New Half-Life 2 screenshots

[Marek]

See: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55379

EuroGamer says it well: "it's starting to look a bit more like a real game and not some sort of magical voodoo concoction as it did when we first slobbered over it at the start of 2003."

I thought the screenshots were a little underwhelming. I mean, it still looks better than most games, but somehow these new locations don't seem quite as detailed as what we saw before.

Oh well, I guess that was to be expected somewhat.

[tabacco]

Yeah, the textures and everything seem kinda boring and plain. Especially after seeing the Crytek engine in action again the other day

[Jake]

Just the general moodiness and architecture and stuff seems a lot .... more lame. Less realistic. E3 will reveal, no?

.. or is HL2 not at E3?

At least there are still some shots coming out with the attention to detail that made people fly around the room last year.

[Chris]

Stuff like this seems inevitable when games miss their release mark by this much. I too am not quite as head-explodingly enthused as I once was...

[Alex]

if you ask me, that's a good thing. If HL2 had been reviewed in september, everyone would have given it solid gold despite how good it actually was. Now that it's beginning to die down, I feel more secure in my mind that the thumb will be able to produce a much more unbiased (towards valve) account of how well it plays

[D.C.]

I don't mind the graphic style. It looks like an authentic Eastern European city. (I'm basing that on pictures i've seen.) It looks like it'll have an atmosphere like that city near Chernobyl.

[Ginger]

STALKER has raised the bar of our graphical expectations. Whether it will come out before it is toppled by a different preview is another matter. But it has definitely taken the graphical shine off HL2, but hopefully the gameplay and AI of HL2 can still impress

[Ginger]

and is it just me or do the or do the player hand and gun models look as ugly as those for HL1

[pom_gb]

I just watched the new HL2 trailer from IGN and I swear that many parts the graphics looked Half-Life 1 quality.

I'm not really excited about this game any more, bring on the Psychonauts!!

[vimes]

I just watched the new HL2 trailer from IGN and I swear that many parts the graphics looked Half-Life 1 quality.

I'm not really excited about this game any more, bring on the Psychonauts!!

yeah!

Now that they've been dropped by Microsoft, Doblefine can release the game on PC, can't they?

Anyway, they'll be in trouble, cause, the day Psychonauts will be released, there won't be a lot of XBox player left .

[manny_c44]

I pray they will release it on PC, because I don't want to by or steal a whole system just for one game.

[ragnar]

Well, it might even come out before Duke Nukem Forever.

[MrHoatzin]

Well, it might even come out before Duke Nukem Forever.

Now that is just bad taste...

[ragnar]

What is bad taste? DNF or HL2?

[MrHoatzin]

you implying that Psychonauts will never see the light of day... Fie! FIE!

[ragnar]

Psychonauts will probably never see the light of day, at least not on a platform that I can play it on (which makes me very jealous).

[Guest James]

Half-Life itself wasn't groundbreakingly gorgeous, hell it was ugly. However its set pieces and advancement of the genre were its USPs, not graphical supremacy. Doom 3 may be a better looking game, and Far Cry perhaps an example of superior programming, but I'd wager that Half-Life 2 will play better, and involve the player to a greater degree. Doom 3 appears as a re-make; but with less enemies. I'll still buy, and most likely enjoy all three (Far Cry has been on the "to buy" list since release), but at different levels.

[Huz]

Half-Life itself wasn't groundbreakingly gorgeous, hell it was ugly. However its set pieces and advancement of the genre were its USPs, not graphical supremacy.

Hey punk! I don't know what "USPs" means, but I'll just pretend I do and argue against you anyway. Granted it used a modified version of the Quake engine, but that was still pretty sexy back in '98. It certainly wasn't ugly. Don't you remember the animated faces of the characters, the huge tentacle-monster, the intricate machinery on show in the cavernous, erm, caverns, in the intro? The beautifully animated monsters, the turbulant (yes I can't spell) water in Team Fortress, all that mad alien stuff on Xen? It may not have been "groundbreakingly gorgeous" but it had a certain graphical awesomeness that other games of the time hadn't yet achieved. Maybe you didn't have a 3dfx card. I did. I was special.

[Thrik]

Visually, Half-Life 2 totally fails to excite me now. Its graphics are already dated, when put alongside recent releases such as Painkiller and Far Cry. And when I look at the technical demo of the third incarnation of ye olde Unreal Engine, I could almost cry for Valve.

Of course, gameplay always counts for more than graphics. The E3 2004 interview seemed to show that they are very keen to deliver an awesome playing experience with regards to fun and atmosphere. It just won't look as pretty as other games that're doing the rounds.

As for Half-Life 1's graphics, yes it's ugly - when looking back. At the time, it was perfectly suited to the general level of graphics in games. And let's not forget that modifications like Natural Selection really pushed the engine and delivered some very pretty graphics indeed.

[MrHoatzin]

I am actually quite fond of the Half-Life 1 graphics. They remind me of all the public buildings built in the sixties. I was walking down this hall in the university one night and I heard something moving in the airshaft above, probably a rat but the first impulse was, HEADCRAB! WHERE'S MY CROWBAR?!

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Perhaps the graphics are now a step down compared to, say, Doom3 or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but it's ultimately the gameplay and narrative exposition I really look forward to. I may be a graphics whore, but I'll be damned if that's what games are for only.

[schepton]

Check my avatar...

[Erwin_Br]

Marek seems to have picked the worst image from that gallery, though.

I don't think the graphics look *that* dated, but if they are: who cares!? A lot of folks (myself included) still play Counter-Strike for crying out loud! Why? Because it's the best damn gameplay I've ever seen in a FPS.

--Erwin

[schepton]

Yeah there are almost no instances where a game can save it's bad gameplay by having amazing graphics.

Gameplay is key...

[Erwin_Br]

Oh, and I'm sure Half Life 2 is going to kick Doom 3's arse in terms of gameplay. I mean, what's Doom 3 about? Shooting mutilated corpses batch after batch? The only tactics being: Don't get too near them. [insert rolls-eyes smiley here]

--Erwin

PS: Marek/Spaff/Jake/Tabacco: get a rolls-eyes smiley