I just finished Half-Life 2 (Spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

…and boy, are my arms tired. Yeah, I know it’s been out a while, but in addition to having to start the game over from scratch when I got a new computer, I had World of Warcraft, The Sims 2, and a burgeoning personal life all vying for my attention. And this is somewhat notable, since it’s the first game I’ve actually finished since the first Knights of the Old Republic a year or two ago.

It’s easily the best game of last year, its only competition being Sims 2 and WoW. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and say that it’s the best game ever made. Really, this is why I wanted to get into games in the first place – to show that they can be real experiences without being just interactive movies and without being just mindless twitching or number-crunching. When big stuff happens in this game, it’s just a whole different feeling than anything you can get from a movie or a book or a play. It’s one of the only cases where I feel like the term “interactive entertainment” isn’t just some meaningless, pompous marketing phrase like “graphic novel.”

The negatives:
[ul]
[li]The ending was anticlimactic, to say the least. And it’s a drag that they didn’t give a clearer idea of what you were supposed to do, exactly – I had to lose about three or four times before I gave up and read a FAQ.[/li][li]Jumping puzzles are lame anyway, but even moreso when you can’t see your feet. And there were times I felt more like Mario than Gordon Freeman. I expected to get to the Citadel and have Alex say, “Thanks, Gordon, but our princess is in another castle!”[/li][li]Having a squad of followers is a neat idea, but just ended up feeling hokey. They had no self-preservation instincts, so I eventually just gave up trying to keep them alive. At least the antlions you knew were supposed to be disposable. Still, I guess it did keep it from feeling so lonely and giving the impression that there was a real resistance going on.[/li][li]It was pretty clear throughout that you were being led along by the nose and there was one right solution to any puzzle. But they worked it into the story wherever possible, usually very cleverly.[/li][li]There was only one boat level.[/li][/ul]

The positives:
[ul]
[li]The initial ride-through of the Citadel, where you see everything that’s going on inside. Most developers would’ve cut corners, or wouldn’t have bothered to put in such a long completely non-interactive sequence, but the timing was perfect, and these guys understood that the pay-off was important. You had to see what you’d been fighting to get to for so long, and it just built up this sense of dread.[/li][li]The super gravity gun. At the end of the game, you just want to go around as an uber-badass and blow shit up. And they worked it perfectly into the storyline.[/li][li]The pacing overall. There were frustrating moments, but hardly any that felt completely dead. You get a hint of what you’re fighting at the very beginning, everything is foreshadowed at least once, and the tension builds and then falls at exactly the right times.[/li][li]Since when do game developers put so much effort into mood? There are moments of dead silence except for the sound of surf or dripping water, zombie movie creepiness, sci-fi movie creepiness, general dread, and just bad-ass hollering while you watch stuff blow-up or jump over burning gas tankers.[/li][li]Since when do game developers care about subtlety? Characters and exposition are brought in as they really would be, instead of beating you over the head with introductions and back story. Some stuff you just figure out on your own instead of having it explained to you. Sure, many of the story events are cliches, but they don’t feel like it until you’re looking at the game in hindsight; while it’s going on, it feels completely real.[/li][li]Everything else.[/li][li]And especially the boat level.[/li][/ul]

So yeah, I liked it. Now I guess we just have to wait 5 more years for Half-Life 3.

2

I sincerely hope not. They have vastly more power available in the engine than they ever used in the game. They could still use it.

3

Rumor has it that a HL2 expansion pack is in the works.

Stolen from some nameless blog:
In the latest issue of PC Gamer (UK) magazine, Valve Software revealed some details about the upcoming addon for Half-Life 2. Alyx Vance will be a playable character instead of being a NPC. A new weapon, Alyx Gun, will be introduced in the game - it is a combination of pistol, SMG and sniper rifle. The dog will be there too, but, like in the original game, only as a NPC. Thanks: Gamigo.de.

4

did anyone else find HL2 lacking something? the a.i. was nothing to write home about either. I played my first and only time thru on hard and still found it way to easy. it was pretty as hell, but man i finished it just to finish it. it was just missing that certain thing that makes a great game and i cannot pinpoint it. it has all the ingredients, but they somehow were not baked right. compared to resident evil 4 it is sorely lacking. i cannot think of another game(resident evil 4) in a long time where i had so much fun playing. i actually did something i rarely do nowadays, i played it more than once three times as a matter of fact. half life on the other hand i have not touched since that first play thru besides messing with gary’s mod.

5

I still can’t get over how good the water looks in this game.

And I love pinning bad guys to the wall with the crossbow.

