toblix

Highway 17

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I'm playing HL2 for the third time, and I'm just done with the Highway 17 part (the car part, where you drive along the coast), and it struck me how much I enjoy all the parts where it's just me and the environment. Like the abandoned houses and bases, and especially the whole Sand Traps part where you have to keep off the sand. It's like one of the best parts of the game (for me) is just me and the physics engine (and the magnificent level design), without any AI or shooting or whatever. Maybe it's not significant, but I don't know any other FPS games where the parts without action isn't just a hallway to the next shootout gallery.

What I'm trying to say is this: I'd pay for an HL2 expansion pack without enemies if it's as good as the non-enemy parts in HL2.

I'm delighted to hear that in Episode 1 the level designers are putting a lot more stuff everywhere in the levels, so there's more things to see and do.

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Hurrah, yes you are right. I'm a big fan of good environment design. Everyone that said there wasn't enough story in HL2 missed something: the backstory is in the environment.

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Yeah, it'd be nice to just run around and see what the Combine had done since the war. I especially wish there would have been more time spent in the Citadel crater. Just some closeups of what was happening around the edges of the tower and stuff like that, perhaps seeing how animals (such as the birds you can see fly around down there) have adapted, like where they nest and stuff.

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Just some closeups of what was happening around the edges of the tower and stuff like that, perhaps seeing how animals (such as the birds you can see fly around down there) have adapted, like where they nest and stuff.

Astonishingly, I'd be genuinely interested by that.

One question that we don't ask ourselves enough clearly is "what would be the ecological impact of such an invasion".

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It would be kinda cool to see how the world has assimilated this alien crap and found a way to use it to the animals' advantage.

On another note, I must've screwed up pretty bad on that sand trap part. I just ended up using the gravity gun to swap between a single piece of sheet metal and a pallet and would stand on one, then put the other in front of me. Repeat. A million fucking times until I'd explored the entire beach. It was the only part of the game that DIDN'T totally suck me in. Wandering around on the way into the citadel was pretty sweet though, and that bit where you had to find your way around using those giant ground-pounding things was astonishing for me because it was the first thing I played after hooking up my 5.1 setup. Goddamn, the entire house rattled every time. It was beautiful. Can't wait for the expansion, enemies or no.

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Concerning exploring the environment and zet all kinds of cool thing in motion: play tomb raider legend. Eidos managed to resurect the tomb raider game from the grave in a succesfull way. It's actually fun to play. And you get to explore all kinds of cool places. hardly any shooting at all! :)

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...play tomb raider legend. Eidos managed to resurect the tomb raider game from the grave in a succesfull way. It's actually fun to play...

It's far too early in the morning to be slapping me with that one. There's only so much the human mind can take, you know... In fact, I choose to believe I'm still dreaming.

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My flatmate Dan and I had a very similar conversation a while back, about how the opening section of HL2 was, for us, the best, despite having no weapons at all. The interaction, the details, the running through squats and leaping over rooftops with bullets whizzing past. Dan drew the line around where Barney throws you the crowbar. I had to include the first firefight, because the pistol feels so meaty, the aiming so pleasurable, the shootouts so dramatic in a Sergio Leone way.

A whole game like this, we said, would be amazing. Of course, they'd have to work very hard to make it non-linear and pack it full of detail. And it helps that HL2 was able to be self-indulgent to a point, knowing that they could take time over giving the players a HEV suit or a crowbar, as most would revel in the nostalgia.

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I also enjoyed Highway 17 the most. Without any enemies it would have been boring though. I think the balance [in the H17 sections] was quite right.

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I also enjoyed Highway 17 the most. Without any enemies it would have been boring though. I think the balance [in the H17 sections] was quite right.

Definitely. The pacing of the game is what makes it so wonderful. It's not like the enemies are just spread out randomly, but they're hanging around places where it's not jarring for them to be, like the houses they've occupied, and the roadblocks they've set up. But it's like, when it's just an old house, completely silent (only the wooshing of the ocean), and you can go into the kitchen and see all the stuff there, and upstairs there's the former inhabitant that got taken by a headcrab, and he wakes up when you arrive and starts wailing and shambling towards you. And this is so great, because it's not like the enemy is there as a challenge, but just as some sort of, I dunno, story element. It's pretty unusual for a game, but it works fantastically. Even though it's just another zombie model, you're thinking "hey, this is the guy who lived here," or whatever. And you can just cheese it, and leave him there. Run out of the house, jump into the car and continue along the coast.

It's like the game world is so real that me leaving the guy alive there, or me doing whatever, throwing stuff off a cliff or stacking cans of paint, has some meaning or effect that's not a product of some explicit game mechanic, but just a byproduct of all the aspects of the game's design.

At least, that's what I think.

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In a way, this thread sums up more than just HL2, it sums up why I like coming to these forums now and again. You guys get this stuff. Any other message board, by now, someone would've strolled in trolling away about how it's just not an FPS without guns and explosions and the whole discussion would've collapsed in ugliness.

