Marek

Half Life 2 First Impressions

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The robot was called dog, yes.

Nade timing is an issue, yes. The only time I have a hard time with explosives is when they're comming so fast I'm bound to run into one.

My only annoyance so far is that CS:S doesn't feel finished. Yes, what is there is polished, but it's still missing several things.

Things I'd like to see:

1. More player skins (given that this isn't a fan mod, it should have been released at least somewhat complete).

2. More maps.

3. I was hoping for at least a few more guns, given that all it is is a graphically enhanced mod.

4. I wish they would let you pick things up so that you could build baracades without using all of your ammo.

Things that rock:

1.The way glass shatters in office.

2. Nades and Flash Bangs.

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I think we're going to see major updates to CS soon. I suspect they weren't allowed to use many HL2 assets until that game had shipped. This is why there's no chickens in cs_italy. They couldn't yet use HL2's bird AI.

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Chris wrote Doc in a recent news item, which I corrected, which apparently turned out to be wrong. I'm still not convinced though. Characters call Gordon Doc (as in: Dr. Freeman), but it seems the robot should be called Dog as he lives in a dog house and behaves like some kind of dog slash gorilla.

I actually originally wrote Dog, then someone in the discussion thread said it was Doc so I changed it. Then I guess you changed it back? Should I change it again? In the game it sounds to me like she's saying "Dog".

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Planet Half Life calls it "Dog" on their outdated "Allies" page.

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To keep this Dog discussion going, I'll state that I'm almost certain I read "Dog" from the subtitles.

I always turn on the subtitles for some reason. Even when watching DivX movies, I go through a lot of trouble to download and adjust (if needed) English subtitles for English films.

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After a certain point in HL1 it seemed that you'd get stuck on every elevator floor...really bizarre.

As for Hl2, I didn't get stuck once or have any sort of trouble getting caught on any edges. In fact the whole thing ran pretty much perectly, the only time it crashed was after I beat the game and clicked clicked the "quit" button, so I have very few complaints about its design or execution. Steam has worked great for me too, luck of the Irish I suppose.

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So, as the last person on Earth not to have played the original Half-Life, how 'necesary' is it to have played prior to HL2 (for which I have a free voucher in an ATi card I picked up at work a month or two back).

Will not having played HL1 hinder my enjoyment of the plot of HL2? In-jokes? Recurring themes etc?

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:hmph: Hey. Just play HL and get it freaking over it. Don't feel peer pressured to play HL2 just because everyone and their grandmother's dog has it at the moment. Cut yourself off from us for a week, play the first one, wait a few days, then play HL2.

Once you play HL2 you'll never want to 'regress' and play the first one, because HL2's advancements on every level will most likely fook up your otherwise nice experience with HL should you decide to play it after HL2. You'll thank me later. :innocent:

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I don't feel pressured, but coupling the general love of the game here, and the free voucher for it that I have, I figured getting the game and playing it ASAP would be the polite thing to do.

It's just not often I get the chance to play a game around release time - to actually be part of the buzz, as usually the budget only stretches to reduced price games - eg. I just finished Armed & Dangerous, am currently playing Runaway, and today bought Mafia.

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Ah, Mafia is another very good game.

I think you probably should play the first Hl1, besides for the reasons Trep listed its just a damn fine game and probably one of the best you play, even if the graphics are dated. But if you go backwards you may indeed feel like things are missing and the graphics are absolute shite. So play the first one, it may seem like a chore now, but once you get into it you'll see what a marvelous game it all is.

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You cant upgrade an ATi voucher to one of the special packages. So unless he feels like paying $60 dollars for HL:S he'll probably be playing the old one.

My recommendation is to just rip it off the internet.

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Just to clarify, the big robot friend is called Dog, unless the subtitles are wrong throughout the entire game, which I doubt.

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jp-30: you can play HL2 as a standalone game. Apart from the return of some old friends which won't mean much to you, you can still enjoy and understand the rest of the game. So playing HL1 is definitely not required. But like Jake and Trep I do recommend playing them in the right order, as it's more fun.

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Thought I'd be the 85th person with a "first" impression. :fart:

I'm not that far in yet, but I'm already completely impressed by the game's awesomeness. Aside from all the great "gaming" goodness, there really is nothing like either Half-Life for immersion. Most games TELL a story while you play a game (if we're lucky), but the HL's create a world and let you LIVE the story. Wow. Just frickin' wow. It's not all that complicated, but why the hell can't anyone else do it?

One minor complaint, just cuz... The "look ma, no hands!" routine on the vehicles (the hovercraft, at least) just doesn't cut it.

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Hmm, this is the best game so far to really demonstrate what Havok can do.

But I'm a bit worried about the shortness.

Today I started the game and played four hours straight, now I'm in chapter 6 and if I'm correct, the game has about 12 chapters?

And I haven't hurried one bit, I've played with the physics in almost every possible point in the maps and found a lot of "secret" places.

The story so far is 10x of what the puny story was in Hl1, that is something that I'm really glad about.

The voice acting and lip sync truly is top notch.

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So, any ideas as to how well HL2 sold in comparison to, say, Halo 2? I'd be interested.

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I just finished the game, and...

it's so excellently brilliant I can't believe it. Instead of saying what's good about it, I'd rather say what's not so good, since that constitutes a smaller set of points:

- The endgame was a tad boring, I thought, with the endless waves of guards and the platform jumping. The ending was great, just not the end game.

- There wasn't a proper tram ride, like in the HL intro.

- The endlessly spawning enemies sucked a bit, but I soon figured out when they were endless and when they weren't, so it wasn't annoying, since it only happened in isolated spots. I guess they had to do it to get that chaotic escape feeling thing or something.

Also, it won't be six years until the next game. Okay, maybe till HL3, but they'll be releasing more episodic stuff and expansion packs, like Op4 and BS for HL, which were great expansion sets. I'd love an expansion pack that played more with the physics, for example.

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If you click "new game" in the menu, you can see which chapters you have completed and how many chapters there are. If you play anywhere as slowly as I do, you'll probably not complete it today.

The "Sandtraps" chapter is my favourite so far...

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