6

Eh, people keep raving about RE4 but I just don’t see it. It’s not even in the same league, IMO. Sure, it’s the best Resident Evil game I’ve ever played, but it’s still a resident Evil Game. Hokey dialogue (you have to make some allowances for the translation, I guess, but c’mon – these things are big-enough budget now to hire some real talent, aren’t they?), predictable situations. Introduce the 2-dimensional NPC, then cue the zombie attack, finish that level, get to save point.

And it never “felt” right to me. In HL2, you pick up an unfamiliar gun, you fire it, and you just get it immediately. It feels right. The shotgun feels like firing a shotgun, the combine rifle feels like what an alien rifle would feel like, and so on. The mechanic in RE4 is a hell of a lot better than earlier versions, but it still feels clunky and clumsy and “gamey.”

RE4 is a polished game and all, for what it is. But it still just feels like an iteration on previous games. HL2 is a first-person shooter, but it’s as if they’re saying, “Yeah, we know how to make an FPS now, but that’s not the point. The point is to show what games are capable of doing.”

7

I bought this last week (after finally getting a PC snazzy enough to run it). I’ve played a bit and am loving it. I’m not very far in, but I must say that so far it hasn’t grabbed me in the same way HL1 did. Still, a great sequel to a great game.

I agree about mood. The only game of this genre I ever played outside of the HL series that I felt had the mood down pat was the first Unreal. It was just so otherworldly and worked really well.

8

I’ve heard HL2 referred to as too “linear” in it’s play. Every time through, you know there will be a zombie behind that door.

Way back in Quake III, at least the bad guys were not on rails. They might come from any number of directions or attack in a variety of different ways.

But in HL2, same thing, every time. I got so tired of hearing Barney say, “Hey Gordon, lob a grenade” just as I got zapped by a sniper until I figured out just where to lob the damn thing without looking.

It would have been better (or worse if you sucked as bad as I did) if the snipers were in a different spot, or something, each time. Just using this as an example.

But it was definitely a cool ass game, my nit picks aren’t a condemnation of the entire thing, it’s just that I would have expected the AI to have made as great a leap as the graphics/physics in the years since Q3A.

I’m wanting to try Far Cry, I have heard it never plays the same way twice, and how you play influences the play of the AI.

9

If those who have the game haven’t already tried it, I highly recommend cheat coding the super gravity gun into the early stages of the game.

Nothing like lobbing a combine guard over a building half a block away.

10

I enjoyed this game immensely, but things got a whoooooole lot more fun when I got to that level! I second this recomendation.

It’s just a shame that bodies ‘disappear’ if you pile up too many of them. And the ‘actors clip properly when piled up’ fix doesn’t seem to work.

If you use the gravity tool on story-based actors you create a (dead) copy of them.

I would LOVE it if other games had this wonderfull weapon!

11

Did you mean Quake 2? Q3 was just multiplayer IIRC.

12

Sorry, Quake III Arena. Q2 had the bad guys in the exact same place every time as well.

13

Half-Life 2 was great.

With that out of the way, it definitely flopped on what was promised (which ain’t no thang… I can’t think of a single game, ever, that delivered on all its promises). The AI was lacking tremendously, especially the group AI. We were promised “next to no scripted sequences”, and got nothing but a string of scripted sequences. The weapons had to be nerfed in order to keep it from being too easy (why are they using a cone of fire for your guns? Counterstrike had a perfectly acceptable accuracy system… why change it? Oh yeah, because you couldn’t get the AI smart enough so you had to nerf the weapons…)

Then there’s the fact that it was pretty short. I hate short games.

Which is not to say that I think it was a total wash (remember, I started by saying “Half-Life 2 was great”, and it was, and is). Facial animations were amazing. Body movements were very realistic. Physics were spot-on. Level design was very clever. Mood and ambience were PERFECT. There were a shitload of little things done well… the constant Big Brother-esque broadcasts, the fences and force field screens, the dilapidated feel to the cities…

I also loved how many times the player is put in a situation of having to fight an enemy much more powerful than himself. It was something done a handful of times in HL1… in the sequel, it’s CONSTANT. From the get-go, you always have a gunship or a dropship coming at you… the rebellion sequence, slaughtering dozens of striders, was fucking epic.

Am I one of the few that DIDN’T like the Super Gravity Gun? It just screamed “We’re trying to finish this game as fast as possible!” to me. Lazy design. The beauty of the last act of HL1 was how goddamned HARD it got. How you had to scrape through this other-dimensional Hell on your fingertips, always a step away from death, in order to win.