I don't really have anything to add because all these parts are exactly what I love about HL2 too. When I finished the game, my overwhelming impression was that, despite their focus on human characters, the strongest character in the game was City 17 itself and the whole game was just a portrait of the city and its surroundings.

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Well, technically, the STRONGEST character was Dog, but I get what you mean. I too loved the way that the only people left in some houses were their headcrab-stricken owners. Although I never let them live. They weren't really alive when I'd shown up anyway. It's like if you saw a loved one become a zombie, you know you'd have to shoot them because they were the same body, but not the same person.

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I think I'd probably try to talk them out of it first, and then kill them. The double-barreled shotgun double shot to the face is fabulous! WHAM!

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Wait, so kill them whether you were successful or not?

"Oh thank God you've freed me from this horrible alien menace! Is there anything I can do to repa-"

BLAM!

real nice, man. Real nice indeed.

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I remember when the highway 17 section started, I let out a curse, I felt not enough time had passed since the hovercraft section (which I didn’t enjoy that much) plus I wanted to play with my grav gun. However once I got into it, it became my favourite section of the game. .

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My favorite segment was, too, a part without many enemies at all

I loved climbing under the bridge

I thought it was so cool to look through all the scaffolding and metalwork and to look down to the ocean

It really gave me a sense of the dizzying height

The height felt more real than in the citadel at then end (which, lets be honest, could have been done better)

But the experience of scaling and sneaking under the bridge with the trains rattling overhead and the accidental slips of your wrist that would find you wedged in between two procarious beams just inches from a fatal fall was far more thrilling than the traditional turn-a-corner-and-shoot action of the rest of the game.

My other favorite segment was the openning chase across the rooftops, which says something, as those were two parts that were almost devoid of confrontation.

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It has recently become cool to say that Half-Life 2 was overhyped and actually average. I'm so happy this forum isn't going along with that.

Whenever I think back to any of the scenes you describe I'm reminded how great Half-Life 2 is. It is hands down The Greatest FPS Ever Made. No other FPS comes even close.

I will always remember the excitement and the emotions I experienced when I first played it. Half-Life 2 is everything (and more) that I dreamed of as a kid when I was still playing Wolfenstein 3D. It is the dream game that I wished would some day be created, and it was. Let us never take this level of excellence for granted.

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It's really strange... I don't feel at all like you guys : for me, Half life had its moments but overall it felt like the storyline was more of a ride than a real scenario : It felt like I was pushed forward and around without begin able to be pro-activ in any of the situation encountered.

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It has recently become cool to say that Half-Life 2 was overhyped and actually average. I'm so happy this forum isn't going along with that.

I couldn't agree with you more. It's like it's suddenly fashionable to slag it off, despite the fact that it's clearly brilliant, brilliant stuff. People are weird...

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It has recently become cool to say that Half-Life 2 was overhyped and actually average. I'm so happy this forum isn't going along with that.

Whenever I think back to any of the scenes you describe I'm reminded how great Half-Life 2 is. It is hands down The Greatest FPS Ever Made. No other FPS comes even close.

I've been noticing this too. What I've concluded is that a lot of gamers posting on message boards suffer from what I (offensively) deem a kind of FPS/gaming autism. It's a kind of disorder where you play games without any interest in any story or character elements and only with interest in the raw gameplay. "Where's the next enemy for me to shoot?" is about the level of immersion achieved for these guys, which explains to me why, for them, Quake 4 is an enjoyable game, Half-Life 2 is "crap cos you just run and gun against the same four enemies" and something like Psychonauts is "just a boring platformer".

The best methods for diagnosis change but they always revolve around watching to see who declares that HL2 has "no story". Last summer, the best examples were the guys who played the Lost Coast and then posted saying "I've got to the top and into the church and now I don't know what to do". Despite the fact that the entire way up some bloody great cannon had been firing away and now it was in the same room as them, and despite the fact that that fisherman had mentioned it multiple times, they were always genuinely surprised to find they had to do something with the cannon.

The current method for diagnosis is to watch for the people who say "Episode One is set in City 17?? Boooooooooooooooooooring. Give me somewhere new to shoot stuff in!", because you know, who cares about seeing what happens to the characters and the story.

For all my insults here, however, on most days, I am more than happy to accept that different people get different things out of their games and it's totally fine to just play games for the sake of shooting stuff. Just don't go telling us which games are crap and why we shouldn't like them, when it's got nothing to do with the games but the person playing them.

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I have no hate for HL2. Ravenholm freaked me out so damn much, The journey through Citadel was fantastic, and Highway 17 was brilliantly paced. I don't think it's the Greates FPS Ever (for me, that spot is held by Tron 2.0) but it is a damn fine game.

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It has recently become cool to say that Half-Life 2 was overhyped and actually average.

Yes. Bizarre.

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Maybe it's not somuch that those people don't appreciate the story, but that they're uncomfortable liking something that is critically acclaimed and liked by many other people. I mean, does it make you hardcorererer if you're above "mainstream pap" like Half-Life 2? I have no idea what goes on in their heads. Let's kill them all.

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