of the characters being stock military cliches, not unlike the Call of Duty games.SnakeCL said:Now see, that's where I disagree. There's this propensity for people to generalize Halo into "military shooter" without actually taking into account much of the nuanced story that goes with it. Heck, for most of the games, humanity is on the losing side of this conflict, getting beaten back planet by planet, entire population centers being lost.
"The humans are good, except the ones who are bad (and tried for warcrimes) and the aliens are bad, except the ones living on earth that are good, and the big one who is trying to kill humans which is bad, except for his wife which is trying to save humans which is good..." I think there's more ambiguity in Halo than you're willing to give credit for.
I almost wonder if you've ever actually played a Halo game (or at least a game since CE), because it sounds thoroughly like you're talking from your arse. Heck, there's a LOT of lore within the games themselves, but it seems people don't want to acknowledge it in favor of an easy reason to dump on the franchise.
And I'm not exactly biased. I hated Halo with a passion, until I played Reach, and realized how much deeper the universe and games were than I originally believed.
They're both fun FPS games, but this idea that Half-Life is some intellectual golden child of gaming, and Halo is "just some scifi military shooter" is just plain wrong. They're both fun games, and great experiences to play,
In Reach, I'm plopped down on a planet with some ill-defined "rebel activity", of which there is no real explanation or follow-through, because almost immediately I discover a Covenant massacre and spend the rest of the game hopping from one military objective to the next. Defend this, attack that, the hope of humanity must escape. I struggle to remember one thing any of my fellow Spartans said that wasn't mission related.
It's effective at what it does, but, quite frankly, I learn more about the Gears of War cogs in any given game than I learned about any character in either of the two games I played. There's an odd pathos to a character like Cole-Train, someone who is more than just a soldier carrying a gun, a guy with hopes and dreams. And I don't even like the douche-nozzle.
And HL2's reputation as intellectual masterpiece is beyond over-blown. The game is as shallow as a puddle and the plot is little more than a series of overly complicated objectives, but there's a decent amount of depth to characters. I haven't played the game in forever (and only once), but I can still remember quite a number of characters. I played Reach last year and can only remember "bitchy scientist".
What? Did Bungie kill your parents or something?xdiesp said:Isn't it ironic, how Halo fell out of fashion and suddenly fanboys realize how shit the game was in the first place, after a full decade that pc gamers tried to tell them so?
You do realize that the entire Halo franchise is based around the epic feeling of being in SPACE right? Anyway, no dubstep or even Grunge Rock could correctly fit into the game. I know that there is the Mjolnir mix, which is great and is metal, but it isn't Halo Campaign music. I always liked the score, it helped enlarge your epic quest to save humanity. If you want dubstep and grunge, look for games dedicated to these genres. Like all music, there are people who love it and there are those who don't.Trishbot said:Man, totally agree, only I quit much sooner. I got bored at the start menu. That dull choir music? I never even bothered playing past that start menu 'cause it was so boring. What a dull game, all in space and stuff with its "Ahhhhs" and violins. I need more dubstep and grunge-rock. Throw some Skrillex in that sh*t. How could anyone make a franchise on this series when the start menu alone is so bland and dull. Sheesh.