I don’t even mind the ending. Looking back, there was no other way for the game to end, really. A cliffhanger is necessary for a trilogy setup like this… think Empire Strikes Back. The ending battle could have been designed a bit better, though.

14

Oh, and my biggest pet peeve: The Combine Assault Rifle. It’s an energy gun, right? Its “clips” are about the size of an egg. Yet you can only carry TWO spare clips? What the fuck? You should be able to carry a DOZEN spare clips… hell, three or four dozen, easily! Get a backpack and carry around a gross. But TWO?

Fuck that.

15

How exactly is this done? I’ve managedt o get most of the codes to work, except the super grav gun one. Which was in fact the whole reason I wanted to codes. :smack:

16

Go to the level where you get the gravity gun. Then, after that, you can change levels and keep the gun with you through the level changes.

I really enjoyed both the boat level and the Ravenhome level. When I figured out that every item had a unique way of killing the zombies I just started lobbing everything I could at them to find unique ways for them to “die.” The entire level was fantastic in its mood and sound effects and playability.

I too didn’t like the ending. What I really didn’t like about it was the fatalistic situation you found yourself placed in.
Do nothing and you lose the game automatically. Well that’s obviously not the right course so let’s try to win.
Oh no, you just blew up the building and killed Alyx. Too bad. But hey, now the guy in the suit gets to trap you again in a space/time vortex. Well done! Game over.
What? The ending of the game forces you to make one of two choices, neither of which are right.

Maybe I can go back and shoot Benson. I don’t care if he’s missing a leg…

17

I didn’t feel it was short at all: how did you get that impression? To me, the length of the game isn’t just the amount of content (and anyone would have to admit that HL2 has quite a lot of levels and time spent) but the diversity of the content. Most games throw out a new enemy or gun once and awhile. HL2 introduces a whole new experience pretty much every chapter of the game: elements that totally change around the gameplay.

The only gripe I have here is that by the end of the game, new enemy and weapon content got sparse. We got striders, which were cool, and a new trooper that was basically the same as the old trooper, only with a better gun. Our arsenal was, in the end, pretty darn conventional. While the final levels were unlike anything in any video game every before (the point was NOT to cop out on some final gameplay, but rather to have you completely tear up the bad guys finally… and yet have Breen make you feel progressively less and less sure about what you are doing as you go along…)

The reality is: there was a lot of really cool stuff that Valve cut out to rush the already delayed release. Stickymines. Cremators. The SLAM (which was recently added to the DM mode). The OICW. Synths. Stalkers. The hydra. And the reality is, they really didn’t quite take full gameplay advantage of the physics engine up to its fully creative potential, as revealed by garry’s mod.

No game can be perfect. Still, HL2 was a breath of fresh air, and the mods are already looking awesome. CS:S is delightful (I’ve always been sort of sour on CS, but with CS:S, I’m getting into it, thanks to SeniorBeef and his SDMB crew). HL2DM is constrained by a lack of weapons and maps, but it’s still better than almost any DM mode, awesome and often just plain funny fun fun. DOD:S is coming soon, and while it doesn’t look quite as impressive as CS:S, it should still be a blast. Garry’s mod is the must try mod of the decade: simply mind-blowingly cool (hi, I’d like to tie some rotating carosels to a bathtub filled with baby dolls and watermelons attached to some rockets and ballons and maybe some birds: can I do all that and have it look and work realistically, even though it’s totally insane? Yep. Tis easy). Natural Selection, by far my favorite mod ever, should release its Source port in a few months (though, frankly, the original is good enough for now, still going strong, looking awesome, and playing sweet even 7 years after the engine’s release) Things look bright.

HL2 will be a SP game I can come back to. Yes, it’s linear. But the price is paid so that they can get some pretty neat experiences in place. I mean, can anyone remember being as freaked out/rushed through an action sequence as when the combine first start chasing you when you have no weapons? Or the rush through the canals at the start? The insane ownage of having an army of bugs on your side? And the pure sweetness of the grav gun (which henceforth many games are scrambling to put in their games)? Nope. No other game came close.

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Not me. One way or another, he was killing off what was left of humankind. He may not have been doing it intentionally, but, as they say, better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness.

19

Still, he was doing it because the alternative was the elimination of humanity entirely. And just as you basically partly caused the destruction of most of the earth the first time around, you’d think you’d be a little more wary this time around. But I guess not. Blow that up! Push that in there! smiling bandit does as he’s told. :slight_smile:

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and I had a reply set and the board ate it. :frowning: