twmac

Half Life 2: I'm really missing the point

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I played the Half life demo about 7 years ago, it involved moving some kind of suit through a tutorial doing mega jumps or something. I sort thought that this was going to be a game that no one would ever talk about again as the whole thing looked like complete gash.

Then I found out it was supposed to be one of the best games ever and I figured I must have just played a particularly dull section. I didn't have a PC that could run it so I shrugged and left it at that.

The Xbox version of Half Life 2 came out a couple of years ago and I was a little appalled that it was published by EA so I borrowed a copy rather than buy.

I got drunk and started to play, then turned it off 30 mins in. I looked back at that moment last week after looking at orange box for the 360 in the local gamestop, I figured I'd give it another go and ended up stopping at roughly about the same spot (I'm shooting stuff that is green and falling off the ceilings).

Now I've tried to blame several factors but they don't fit. The first is that I'm a twitch gamer if I'm not shooting things or hacking them to pieces I get easily bored; then I looked at my 15 hours on Viva Pinata, that I was utterly enthralled by Bioshock and Doom 3 (which doesn't give you a gun for ages) and that doesn't wash. The second was that I was drunk both times and didn't appreciate it, but that doesn't wash either because I usually enjoy things more when I'm drunk (Inane conversations, urinating, the first Republica album). I'm left scratching my head, I mean does this game get better, do I need to persevere? Or have I just found myself a victim of hype after years of listening to people compare everything to Half Life I was maybe expecting too much? Do I need to play the first one to appreciate something that I missed?

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I'm confused, are you talking about Half Life 1 or 2? You don't need to play one to appreciate the other.

Either way, there's something clearly wrong with you :D

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Sort of talking about both but more specifically Half Life 2, which I tried again recently.

Yeah, I thought that had to be the answer... Some kind of genetic anomally maybe ;(

---------

Realised I forgot to specify this in first post and edited it for clarity (hopefully)

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Not much to really say. I thought both games were fantastic from beginning to end, although I'd say Half-Life 2 is the generally better game due to the sheer variety of locations and gameplay on offer.

When I think back to HL2 I remember nothing but awesomeness. I genuinely find it difficult to think of one single part of the game I disliked, and find it very hard to comprehend how anyone could not really like it.

All I can do is urge you to persist with Half-Life 2 a bit (unlike Half-Life 1 the environments and gameplay changes dramatically throughout). If you still don't like it, you're clearly insane and want to book yourself into the nearest nut house.

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Yeah, that's a good point. PC games is definitely what Valve does, and I can't see how a console version could be anything but inferior. And it probably is.

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I think the Half-Life games are one of the few games where every single second, from beginning to end, is totally awesome.

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Don't play it on a console?

If you don't enjoy the second game, even now, you need your head looking at.

I. :shifty: I wasn't impressed by Half-Life 2 either. And I don't mean just now on Orange Box, but I mean when it came out on the PC. Made it a little bit past the boat sequence and never touched it again. Bored me to death. I definitely appreciate the architecture and art direction, but the game was so dull.

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To be completely honest, I also don't see Half-Life 1 as being as great as most people seem to think. I didn't like many of the levels and I think the soldier AI is unfair (too fast or something, I don't remember which difficulty I'm playing). But it's definitely a great game, and I actually started replaying it (Half-Life: Source) recently... hmm... one more item I missed from my already-long-enough-backlog :)

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Weird. It was the characters, implied storyline, and cinematic nature of the events that made the game appeal to me father than the art direction or architecture. In fact, those things hardly occurred to me at all.

How can other people possibly think of the game in a different way to me??

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I played Half-Life 2 when it was first released and thought it was very nice. I didn't ejaculate or anything, but still liked it. But it was only when I decided to replay it a while ago that I realized how polished nearly every aspect of it was. Still, I stopped playing it when I was over half way through, and focused on other games and stuff.

Shortly after that, I bought Orange Box for TF2 and Portal, but decided to give Episode 1 a go. I soon noticed that I was actually really paying attention to what Alyx was doing and saying almost like she was a real human being. This is something that rarely happens when I'm playing and made me realize how excellent Valve actually is. And yet, I soon got bored playing with those glowing balls, quit, and didn't touch the game since.

I don't know what is going on! In my opinion, Half-Life 2 is a game that does pretty much everything a little bit better than any other FPS game I have played. Yet, it doesn't manage to suck me in like some other games. It's not that I ADD gamer either; I have played through my share of rubbish games hoping that they would get better.

It feels like the game is missing some tiny but, for me, essential part and I can clearly see that it isn't there but I'm not sure what it is that isn't there.

I promise that some day I will force myself to play through all the Episodes.

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It feels like the game is missing some tiny but, for me, essential part and I can clearly see that it isn't there but I'm not sure what it is that isn't there.

The Hammy-ness of nearly all other FPSes maybe?

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Well at least a few other people were bored playing, not just me.

I'm going to try and slog through it a bit further and see if I can find something in it to enjoy.

I will not, nor will I ever return to PC gaming, not only is it expensive to keep up to date, I travel too much for it to be viable to lug around everywhere. And on top of that it is also dangerous (Heroes of might and magic 2 destroyed me on an epic level like no console game ever could).

There's also the fact that I gave up games in their entirety for 3 years because of 2 of the aforementioned reasons. I was saved by a round of Tekken 2 and the introduction of the Dreamcast.

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I guess I mean that Half-life 2 has a a certain slickness to it, and totally buys into it's own fiction (without losing all sense of humour). It takes itself seriously, in a good way, making it more consistant.

Most other FPS games seem clumsy in comparison. And Cheesy. The game-ness is more apparent. It's the difference between a really excellent movie and a hammer horror B-movie. If you're used to cheesyness then entertainment of actual merit can be difficult to adjust to.

I'm not sure how to explain it really.

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There's more depth to the characters in HL2, since they've put a lot of effort into body language and facial animation.

I love the HL2 games to bits, but HL1 bored me to tears by the time I reached Xen. A four legged spider with a giant bollock hanging off the bottom, running around a floaty space world made of rock platforms and crystals? Fuck off.

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Most people hated Xen. I loved it, although I admit the change in gameplay wasn't great. What I liked was the depiction of an utterly alien dimension, something that could feasibly melt your brain. I've yet to see much like it in a game before or since.

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I thought it was a total cliche, like an extension of 2D platformer aesthetic conventions mixed with 80s kids cartoons like Ulysses (Which I liked, but the floaty space weirdness was not a plus point) and Dali paintings. Meh :)

I also played it after Unreal, which had Na Pali sky castles on flying islands. They too just seemed like a big cliche.

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Well at least a few other people were bored playing, not just me.

For the record, as much as I enjoyed the main Half-Life 2 game I found Episode 1 rather trite and uninspiring. It's only noteworthy point for me is the new heights Valve has soared to in terms of NPC connection and interplay -- Alyx is simply brilliant in every aspect.

I'm going to try and slog through it a bit further and see if I can find something in it to enjoy.

Please, for me, at least play up until you've done the bridge. :chaste:

That's my most favourite gamespace to date as I write this; it's unlike any other set piece I've played, blending several highly contrasting gameplay formats/structures (platforming, FPS, stealth) into one section so brilliantly. It's also quite breath-taking to just see in my opinion -- I really hope you get that far and enjoy it too.

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The coastal section of the game in general is definitely my favourite. I love the isolated feel you get out there, combined with the threat of never knowing where some equally isolated Combine group is.

I think the fact that you traverse so much distance in Half-Life 2 is one of the major appeals for me. It makes it feel kind of epic considering you go across a huge amount of distance. And even better, it's all seamless (apart from the in-game loading) and not split into 'levels'. That's one thing HL1 did that really is awesome, with the only thing better being seamless streaming.

Pretty weird how I'm already a bit nostalgic about that game.

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I guess I mean that Half-life 2 has a a certain slickness to it, and totally buys into it's own fiction (without losing all sense of humour). It takes itself seriously, in a good way, making it more consistant.

I actually loved that in HL2.

At least I think so. It might be that subconsciously it was just the opposite. Not very likely, though.

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I think the fact that you traverse so much distance in Half-Life 2 is one of the major appeals for me. It makes it feel kind of epic considering you go across a huge amount of distance. And even better, it's all seamless (apart from the in-game loading) and not split into 'levels'. That's one thing HL1 did that really is awesome, with the only thing better being seamless streaming.

That's a very good point actually; both Half-Life games have had the player traverse an enormous amount of distance, whether it be running/driving overground or crawling deep in the bowls of a top secret military science installation.

Thinking about this gives me a rush of nostalgia, too...

Hurry up, Black Mesa!

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Half-Life 1 is a classic, but it's loved even more for the lasting community it spawned. Obviously looking back we can pick it apart but that doesn't diminish what it was and what it became. It also had the best exhibition of AI in your typical first person shooter.

Saying that I found Half-Life 2 to be severely overrated. At the time it came out the FPS genre had moved on, everything HL2 did well was to be expected and it didn't do much else beyond implement some contrived physics engine. Level loads were a bitch and the AI seemed prefunctory (as if we were now facing endless streams of stormtroopers for no apparent reason other than to shoot). Looking back, having recently played Episode 2 (and loved it to bits), I can now appreciate what they were originally gunning for in terms of an FPS experience - but it took them until Episode 2 to actually nail it...

Episode 1 was Half-Life 2 marginally improved. I enjoyed it, as I did HL2 for that matter, but it never made any lasting impression. Ep2 on the other hand is the best in the franchise and strikes the perfect balance.

I don't think I've ever been 'bored' by the HL games, they are first person shooters after all and there's not a whole lot to them. I'm not sure what you were expecting exactly?

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I'm going to try and slog through it a bit further...

Well if you're already going back into it thinking it will be a slog it's pretty much a pointless endeavor ;) I'd just give this one up and play things that genuinely excite/intrigue you.

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I disagree. If I expect a lot less from this game I'm hoping it might surprise me. I hated the first hour of Dreamfall: The longest journey then I went back to it a few weeks later just so I could say I completed it and found myself ignoring the piss poor fight scenes but really enjoying the story. Expectations lowered=Small rewards appreciated.

Unfortunately I had a 100% reproducible crash on the library section and have never been able to circum-navigate it.

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